Home > Work > Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life
21 " The Romantic Lie is self-delusion, the story people tell about why they make certain choices: because it fits their personal preferences, or because they see its objective qualities, or because they simply saw it and therefore wanted it. They believe that there is a straight line between them and the things they want. That’s a lie. The truth is that the line is always curved. "
― Luke Burgis , Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life
22 " When President Kennedy told the American people, “We choose to go to the Moon,” he modeled a desire that surpassed what people had previously dared to entertain. “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things,” he said, “not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills. "
23 " Desires are discerned, not decided. Discernment exists in the liminal space between what’s now and what’s next. Transcendent leaders create that space in their own lives, and in the lives of the people around them. "
24 " When the desire for equality is hijacked by mimetic desire, the only things we see are imaginary or superficial differences. "
25 " 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. "
26 " If my friend is more on top of global affairs, urbanism, culture, and design than I am, it’s because he has a Monocle subscription. "
27 " Scientism fools people because it is a mimetic game dressed up as science. The key is carefully curating our sources of knowledge so that we are able to get down to what is true regardless of how many other people want to believe it. And that means doing the work. "
28 " The pride that makes a person believe they are unaffected by or inoculated against biases, weaknesses, or mimesis blinds them to their complicity in the game. "
29 " It brought you a sense of fulfillment. Your action brought you a deep sense of fulfillment, maybe even joy. Not the fleeting, temporary kind, like an endorphin rush. Fulfillment: you woke up the next morning and felt a sense of satisfaction about it. You still do. Just thinking about it brings some of it back. "
30 " People worry about what other people will think before they say something—which affects what they say. In other words, our perception of reality changes reality by altering the way we might otherwise act. This leads to a self-fulfilling circularity. "
31 " Human beings fight not because they are different, but because they are the same, and in their attempts to distinguish themselves have made themselves into enemy twins, human doubles in reciprocal violence. "
32 " The weasel lives in necessity and we live in choice, hating necessity and dying at the last ignobly in its talons. "
33 " Silence is where we learn to be at peace with ourselves, where we learn the truth about who we are and what we want. If you’re not sure what you want, there’s no faster way to find out than to enter into complete silence for an extended period of time—not hours, but days. "
34 " If individuals are naturally inclined to desire what their neighbors possess, or to desire what their neighbors even simply desire, this means that rivalry exists at the very heart of human social relations. This rivalry, if not thwarted, would permanently endanger harmony and even the survival of all human communities. —René Girard "
35 " Within a few years, the company realized that its search results were not just data points about what people happened to be trying to find at any given time but early indications about what people wanted—information about their desires, which Google had access to before anyone else. Google pioneered what Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff calls surveillance capitalism.16 Companies that operate according to this model translate private human experience into behavioral data that can then be used to engineer their desires, or at least to exploit them for profit.17 "
36 " Ideologies are closed systems of desire. They provide clear constraints about what is acceptable or not acceptable to want—whether it is the platform of a political party, the guiding ideology of a company, or the ideology that shapes a family system. "
37 " Parker Palmer writes, “Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.”7 "
38 " Meditative thought, on the other hand, is patient thought. It is not the same thing as meditation. Meditative thought is simply slow, nonproductive thought. It’s not reactionary. It’s the kind of thought that, upon hearing news or experiencing something surprising, doesn’t immediately look for solutions. Instead, it asks a series of questions that help the asker sink down further into the reality: What is this new situation? What is behind it? Meditative thought is patient enough to allow the truth to reveal itself. "
39 " The extraordinary success of a few internet companies has masked the embarrassing lack of major breakthroughs in other domains. There has been little improvement in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, which affect nearly a third of all Americans over the age of eighty-five. There is still no cure for cancer. Life expectancy is declining in many parts of the world. So is quality of life. The Concorde made its last flight in 2003. Trains, planes, and automobiles move about as fast today as they did fifty years ago. Inflation-adjusted wages have stagnated for most Americans since the early 1960s—while the absolute size of paychecks has grown, purchasing power has not.5 "
40 " It's necessary to visit hell so we never become permanent residents. "