This is a YouTube video titled "Mimetic Desire Shatters the Myth of Why You Want with Luke Burgis" containing a discussion recorded in June 2022. The content features a dialogue primarily between Luke Burgis and another speaker exploring the concept of mimetic desire, its emotional and subconscious origins, and how it influences human wants and behaviors. The conversation delves into philosophical and psychological perspectives on desire, referencing various examples and theories.
Chapters
Bulletproof radio. A state of high performance. So then one of my favorite human beings who's been on the show a couple times, who's taught me a lot about entrepreneurship is Dan Sullivan. He runs a company called Strategic Coach. And I have more friends than I can count with $50 million plus companies because of his coaching. And this is a guy who's, I believe he's in his late 70s and is planning to live to 150 something. But he says straight up, if you're in one of his classes, and he says, why do you want that? And. And people go, I want it because of this, because of that. And he goes, there is no reason. You want it because you want it. Desire is an emotion. It's not a thought. Right. And if you want a BMW, right, it's because you want a BMW. It's not because it's going to get me there faster. It's not because I'm going to get laid. It's just because you want it. So there's just an inherent. I don't know why I want it because it's emotional. And that doesn't jive with mimetic desire, which is a rational thing. Oh, if I have this, I've been taught to want this. If I have this, it's going to give me something, therefore I should want this, therefore I do want this. And then, you know, you're kind of trapped in this matrix of illusions. So how do you reconcile. I want it because I was taught to want it, which is a memetic desire, because I see others wanting it, therefore I want it, and I just want it because I want it.
Yeah. So the. I would say that mimetic desire is not a rational process at all. It's actually the opposite of rational because the, the social process that Girard says forms our desires happens subconsciously. So it's not like I, I like when I was basically when Tony Hsieh of Zappos, the late Tony Hsieh, rest in peace, was my mimetic model. It's not as if I realized that at the time, Right. And like all of the little ways that I was changing my company culture, I didn't realize that I was imitating him that way until months, maybe even years later. So at the time, we're socially influenced in a way that is pre rational or subconscious. And I think that's one distinction that I would make. I didn't know that Sullivan teaches that. That's fascinating that he straight up says that in the class so I would be interested in his take on where desire comes from, then? Because that is very different than Girard's idea.
Right?
He would call that the romantic lie that we always think that our desires are spontaneous, that we just want things when we want them. I'm just curious. What is his kind of understanding of the seed of desire? Is it intellectual? Is it in the will? Does it just arise?
I think he believes it's emotional, so it isn't even in the will, but it jives with some of the other stuff. So I've had professional dominatrixes on the show. Uh, I had a. A recent podcast where the guy who did the largest survey of fetishes and fantasies in the world, like, I don't know, a huge number of people in this survey and an academic, you know, did a proper study of all this stuff. And I don't think you can rationally say, like, why that person wants a spanking and that person, you know, is into Swiss cheese or whatever the heck. I mean, people are weird, right? So I don't know how much of that is mimetic, but maybe it's all mimetic because you saw something when you were two and Swiss cheese sandw was really attractive. Maybe that's all in there. But it seems like there's some level of. I have no idea why, and there isn't a why, but I still want it. Like, why do I like the sunset? Right? You can't say why. Why does that painting speak to me and that painting doesn't speak to me? But those are forms of desire. But I don't know, are they mimetic? Because someone told me I should like that painting.
I think that mimetic desire exists on a spectrum and that there are some things that can't be explained mimetically at all. Something, you know, beautiful, like a sunset or like, you know, a beautiful woman that I'm attracted to. There are very clear, scientific, sort of physiological things going on there, right? So we. Let's make a distinction. I should have said this right up front. Mimetic desire is. Exists on this spectrum where sort of those kind of like, hardwired, physiological things like thirst and hunger, those have. Have been met, right? And we're sort of now in a more abstraction.
