Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life

While we fight for equality in the areas that do matter—for fundamental human and civil rights, or for the freedom for each person to pursue their thick desires (in the United States, this is called the “the pursuit of happiness”)—we also begin fighting for equality in areas that do not matter, our thin desires: to make as much money as someone els

Shakespeare often portrayed mimetic desire in comedies because it’s more palatable for people that way—they can laugh at others behaving ridiculously from a safe distance, without being reminded of their own mimesis.

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.”5

The health of an organization is directly proportional to the speed at which truth travels within it.

START POSITIVE FLYWHEELS OF DESIRE Desire is a path-dependent process. The choices we make today affect the things we’ll want tomorrow. That’s why it’s important to map out, the best we can, the consequences of our actions on our future desires. Start by thinking seriously about what a positive cycle of desire might look like for you. Start with a

Empathy feels different. The em- in empathy means “to go into.” It’s the ability to go into the experiences or feelings of another person—but without losing self-possession, or the ability to maintain control over our responses and to act freely, out of our own core.

Desire is part of the web of connectivity. When people deny that they are affected by what other people around them want, they are most susceptible to getting drawn into an unhealthy cycle of desire that they don’t even know to resist.

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.

Mimetic desire is the unwritten, unacknowledged system behind visible goals.6 The more we bring that system to light, the less likely it is that we’ll pick and pursue the wrong goals.