Girard would nod mmm-hmm at trying to find differences among people who went to college together. If you zoom out to look at the whole wide range of people arou

Girard would nod mmm-hmm at trying to find differences among people who went to college together. If you zoom out to look at the whole wide range of people around the world -- truckers, subsistence farmers, politicians, assembly line workers, homemakers -- people who went to the same college in the US are clustered very close together. One reason that Girardian conflict is attractive is that the differences aren't big enough to ensure different destinies. Rivals in college can put each other down, CS geeks insulting math geeks, knowing that their likely outcomes in life are broadly similar. Putting down, say, a subsistence farmer, who does have a different destiny, would seem quite cruel. Girardian conflict doesn't feel like elitism. Marxist conflict does.