SWAY: Influence, Desire and the Stoics
Written by Shalina May Kumar.
Digital collage by Shanita Lyn Kumar.
Desire — it’s an essential force in our lives. An indispensable compass. It is what pulls us to push, to strive, to start and continue making the interminable journey towards the goals we set ourselves. In fact, in the absence of external restraint, it is the force that defines those goals for us in the first place.
Powerful a sensation as it is, wouldn’t it be slightly unsettling to find out that most of those desires aren’t entirely our own? That those goals are influenced, though we might not even notice it?
If you’re a fairly independent person, and have the privilege of being autonomous from others in your decision-making, you would probably object with passion to those insinuations — you’re an inimitable human being, and you set your own goals! You set them in accordance with your uniquely defined ideas of happiness and success, in a way that satisfies those strange and beautiful desires that are intrinsic to only You.
Well, I’m here to challenge that! Let me introduce you to the concept of mimetic desire.
Photo by Mika Baumeister via Unsplash.
MIMETIC DESIRE
The mimetic theory of desire was put forward by the French polymath René Girard in his 1961 book, Deceit, Desire and the Novel. On its own, the word ‘mimesis’ is defined as “the deliberate imitation of the behaviour of one group of people by another group as a factor in social change” — indeed, I don’t think it needs proving that human beings’ basic method of learning is by imitation. Children are the world’s most avid observers; they watch everything everyone is doing around them, and from there start forming the foundations for their beliefs on what is “right” and “wrong”, what is “good” and “bad” (or more accurately, what is or isn’t socially acceptable), and this plays a significant role in shaping who they grow up to be.
The concept of mimetic desire, however, proposes that not only do humans tend to imitate each other’s behaviours, they actually imitate the very desires that power that behaviour. Take, for example, the classic case of two children on a playground. Though there may be an abundance of available toys lying around, Child A will not be satisfied by anything other than the toy Child B is playing with. Or another example: a new phone model has been released and of course, you might have thought the designs and features were cool to begin with, but would you really have been as eager to buy it if your favourite celebrity hadn’t been smiling next to it on that billboard? I’m guessing, no. Not as likely!
This is what Girard calls ‘mediation’ — the process in which one person influences the desires of another. Child A saw no value in that particular toy before Child B expressed an interest in it; but the display of that interest signified that the toy does have value that perhaps Child A hadn’t seen before, so now they want it! Child A has copied Child B’s desire for the toy, rather than the simple action of taking it. The same is true for the phone and the celebrity. In going to buy that new smartphone, you’re not imitating the behaviour of Jungkook from BTS — you’ve actually imitated his ostensible desire for it. (His sense of desire is to be trusted, obviously. Obviously, Jeon Jungkook wouldn’t desire an inferior object. Heaven forbid! Blasphemy!)
Photo by Joel Muniz via Unsplash.
A worthwhile point to note is that, while the dictionary defines ‘mimesis’ as a ‘deliberate imitation of behaviour’, Girard proposes that it refer (in this context, at least) to ‘the deeper, instinctive response that humans have to each other’. Therefore, not a conscious action or process.
In the decades since Girard first proposed his theory, scientists have dug into the concept themselves to find physical proof of its occurrence in the human brain — and some results have been intriguingly positive! But even before considering the experimental evidence, I actually found this idea of mimetic desire rather easy to acknowledge as possible, because examples of it seem to be extremely prevalent around us. In our relationships with family members, friends, teachers, colleagues; but even more so through social media. We are constantly looking to other people for inspiration on what to want, which things hold enough value — or the right value — to be desired. We think that maybe we should look more into this brand of clothing, since that influencer wears it all the time; or that we should consider this alternate business option because our cousin is thriving in it. As René Girard said, “Man is the creature who does not know what to desire.”
“Man is the creature who does not know what to desire.”
But the fact that these influences surround you in such high intensity, and the fact that all those desires can theoretically be inherited as well, raises a slight concern.
Sure, desire is generally accepted in the modern world as vital to humankind’s drive for survival, progress and creativity; but rampant, uncontrolled desire can definitely be seen as — well, less than desirable. This has always been a prominent message in philosophical and religious teachings. (Albeit to varying degrees from different perspectives!) I’d like to dwell on the Stoics’ take on it.
