Wanting (Kindle highlights)

Girard discovered that most of what we desire is mimetic (mi-met-ik) or imitative, not intrinsic. Humans learn—through imitation—to want the same things other people want, just as they learn how to speak the same language and play by the same cultural rules. Imitation plays a far more pervasive role in our society than anyone had ever openly acknowledged. (loc. 81-84)
An unbelieved truth is often more dangerous than a lie. The lie in this case is the idea that I want things entirely on my own, uninfluenced by others, that I’m the sovereign king of deciding what is wantable and what is not. The truth is that my desires are derivative, mediated by others, and that I’m part of an ecology of desire that is bigger than I can fully understand. (p. 3)
Characters in these novels rely on other characters to show them what is worth wanting. They don’t spontaneously desire anything. Instead, their desires are formed by interacting with other characters who alter their goals and their behavior—most of all, their desires. (p. 4)
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. (p. 5)
Models are people or things that show us what is worth wanting. It is models—not our “objective” analysis or central nervous system—that shape our desires. With these models, people engage in a secret and sophisticated form of imitation that Girard termed mimesis (p. 6)
“Human beings fight not because they are different, but because they are the same, and in their attempts to distinguish themselves have made themselves into enemy twins, human doubles in reciprocal violence.” (p. 7)
A company in which people are evaluated based on clear performance objectives—not their performance relative to one another—minimizes mimetic rivalries. (p. 10)
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. (p. 11)
Stories of sibling rivalry are universal because they’re true—the more people are alike, the more likely they are to feel threatened. (p. 12)
Buried in a deeper layer of our psychology is the person or thing that caused us to want something in the first place. Desire requires models—people who endow things with value for us merely because they want the things. (p. 21)
Meltzoff’s work suggests that we don’t learn how to imitate; we are born imitators. Being an imitator is part of what it means to be human. (p. 23)
This natural and healthy concern in children about what other people want seems to morph in adulthood into an unhealthy concern about what other people want. It grows into mimesis. Adults do expertly what babies do clumsily. After all, each of us is a highly developed baby. Rather than learning what other people want so that we can help them get it, we secretly compete with them to possess it. (p. 26)
As I smile and tell him how exciting that is, I feel some anxiety. Shouldn’t I be making an extra $20,000, too? Will my friend and I still be able to plan vacations together if he gets twice as much paid time off as I do? And also, what the hell? We graduated from the same university, and I worked twice as hard as he did in school and after. Am I falling behind? Did I choose the right path in life? Even though I used to say that I could never be in his line of work, now I’m second-guessing myself. (p. 28)
He gave the illusion of autonomy—because that’s how people think desire works. Models are most powerful when they are hidden. If you want to make someone passionate about something, they have to believe the desire is their own. (p. 35)
It’s the Paradox of Importance: sometimes the most important things in our lives come easily—they seem like gifts—while many of the least important things are the ones that, in the end, we worked the hardest for. (p. 39)
We are generally fascinated with people who have a different relationship to desire, real or perceived. When people don’t seem to care what other people want or don’t want the same things, they seem otherworldly. (p. 45)
That’s because rivalry is a function of proximity. When people are separated from us by enough time, space, money, or status, there is no way to compete seriously with them for the same opportunities. (p. 48)
This brings us to an important feature of Celebristan models: because there’s no threat of conflict, they are generally imitated freely and openly. (p. 49)
If someone has better insights into the role technology is playing in our lives, it’s because they listen to the right podcast (Note to Self by Manoush Zomorodi, by the way). (p. 56)
The mimetic rivalry between Tupac and Biggie ended with both of them dead. When mimesis is strong enough, rivals forget about whatever objects they were fighting for in the first place. Objects become completely interchangeable—the rivals will fight for anything, so long as their opponent wants it. (p. 61)
When mimesis is strong enough, rivals forget about whatever objects they were fighting for in the first place. Objects become completely interchangeable—the rivals will fight for anything, so long as their opponent wants it. (p. 61)
It’s critical to distance yourself from the force they exert on you. Unfollow them. Don’t ask about them. (p. 63)
Mimetic desire is the real engine of social media. Social media is social mediation—and it now brings nearly all of our models inside our personal world. (p. 64)
The more that people in a group are alike, the more vulnerable they are to a single tension affecting the whole. (p. 67)
Austin Kleon, author of Steal Like an Artist, put it this way: “If we’re free from the burden of trying to be completely original, we can stop trying to make something out of nothing, and we can embrace influence instead of running away from it.”8 Know when to lean into mimesis. (p. 72)
Mimetic desire tends to move in one of two cycles. Cycle 1 is the negative cycle, in which mimetic desire leads to rivalry and conflict. (p. 77)
