Peer pressure. I have been “induced” to think of the word to mean the pressure of the mob upon one to do something he/she would not do normally, that is, to do something “wrong”. Holding that definition and thinking in the context of what Father James is saying, then I believe that it cannot be good for me.
There is an aboriginal skills/wilderness survival teacher, Larry Dean Olson, who takes troubled kids out into the desert for a month long program. There they learn self-sufficiency skills, working as a group, as well as spending a certain amount of time totally alone. Larry says that when he checks in on them six months after the program, a common report is that the kids do not have specific friends anymore, that they are now comfortable being with whoever they are with. I think there is a clue here on how to free myself from mimetic rivalry.