Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World by Rene Girard

Book 1: Fundamental Anthropology

Chapter 1

All learning is based on imitation.
What's missing from Plato's account of imitation is any reference to kinds of behavior involved in appropriation.
It was Plato who determined once and for all the cultural meaning of imitation, but this meaning is truncated, torn from the essential dimension of acquisitive behavour, which is also the dimension of conflict.
- (Gavin) It seems that Girard is skeptical of the unconscious and will attempt to explain psychology based in our tendency toward imitation.
Imitation can become a chain reaction - like a blood feud which lasts from generation to generation.
Flood and epidemic in religion can serve as metaphors for mimetic violence (mimetic propogation).