Desiring Well: Mimetic Desire & the Art of Knowing What You Really Want
Align your desires with your values and avoid getting lost in a culture of discontent
I've been reading Luke Burgis’ book Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life.
It's a book based on Rene Girard's Mimetic Theory and it is about how we come to want what we want.
Rene Girard was a French anthropologist, philosopher, and literary critic who recently passed away in 2015. His theory of mimetic desire is based on the idea that we do not control what we desire, and that our desires are always influenced by models of desire which we have usually chosen unconsciously.
In other words, we want what we want because a model first demonstrated a desire for it.
Social media platforms have become powerful tools for spreading mimetic desire. Peter Thiel, the billionaire tech investor, used Girard's theory to make an early bet on the success of Facebook.
Platforms like Facebook exploit mimetic desire by amplifying our need for belonging and status. When a model we follow shares something, we want to share it too. When we share something of our own we want to know how it is being received and if someone else has shared it. We pay attention to what people are talking about and what they are doing because we want to know what is okay to want and what is okay to pay attention to.
It is this desire for love, belonging and status that keeps us glued to our social media platforms like addicts.
In this post, I will outline what Luke Burgis calls the 'Ecology of Desire' and how mimesis magnetizes us into a Cultural Desire System that is often very difficult to see. And, as always, I offer a reflection exercise at the end, along with a free downloadable worksheet, to help you sort out your own Cultural Desire System and get a better handle on it.
Becoming more conscious of what you desire and why will help you avoid the trap of desiring superficial and short-term goals that eat up your time and leave you unsatisfied.
How Mimetic Models Shape Our Desires and Social Worlds
Desires spread rapidly through our consumer culture like a virus. Advertisers understand well how mimetic desires work and use models to sell their products. Early in the 20th century, ads began to focus on the models 'state of being' rather than the product itself. Ad companies started selling 'happiness,' 'health' or 'sensuality' barely even mentioning the product at all.
We live at a time of hyper-imitation. Fascination with what is trending and going viral is symptomatic of our predicament. So is political polarization. It stems in part from mimetic behavior that destroys nuance and poisons even our most honorable goals: to develop friendships, to fight for important causes, to build healthy communities.
Luke Burgis, Wanting
The claim behind Mimetic Theory is that we are all imitators of one another. We want something because another person desires it. We want a perfect home, a perfect relationship, a perfect career because someone has modelled that for us.
Mimesis underpins the formation of human social structures and culture. Desire is so important a human emotion, and so basic to how we interact with each other, that one of our oldest religious texts, the Bible, repeatedly warns us against it.
You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.
Exodus 20: 17
Through interacting with others, our goals and behaviours are formed. This is especially noticeable in childhood and within the family. We tend to want what our families want. On the other hand, we may want to differentiate ourselves by wanting the complete opposite of what our families want. This creates the foundation for mimetic rivalries where people start to compete in an unseen ranking system only they can discern. This is the basis for sibling rivalry.
If you look hard enough, you will find a model (or a set of models) for almost everything—your personal style, the way you speak, the look and feel of your home. But the models that most of us overlook are models of desire. It’s deceivingly difficult to figure out why you bought certain things; it’s extraordinarily hard to understand why you strive toward certain achievements.
Luke Burgis, Wanting
The Impact of Dysfunctional Desires on Adult Life
Unconsciously we can take on models of behavior that are not good for us. If you grew up in a dysfunctional home, and if you're not very careful and very conscious, you will begin to follow those same patterns unknowingly as you build your adult life.
Childhood experiences significantly shape our adult behaviours and desires. It's hard to detect these patterns on a day-to-day basis but, with each little decision, the dysfunctional behaviours and patterns start to build up. Before you know it, you may find yourself in midlife or later, wondering how the hell you ended up in a situation that looks eerily similar to your childhood.
Gravity causes people to fall physically to the ground. Mimetic desire causes people to fall in or out of love, or debt, or friendships, or business partnerships. Or it may subject them to the degrading slavery of being merely a product of their milieu.
Luke Burgis, Wanting
My childhood was unpleasant. Luckily for me, I was able to wake up early enough to the dysfunctional and destructive models that surrounded me as a child and choose different models for me to aspire to.
But this takes a lot of work and a concerted effort. It requires us to move out of denial and wake up to the fact that we are powerless over our unconscious patterns. We are held captive by our internal patterns of desire and we are not in control.
Challenging the Notion of 'The Sovereign Individual'
There is a popular idea in some social media spaces that we can work toward becoming a 'sovereign individual'. Interestingly, this idea was popularized by Peter Thiel after he cited the book The Sovereign Individual as a major influence. The book promotes and encourages hyper-individualism, self-ownership, and enough wealth accumulation to allow for independence from the nation-state, which the authors claim seeks to dominate us. This is in line with the libertarian idea that the role of government is to protect private property and nothing more.
