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René Girard, the French literary theorist and anthropologist, proposed a powerful and unorthodox framework for understanding human nature, culture, and religion through the dynamics of mimetic desire and scapegoating. While initially emerging from his analysis of literature, Girard’s thought developed into a broader anthropological and theological thesis: that human desire is imitative; that this imitation leads to rivalry and violence; and that cultures have historically managed this violence through the mechanism of scapegoating. Myths and sacrificial religions, Girard argued, emerged to conceal this violence. In contrast, the Bible progressively unveils it. Christianity, in this view, is not merely one religion among many but a singular revelation that exposes the foundations of human culture and offers the only true alternative to its violent cycles. This essay explores Girard’s theory, its explanatory power in both ancient and modern contexts, and how it ultimately substantiates the unique truth claims of Christianity and the person of Jesus Christ.

At the center of Girard’s theory is the idea of mimetic desire—the claim that human beings learn what to desire not independently, but by imitating the desires of others. Desire, in Girard’s model, is triangular: the subject desires an object because it is already desired by a model or rival. This imitation, while foundational to socialization and learning, also generates rivalry and conflict. If two individuals desire the same object, not due to its intrinsic value but because the other desires it, a struggle ensues. When this mimetic rivalry spreads through a group, it creates a crisis of escalating violence and disorder.

In order to survive such crises, archaic societies developed what Girard termed the scapegoat mechanism. A community on the verge of collapse due to internal conflict unconsciously projects its collective tensions onto a single victim—someone marked as different, vulnerable, or blameworthy. The victim is expelled or killed, and this act of violence restores a fragile sense of unity. Over time, this event is mythologized, and the victim is remembered not as innocent but as guilty, sometimes even elevated to divine status. Through this mechanism, violence is sanctified, and the origins of religion, law, and culture are rooted in collective murder misremembered as justice.

What distinguishes the Bible from myth, according to Girard, is that it gradually unmasks this mechanism. Rather than justifying violence, the biblical texts increasingly side with the victim and reveal the injustice of scapegoating. The story of Cain and Abel, for instance, names the guilt of the murderer and insists that Abel’s blood cries out from the ground. Joseph is thrown into a pit and sold by his brothers, yet the narrative vindicates him. Job, falsely accused by his friends, is ultimately defended by God. The trajectory continues in the Psalms and the prophetic literature, which frequently highlight the persecution of the innocent and the corruption of the crowd. Most notably, Isaiah 53 introduces the figure of the suffering servant, who is “despised and rejected by men,” but who suffers not for his own sins, but for those of others.

This biblical trajectory culminates in the Passion of Christ. Jesus, like countless scapegoats before him, is accused by religious and political authorities, abandoned by his followers, and condemned by a unanimous crowd. However, the Gospels insist on his innocence, breaking with the narrative structure of myth. The crucifixion of Jesus is presented not as a sacrifice demanded by God, but as the ultimate exposure of human sin—specifically, the sin of scapegoating violence. His resurrection, moreover, does not symbolize divine revenge but divine vindication. It reveals that the victim was innocent and that the mechanism of communal violence was based on a lie.

For Girard, this moment marks a rupture in human history. Christianity is not simply a superior moral system; it is a revelation of the deepest truths about human nature and social order. The cross does not continue the sacrificial logic—it ends it. Where myth obscures the victim’s innocence, the Gospel illuminates it. In this light, Jesus is not merely one more martyr; he is the only victim whose innocence is universally declared and whose death exposes the structure of sacred violence. The revelation is twofold: anthropologically, it shows the mechanism by which cultures have maintained order; theologically, it reveals a God who identifies not with the sacrificers, but with the victim.

This interpretation not only reframes the biblical narrative, but also extends to modern social phenomena. Mimetic desire and the scapegoat mechanism remain operative in contemporary society, often in secularized forms. One striking example is cancel culture. On digital platforms, individuals accused of transgression can become targets of mass outrage, losing reputation, employment, or social standing. The moral fervor that drives these phenomena is often mimetic: people echo others’ condemnation, align with influential voices, and participate in a collective purge. While sometimes justified by ethical concerns, the speed and unanimity of such reactions frequently resemble the dynamics of scapegoating described by Girard. The community finds unity not through truth or reconciliation, but through symbolic exclusion.

