Against Girardian mimesis

Wikipedia summarizes René Girard's mimetic theory like this: Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires. In other words, you think you want something for your own internal reasons, but the actual reason you want it is that someone else wants it, and that makes you desire the thing and compete for it. The "someone else" whose desires you copy is someone you care about . It could be a friend, a sibling, or a colleague. It could also be a famous person, or even a fictional character. (Not a stranger you don't care about.) This creates unnecessary social conflict, as people gradually converge on wanting the same thing, people start seeing each other as rivals, this attitude gets copied too, then people start hating each other, but who hates whom gets copied too, until everyone synchronizes at hating one specific person ... and then they typically murder the person, and everyone feels happy about the conflict being resolved. The choice of the person to kill is arbitrary, in the sense that the selected person is definitely not responsible for everything they get b