Desires are fundamentally different from needs

Desire (as opposed to need) is an intellectual appetite for things that you perceive to be good, but that you have no physical, instinctual basis for wanting – and that’s true whether those things are actually good or not.

the pleasure is primarily intellectual.

The 13th-century philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas wrote that these intellectual appetites are part of what has traditionally been called the ‘will’. When a person wills something, they strive toward it. If they come to possess the object of their desire, their will finds rest in it – and they are able to experience joy, so long as they are able to rest in the object of their desire.

striving for something that we do not yet possess is called desire. Desire doesn’t bring us joy because it is, by definition, always for something we feel we lack.

Desire is a social process – it is mimetic

Girard noted that desire is not, as we often imagine it, something that we ourselves fully control. It is not something that we can generate or manufacture on our own. It is largely the product of a social process.

If I perceive some career or lifestyle or vacation as good, it’s because someone else has modelled it in such a way that it appears good to me.

Desire comes first from social influences, often long before we realise it, or understand why.

When I think about the lifestyle that I would most like to have, who do I feel most embodies it?

Aside from my parents, who were the most important influences on me in my childhood?

Is there anyone I would not like to see succeed?

it’s useful to recognise what kind of models are influencing you. Girard identified two main types: those inside your world, and those outside it.

Models inside your world (‘internal’ models of desire) are the people you might really come into contact with: friends, family, co-workers, or really anyone you can actually interact with in some way

Models outside your world (‘external’ models of desire) are people you have no serious possibility of coming into contact with: celebrities, historical figures and much of our legacy media.

the companies serving the ads typically show you not the thing itself, but other people wanting the thing. Advertisers play right into our mimetic nature.

Be aware that internal models lead to more volatility of desire in your life because the world of internal models is highly reflexive: you can affect one another’s desires, which isn’t possible in the world of external models.

Because desire is mimetic, people are naturally drawn to want what others want.

mimetic desire often leads people into unnecessary competition and rivalry with one another in an infernal game of status anxiety.

your desires can become hijacked through this process of mimetic attraction. It’s easy to become obsessively focused on what your neighbours have or want, rather than on your immediate responsibilities and relationship commitments.

His Michelin rating had kept him stuck in a ‘system of desire’. The organising principle for all his choices was simple: keeping Michelin happy.

To gain more control over your desires, figure out what your particular version of the Michelin Guide looks like. It might not involve stars at all, but the approval of specific people or the expectations of your friends or family

By mapping out the system of desire that you’re enmeshed in (and probably have been your whole life), you can begin to take some critical distance from it.

Most of all: know where your desires came from. Your desires have a history. You can’t know what a ‘true’ or ‘authentic’ desire is unless you understand where it came from – and that involves diving deep into your past, understanding how you have evolved as a person, and seeing which desires have been with you for a long time and which ones have come and gone like the wind.

fear of missing out, which is really just a form of mimetic desire.

Wanting to write a book, like starting a company or embarking on a career change, is often the product of social interactions.

Lamborghini’s story is a great example of how desires do not stay in one place on the spectrum. They’re mobile. They can move to the right (become more mimetic), and they can move to the left (become less mimetic).

the intentionality that you bring to them can allow you to become the author of a new creation.

there are certain perennial human values and desires that are worth pursuing no matter what because they have been proven to never disappoint.

Ask yourself: In what person or thing are my desires able to rest without the incessant feeling of restlessness? Why might that be? What is something that seems to bring me longer-lasting joy, without the need for ‘more’?

the most anti-mimetic attitude of all is an openness to wonder and a desire to let reality surprise you. It rarely disappoints.

Social media is a mimetic machine. What we typically call ‘social media’ is really social mediation – the mediation of desires. All day, every day, desires are being modelled to us through people we barely know. Mimetic desire is the hidden engine of these platforms.

Ask yourself: Is this person I am following actually leading me to develop any positive desires, to aspire to greater things? Or are they causing me more anxiety? At the same time, realise that everything you say or do is a model of desire for someone else.

what is your core motivation? What is really driving you, and might have been for most of your life? It’s important to put your finger on this because you can apply your core motivational drive across many different types of work.

Mimetic desire gives significance to things because of the other people who want those things. When the model of desire is gone, so does our interest in the thing.

It’s people we care about most, not things. If you can identify how much significance you place on something merely because of someone else’s relationship to it, you can begin to free yourself from its hold.

every possession, from TVs to NFTs (non-fungible tokens), is merely to be used. From the standpoint of mimetic desire, material things are also talismans for some deeper desire. As Girard wrote, all desire is a desire for being.

if you can’t be happy right where you’re at, right now, then you probably won’t be happy anywhere. Your happiness will always be something ‘out there’, beyond the horizon, and mimetic desire will continue to exert an unhealthy control over you.

Lifestyle is something that emerges from one’s values and discipline, not something you find at a particular zip code or via the keys to a different house or van.