Financial markets offer another domain where mimetic dynamics are evident. Investment decisions, particularly during bubbles or crashes, are often driven less by rational analysis than by the perception of what others are doing. When desire for an asset is amplified by the desire of others, it creates a feedback loop of imitation. The result is herd behavior, speculative bubbles, and panic-driven collapses. When these systems fail, blame is assigned—often to scapegoats such as executives, regulators, or short sellers—rather than to the mimetic structure itself.

Even political polarization can be understood through mimetic theory. Rival parties and ideologies increasingly define themselves not by coherent programs, but by opposition to one another. In such a climate, internal dissent is punished, loyalty is performative, and enemies are necessary for group cohesion. This polarization is fueled by the same dynamics Girard identified in ancient societies: desire shaped by rivalry, conflict sustained by imitation, and peace maintained through symbolic or literal scapegoating.

Yet despite the persistence of these mechanisms, Girard believed that the biblical revelation remains active. Christianity offers not merely a critique of violence, but a concrete alternative to it. The teachings of Jesus—love your enemies, forgive endlessly, do not judge—are not moral platitudes but strategies for dismantling the foundations of mimetic violence. To follow Christ is to resist the crowd, to side with the victim, and to refuse the logic of vengeance. In this sense, Christian truth is not only doctrinal but anthropological. It reveals what human beings are, how they form societies, and how those societies can be transformed.

In conclusion, René Girard’s mimetic theory offers a comprehensive framework for understanding human desire, social cohesion, and religious history. It unveils the hidden structures of violence that have shaped civilizations and reinterprets the Bible as a progressive disclosure of these structures. In the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Girard finds the decisive revelation: the scapegoat is innocent, the crowd is guilty, and God is on the side of the victim. Christianity, therefore, is not a myth among myths, but the end of myth—a divine intervention that reveals the truth of human sin and the possibility of redemption. In an age still gripped by rivalry, polarization, and sacrificial violence, this revelation remains as urgent as ever.

Every few years, there’s a shift that feels less like a trend and more like gravity. Lately, it’s become hard to ignore how many of the most compelling problems—and the most quietly ambitious builders—are sitting at the edge where software meets the physical world.

I’m not talking about another wave of apps built on the latest foundation model, or agents that book calendar invites slightly better than last week. I’m talking about systems that do something—sense, move, manipulate, extract, assemble. Things that run on code, but are grounded in atoms.

This isn’t nostalgia for hardware. It’s not about romanticizing robotics or trying to find a physical counterpart to SaaS. It’s about a genuine shift in what’s possible. The ingredients are lining up: cheap sensors, abundant compute, increasingly capable edge devices, smarter control software, and lower costs across the board. Combine that with AI models that can operate in messier, less structured environments, and suddenly the idea of intelligent machines in the wild doesn’t feel sci-fi. It feels near-term.

What’s emerging is a convergence—one where software isn’t just an interface, but a brain. And hardware isn’t just a container, but a body.

This matters for a few reasons. First: software is becoming less defensible. Everyone feels it. The ability to replicate, remix, and launch is faster than ever. Moats that once held—data, UI, even distribution—are shrinking. If your product lives only on a screen, it’s probably on borrowed time. But combine it with a physical system that’s hard to copy, hard to ship, hard to scale? You’ve got something much stickier. The bar to entry rises. The moat deepens.

Second: many of the most important frontiers—energy, health, manufacturing, climate, defense—don’t yield to software alone. You can’t debug a mining drill with a slide deck. You can’t decarbonize an industrial process with an LLM. These are problems that live in the real world. They demand a different kind of thinking. A willingness to go low-level. A willingness to get your hands dirty.

