Reflection Theory Principles and Breakthroughs

The first major breakthrough in reflection theory occurred in 2025, when I realized that reflection precedes imitation.

I uncovered this breakthrough while working carefully through the implications of Rene Girard’s and JM Oughourlian’s articulation of interdividual psychology, which I was attempting to use to build a better personal productivity system and computing product. This project ramped up quickly in 2023 and 2024, when I read almost every published book by Girard and Oughourlian (and also books from some of their contemporaries), despite my first read of Things Hidden having occurred in the 2010s. Through 2024 and into early 2025, I began using interdividual terminology and concepts in thinking about both self-directing my work and personal relationships and in coaching others. By early 2025, I began looking for a term to use to better describe a specific type of interdividual relation that wasn’t quite a coach or advisor or imitative model, but also wasn’t quite a friend or colleague either. I eventually settled on the term reflector after evaluating a few different possible terms (some in discussion with work colleagues, and some separate). I then began to use the term reflector to refer to the person to engage in this interdividual connection with, and that began a significant shift in thinking about a difference between purely imitative compared to reflective dynamics.

By early May of 2025 I was still defining reflection in terms of imitation and mimesis and mimetic theory. It is only by the end of May 2025 that I realized that our brains can be better thought of as reflection organs. This opened a small crack that widened into an entire theory supplanting mimetic theory by early and mid 2026.

As I reviewed other philosophy and psychology works over the last year after my breakthrough, I slowly tested and developed a set of core reflection theory principles with the following list mostly formed by July 2026. I discussed the principles while in a few different countries during 2025 and 2026, and after July 2026 I shared these principles in a paper copy with a few friends or colleagues or former advisors in the US and in Japan. I am explaining these dates because you can already see the principles at work in global systems after the initial breakthoughs in 2025.

I intend to continue slowly developing these principles and I intend to publish a book about them at some point, but I am sharing the first few principles that I have the highest confidence about now, so that others can also benefit from thinking about them and from using them.

The principles are in a rough order of importance, but are subject to change as I learn and develop reflection theory more. I have added a few comments and explainers after the list of principles. Readers might want to skip to the explainer first if they are not heavily studied on Rene Girard to better understand why the breakthroughs outlined are significant.

1. Reflection precedes?
2. Reflection as Imperfectly Mirrored Perception.
3. Reflection precedes Thinking.
4. Reflection precedes Duration.
5. Reflection precedes Being.
6. Duration as reflection-of-world. Being as reflection-of-self-in-duration.
7. Reflection precedes Imitation.
8. Man and Woman both reflection-capable.
9. Reflection-ability as the transition to Human.
10. Reflection Space as a human’s accessible reflection at any given moment.
11. Reflection precedes mimesis.
12. Memory as Re-perception of Reflection Space.
13. Reflection precedes Learning. Learning as expansion or modification of Reflection Space.
14. Formation as goal-directed Learning.
15. (Perhaps) Meconnaissance as memory loss.
16. (Perhaps) Meconnaissance as re-perception of reflection space guided by a formation-goal other than recalling reflection of the original moment of duration with no or low present influence.
17. (Perhaps) Desire as repetitive meconnaissance.

As an example of a change in the order of these principles, during the course of 2026 I initially had Duration higher in the list, and had a few terms defined very narrowly using the concept of Duration (which I am took directly from Henri Bergson’s usage and definitions). I then slowly realized that reflection precedes Duration, and then shifted the ordering to build up steadily from the first principle.

As another example, reflection precedes imitation is currently at point 7, even though it was the first truth that I found. I also include a separate principle for ‘reflection precedes mimesis’ because Girard defines mimesis and imitation slightly differently, and there is an important breakthrough that I have made about the point of transition from ape to human that differs from Girard’s position. This move enabled me to carefully think through some different perspectives on failures of reflection-ability and failures of desire (and the violence that could be triggered in each case), which then enabled me to make a few more breakthroughs that better explain some of Girard’s observed dynamics with desire. Desire is currently defined as repetitive meconnaissance, which is a very challenging (and shocking) way to think about desire. I have marked this definition with a ‘(perhaps)’ because I am less confident of this exact way of describing desire, but I am still sharing it so that the enormous shifts that open up from the earlier definitions are clearer. I will add update notes at the bottom if I do make any changes to this list.

The question mark in the first principle is of critical importance, because it leaves open the reflection-ability process of the human experience.

I use “as” instead of “is” in most places during definition, to more accurately show the reflection space nature of how our brains truly operate. This is not a relativism, but is a way of defining terms so that the dynamic nature of the brain and memory and learning and meconnaissance and language can be more accurately understood.

Finally, I have additional principles written that I am not releasing now because in some cases I am less confident of the principle, and in other cases releasing the principle now would detract from focus on this initial list.

This initial list should already make clear why reflection theory must sit as a standalone theory, instead of being a branch of mimetic theory. I did not intend to create an entirely new theory when I began work on this, but as I slowly worked through the implications of the first breakthroughs, so many required changes accumulated that an entirely new theory became a necessity if the most important truths of reflection theory are to be maintained. Most of the implications of Girard’s mimetic theory still hold, and the compatibility means that many systems of the world have been almost seamlessly upgraded in a remarkable kind of operating system upgrade across 2025 and 2026.

That said, there is still an enormous amount of work to do based on the new principles’ implications across many disciplines.