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Do people desire to be, say, a lawyer because the legal profession is beautiful? Surely, the merits of the legal profession can convince us to pursue it. But a more subtle, even more powerful factor can be that our peers gave us the memetic desire to want it so. This applies to any other aspiration or the lack thereof.
People think they want something because it’s worth wanting. In fact, we “want” many things not because we found them useful for ourselves, but because other individuals have influenced us into desiring them. In other words, some of the most important causes of our wanting are our neighbors. We tend to call it peer pressure or “mimetic desire.” Wanting by Luke Burgis, following the philosopher René Girard, reminds us of this powerful and ubiquitous reality—and how we might respond to its effects.
Burgis mainly applies his observations on mimetic desire to professional life. He examines the experiences of entrepreneurs and artists, with anecdotes of specific people like Enzo Ferrari, Ferruccio Lamborghini, and Chef Sébastien Bras. As the book presents its analyses, you might catch yourself wondering about the dynamics of mimetic desire in other social aspects: the classroom, government politics, clubs, groups of friends, sports, and even religious organizations.
In my case, for instance, it made me think of my family and coworkers. I understand that I have desires for each category. I want this for the family. This should be my goal for work. I want to write this, and I want to research this issue and that. I can give a reason for each of my aims. But now that I think of it, I was not that conscious of who, as opposed to we, influenced me to want something. The book of Luke Burgis served as a welcome reminder that I should be asking more the who question in understanding why I do or want certain things.
If I were to build on the ideas of the book, I would apply them to my specific context in the Philippines. The Philippines can make for an interesting examination of the book’s insights because of the culture that surrounds the archipelago’s kinship and communitarian values. I haven’t started researching it yet, and God knows if I ever will. I intuit that mimetic desire, more than economic needs or the sheer brilliance of an idea, hugely determines what Filipinos tend to like. But perhaps this isn’t just the Philippines. Perhaps every country and culture in the world is like this. Insights, ideas, and arguments find their believers not so much because of the reasoning and evidence behind them as who is promoting them. Brilliant ideas gain supporters because a well-loved person praised them. This is good. Terrible ideas amass advocates because a popular person endorsed them. This is bad. Powerful insights hardly get noticed because their believers do not enjoy a strong reputation. Non-insightful claims thrive with overexposure only because their promoters have a big name.
If I were to build on the ideas of the book, I would apply them to my specific context in the Philippines. The Philippines can make for an interesting examination of the book’s insights because of the culture that surrounds the archipelago’s kinship and communitarian values. I haven’t started researching it yet, and God knows if I ever will. I intuit that mimetic desire, more than economic needs or the sheer brilliance of an idea, hugely determines what Filipinos tend to like. But perhaps this isn’t just the Philippines. Perhaps every country and culture in the world is like this. Insights, ideas, and arguments find their believers not so much because of the reasoning and evidence behind them as WHO is promoting them. Brilliant ideas gain supporters because a well-loved person praised them. This is good. Terrible ideas amass advocates because a popular person endorsed them. This is bad. Powerful insights hardly get noticed because their believers do not enjoy a strong reputation. Non-insightful claims thrive with overexposure only because their promoters have a big name.
So, Burgis’s book more or less suggests having the right people at the right place and time, promoting the ideas that we hope can make our world better.
Wanting gives you a satisfying read. It makes a strong call to be social, if only in the sense of thinking about other people and how much they are involved in who we are or who we are becoming.
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