Why do we want what we want? The theory of "Mimesis"

Summary and notes from Wanting by Luke Burgis

The theory of mimesis is a framework for understanding our desires.

This draws on the book Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life by Luke Burgis which is based on the Theory of Mimesis from professor René Girard.

Our desires — the things we want beyond our basic physiological and psychological needs (like food, water, sex, social connection) — do not develop spontaneously or organically. They are derived from modeling the desires of others. Wanting is a social phenomenon. How do we come to want the things we want when there is no instinctual basis?

To know what to want is more complex than to know what to need.

So we use models: people or characters that show us what is worth wanting. With them we engage in a subtle imitation process known as "mimesis". This is a term developed by René Girard. Mimesis is to social psychology as gravity is to physics. It is a fundamental principle. What we want is always curved through a model. Models mediate desires. We are usually ignorant of this or refuse to believe it.

There is evidence for this theory even in child development. As humans we do not just model action, we model the intent behind the action. There is a study were adults try to pull the end cap off a toy. It is easy to do, but the adult experimenter pretends to keep having his or her hand slip off. When the toy is given to a baby, the baby will easily pull the end cap off. This is subtle yet important: the child is modeling the intent or desire of the adult, not the outcome.

Who we model is a function of proximity. It is more likely you’d envy your co-worker who just got a $5,000 raise than Jeff Bezos.

There are two “spheres” from which we interact with models. The distant sphere where we don’t feel like we are in competition. Then there is the immediate sphere in which we occupy the same social space. In the immediate sphere, rivalry intensifies (explicitly or implicitly). Distant sphere models (like celebrities) we imitate freely and without issue. If I dress like my favorite celebrity or follow the same behaviors as my favorite athlete it isn’t so unusual. Immediate sphere models are imitated secretly and we compete with them to differentiate ourselves. If I were to start dressing and talking like one of my friends everyone would immediately notice how weird it was.

This is important because it drives competition which drives conflict. Any object of desire is desirable because others want it. How desirable something (or someone) is, is a function of the amount of people in our immediate sphere who desire it and the intensity with which they desire it. If you like playing soccer and baseball equally but the baseball team only has 5 open spots and all the other kids in the class are obsessed with baseball, it is likely you would be drawn to baseball.

This is the essence of “mimesis” and out of it conflict springs.

Girard opens the first lecture of his class — Literature, Myth, and Prophecy — with the words: “Human beings fight not because they are different, but because they are the same, and in their attempts to distinguish themselves have made themselves into enemy twins, human doubles in reciprocal violence.”

Girard also wrote:

If individuals are naturally inclined to desire what their neighbors possess, or to desire what their neighbors even simply desire, this means that rivalry exists at the very heart of human social relations. This rivalry, if not thwarted, would permanently endanger harmony and even the survival of all human communities

Perhaps counterintuitively, it seems the more people coalesce into sameness of desire, the more they fight to differentiate themselves. If they don't have positive outlets for this it will turn destructive. Consider this: class conflict and terrorism are not about wanting different things but the same things. The poor want wealth (so they attack the rich) the terrorists want significance (so they attack those with it). It is likely that a school shooter desperately wants to be “cool” — significant and popular. It is not because they want different things, but because they want the same things that they feel frustration and lash out.

Mimesis is a dangerous feedback loop. We model the desires of others which makes the objects of desire perceived as more desirable. This increases rivalry which leads to conflict.

Mimesis is not linear like the flow of energy from billiard ball to billiard ball. It spreads more like the energy at a concert or a political rally — a social contagion. In 2019 there was a 40 person melee resulting in arrests and injuries at a water park. How did this start?

Apparently, it was over a beach towel. An object starts as object of shared attention then shared desire. It fuels mimetic rivalry. Then there is Mirroring and Reciprocal Energizing and escalation of energy until conflict.

Our modern society is particularly at risk for this due to “the cult of the expert” and smartphones / social media.

First and foremost this commentary on “experts” is not a critique of science in any way. It’s just the observation that our society has “traded saints for experts”. Those labeled as experts are now the source of ultimate authority — often unquestionable authority — much in the same way that religious institutions used to be. Again, in many ways this is good. Quality, peer-reviewed literature is a better source of authority than theology (for most things anyway). The danger is that expert authority is also highly mimetic. It follows similar laws as desire.

What is our basis for taking a source as authoritative? Is it because we personally checked all of the person’s credentials? Is it because the source was fact-checked by editors at the New Yorker? Is it because the person has one million followers on social media and a “verified” blue sticker? Authority is more mimetic than we tend to believe. It’s much like a “cult of the expert”. Once you convince a few of the people with expert authority to label you as an expert, you become one.

This means our society is highly susceptible to mimesis driven expertise authority.

Related to this, we have social media and smartphones which take the distant sphere and turn it into the immediate sphere. Historically the lives of kings and celebrities — and their respective desires — were distant stars. Now we can get up close and personal with the daily life of celebrities. They are theoretically only a DM away. This means we are increasingly drawn to the desires that are “outside our orbit” per say. 100 years ago, unless I lived down the road from Andrew Carnegie, I probably wasn’t exposed to mansions, cars, and luxuries. But now I see these trappings of desire every day on my instagram feed.

This breeds discontent and mimetic frustration.

Again it is worth noting that this theory and the work of both Girard and Burgis may be considered more social philosophy than “psychological science” as it is more a matter of observation than experimentation. Nonetheless, there are a few prescriptions to combat or manage mimesis.

Use “Disruptive Empathy”.

Disruptive empathy is seeing shared humanity through stories of suffering and/or deep fulfillment. This can break a cycle of mimetic rivalry. One historic example of this is the story of Jesus and the stoning of the adulterer. He says — “let he who has never sinned cast the first stone”. By doing this he disrupts a social contagion by bringing attention to the common fallibility of all people. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow sums it up in his quote: “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.” When we empathize with others we naturally shift from adversarial rivalry to rapport.

Take back your desires.

Yuval Harari says the key question that will shape humanity's future is figuring out what we want to want in a technological environment that can give us anything we want. We are against armies of engineers and advertisers who try to incept desires into us to capitalize off of them. We must take ownership of our desires. We must learn to embrace wanting differently. We should assess our own values and motivated abilities (eg strengths) and pursue fulfillment through them. And we should seek transcendent desires that go beyond ourselves.

Use “meditative” thought.

We may distinguish between more calculated, linear, analytical thinking which is mostly concerned with optimizing and goal pursuit. This is how do we get from A to B most efficiently. On the other hand there’s thought that is less structured: intuitive, emergent, and synthesis focused. Note I’m not sure if this corresponds to an existing model of thinking in the scientific literature, I’d imagine so. But again this is going from more intellectual reasoning to spaciousness for discernment. In giving time and space to this sort of mode we may develop greater clarity and insight into what we really want out of life.

Desire is a sort of social contagion that operates through the mirroring of desires in others. It can be a volatile force. It must be managed carefully in individuals and societies.

Your happiness nerd,

Jackson K.