Commentary Anyone with a spouse, child, parent, or close friend victimized by 21st-century “cancel culture” already knows it to be a profoundly disturbing, unjust, and soul-destroying experience. Vicious playwrights and the frantic mobs that follow their scripts have no respect for the limits of moral decency. The development of social media has empowered self-interested actors to “cancel” anyone who stands in the way of their unrealized ambitions or desires. Their unfortunate victims often end up jobless, isolated, and broke. Generally, those who take great pains to destroy other people gain little more than empty satisfaction. Everyone loses the capacity to understand different perspectives and live in harmony. The Pathology of ‘Mimetic Desire’ On the death in 2015 of René Girard, who was the Andrew B. Hammond Professor of French Language, Literature and Civilization at Stanford University, a French scholar compared the eminent philosopher of social science to the famous 19th-century historian and moralist Alexis de Tocqueville.
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