Civilization is built on the suppression of mimesis.

Evidence

Civilization has replaced the organic adaptation to others and mimetic behavior proper, by organized control of mimesis, in the magical phase; and, finally, by rational practice, by work, in the historical phase. Uncontrolled mimesis is outlawed. The angel with the fiery sword who drove man out of paradise and onto the path of technical progress is the very symbol of that progress. For centuries, the severity with which the rulers prevented their own followers and the subjugated masses from reverting to mimetic modes of existence, starting with the religious prohibition on images, going on to the social banishment of actors and gypsies, and leading finally to the kind of teaching which does not allow children to behave as children, has been the condition for civilization. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 139

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines mimesis as organic adaptation to others that civilization forcibly controls.
• SEED: The definition of modern work/schooling as suppressing mimetic childlike behavior could ground an essay on why we pathologize adult play.
• XREF: connects to: Civilization cannot be separated from the terror that sustains it — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 188; Civilization recreates the sacrificial situation it claims to abolish — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 106; Cultures built on subjugation provoke destruction from the suppressed. (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Civilization recreates the sacrificial situation it claims to abolish #expands (0.80) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 106
• Civilization’s history is sacrifice turned inward as renunciation #expands (0.80)
• Civilization cannot be separated from the terror that sustains it #expands (0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 188
• Modern civilization centralizes rather than abolishes violence #complicates (0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 284
• Civilization can manufacture internal barbarians by mass rightlessness #expands (0.75)
• Cultures built on subjugation provoke destruction from the suppressed. #expands (0.72)