Mimetic Desire 101 - Anti-Mimetic—A Field Guide to Mimetic Desire
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Mimetic Desire 101 - Anti-Mimetic—A Field Guide to Mimetic Desire
“Girard discovered that we come to desire many things not through biological drives or pure reason, nor as a decree of our illusory and sovereign self, but through imitation.”
Luke Burgis • Just a moment...
Our goals are often not even our own; we borrow them from peers, celebrities, and what we imagine society expects from us. French philosopher René Girard called this phenomenon mimetic desire: we desire something because we see others desiring it. In other words, our goals mimic the goals of others.
Anne-Laure Le Cunff • Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World
He argues that humans do not themselves know what to desire; as a result, they imitate the desires of others.
Wolfgang Palaver • René Girard's Mimetic Theory (Studies in Violence, Mimesis & Culture)
René Girard, a Frenchman who was a professor of literature and history in the United States, had his first insight about the nature of desire in the late 1950s.
Luke Burgis • Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life
This is why most of us spend our lives on a never-satisfied search for the next object of desire. There is always another model somewhere making us wonder if what they want, we should be what we want, too.