Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta

[7Wannabe5]

If this be true, why 7 not be 5 yet?

[Stasher]

Hard for me to engage in these conversations but I can certainly dumb it down with my personal feeling/example from real life for what you just shared J&G. I race/ride a lot and very wired into the local mountainbike/gravelbike/bikepacking community. From what friends are doing, what the local bike shops are showing, what is happening at the races and of course wathcing elites on youtube etc form a serious dose of influence on my decisions. 100% legit it is the hardest part of discretionary spending I try to resist as my bikes cost a lot and I want to ride them for years without upgrading them or adding unnecessary trick new parts. I could justify as this is my recreation/health/wellbeing investment wrapped up in one budget line item but that would just be finding a way to enable excess consumerism.

If we assume that this theory of mimetic desire is correct, that all desire is socially constructed, then, I suggest, that identity is the product of iterative mimetic desire.

Here's how I think it works: We learn what to assign value to and desire from our families and peers as well as our cultural heroes and role models. When we see them desire something, we assess it as having value and imitate that desire*. At this point, it enters our internal reward and emotional system.

[Lemur]

Interesting @J+G

If mimetic desire is true, then it supports why social conformity appears to be a mostly built-in human feature. Yes, these are certainly psychological needs for love & belonging but these needs could also even be based in physiological and security needs. Standing out too much, and being different, can get you socially outcasted at best or even killed in some cases at worst. So it stands to reason why its easier to rationalize an identity that doesn't drift too far off from the culture around you. Seems to me most people socially conform without too much of a second thought but given that roughly 15-20% of the population is estimated to be neurodivergent....this may be a cause of why neurodivergent people learn to strategically mask as they're simply outnumbered.

I suppose some good news is that standing out, having original thoughts, and proposing "radical" ideas is much more acceptable today then it was in years past, but humans are still going to human.

[theanimal]

If this be true, why 7 not be 5 yet?

Mimetic desire does not mean that one realizes or achieves all of their desires. It’s more of a means of explaining where desires come from and what can happen sociologically when we act upon them. So in your case, it would explain why you want to be 5, or why some tech bro wants to be the next Zuck, or why many on the forum want to be like Jacob. But wanting alone does not necessarily lead to doing or even fulfilling those desires.

[Jean]

Also, their is still something that need to decide who to mimic.

[jacob]

From a needs perspective, this idea implies that all non-physiological needs are social. We first form desires by seeing what others desire and imitating them.

To put this in a bit of context, for

Kegan1 - our desires are reflexive and driven by physiological needs like hunger, thirst, fear, ...
Kegan2 - our desires are impulsive and based on whatever idea just popped into our head or caught our attention, ...
Kegan3 - our desires are the desires of our group; we follow the vibe of the tribe. The value of a decision is judged by others (ultimately the most popular person in the group) and we seek to abide by that.

(This covers about 70% of adult human beings.)

All these stages are not yet aware of how increasingly complex mimetic effects influence what they want. Mimetics is still the water they swim in.

However, the idea that "needs are 100% socially constructed" is too simplistic to explain why people demonstrate different levels of enthusiasm for satisfying these needs despite living in the same social soup. It's almost as if they value those socially inspired needs differently. Why is that?

One popular explanation is "individual history" (lived experience, childhood, trauma,...) and another more theoretical explanation is that people have different innate temperaments so that a given "mimetic desire" is rewarded differently. I prefer general theory over personal narratives, so I'll go with that.

Temperament explains why individuals in a group don't find the same memetic [socially induced] desire equally rewarding. Depending on their ability to imagine other desires (level of intelligence) or their experience/exposure with other social groups whose mimetics they find more rewarding, they enter a level of tension that can play out both internally and externally.

This in turn explains why social groups can fracture and realign. In particular, it explains which kind of individuals are most likely to do this (temperamental outliers). It also explains how "mimetic desire" is subject to evolutionary pressure in terms of value transmission.

