Braden Bristo’s – The Journeyman’s Path

René Girard (1923-2015) was a French philosopher, historian, and literary critic who discovered and developed memetic theory, or memetic desire. This theory says that human desires come from imitating the desires of other humans. He sums it up like this,

Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires.

René Girard

Man will seek a model with a desire and will copy that desire for themselves (lower versions of this are trends and fads).

If you live in the southeastern United States there is a good chance you like football. This is simply by product of where you were born, where you grew up, or where you live now. Had you been born in Europe, you would most likely be a soccer fan. It isn’t necessarily that you have an intrinsic, deep-seeded desire to prefer one sport over the other, you are simply drawn to imitate the models around you.

If you think deeply about the things you want and chase after (money, status, sex, power, influence, etc.) you may realize that the deepest reason you want these things is so you won’t be alone. You chase these things because the crowd chases them. If no one cared about status, and society (model) didn’t incentivize you to acquire it, you would never desire it.

The right question isn’t “what do you want?”

It is “why do you want what you want?”

Fear is the father of desire. Your fear of being alone, abandoned, different, or exposed is why you want what you want at the most fundamental level.

If you were devoid of all fear, what would your deepest, most authentic self really want? How freely would you be able to perform if you were completely rid of your desire to blend in?