desire

From the Latin de sidere meaning “from the stars,” the word’s etymology has a revealing double-meaning: when we desire something we want unknown fate (the stars) to bring it to us, but our desires themselves also often originate in the unknown. Why do I prefer vanilla ice cream to chocolate? Why do I prefer Star Trek to Star Wars? Desires both begin and end in the great cosmic mystery of life.

Mimetic Desire

From René Girard, mimetic desire (also called “triangular desire”) refers to wanting something because of another person, rather than for the object’s intrinsic value. Put another way, it’s when we don’t want to have something, but instead want to be someone, who we think having the thing will make us. You can see this dynamic at work in most advertising: people don’t buy products, they buy better versions of themselves.

Mimetic desire comes from the need to belong, to gain others’ approval. Thus, it opens the door to shame, to feeling bad about ourselves when we don’t have that approval. Indeed, it may even be a precondition for shame, since for shame to have any effect we have to first care about the approval of others.

Mimetic desire also leads to conflict. We may be trying to gain others’ approval or status within a peer group, but so are our peers, which puts us in conflict with them. And while those we aspire to be—our models—gain some measure of their own status from our desire to mimic them, we also threaten their status if we actually realize that ambition. This dovetails with Freud’s theory of the narcissism of small differences, that the more alike we are to some rival, the more bitter our rivalry as we struggle to differentiate ourselves.

More on Mimetic Desire

• A long introduction to the concept
• A theological perspective on Girard from Bishop Robert Barron