TIL about Mimetic Desire
Mimetic Desire is the idea that we want what other people want. Beyond the absolute basics of bodily need, our brains have no internal way to direct our dopamine. So, we start scanning around, looking for what other people want. Those people are usually playing the same status game – either as peer or as aspirants.
It’s a pretty hilarious theory to get into, and explains why we all look at the same stuff and buy the same stuff and why social media algorithms serve up the same content to the same people…even in a world of 8 billion unique individuals.
Read more on Mimetic Desire 101. Here’s the intro quote –
Nearly everyone (unconsciously) assumes there’s a straight line between them and the things they want.
>> I wake up one day and “suddenly” decide that I want to run a marathon—amazingly, all of my friends had a similar realization when they hit their mid-thirties, too.
>>I get the brilliant idea that Substack is objectively the best publishing platform for my long-form essay writing, based on all the “data”—right around the time that everyone else and their mother seems to be arriving at the same conclusion.
>> I decide to get a dog during Covid because, well, I’ve been wanting a dog for a long time and now seems like as good a time as ever. (Nevermind that I’m the only one in my friend group who hasn’t, yet, and these guys share pictures of their puppies on Instagram along with the rest of the world on nearly a daily basis.)
In each of these cases, I’ve convinced myself that my desire is independent and autonomous. I want to pursue something because it “just makes sense,” or it’s the right thing to do, or it’s what I “authentically” want or need to be happy.
(This all happens beneath my conscious awareness. Very few people question why they want the things they want at all.)
This assumption that my desires are all my own—this story that I tell myself—is what the French social scientist René Girard calls “The Romantic Lie.” The Lie is that I want things independently, or that I choose all of the objects of my desire out of some kind of secret desire chamber in my heart— that I know a good thing when I see it; that I know what’s desirable and what’s not, unaided.
Further reading
- Status Games (book) – which explains the cause of mimetic desire, the copy, flatter, conform instinct to gain status within a group (whatever that real or imagined group may be)
- Taste Games – which highlights how objects indicate membership in a group to others, and we choose objects based on what groups have what objects
- How To Know What You Really Want – another well-done summary
- René Girard Explains Mimetic Desire – perfect, short video
- How to know what you really want (video) – another longer video