
Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life

Most people aren’t fully responsible for choosing their own goals. People pursue the goals that are on offer to them in their system of desire. Goals are often chosen for us, by models. And that means the goalposts are always moving.
Luke Burgis • Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life
If the modern world seems to be going crazy, it’s partly because we are hyperaware of the ways in which exploitation and violence against innocent victims occur, but we simply don’t know what to do about them. It’s like we’ve been told something terrible that we didn’t want to know, and which we’re powerless to fix entirely on our own. And that’s a
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We can’t want something that is outside the system of desire we occupy.
Luke Burgis • Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life
Leaders should also consider that economic incentives are always more than economic. If the signals are strong enough, they can distort desires and give people a “false north” on their career compass.
Luke Burgis • Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life
A hierarchy of values is especially critical when choices have to be made between good things. If values are all equally important, or if there isn’t a clear understanding of how they relate to one another, mimesis becomes the primary driver of decision-making.
Luke Burgis • Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life
Core motivational drives are enduring, irresistible, and insatiable.
Luke Burgis • Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life
Whether we recognize it or not, our minds think in hierarchies all of the time—whether it’s related to our daily to-do list, the priority of issues in an election, or even a glance at a menu in a restaurant (appetizers, main course, dessert). Without a hierarchy of values, which helps form and direct desires, we can’t even begin to think about what
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Girard calls this striving not for any particular thing but for some new way of living or being metaphysical desire.
Luke Burgis • Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life
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.
Luke Burgis • Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life
Desire, like gravity, does not reside autonomously in any one thing or person. It lives in the space between them.