That’s where things get exciting. Because we now have the tools to do it. AI can be embedded, not just accessed via API. Robotics platforms are modular and open. Edge compute is cheap enough to deploy everywhere. And talented engineers—some from the consumer web world, some from deep R&D—are quietly building systems that feel like they belong to the next era, not the last one.

This isn’t a call to action. It’s just what I’m seeing, over and over again: the most interesting builders are converging on problems that require both code and circuits. Both intelligence and embodiment. Both software and hardware. And they’re not doing it for novelty. They’re doing it because it’s the only way to actually move the needle.

There’s something important happening here. You can feel it.

In the wake of the crypto boom, we witnessed the rise of a new kind of organization: the DAO, or Decentralized Autonomous Organization. For a moment, it felt like the future of management had arrived. Flat hierarchies, community ownership, collective decision-making—ideologically, it felt like a rebuke to the top-down structures of old. Yet, several years on, it’s hard to name a single DAO that has scaled sustainably, much less successfully.

The failure here may be less about execution and more about a fundamental confusion: a conflation of the macro and the micro.

Decentralization as a Macro Strategy

At a macro level, decentralization makes a great deal of sense. It enables flexibility, resilience, and autonomy. Institutions that operate at national or global scale—governments, regulatory bodies, international corporations—often benefit from decentralized structures that allow for local decision-making and context-sensitive execution. In fact, many large and successful organizations embrace a decentralized macro design.

Visa is a canonical example. Originally structured under Dee Hock’s leadership, Visa was conceived as a decentralized system—a chaotic web of issuing and acquiring banks, member institutions, and processors, all coordinated under a common brand and standards body. Its success wasn’t in spite of that chaos but because of it. The structure allowed Visa to scale across the globe, adapt to regional differences, and avoid the bottlenecks of centralized control.

Mastercard followed a similar pattern, and so have other massive, network-based companies. But here’s the catch: even in these organizations, success came from clarity of ownership and decision-making at the micro level.

The Power of Centralized Micro Systems

When it comes to execution—especially in startups or teams building new products—radical ownership is essential. That usually means centralization. One person or a small group must be accountable. Decisions must move fast. Trade-offs must be made. Committees rarely deliver world-changing products.

Look at Apple. Steve Jobs was infamous for his control over the details, from design to marketing. Under Tim Cook, Apple has retained that centralized ethos in product development. Amazon, too, with Jeff Bezos’s relentless focus on customer obsession and operational excellence, succeeded not by distributing decisions across thousands of voices, but by maintaining strong, centralized leadership with a clear vision.

Even companies that once leaned into more democratic ideals of product building are turning inward. Brian Chesky of Airbnb recently announced that all major product decisions now flow through him. That’s not a bug—it’s a feature. It’s what happens when companies mature and realize that great product requires great taste, and great taste is rarely arrived at by consensus.

The DAO Problem

DAOs, for all their promise, often lack this principle. By design, they distribute ownership, decision-making, and accountability to the “community.” But the result is too often paralysis, or worse: incoherence. Without a clear leader, without someone empowered to say “no,” DAOs drift. Some have become glorified message boards with a treasury. Others burn out in factional infighting. The few that survive do so only by reintroducing—ironically—centralized leadership structures.

Decentralization for its own sake is short-sighted. It prioritizes ideology over outcomes. Go back to first principles: Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations argued that ownership—of land, labor, capital—is what drives productivity. Organizations work in much the same way. Ownership drives alignment. Alignment drives speed. Speed wins.

Where Decentralization Does Belong

This isn’t to say decentralization has no place. In fact, it is vital—just not where most people want to put it. On a macro scale, decentralization protects freedoms, safeguards institutions, and creates space for innovation. It gives countries sovereignty. It gives citizens liberty. And yes, it allows large organizations to be flexible at the edges.

But zoom in, and the picture changes. At the team level, the department level, the product level, you need clarity. You need ownership. You need centralization.

Because when everyone is responsible, no one is.

And as the saying goes: a camel is a horse designed by committee.

Private Equity Is Hollowing Out American Manufacturing — It’s Time to Put Builders Back in Charge

In the race to rebuild America’s industrial base, we are dangerously close to losing the plot.