Cycle 2 is the positive cycle in which mimetic desire unites people in a shared desire for some common good. (p. 77)
At the present time we have such a heightened sensitivity to innocent victims that we find new injustices to accuse ourselves of daily. We are made highly uncomfortable by the thought that someone being treated harshly might be innocent. (p. 127)
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. (p. 136)
Mimetic desire is the unwritten, unacknowledged system behind visible goals. (p. 137)
Make visible what is invisible. Mark the boundaries of your current world of wanting, and you’ll gain the ability—at least the possibility—to transcend it. (p. 141)
In adulthood, we are free to pick some of the systems of desire that we are a part of and alter the nature of our relationship to others. The earlier we exercise our agency in the process, the easier it is. (p. 148)
In short, empathy allows us to connect deeply with other people without becoming like other people. (p. 156)
“Some find it in the beauty of nature, or art, or music. Others find it in prayer, or performing a mitzvah, or learning a sacred text. Yet others find it in helping other people or in friendship or love.” (p. 161)
So my hope is that even if you don’t think of yourself as spiritual, these approaches will be helpful because they are grounded in a fundamental truth about what it means to be human: we are not entirely our own, but exist in a web of relationships connected by desire. (p. 162)
Core motivational drives are enduring, irresistible, and insatiable. They are probably explanatory of much of your behavior since the time you were a child. Think of them as your motivational energy—the reason you consistently gravitate toward certain types of projects (team versus individual, goal-oriented versus ideation) and activities (sports, arts, theater, forms of fitness) and not others. (p. 162)
There are patterns in your motivation. If you can put your finger on what specifically they are, then you will have taken a major step toward understanding your thick desires. The best way to uncover the patterns is by sharing stories. (p. 162)
A Fulfillment Story, as I call it, has three essential elements. (p. 163)
It’s an action. (p. 163)
You believe you did well. (p. 163)
It brought you a sense of fulfillment. (p. 163)
The health of any human project that relies on the ability to adapt depends on the speed at which truth travels. That holds for a classroom, a family, and a country. (p. 177)
(1) pay attention to the interior movements of the heart when contemplating different desires—which give a fleeting feeling of satisfaction and which give satisfaction that endures? (2) ask yourself which desire is more generous and loving; (3) put yourself on your deathbed in your mind’s eye and ask yourself which desire you would be more at peace with having followed; (4) finally, and most importantly, ask yourself where a given desire comes from. (p. 180)
Solitary confinement is a good and necessary thing for a human being. I’m not referring to forced solitary confinement. Our criminal justice system uses it atrociously. I mean the free, voluntary decision to confine oneself to solitude in order to discern properly—to find out what it is you want, and what others want of you. (p. 181)
Silence is where we learn to be at peace with ourselves, where we learn the truth about who we are and what we want. If you’re not sure what you want, there’s no faster way to find out than to enter into complete silence for an extended period of time—not hours, but days. (p. 181)
In my experience, the most effective context for discerning desires is a silent retreat—ideally, at least five days (but a minimum of three) of being unplugged from all noise and screens, in a remote location, completely off the grid. No talking allowed. (p. 182)
Set aside at least three consecutive days every year for a personal silent retreat. No talking, no screens, no music. Only books. Deep silence is the kind of silence you enter into when the echoes and comforts of normal noise have completely receded and you are alone with yourself. A five-day retreat is ideal because often the noise of the world doesn’t fully recede from our minds until the end of the third day (and the major benefits of the silence flow once that has happened)—but three days is a good place to start. (p. 183)
The Internet, despite creating enormous economic value by connecting the world, accelerated mimetic rivalry and diverted attention from innovation in other areas. (p. 190)
The best way to get started practicing meditative thought is to pour yourself a beverage and look at a tree for an hour. An entire hour. There is no goal in this exercise other than learning how not to have a goal. As you look at the tree, pay attention to everything you notice. You should find that your calculating thought slowly gives way to meditative thought. (p. 201)
Economic competition is less bloody than the sacrificial world that it supplanted. At the same time, it produces its own victims: the poor who don’t have access to markets, exploited workers, and winner-take-all systems. It exacerbates the differences between those who are in and those who are out. (p. 209)
Life is about navigating an uncertain future, and every one of our current schemas is inadequate. (p. 211)
The point is to make sure that as you pursue a model, the pursuit is simultaneously effecting the inner transformation that will help you select new and better models. (p. 213)
The transformation of desire happens when we become less concerned about the fulfillment of our own desires and more concerned about the fulfillment of others. We find, paradoxically, that it is the very pathway to fulfilling our own. (p. 214)
In the meantime, and probably at all times, we have something warm to sink our teeth into: wanting what we already have. (p. 214)