[7Wannabe5]

So in your case, it would explain why you want to be 5

Actually, that was mostly a misunderstanding on my part. A 5 is usually either an INTJ or an INTP, and I'm already pretty close to being an INTP, because virtually balanced in E/I. So, if I actually wanted to make/earn more money/GTD, I would have to move my P towards J, but I don't want to do that directly, because ENTJ and ENTP =totally different world-view, also I will simply never be able to muster up that much primary Te BDE. What I actually want to do is move more towards ENFP, flipping out secondary Ti for secondary Fi and then tertiary Fe for tertiary Te. IOW, I now wannabe more like Doechii rather than more like Jacob. However, this is obviously all more intellectualized than simple mimetic desire.

[Jin+Guice]

@Stasher:

Heh, this tendency is actually what lead me to go down this line of thinking. I noticed that I always want to upgrade my gear or, failing that, at least know about the latest gear, well beyond what I need for my particular skill level and goals (a strategy for not upgrading gear unnecessarily is covered in the ERE book btw). This lead me to question why this kept happening in different realms of interest, which lead me to question why I have those interests at all.

@Lemur:

Mimetic desire makes conformists of all of us. Those who appear to be "anti-conformists" are still mimetic. IIRC, this is what Girard refers to as a "snob," which is someone who tries to differentiate themselves from mimetic desire by doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing. However, they are still reacting mimeticaly because their desires and the resulting actions are still defined by what they perceive others to desire (in this case they just do the opposite instead of copying them).

Another observation is that people who "don't conform" are often anti-conformists in the same way. They find other "alternative" people to model instead of modeling what is perceived as the conformist status quo.

@Jean:

I agree there is a layer below mimetic desire which chooses which mimetic possibility becomes a desire. Girard somewhat discusses this but he doesn't have a detailed theory for why we choose which mimetic desire. His idea is that we are likely to mimic 1) people we would like to be like (people in the public eye) and 2) people whom we share the closest proximity with in terms of geography, interest and social standing.

However, the idea that "needs are 100% socially constructed" is too simplistic to explain why people demonstrate different levels of enthusiasm for satisfying these needs despite living in the same social soup. It's almost as if they value those socially inspired needs differently. Why is that?

Technical note: mimetic desire can still explain this because people are exposed to different "models" (Girard's term) to copy.

I don't think that mimetic desire DOES explain this, nor do I think Girard's theory attempts to explain which mimetic desire will be chosen by who in what circumstance. The idea is that all desire beyond "impulse"(=hardwired desire to satisfy physiological needs) is derived mimetically.

The process by which we latch onto a mimetic desire is an extremely interesting question, but it's not necessary for where I'm going and I guess Girard didn't feel like it was necessary for where he went either. I do think this is a fascinating question that has implications for the questions I'm asking, so I may return to it later (and am interesting in hearing ideas about it).

For what it's worth, I am guessing which "mimetic potential" (my terminology) we desire is likely some combination of innate reward/ fear systems, previous undigested experience, previous mimetic desire (as well as which mimetic potentials are available to us in our social environment). So some combination of temperament and lived experience?




I am refining what I said earlier. I think there are broad categories of needs, which are not physiological, that universally direct desire. The broad categories of Maslow's hierarchy are examples of these: esteem, love and belonging, curiosity as well as beauty. However the specific expression of these needs (which is the specific desire) is mimetic (what gives us esteem, whom we wish to love and belong with, what we are curious about and what we find beautiful).


Mimetic theory suggests that there is no innate self to discover. The idea that our desires are individual and self-directed is what Girard calls the "Romantic Lie." I suppose this can be reimagined as self-discovery is the process of identifying which mimetic desires we feel most strongly.

In a modern society that values "self-knowledge" so strongly this is, in my mind, kind of big news.

In terms of needs, actualization and ERE, if I am trying to organize my WoGs, in my view, it helps to have some hierarchy or organizing principle for the goals in the web. I'm not sure how to come up with a WoGs without formulating an identity, aka self-discovery or ordering desires.

