Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life

by Luke Burgis

Each of us spends every moment of our life, from the moment we’re born to the moment we die, wanting something.

Girard identified a fundamental truth about desire that connected the seemingly unconnected: linking biblical stories with volatility in the stock market, the collapse of ancient civilizations with workplace dysfunction, career paths with diet trends.

Girard discovered that most of what we desire is mimetic (mi-met-ik) or imitative, not intrinsic. Humans learn—through imitation—to want the same things other people want, just as they learn how to speak the same language and play by the same cultural rules. Imitation plays a far more pervasive role in our society than anyone had ever openly acknowledged.

At the same time, it has a dark side. Imitation leads people to pursue things that seem desirable at first but ultimately leave them unfulfilled.

An idea that challenges commonly held assumptions can feel threatening—and that’s all the more reason to look more closely at it: to understand why.

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.

He uncovered something perplexing, something which seemed to be present in nearly all of the most compelling novels ever written: characters in these novels rely on other characters to show them what is worth wanting. They don’t spontaneously desire anything. Instead, their desires are formed by interacting with other characters who alter their goals and their behavior—most of all, their desires.

But after meeting our basic needs as creatures, we enter into the human universe of desire. And knowing what to want is much harder than knowing what to need.

Models are people or things that show us what is worth wanting. It is models—not our “objective” analysis or central nervous system—that shape our desires. With these models, people engage in a secret and sophisticated form of imitation that Girard termed mimesis (mi-mee-sis), from the Greek word mimesthai (meaning “to imitate”).

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.

Mimetic desire draws people toward things.4 “This draw,” writes Girard scholar James Alison, “this movement … [is] mimesis. It is to psychology what gravity is to physics.”

“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.”

In Girard’s view, the root of most violence is mimetic desire.

A company in which people are evaluated based on clear performance objectives—not their performance relative to one another—minimizes mimetic rivalries.

Models of desire are what make Facebook such a potent drug. Before Facebook, a person’s models came from a small set of people: friends, family, work, magazines, and maybe TV. After Facebook, everyone in the world is a potential model.

Movements of desire are what define our world.

Mimesis can hijack our noblest ambitions.

Homogenizing forces are creating a crisis of desire.

Sustainability depends on desirability.

If people don’t find positive outlets for their desires, they will find destructive ones.

The mysterium iniquitatis (the mystery of evil) remains just that: mysterious. But mimetic theory reveals something important about it. The more people fight, the more they come to resemble each other. We should choose our enemies wisely, because we become like them.

In the final analysis, two questions are critical. What do you want? What have you helped others want? One question helps answer the other.

Desire is our primordial concern. Long before people can articulate why they want something, they start wanting it.

In the passage from childhood to adulthood, the open imitation of the infant becomes the hidden mimesis of adults. We’re secretly on the lookout for models while simultaneously denying that we need any. Mimetic desire operates in the dark. Those who can see in the dark take full advantage.

He gave the illusion of autonomy—because that’s how people think desire works. Models are most powerful when they are hidden. If you want to make someone passionate about something, they have to believe the desire is their own.

a warning to stand on guard against mimetic valuations. It’s the Paradox of Importance: sometimes the most important things in our lives come easily—they seem like gifts—while many of the least important things are the ones that, in the end, we worked the hardest for.

Desire is not a function of data. It’s a function of other people’s desires.

In both bubbles and crashes, models are multiplied. Desire spreads at a speed so great we can’t wrap out rational brains around it. We might consider taking a different, more human, perspective.