Being clear with your interests

If you are somewhat active on social media, you might recognize certain trends. And over time, the trend is getting bigger and more and more people participate in a given trend. So why is everyone living the same life? Why is everyone wearing the same New Balance shoes in the gym? Why does everyone want to buy a Stanley Cup? Or why does everyone want to book a trip to Japan?

The answer is that we are not, as we believe, the rulers of our own desires. We are a social species, and with that, we do not form our desires and our decisions alone in a vacuum. We form them by watching other social beings and wanting what they seem to have.

René Girard was a French academic and probably best known for developing the mimetic theory, which argues that human desire is fundamentally imitative, generating rivalry and violence and ultimately giving rise to the scapegoat mechanism as a foundation of religion and culture.

In my opinion, he found some very sharp words that describe his theory very well:

You don’t want what you want because of who you are. You want what you want because the people you want to be have them.

• René Girard

Mimetic Desire

So I think you are now familiar with the basic idea behind mimetic desire. We tend to think that we look at something, weigh the pros and cons, and then decide what to do with it. But honestly, that’s not how it works for most of us. We don’t negotiate with our desires; we just go after them.

We want money, status + recognition, the next big hit of dopamine. And if you zoom out far enough, a big part of what we do during our days is just chasing some version of that.

So where does this come from? If you look at it from an evolutionary point of view, the answer is survival. And if you look at it from a psychological or maybe even philosophical point of view, the answer is… also survival. We want to stay part of the group so we don’t get left behind. And for most of human history, getting left behind simply meant being dead or at least undesired.

So in short: we want things because we see other people wanting them. And somewhere in the back of our head, we come to the conclusion that those people must know something we don’t. That the thing they have contains some quality we are missing right now. Status, belonging, meaning, or love.

The Model

Girard called the person whose desire we copy the model (or mediator). And here comes the interesting part: we don’t actually want the object itself. We want the qualities we project onto the person who has it.

A good example of this is scrolling through Instagram. You see someone’s apartment, their relationship, their body, or their career, and inside you feel something. Most of the time, that’s not really admiration. You are using that person as a model for a version of yourself you think you should be. The desire isn’t for the actual object, like the apartment or their career. It’s for the person you imagine you would become if you lived in it.

The thought process goes something like this: the model acts rich, successful, tough. So the car, the house, the shoes, or whatever must be at least partly responsible for that.

Right?

Well, not really.

And funny enough, this explains why so many people finally get the thing they’ve been chasing for months and feel… nothing. Or at least not what they expected (except for the small dopamine hit from buying new stuff, for example). Because the desire was never really about the thing in the first place.

The Closer Models Are, the More Difficult It Gets

Girard made another distinction that I find pretty interesting. There are models that are far away from us, like celebrities, influencers, or historical figures. He called this external mediation. We might copy what they want, but we will never compete with them directly.

And then there are models that are close to us. Friends, colleagues, neighbours, the people in your group chat. Girard called this internal mediation, and this is where it gets messy. Because if the person next to you wants the same promotion, the same apartment, or the same recognition, you are suddenly not just imitating them; you are competing with them. The model becomes a rival.

I think most of us know this feeling. You don’t really care about the salary of some random CEO. But when your old classmate posts about their new job, something inside you gets a little bit louder. That’s the mimetic desire doing its thing.

How to Have an Original Desire

So for me, the most interesting question was if we can escape this thinking entirely. And honestly, I don’t think so. We will always learn from other people what is worth wanting. And that is not a bad thing in general. I somehow learned to love running because of people I looked up to, and I am grateful for that.

The goal is not to get rid of mimetic desire. The goal is to be aware of it, so you can decide which desires you actually want to keep.

Luke Burgis wrote a book called “Wanting” which builds upon Girard’s work and brings it into everyday life (somehow, it is my second book suggestion in a row on this blog). He makes a distinction between thin desires and thick desires. Thin desires are highly mimetic; they come and go with the trends, and they rarely leave you satisfied. Thick desires are the ones that were formed over a long time, often since the very beginning of your childhood, and they don’t really change when the next trend shows up.

These are a few things I try to keep in mind to find out which one I am dealing with:

• Let it cool down. Try to hold on for a week or two before you get something new. If it still survives this, then it is something you probably really want.
• Look back instead of around. Think about moments in your life where you did something and felt truly fulfilled while doing it, without anyone watching. Doing this will tell you a lot about your “thick desires”.
• Write it down. I already wrote about journaling and this is another place where it helps. Seeing the same desire show up over months on paper is a pretty good signal that it’s actually something you want.
• Choose your models. Since you will imitate someone in some ways anyway, you might as well pick who. Spend time with people whose desires you would actually like to share.

Don’t worry if decisions feel implusive from time to time. One has to learn this like everything else.

Closing Thoughts

Not everyone who buys a new jacket or books a trip to Japan is just following the hype. Maybe you always wanted to see Japan, and that’s great. The point is not what you want, but knowing why you want it.

Being clear with your interests doesn’t mean you have to want something nobody else wants. It means that when you want something, you know where that desire came from, and you still choose it anyway.

Sources

René Girard - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Girard

Mimetic theory - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimetic_theory

Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life by Luke Burgis - https://lukeburgis.com/books/wanting/