René Girard’s Mimetic Theory Changed The Way I Looked At My Own Desires.
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René Girard’s Mimetic Theory Changed The Way I Looked At My Own Desires.
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
We began with the idea that underpins all of Girard’s theories––imitation. Conflict between people, he believes, is rooted in our propensity for imitation or in what he calls “mimetic desire”—an idea that began to take shape for him through his study of the great European novelists.
David Cayley • The Ideas of Rene Girard: An Anthropology of Religion and Violence
Girard believes that the way we go about choosing which objects to go after is by imitating those whom we already consider possessing this fullness of being (celebrities, parents, entrepreneurs, etc.)