Modern football through the lens of René Girard
&gt; Girard argues that we don’t develop our own desires but want what others seem to want.<p>Garbage. I might feel bad that I haven&#x27;t read Girard, except that the author admits he hasn&#x27;t either.<p>&gt; Think about it: rituals before, during, and after the game; group singing; deep emotional involvement; the use of symbols to show that you are part of a certain group. These are all religious aspects. Every club has legendary players; heroic figures, shaped by immortal memories, admired by everyone at the club.<p>Sorry, Niklas. I&#x27;ve been to Wrigley Field when the Cubs win and everyone sings &quot;Go, Cubs, Go.&quot; It&#x27;s different in America, and by the way, you&#x27;re welcome to wear the visiting team&#x27;s baseball cap to a game, too. We know it&#x27;s just a game.<p>In the video [1], Girard says:<p><i>I think desire usually is born out of the contemplation of someone else who is desiring and who designates to you the object he is desiring as desirable.</i><p>Sorry, this is barely even a half-truth. Middle schoolers are walking down the street not looking where they&#x27;re going because they&#x27;re staring at their smartphones, and that&#x27;s where <i>they</i> get desire. If they grow up, they learn to think for themselves.<p>More from the video:<p><i>Peter Robinson [narrator]: Serpent, Eve and apple.<p>Rene Girard: Serpent in the mimetic theory of desire is a symbol, an image, of the mediator. In other words, the one who directs the subject towards the bad desire. There are churches who know what they are talking about much better than most people think. Know that example is the key to bad as well as good behavior, and this is nothing but what I call mimetic desire.</i><p>... and this is why people like to make fun of French intellectuals.