For the last two decades, the private equity model has quietly crept into nearly every corner of U.S. manufacturing. And at a surface level, it’s easy to see why. PE firms offer liquidity to aging owners, promise operational efficiency, and tout financial engineering as a value driver. But behind the spreadsheets lies a growing problem: these firms are gutting the very capacity and talent we need to compete with China and restore industrial sovereignty.

This is not a partisan issue. It’s a national one. And it’s time we got serious about what kind of capital America needs — and what kind it must leave behind.

The Private Equity Playbook: Efficiency Over Resilience

The typical private equity strategy in manufacturing follows a well-trodden script:

1. Acquire a profitable, owner-operated manufacturing business.
2. Slash headcount, outsource operations, and centralize finance, HR, and IT.
3. Migrate systems to the cloud and cut any “non-core” expenses.
4. Raise EBITDA, dress up the company, and flip it to the next PE firm in line.

This rinse-and-repeat model is not designed to build; it’s designed to extract.

It may generate short-term returns for LPs, but it comes at the long-term expense of American industrial capacity. Skilled workers are let go. Facilities are run leaner, not smarter. R&D is often considered a cost center, not a growth engine. The result? A hollowed-out shell that looks good on a P&L but can’t build the future.

Real World Fallout: Case Studies in PE Decline

Consider the fate of Remington Arms, one of America’s oldest manufacturers. Passed between PE firms, it suffered years of cost-cutting and mismanagement. Innovation stalled, quality control declined, and workers were laid off in droves — culminating in bankruptcy and fire sales.

Or take American Apparel, bought by PE firm Standard General. Despite initial hype about a turnaround, years of misaligned incentives and aggressive financial maneuvering drove the company into the ground, with manufacturing jobs lost and production outsourced.

These aren’t isolated incidents. They are systemic symptoms of a financial model that views manufacturing not as a strategic asset, but as an arbitrage opportunity.

Why This Matters Now: The China Challenge

We’re not in a vacuum. While America shuffles factory ownership from fund to fund, China is investing in capabilities. It’s pouring state and venture capital into drones, semiconductors, advanced materials, and batteries — the building blocks of tomorrow’s economy.

Just look at BYD (EVs), DJI (drones), or SMIC (chips). These companies are vertically integrated, backed by long-term capital, and constantly reinvesting in innovation and production.

Meanwhile, America is debating whether it can even make its own antibiotics or solar panels.

This isn’t just economic strategy. It’s geo-economic survival. The nation that controls manufacturing will dominate trade, energy, defense, and even culture. If we want the next century to be shaped by American values — not authoritarian ones — we need to reclaim our industrial might.

A Better Path: Backing Builders, Not Bankers

So what’s the alternative?

Equip builders and operators — founders who know how to build teams, factories, and technology — with the capital, resources, and networks they need to scale. That means:

• Raising operator-first funds that acquire and operate manufacturing companies with a long-term view.
• Embedding cutting-edge tech into legacy industrial firms — not as a cost-cutting tool, but as a productivity multiplier.
• Structuring worker ownership models that align incentives, reduce churn, and foster a culture of pride and performance.
• Creating talent pipelines that train the next generation of industrial leaders, from factory floor to founder.

This isn’t wishful thinking. It’s already happening in pockets: companies like Anduril, Varda, and Hadrian are pioneering a new model of vertically integrated, mission-driven manufacturing. But they are the exception. We need 100 more.

Capital Must Serve Capability — Not Just Returns

To be clear, this isn’t an anti-capital argument. It’s a call to reframe what kind of capitalism we practice.

Capital should serve capability. It should invest in hard things, real assets, and human potential. It should support long-term builders — not just short-term extractors.

Because if private equity continues to dominate this sector unchecked, we will end up with fewer factories, fewer skilled workers, and less national leverage — even if EBITDA margins look great for a few years.

The choice before us is simple: do we let spreadsheets dictate our industrial future, or do we back the people who can actually build it?

The fate of the next American century depends on what we choose.

Let’s choose builders.