I don't feel there is a strong conflict if one has a strong freedom-to within a well defined range. If a freedom-to is working out super well, then who cares if it's mimetically derived or not?

In this way I think self-discovery, even if it means uncovering mimetic desire, is helpful for building a WoG.

It becomes a problem if: 1) we are experiencing WL6 ennui; 2) we are having trouble picking between different freedom-tos (different mimetic desires) and 3) if we are experiencing "runaway" mimetic desire.

(1) and (2) are existential crisis of living in a world where physiological desires are met without much effort.

(3) occurs when a mimetic desire becomes hardwired into our identity that is either impossible to meet or which continually amplifies when we meet our goal (hedonic adaptation).

I have upcoming posts about each of these situations.


I think this also explains what is happening in the world at large with regards to consumerism and various crisis (@jacob mentions these in the post above where he talks about mimetic desire). "Keeping up with the Joneses" is one variation of runaway mimetic desire. As one person gets X the other suddenly desires X+1, which drives the other to suddenly desire X+2 (Girard calls this mimetic rivalry). The mimetic nature of these desires is not recognized by either individual.

I think each individual comes to perceive these desires as part of their identity. It seems that people who have physiological needs met have a very difficult time differentiating between physiological needs and mimetic desires they identify with. We seem to experience something akin to fear of death if we are blocked from pursuing our mimetic desires and seem to experience something of a death if we lose a large part of our identity. In this way, mimetic desire implants itself our fear and reward systems, driving emotions and a large portion of human action.

[AxelHeyst]

I'm definitely grappling with (2), choosing between different freedom-to's. Which to pick? Which combination to pick, and how to integrate? How many is too much at once and would dilute the whole endeavor? Should I pick one, or combine two, and plan to run with them forever? (Become a "deep" master of that thing.) Should I plan to serially master? What tempo? When is switching from one to another a sign of completion and closure vs. being a bit of a flake? I believe these are questions only I can answer, because they have to do with my wiring and specific makeup and even values (e.g. I do desire to ~enjoy the process, but I'm optimizing for more than just my own subjective experience of the execution of my WoG so there are 'objective' result decisions I'm attempting to fold into the decision process).

Following with interest. Please deliver an easy to follow solution to my lifelong rolling existential crisis, thx.

[Lemur]

Jin+Guice

Another observation is that people who "don't conform" are often anti-conformists in the same way. They find other "alternative" people to model instead of modeling what is perceived as the conformist status quo.

Interesting observation and hard to argue with. Good stuff. Even if I look at my own web of goals, they're desires that mimic someone I've known or mostly ideas I've embraced from a collection of others who share the same goals and values. This could even explain why despite reaching FI, I could never actually pull the trigger on early retirement.

It is ironic that the FIRE movement as a whole is a counter to mimetic consumerism to only be replaced by mimetic desire for travel, experiences, and building up networth for its own sake.

Looks like I will need to add some René Girard to my reading list or if anyone has a video recommendation, please share. Girard has over 30 works so not sure what to add to my list.

At least according to ChatGPT his most famous work is "Violence and the Sacred (1972)" but his more comprehensive work is "Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (1978)."

[AxelHeyst]

...if anyone has a video recommendation, please share. Girard has over 30 works so not sure what to add to my list.

CBS Interview with Girard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8Y8dVV ... e=youtu.be

and The Girard Reader https://archive.org/details/the-girard- ... 9/mode/2up seems like a good place to start with reading, although I've only just started it.

[theanimal]

...if anyone has a video recommendation, please share. Girard has over 30 works so not sure what to add to my list.

The CBC series is very good. He was also interviewed by the Hoover Institute (Stanford). David Perrell and Jonathan Bi put together a 7 part lecture series on Girard and mimetic desire last year that is also a good introduction to his ideas.

As far as his books, I'd recommend the following:
-Deceit, Desire and the Novel
-Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World
-I see Satan Fall Like Lightning
-Theater of Envy

If you really want to dive deep, you can go further from there. If you only read one of his works, you should read "Things Hidden..."