The so called “mimetic forces” (cf. René Girard) like greed, vanity, envy, jealousy, group-think determine our human actions, based on our passion, lust, and desire. Whatever we do, aims to satisfy our wishes, desires, and needs (e.g. cf. Marshall B. Rosenberg) within a social system, with certain structures and patterns, we are part of (cf. Niklas Luhmann).
While selling products and services aims to further increase the mimetic forces, democracy has the potential to mitigate and transfer the mimetic forces into a healthy and thus sustainable society by the use of debate, argument, and confrontation.
This is most fascinating, since democracy is within this context a process able to transfer from the individual mimetic desire to a collective system of mimetic desire based on “the majority wins”.
Within a global democratic system, there is an additional layer within the mimetic forces, the national identity, formalised within the “national state”.
While the most direct way to satisfy the mimetic desires aims to strengthen the national identity and thus strengthen the national state (e.g. “make … great”). The mimetic forces are transferred from the individual person to the national state in the same way. The “object of desire” is shifted from “one” to “many”, from one person to all citizen within a national state with the same pattern. This works with pushing the need for security, identity, and demarcation. “Winning” within some kind of “competition” is most desired, since the mimetic forces have an immediate effect and actions intend for immediate satisfaction.
The global democratic way to satisfy the mimetic desire aims to strengthen the collective identity (e.g. “make our planet Earth great”). The mimetic forces are negotiated within a competitive democratic decision making process and the satisfaction of the individual mimetic desire is part of all the actions towards a collective healthy society. The “object of desire” is shifted from “one” to “all”, from one person to all people being “global citizen”, just being humans.
Competition is overcome by the seek for the best possible collective mimetic desire satisfaction, competition and rivalry is replaced by meaning. The mimetic forces like greed, vanity, envy, jealousy, group-think are transferred or focused or transmitted or diverted into actions of love. These are actions towards peace, solidarity, health promotion, and sustainability.
Global democracy establishes the according system (structures and patterns) for this negotiation process. Decisions within the global democratic process are based on “one person, on vote”. This means, the individual mimetic desire is included and every person has the same decision making power, not matter what nationality.
Leaders within (global) democracy are service providers, mediating between “science based targets” and individual mimetic forces.