What everybody must know about only desiring what YOU want

We have known the answer for 1,500 years.

French polymath René Girard defines mimetic desires as desires you develop because someone else did. You mimetically desire what someone else wants, or the opposite. Writer A sees Writer B's essay on the homepage of The New Yorker and now dreams of it. Or Writer A turns down the offer because Writer B accepted it. 

It's an alluring theory because you can easily find inner desires that resemble this pattern. 

I wanted to major in Computer Science. Do you want to be a SCHOOL TEACHER? Your teacher studied Computer Science, my dad said. He was asking if I wanted to be broke. Who does? I enrolled in the major he desired for me, mechanical engineering, after designing a narrative that was what I wanted. Three months later, I crammed my checked suitcase in the back of a van heading home. 

The dangling pearl earring I imported from a London jeweler two years ago and stored in a 5x5 cm box was another mimetic (not “genuine”)desire. I hadn't thought about wearing one, but the circular pearl contrasted with the triangular face of a model that resembles me. 

The ease of finding examples of mimetic desire deceives mimetism scholars and us into thinking genuine desires exist.

I. Mimetism Scholars’ Misconceptions

Luke Burgis

proposes our imagination reveals our desires. To choose between options, imagine the day's events after choosing either option. Which option leads to the preferred day? He says to practice the same exercise but imagine yourself on your deathbed. “Which choice leaves you more consoled?”

Burgis ignores that memories shape the scenarios we can imagine.

Two characters I just made up: Reginald, heir of golf clubs, and Mick, a victim of intergenerational debt. Reginald associates informal education (option A) with badges bouncing front, center, and right and center. Mick links informal education to checks with varying zeros, no zeros, and tendonitis. Mick prefers formal education (option B). Reginald and Mick's past mimetic decisions conceived their present lives and conditioned the future they can imagine. 

Holding conflicting ideas instead of rejecting any is another method to discover what we want. But this recommendation from Burgis is also tangential. The available options our imagination surfaces still come from other people. 

II. A Buddhist Elucidation of Mimetic Desire

The snag in freeing ourselves from mimetic desire and developing our own desires comes from two assumptions:

1. Mimetic desire is a problem

2. Mimetic desire is a problem we can solve

But if mimetic desire is a problem, it is a double-bind—a dilemma where options have downsides or don't address the problem. In mimetic theory, the double bind is that we never do, think, or act as we desire. Reginald keeps it in the family because his parents want him to. His other option is to enroll in college, which would also be mimetic; he’s doing it to oppose his parents’ desires. 

Confronting mimetic desire's double-bind presents us with more double-binds. 

For example, scholars want to solve the mystery of genuine desires.

If you and I faced each other, and I declared, "Show me the REAL you," you might widen your eyes, slightly open your mouth, wait a few seconds, and not say anything. What is this Colombian hippie saying? From that moment forward, you might fidget. Think about what you will say and your body's actions that go with that label, such as showing teeth to prove how happy you are. 

The more we feign genuineness, the more we suppress or exaggerate portions of ourselves. 

III. Zen’s “Solution” to Mimetic Desire

Zen is a Chinese form of Buddhism that developed in Japan. "Zen" derives from the Chinese word "Chán" (禪), which comes from the Sanskrit word "Dhyāna," meaning meditation. The closest English translation for "Zen" is "contemplation." 

Zen intends to condition a contemplation space where you—not your peers, master, or friends—can grasp intellectually and instinctively that the world within and outside you is one entity, one cosm, and that entity is you. 

Existence is interconnected.

Again, mimetic desire is a problem only because we categorize it as one. We label societal opinions, influences, and the collective unconscious (e.g., archetypes) as external influences we can untangle ourselves from. Two entities, two worlds.  But we can't free ourselves from mimetic desires because they are as part of us as our "genuine" thoughts. 

Double-binds are doors that only open in one direction. We can't see mimetic desires as unproblematic once you categorize them as problematic. However, we can only see them as unproblematic by seeing them as problematic. 

Take the "to desire is to suffer" double bind, for example. 

Many tormented Westerners drag their steps towards Buddhism. They adjust their lotus position for ten hours next to other hunched souls, imploring for an answer. Leaves will fall, one at a time, exposing branches.

Willow exclaims, "I haven't gotten rid of every desire, but I no longer desire a fourth car." The cheeky monk says, "That's great, but what about the desire not to desire the remaining ones or the desire to get rid of the ones you had?"

The monk provokes us until we conclude that we always desire something; There’s no solution to seek. 

In Zen, the whole point is to open enough doors until we don't need to—to persistently affirm that we can “solve” double-binds, such as to desire to suffer until we deduce there isn’t a solution or a problem. 

Through this Zen lens, mimetic scholars like Luke are right and wrong to say self-inquiry can “solve” mimetic desire. They are wrong because we can’t detach ourselves from mimetic desires, just as we can’t be humans and not be apes or have a heart. But these scholars are right because we can only conclude genuine or mimetic desires don’t exist after introspection led by the belief that they do. 

As Poet William Blake said, "The fool who persists in his folly will become wise."