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by mrxd 1478 days ago
I suspect that Girard’s ideas are a touch more sophisticated than “people are sheep”. Unfortunately if you see his name in a headline, that’s usually all that’s being said.
3 comments

I see his name as a heuristic for Thiel adjacent content, which is useful for deciding which links to skip
Thiel is an independent thinker and it is much needed in a rather strange and extremely conformist society. He is unpopular by definition.
I don’t care for his beliefs at all but that is not what my petty protest is about.

He is an incarnation in the flesh of state corporatism and a anti-democracy activist. That I can not stomach

> He is an incarnation in the flesh of state corporatism and a anti-democracy activist. That I can not stomach

I couldn't see a shred of this. Can you point to a specific example that influenced your stance? (direct source). Thiel has a combination of liberal, liberatarian and conservative views. He strongly opposes authoritarianism of any kind and promotes individualism.

From this clip, he describes himself as an individualist which is literally the opposite of any authoritarian/collectivist society: https://youtu.be/YK3Tzx-S264?t=54

And him directly addressing Democracy which your stance seems uninformed:

> In a Democracy, if 51% of population believes then it is better, there is a certain bias towards majoritarianism, if you have 70% of the population that believes in something, then it is even more true. But if you go from 51% to 70% to 99%, then you've gone from Democracy to North Korea. At what point do we go from wisdom of crowds to madness of crowds?

https://youtu.be/YK3Tzx-S264?t=314

Try again?
Well that is just foolish. I am an atheist but I find Catholic Bishop Robert Barron on Girard fascinating and great at explaining Girard.

Girard is one of the great theologians and a historic figure. Thiel is not a historical figure.

I actually read The Scapegoat and liked it. I’m not sure he could convince me of his thesis due to the unfalsifiable nature of his arguments; but he is an interesting thinker.

However, due to the high probability that blog-like content mentioning Girard shares Thiel’s ethos, I am obliged to pass on principal.

That "people are sheep "is merely the first idea that his thinking is based off of. The rest of it is about the mechanics that follow. If you actually read the article you can see that there's a discussion of those ideas beyond merely "people are sheep".
What do you mean?