mimetic desire

René Girard, theologian 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
Mimetic desire draws people toward things. This draw, this movement … mimesis is to psychology what gravity is to physics, “Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard”, James Alison (Girard scholar)
Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire, and How to Want What You Need, Luke Burgis
Rene Girard and Myth: An Introduction

17 notes

2024-11-25non-language knowings
For Jane Bennett, expanding on Adorno, the feel of fabric or the hum of a machine conveys something irreducible to words.
2023-11-05brain's press secretary interpreter module
The self acts less like an autocrat making decisions and more like a press secretary, spinning justifications for an outside audience.
2023-11-05pervasive tendency to rationalize
We are often rewarded for acting selfishly yet less so for admitting it, so our brains strategically stay ignorant of our own motives.
2023-07-02traincat
“Train on cats,” says Fool in Leonid Gaidai’s “Operation Y,” and his bumbling crew mirrors leaders who fight adversity by force or surveillance.
2023-07-02writing healing fiction
“Healing fiction” aspires to draft and design a better human experience, in the engineering sense of improving, mending and repurposing.
2023-03-06unformed adult zelig
The hero of Woody Allen’s mockumentary Zelig (1983) is an unformed adult who borrows other people’s identities, thinking he can be anybody.
2022-10-19enacting behaviour of others
Imitating other people’s behavior rarely solves personal problems and often makes the right solution harder to find.
2021-08-11cult of experts
For Luke Burgis, the cult of experts sells “Follow These Five Steps” happiness with little respect for human complexity.
2021-08-11ideology maturity conflicting desires
Ideology sees everything as good or bad, while maturity can hold two conflicting desires at once without rushing to reject one.
2021-08-11journalism supplies insatiable curiosity
The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything except what is worth knowing, and journalism, with tradesman-like habits, supplies it.
2021-08-11mimetic
René Girard found that most of what we desire is mimetic, not intrinsic: we learn to want what others want, as we learn a language.
2021-08-11scientism mimetic game
Scientism fools people because it is a mimetic game dressed up as science.
2021-08-02all hipsters look alike
The effort to leave the beaten paths forces everyone into the same ditch.
2020-12-01Technological Society
2020-11-29mimesis
Mimesis names imitation, representation, mimicry and resemblance in literary criticism and philosophy.
2017-10-31the etiology of the existential vacuum
With no instincts to tell him what he must do and no traditions to tell him what he should, man does what others do or wish.
2017-08-21human autonomy and influence
For Viktor Frankl, no longer told by instinct or tradition what to do, man often wants what others do or does what others want.