Why you want what someone else wants

Here is an uncomfortable thought to begin with: much of what you want, you don't want of your own accord. You want it because someone else wants it. The French thinker René Girard made this the work of his life, and his idea, mimetic desire, is one of those insights that, once seen, you keep noticing everywhere. Desire, Girard said, is imitation. We look at what others are pursuing, and we set out to pursue it too. Not because the thing is so intrinsically valuable, but because the wanting itself is contagious.

Think of how a toy lying forgotten in the corner suddenly becomes irresistible the moment another child picks it up. That child is us, our whole lives long, only with more expensive things: the car, the title, the neighbourhood, the kind of company that "people" consider successful. We believe we are choosing autonomously, but often we simply take over our desires, unthinkingly, from the people around us, from colleagues, competitors, timelines full of other people's lives.

The consequence: everyone fights over the same thing

If desire is imitation, a predictable problem arises: everyone ends up wanting the same thing, and therefore fighting over the same thing. Girard saw in this the root of much human conflict, rivalry not in spite of resemblance, but precisely because of it. The more two people resemble each other and pursue the same thing, the fiercer the struggle. It is no accident that the bitterest competition often rages between those who are most alike.

The investor Peter Thiel, who studied under Girard, drew a sharp lesson for founders from this. Competition, he said provocatively, is for losers, not because winning doesn't count, but because fighting along with the herd means you are fighting over the same thing as everyone else, with shrinking margins and rising misery. The real opportunity lies elsewhere: in building something unique where no one else stands. Escaping the imitation.

The liberating side

Because here, alongside the discomfort, lies something liberating. The moment you see through the fact that many of your desires are borrowed, you can do something that was impossible before: choose. You can ask yourself the question Thiel made famous, what valuable truth do very few people agree with you on?. And seek out the place the herd overlooks. The best opportunities rarely lie where everyone is already looking; they lie in the blind spot of the consensus. Not becoming the tenth competitor in a saturated market, but finding the place others don't see because they are all looking at one another.

And on a personal level the gain may be greater still. Whoever notices that they are chasing something purely because their surroundings are chasing it can ask: do I actually want this? Or am I chasing someone else's desire? That is, in the words of an older philosopher, the first step toward becoming who you are rather than who the herd happens to be.

A moment to take with you: name one thing you are pursuing hard right now. Ask honestly: would I want this if no one around me wanted it or had it? Sometimes the answer is a wholehearted yes, then it is yours. Sometimes it gives you a jolt. Both answers are valuable.