Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life by Luke Burgis

“Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life” is a fascinating dissection of how we desire things or non-things. This book is a great introduction to Rene Girard’s work in general and mimetic theory in specific.

Last year, I decided to read Rene Girard and picked up “Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World” to understand his overwhelmingly comprehensive treatise of thinking on desires, violence, culture, rituals, religion.. The list is just a glimpse of the width that he has covered as a philosopher.
So when this book came out I immediately picked up this book to get more personal perspective from a modern-day entrepreneur (Luke is an entrepreneur and founder of four companies) who explored the mimetic desire theory from his personal experiences and leveraging developments and anecdotes from modern businesses.

Luke’s writing style and extensive use of examples to make us familiar with the mimetic desire make it a very interesting read for even those who are not so used to reading books on philosophy.

If you are wondering what is this memetic desire and why you should even care about reading a book on this: mimetic desires are those desires that originate not because of any physical or biological needs but because other people seem to desire them.

Luke provides some great advices on managing our desires and understanding who are our role models that are dictating our behaviors. One of the easiest way to figure out who is our role model and influencing our desire are often the people whose success makes us feel sad or inferior.

But these theories are not only philosophical constructs validated by the historical anecdotes and stories. Burgis finds the scientific explanation to our vulnerability to mimesis.

What Girard calls mimetic desire might have some neurological basis in mirror neurons, but mimetic desire is a mysterious phenomenon that can’t be reduced to mirror neurons alone.

Luke Burgis

…They discovered that a specific area of a macaque monkey’s brain activates when it sees an adult pick up a peanut — the same area that lights up if the monkey picks up a peanut directly.

Luke Burgis

The book also has a really useful glossary in the end and a reading list for those who want to explore more. Please go ahead and pick this one up to explore Rene Girard, mimetic desires and how you can resist mimetic desires.