In practice, however, this worldview has little to do with the realities of people's lives. The fact is our lives, and therefore our desires, are deeply intertwined with those around us. We are not autonomous and rational individuals in charge of our own fate. We cannot all be billionaire tech bros at the level of Elon Musk and Peter Theil, even if we wanted to. Stability, peace and prosperity for all are still important values for many of us. These values will always be threatened in a world dominated by unhealthy mimesis and mimetic rivalries.
An unbelieved truth is often more dangerous than a lie. The lie in this case is the idea that I want things entirely on my own, uninfluenced by others, that I’m the sovereign king of deciding what is wantable and what is not ... The truth is that my desires are derivative, mediated by others, and that I’m part of an ecology of desire that is bigger than I can fully understand.
Luke Burgis, Wanting
I am a firm believer in personal autonomy, setting boundaries, and taking responsibility for one's self. These concepts are at the very heart of what it means to grow up and become a functional adult citizen.
But the truth about the human being is that, after our basic survival needs are met, we are all after the same thing: inclusion, esteem, love and belonging. And we are dependent on each other to provide it.
We are nested inside a collective that is fractal. Our personal autonomy coexists within a cooperative hierarchy of family, community, nation, and planet.
In this way, we are Holonic Individuals, not Sovereign Individuals.
We are nested inside a collective that is fractal. Our personal autonomy coexists within a cooperative hierarchy of family, community, nation, and planet.
In this way, we are Holonic Individuals, not Sovereign Individuals.
Recognizing Our Place in A Holonic Universe
A holon is both a complete whole within itself and part of an embedded hierarchy of wholes that resonate out from a central point.
In a Holonic Universe, that central point is you. You are the center of your world.
This is far from a narcissistic notion. Understanding your place in a fractal hierarchy reveals your responsibility for the health of the whole. Like Atlas, you must bear the weight of the Holonic Universe on your shoulders.
This is a far cry from the hyper-individualism that books like The Sovereign Individual espouse. This is also very different from the collectivist ideologies of communism and socialism which often require blind adherence to centralized orders.
Within a holonic framework, each holon has decentralized authority for its own decision-making. And yet that authority must constantly be made to justify its actions to the whole.
Do you ever ask yourself why you do the things you do? Do you question your thoughts and behaviours to ensure your decision-making is guided by a model that is honourable and true rather than malevolent and petty?
Instead of participating in the destructive mimetic rivalries we see gaining steam all around us, can we turn our limited energy toward finding life-affirming models to aspire to instead?
This self-examination is a necessary process and is part of the responsibility we shoulder as inheritors of the mess of history.
Mimetic desire is part of the human condition. It can lurk under the surface of our lives, acting as our unrecognized leader. But there are ways to recognize it, confront it, and make more intentional choices that lead to a more satisfying life—far more satisfying than one in which we’re totally consumed by mimetic desire without knowing it.
Luke Burgis, Wanting
Reflection Exercise - Uncovering the Roots of Your Desires
This Reflection Exercise will help you begin the process of sorting out your own Cultural Desire System. Grab a notebook and a pen or sit down at your laptop and work through the exercise below.
1. Identify and Reflect on Desires:
List three things you currently desire. For each, consider how you became aware of this desire and identify any cultural or societal influences, such as media or family, that may have contributed to it.
2. Align Desires with Personal Values:
Reflect on whether each of these desires aligns with your values or is driven by cultural expectations. Write a brief statement on this alignment or misalignment.
(If you need help understanding why and how to clarify your personal values, see this post I wrote for Medium.)
3. Choose Models that Exemplify Values:
Identify and consider models in your life or broader culture who exemplify your values and whom you might want to emulate.
Here is a free worksheet you can use to perform this exercise. The worksheet is available in pdf, docx, or odt depending on your preference.
Final Thoughts on Navigating Mimetic Influences
Desire lies at the heart of everything we do. We are all responsible for the health and maintenance of our 'Ecologies of Desire.'
There are positive models of desire and negative models of desire and, if we are conscious enough, we can muster the power to choose which ones we wish to emulate.
This is not an easy task and it takes work. It's especially hard to break free from what was modelled to us as children by our families.
We now live in a hyper-mimetic world where billions of models are available to us via the internet. The ability to manage ourselves and our desires consciously is more important than ever.
Each one of us has a responsibility to shape the desires of others, just as they shape ours. Each encounter we have with another person enables them, and us, to want more, to want less, or to want differently.
Luke Burgis, Wanting
We live at the center of a Holonic Universe and we hold the health of that Holonic Universe in our hands. If we understand ourselves as mimetic beings we can participate in a process of positive mimesis and begin to build a better and saner world.
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After some careful consideration, I've decided to change the name of these letters to 'Sober 2nd Thought.' The focus will be on sense-making in a crazy-making world and emotional sobriety in midlife.