“Competition Is for Losers”
According to Girard’s exegesis of this famous section of the Sermon on the Mount, the point Jesus was trying to make is that the world actively invites violence. That is why the examples that Jesus uses are so drastic. Jesus refers to someone who slaps a person without provocation and who sues a person for his tunic, which at the time was among the few articles of clothing that people owned. Conduct of that sort can only be motivated by something more than what meets the eye. What the aggressor really wants is to draw us into an endless cycle of violence. “Only the conduct enjoined by Jesus” offers an exit strategy, maintains Girard.
.. Thiel says most business rivalries resemble Romeo and Juliet. “The two houses are alike, yet they hate each other.”
Thiel’s business philosophy is a thorough working out of Girard’s anthropology. Thiel argues, for example, that competition is most often a losing proposition for the competitors. Among mimetic rivals in business, it drives down prices and eats away profitability. And among mimetic rivals within the same company, it breeds needless jockeying for the top job.
.. Companies are better formed, in Thiel’s view, by friends who enjoy each other’s company and share a unique idea, than by type-A loners who just want to improve upon what everyone else is already doing.
.. every religion which is persecuted becomes itself persecuting; for as soon as by some accidental turn it arises from persecution, it attacks the religion which persecuted it; not as religion, but as tyranny.