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..."

[7Wannabe5]

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).

Yes, and in terms of economics or ecology this might be understood as occupying a novel niche. Demand is likely to be high and supply is likely to be low for whatever most everybody wants, so it may be energetically less expensive to become a snob. Actually, it is often an act of cultural creation, bringing something new into the inter-subjective. How do you get what you want? Find it/Take it-> Band together->Fight hard-> Obey the rules-> Work hard-> Work smart-> Counter the rules-> Create Culture.

[suomalainen]

Much of this seems like fancier words to rehash the old nature vs nurture debate. I personally would think of “mimetic desire” not as creating anything, but merely as exposing and expressing innate desires. As such, cultural expression gives a person a place to start when exploring their need for food, for example. But once a person is exposed to different cultures, it may appear that their desires for certain foods “change”, but in reality it’s just that they’ve gained more experience and are able to refine how they understand / express their desires. How can you know you love pizza if you’ve never tried it?

[biaggio]

There is another lens through which one can view mimetic desire: desirable vs. "non desirable". In the desirable case, mimetic desire is what enables language and culture: children learn by immitating sounds (~> langauge) and behaviors (~> culture) around them and so forth. This desirable class of immitation is what Piaget talked about.

One could say that Girard talks about the non desirable aspects of immitation---where things result in conflict which eventually gets resolved through scapegoating mechanism.

[guitarplayer]

You know the fairness study video? It explains mimetic desire better than anything else I’ve found online

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6Txys ... VyIGdyYXBl

[suomalainen]

https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2 ... aning.html

The last sentences of his lengthy tome, Existential Psychotherapy, sum up his solution: “The question of meaning in life is, as the Buddha taught, not edifying. One must immerse oneself in the river of life and let the question drift away.” How he lands here is an intriguing path through a slew of philosophers and psychiatrists. Even without symptoms of a problem, attention to meaning is necessary as it gives birth to values, which become principles to live by as we place behaviours into our own hierarchy of acceptability.

“One creates oneself by a series of ongoing decisions. But one cannot make each and every decision de novo throughout one’s life; certain superordinate decisions must be made that provide an organizing principle for subsequent decisions.”

Yalom doesn’t suggest coming up with a list of values that can become meaningful to us, but that we immerse ourselves in life to become more aware of which values we already have.

Without the sustained effort to develop our own sense of meaning, we’re in danger of falling into conformity and submission, blindly accepting meaning created by a group, getting subdued by nihilistic destruction or apathy, searching for a pre-conceived meaning to be found instead of cultivated, or mistaking a fear of death or loneliness for a quest for meaning.

Seemed relevant to jng’s current process.

[Jean]

My impression is that mimicry (or anti mimicry) is a desire of it's own, probably as a strategy to fulfull one's need for an identity.
And again, it's a bit like in cooking, where you can either follow a recipe, or make your own how your understand how ingredients work.
Humans tend to desire similar things because humans are similar.

Edit: cooking, not cooling

[7Wannabe5]

Yalom doesn’t suggest coming up with a list of values that can become meaningful to us, but that we immerse ourselves in life to become more aware of which values we already have.

Yes, and this is somewhat akin to Jacob's suggestions that one's outcomes must have been one's goals. Also why I recently declared "Curiosity" and "Pleasure" as must be near top of my current list of values. "Why did I open that book?", "Why did I wander into the kitchen to grab a couple cookies?" Thus, it also seems likely from objective perspective of intelligent alien, my current goals must be "Become more knowledgeable and more chubby."

[Jin+Guice]

@AH: Options are difficult to choose from because we don't actually need to do anything. I think the modern value meme imposes a complicated structure on basic needs (needs of modernity) and imposes a complicated structure on our emotional/ fear systems. From that view, ERE just points out that, even within the needs of modernity structure, physiological needs are easy to meet.

I think we used to get our purpose from meeting our physiological needs. We didn't need to search for meaning because we were satisfying our higher level needs in the process of meeting our lower level needs. Meeting physiological needs for ourselves, our families and our kin groups was our purpose.

When physiological needs are met under the conditions of modernity, the problems of who we are and who our people are open up. ERE reveals that meeting the needs that can be met with money and consumer goods is extremely easy, thus removing the cultural guidelines and culturally accepted purpose of modernity.

I think the issue many of us eventually run into is that there is no easy replacement for getting purpose from satisfying physiological needs. Once the organizing principle of individual and collective biological need is removed, we must make our own organizing principle. ERE removes a culturally generated organizing principle. Once one sees this truth, the option of re-entering consumer society is not very appealing as the purpose of lifelong struggle for money, goods and consumer services has been removed.

@Lemur: An important note on the theory mimetic desire is that it stipulates that all desire is mimetic and thus mimetic desire is endemic to humanity. So if you buy his theory, you can't escape copying someone.

@7: I don't think "snob" is the best term for what he's talking about, since snobbism is just another form of mimetic desire but calling something snobbism labels it negatively.

@Suo: I thought of including something like this in that post... I don't think mimetic desire is about nature vs nurture, though at first it seems to come down heavily on the side of nurture. It's more like what you're saying...that we need to experience options to know about them. This is kind of like "ok...uh... duh." What it flies in the face of is something Girard calls "The Romantic Lie" which is something like you are born to be an XYZ. It's like, yeah, not if your culture doesn't have the opportunity to become an XYZ. So it's more like a reminder that all of the identity markers we are attached to are not actually intrinsic parts of ourselves, but rather, how we express intrinsic parts of ourselves in whatever environment we end up in. Which is interesting to me as someone who's looking at actualization because it suggests there is not one path of express which we actualize through.

Mimetic desire also says people tend to do what other people do, which is another kind of like "duh" thing, but it's interesting to have an idea of this works if we observe people all chasing something that doesn't seem to fulfill a more innate desire. Where did they get these alternative desires from? Other people. Why is it hard to go against these desires? We don't experience these desires as mimetic, we experience them as our own.

I think all of this mimetic desire stuff supports your second post, which is to say that value development is not going through life to from some concrete set of values, but a process of jamming experience and mimetic desires through yourself to see what works, based on how you feel about it. It's to me interesting to note that we may be getting pushed in directions that don't actually work for us or become over attached to certain identity markers through mimetic desire.