📚 Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life
Genre: Non-Fiction, Psychology, Philosophy Originally Published: 2021
💭 Quick Summary & Thoughts
I picked this book up hoping to figure out what my desires actually were - how people come to understand what they want and how to go about finding it for myself. In that sense, the book was a decent read. The core idea is based on the work of French philosopher Rene Girard, who argued that human desire is fundamentally mimetic - meaning we want things not because we independently decided we want them, but because we see other people wanting them. You don’t want that job, that car, or that lifestyle in a vacuum. You want it because someone around you modeled it as desirable.
That’s a genuinely powerful insight, and once you’re aware of it, you can start catching yourself. “Do I actually want this, or do I want it because everyone around me seems to?” That self-awareness alone makes the book worth reading. Burgis calls these shallow, imitated desires “thin desires” as opposed to “thick desires” - the deep-rooted ones that are truly your own, formed close to your core values.
The book also has some interesting anecdotes from Burgis’s own life as a tech startup founder in Silicon Valley, which give the mimetic theory some real-world grounding. You can see how the desire to compete, to keep up, to want what the people around you want, plays out in environments like that.
Where the book fell short for me is that it’s much better at diagnosing the problem than prescribing the solution. I walked in wanting a guide to help me figure out what I actually want in life, and I walked out with a solid framework for understanding why people chase the wrong things - but without much actionable advice on how to find the right ones. The book gestures toward things like silence, meditation, and retreats, but it’s all pretty vague. I would have appreciated something more concrete.
Overall, not a bad read at all, but not a great one either. A solid middle-of-the-road book that gives you one genuinely useful lens to look at the world through.
⚠️ Spoiler Zone
🚨 Click to reveal spoilers 🚨
The book is split roughly into two halves. The first half lays out the theory of mimetic desire - what it is, how it works, and why it matters. This is the stronger half. Burgis does a good job of making Girard’s academic theory accessible and relatable with real-world examples.
The second half tries to offer solutions and practical advice for breaking free of mimetic desire, and this is where it gets weaker. The suggestions - cultivating silence, ranking your values, seeking “thick desires” - are reasonable but feel underdeveloped. You’re left thinking, “Okay, but how do I actually do that?”
Burgis’s personal stories from the startup world are the most engaging parts of the book. You can see mimetic desire playing out in real time - founders wanting to build companies not because of a deep passion but because that’s what everyone around them was doing. It’s a good illustration of the theory, but the book could have used more of these concrete stories and fewer abstract philosophical passages.
One concept I found interesting was the idea of “models” - the people we unconsciously look to as templates for what to desire. Burgis argues that we should be intentional about choosing our models rather than letting them choose us. It’s a good point, but again, the “how” is left somewhat vague.
🧠 Key Takeaways
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Most of your desires aren’t really yours. Mimetic desire means you want things because you see others wanting them - not because you independently decided they were valuable. This applies to careers, relationships, possessions, lifestyles, all of it.
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Thin desires vs. thick desires. “Thin desires” are shallow and highly mimetic - easily influenced by trends, social media, and the people around you. “Thick desires” are deep-rooted, formed close to your core values, like diamonds formed deep beneath the surface. The goal is to chase thick desires and learn to recognize when you’re being pulled by thin ones.
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People don’t fight because they want different things - they fight because they want the same things. Mimetic desire causes convergence, not divergence. Most conflict comes from people competing for the same object of desire, not from having fundamentally different values.
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Social media is a mimetic desire accelerator. Our exposure to other people’s desires has grown exponentially. Every scroll through Instagram or Twitter is a bombardment of models telling you what to want. Being aware of this is the first step to resisting it.
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You have “models” whether you know it or not. Everyone has people they unconsciously imitate - their desires, their lifestyle, their ambitions. The question is whether you’re choosing your models intentionally or letting them be chosen for you.
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If you want to find out what you truly want, try silence. Burgis suggests extended periods of silence - not hours, but days - away from screens, conversations, and distractions. It’s in that silence that your actual desires, the thick ones, start to surface.
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Rank your values explicitly. When everything is equally important, nothing is being valued. Having a clear hierarchy of values helps you resist mimetic pulls that conflict with what actually matters to you.
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Watch who you want to fail. The people whose failure you’d secretly enjoy are often your mimetic rivals - the ones whose desires you’re unconsciously imitating and competing with. It’s an uncomfortable but revealing exercise.
💬 Quote Corner
“People don’t fight because they want different things; they fight because mimetic desire causes them to want the same things.”
“Thin mimetic desires abound. They’re peddled to us every minute of the day. We can nip at them, maybe even sink our teeth into them, but they won’t take us where we want to go.”
“Silence is where we learn to be at peace with ourselves, where we learn the truth about who we are and what we want.”
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