Mimetic choices

We desire things because other people we respect desire them. This is the theory of *mimetic desires *developed by French philosopher René Girard in the twentieth century. Desire is not individual, but collective, according to Girard’s theory. The process of desire is composed of three essential elements: you, the object/person of desire, and a mediator of desire (this video explains the concept very well). The mediator of desire plays a crucial role in your unconscious decisions as to what to desire. Your mediator may be a person you esteem and is close to you, or someone who inspires you even though you don’t personally know them. You model your desires after their attention and desires, which are, in turn, modeled by other mediators. As a consequence, according to Girard, desires are collective, not individual as one may believe.

Conflict can arise when desires are mediated due to the scarcity mindset of both you and the mediator(s). This leads to finite games with winners and losers, particularly in relationships. When you desire someone to be your partner, your desire is mediated by another's, as Girard's collective theory of desire suggests. Ultimately, only one person can win, as per Western relationship traditions.

The winner-takes-all tension creates conflict, which can lead to chaos and explicit fights. When multiple people are involved and mediators of desire are present, they may resort to the scapegoat mechanism to restore order. This involves identifying one person to sacrifice (kill or punish severely) for the sake of harmony in the collective. The scapegoat is a heuristic; a symbol chosen to reinstate order, even though the chaos was caused by the collective mimetic desires in the first place, and not by one specific individual.

In daily life, you can notice mimetic desires play a role in career choices, for example. Many business school graduates desire to join big consulting firms (e.g., McKinsey, BCG, Bain & Company). Upon further investigation, one may discover that many of those students desire a career in consulting because of mimetic desires, which are an almost infinite cycle that repeats itself multiple times. The other students may act as mediators for the desire of joining consulting, which fuels your seemingly independent desire to join the consulting industry.

Mimetic desires are also one of the underlying factors behind community-led growth of companies such as Notion, Substack, or Discord. The social-media virality of those platforms and carefully curated growth strategies make them desirable also because you notice a wild adoption from the collective (society), which mediates your desires.

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