Luke Burgis – Wanting – The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life

Wanting is a groundbreaking exploration of why we want what we want, and a toolkit for freeing ourselves from chasing unfulfilling desires.
As an undergraduate studying philosophy at Stanford, Peter Thiel met French polymath René Girard and was introduced to his theory of “mimetic desire”-the idea that most human wanting comes from imitating what other people desire, rather than from an innate sense of need. Inducted into the Académie Française as the “Darwin of the social sciences,” Girard is largely unknown outside academic circles. But because of Girard, Thiel knew that Facebook would thrive because it offered a window into people’s curated presentation of the best parts of their lives, thereby satisfying our need to look for “models” who tell us what to desire.
According to Girard, each of us is surrounded by people who generate, shape, and manipulate our desires at every turn. Mimetic desire is no mere tool of advertisers but a reality that…