Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life

Burgis (Unrepeatable), a business professor at the Catholic University of America, argues in this fascinating treatise that desire is often misdirected. His focus is on mimetic wanting, a theory proposed in the 1980s by Stanford professor and historian René Girard, which posits that humans learn to want things from seeing others want them. Most of these desires are what Burgis calls “thin desires,” which are “shallow” and “contagious.” He recommends pursuing so-called “thick desires,” which are formed over time and “make for a good life.” Wanting to retire, for example, is a thin desire, while wanting to spend more time with family is a thick desire. The key to thick desires, he writes, is practicing “disruptive empathy”—by, for instance, listening to other people’s stories about where they find fulfillment—which can derail one from focusing on thin desires. Through thoughtful anecdotes, Burgis makes a case that “the transformation of desire happens when we become less concerned about the fulfillment of our own desires and more concerned about the fulfillment of others’ desires.” Readers who don’t mind psychology mixed in with their inspiration should give this a look. (June)