[coldtea]

>It doesn't discuss anything else and offers nothing except banalities about the Bible, Jesus (speaking in Parables) and Rene (sic) Girard, a French author who was ridiculed in France for his obsessions and circular thinking, but enjoyed some kind of cult following in the US, apparently.

Girard was never ridiculed in France (at least, not any more than any other who became a target at this or that point). He remains a very respected figure, and his theories are very deep. That said, they're not suitable for consumption by analytical philosophy types.

Thiel, however, has only ever said trivialities regarding Girard and his theories, that reveal a very shallow understanding (if that), something analogous to "As Einstein said, everything is relative".

[bambax]

There are books about Girard that are pretty funny; one of them is this (published in 2010, while he was still alive):

https://www.editionskime.fr/publications/rene-girard-un-allu...

His fixation is that all of human history can be explained by the fact that people like to copy one another. One of the (many) problems with that theory is that it's turtles all the way down. I don't think Girard can be said to be deep.

[coldtea]

>His fixation is that all of human history can be explained by the fact that people like to copy one another.

Well, in the same sense that "Einstein's fixation is that everything in physics can be explained by the speed of light and frames of reference". Or "War and Peace talks about Russia at the time of the Napoleonic wars".

E.g. that "people like to copy one another", is a very crude approximation of "humans being social animals, learning from one another, copying one another, getting entangled in mob behavior, valuing things for social reasons, enforcing laws, rituals, and counter-measures to stop regression to anarchy, mob violence, and social conflict, and so on" -- which in turn is a very crude approximation of the far more detailed, argued, and nuanced treatment of those ideas by Girard as he examines the development of various institutions (religion, morals, governance, etc.

>I don't think Girard can be said to be deep.

The "turtles all the way down" strawman is rather not deep.