Wanting

Live as if you have a responsibility for what other people want

We only want things because other people want them.

This is the central premise of Wanting, which discusses how most of our desires aren’t really our own - and what to do with this information.

Wanting: The Power of Desire in Everyday Life, by Luke Burgis (304 pages)

Summary

• We only want things because others want them. This dynamic, where we copy others, is called mimetic desire. Things (or people) from which we learn desire from are called models or mediators of desire

• There are two types of mimetic desire:

  • From people similar to us - think about your friends, co-workers, or acquaintances. This dynamic tends to be a bit less healthy as there can be rivalry. If your coworker gets promoted and you don’t, it’s likely you’ll have jealousy. There is also a tension as we want to differentiate ourselves from people similar to us at the same time. He calls this “Freshmanistan” - think about the uneasiness of your freshman year of high school or college, where people are trying to carve out their own identity and status

  • From people very different to us - think about celebrities or even influencers. Surprisingly, this can be a healthier dynamic than with friends, given that celebrities are so different from us (and literally “out of our league”) that it’s hard to really be jealous or envious of them. He calls this “Celebristan”

• The goal is not to eliminate all your desires – that is impossible and seems pretty unfun – but simply to notice where desires come from and hopefully imitate positive desires. Burgis compares mimetic desire to gravity – you can’t overcome it, but life will be a lot easier if you understand what it is and how it works

• Some desires are more meaningful than others - Burgis differentiates between "thick” desires and “thin” desires. Thick desires are the meaty and meaningful things we really want (e.g., fulfilling relationships, a sense of achievement), and thin desires are more likely to be us copying someone (e.g., a fancier car, a job title)

Thoughts and reactions

• I enjoyed the book and it resonated. The basic concept makes sense - if you think about anything that’s not a basic need (food, shelter), your desire for it had to come from somewhere. Take a fancy watch for example - much of its value is from the fact that you’ve seen other people wear it, people who become models for you. Or maybe a time that you ordered the same drink that others did just to fit in

• Overall, I think this is a helpful framework and lens to see the world - at the very least, it’s helped me pause and ask myself “why exactly do I want that? Who is making me want that?”

• This is also a fun lens through which to consume any kind of media

  • Many advertisements work by explicitly creating models of desire, like the most interesting man in the world

  • Movies often explore it as well - see this scene from the 2000 movie Boiler Room where Gordon Gekko from Wall Street is an explicit model of desire (perhaps alluding to the irony that Wall Street was meant to be a cautionary tale but ended up inspiring more people to pursue jobs in finance)

• The book also serves as a long way of saying “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”

• “We’re more threatened by the people who want the same things as us than by those who don’t” he writes, part of the fascinating discussion of rivalry within groups. There’s a tension where we want to be similar to others (e.g., taking up a similar hobby) while also distinguishing ourselves (getting better than them at it). So how do you deal with this in your relationships?

  • One dumb trick is to put yourself in a “category of 1.” Let me give a dumb example. Let’s say I identify myself as a newsletter writer. There are tons of models and potential rivals; I could spend a lot more time trying to “beat them” (subscribers, tweets, whatever) and being hard on myself for not “winning” or besting them. But if I put myself into the category of “people who write a newsletter in their spare time who have certain other responsibilities and who write for a specific reason,” there aren’t a bunch of rivals. I can (and generally) do my thing without stress. Of course, competition is often helpful, so it sometimes makes sense to find rivals and models (exercise classes can help people work harder than they would on their own), but most people probably over-compare rather than under-compare

• This concept explains the appeal of social media influencers - they help people understand and generate desires while not having the weird dynamic of being your friend. If you are getting all of your desires from a friend, you might feel like a “poser” and you have enacted a weird power dynamic with them where you have kind of elevated them above you. But because the influencer is so removed from you, you get to avoid all the messiness of “Freshmanistan”

• There is even mimetic desire in the professional world. In a lot of jobs, it’s much safer to do what others are doing as opposed to being alone. The classic example is venture capital, where investors will ask a company which other firms are investing. Or the saying that “nobody gets fired for hiring [IBM / McKinsey / Goldman Sachs]…”

• The most interesting piece of advice from the book: Live as if you have a responsibility for what other people want. It’s easy to think about all the influence others have on you. It’s a bit harder to think about the influence you have on others.

  • “Through our relationships, we help other people with their wants in one of three ways: we help them want more, we help them want less, or we help them want differently…”