The instinct for mimicry (of endless use) is powerfully influential and widely unrecognized, even as people engage in it, while rationalizing each morphological tug or shift or phase as some kind of noble cause, nationalist crusade, new relationship rush, ethnic clash, corporate back-scratching, emulation of hyper-masculine (therefore insecure) authoritarian ideologists, or just having fun at a party while engaging in drunken wittery and pun-upmanship, or doing a musical jam.

It also factors into innumerable systemic innovations and malfunctions, from quantum physics to solidarity for/against bullying in high school, to weaponized lone wolves unleashing terror upon demographically targeted segments of society, to all forms of addiction and casual cruelty, to bait-and-switching sociopathic human-traficking gangster cabals. Mirroring is fundamental to a comprehensive understanding of or species. How much time have we given it?