Image by Marcus Wallis via Unsplash.
DESIRES OF NATURE VS DESIRES OF OPINION
From the Stoic point of view, there exists two kinds of desire: desires of nature and desires of opinion. The former refers to those desires pertaining to the biological self — that is, hunger, thirst, the need for shelter, etc. Desires of opinion, however, refer more to those that arise from the mind — these are abstract desires for abstract things, such as power, status and fame.
The view is that desires of nature have a certain natural limit — if you’re hungry, you eat, and there will come a point when your stomach is full and your hunger is gone. These desires are relatively easy to satisfy and, I would like to add, are easy to detect as satisfied. If you’re full, there’s a pretty low chance someone else could convince you that you aren’t! (Well, unless you’re Malaysian.)
Desires of opinion, however, being centred around things that are artificial and abstract, have no natural limit, and therefore can never be completely satisfied. No matter how much power or fame or status you gain, in theory you could always achieve more. If you just bought a big, beautiful house, it would be no work at all to see someone on Instagram flaunting their even bigger house, and then you’d feel lacking again.
Also note that opinion is, by definition, a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge — opinions differ both slightly and wildly from person to person. And if we’re going to take the internet (more specifically social media) as the primary source of desire-influence, things start to get really worrying. At the beginning of 2021, there were allegedly 4.66 billion people using the internet worldwide. When you consider how accessible the internet makes everyone’s opinion, plus the aforementioned concept of mimetic desire, that’s a lot of opinions — and a lot of desires — for people to be unconsciously mimicking. And hence being hopelessly confused and diverted by.
“Natural desires are limited, but those which spring from false opinion can have no stopping-point. The false has no limits. When you are traveling on a road, there must be an end; but when astray, your wanderings are limitless.”
In the world we live in today, a sense of self and, by proxy, a sense of satisfaction, are two of the rarest but most precious commodities anyone could possess. We are constantly being bombarded by media — both traditional and social — with things we should desire. Business models use the mode of comparison to “more successful” people as a way to manipulate your sense of lack and take your money. Human beings, naturally social animals, thrive on knowing others have a high opinion of them, so they post about things they own that you don’t, and the things they can do that you can’t. There is a never-ending, often money-making, game of comparison (and hence desire-influencing) going on online that does huge amounts of harm to our mental wellbeing.
So amidst all this, how on earth does one find peace?
Simple answers might be to distance oneself from the sources of pain (e.g. abstain from absorbing media as much as possible) or to simply power past the incessant desire-influences through sheer mental discipline. But these options might not be workable for everyone for a whole host of reasons. (A job that requires engagement with media, for example. Which is basically most jobs these days, isn’t it?)
But the Stoics have their own suggestion for this too. A suggestion I think is both elegant and practical.
Learn to desire what you already have.
Photo by Chris Ensey via Unsplash.
GRATITUDE
“Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well.”
Now, this might seem like a bit of a contradictory statement to you at first. It did to me too! I mean, if we have something, why would we still desire it? But if we were, for a moment, to quit using the word ‘desire’ in this context and instead replace it with ‘gratitude’, perhaps it might begin to make more sense to you.
Gratitude is apparently a big deal in Stoicism, which makes perfect sense in the context of being content with what you have. As for how it ties into ‘desire’, here is how I’ve made sense of it: feeling a sense of gratitude for something is actively, presently recognising that you now have the thing you once desired — in other words, you are recognising, over and over again, that you have satisfied this desire. Recalling this fact can itself result in “mini-satisfactions” every time.
If you bought a new guitar, and every time you desired to play it, recognised how lucky you are for having it now when you didn’t before, you get to feel that zing of mini-satisfaction! That excited thought of “I want to play the guitar, and — ! Well, would you look at that — I do have a guitar to play! Good for me.” It is simple but, in my experience, extremely powerful. And the best part is that this sort of satisfaction and happiness can continue for as long as you choose to feel gratitude for that thing, or anything. Which can be forever.
Not only to objects, this can apply to experiences you might encounter in the future as well. As the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus said, “Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well.”
Photo by Jakayla Toney via Unsplash.
Whatever happens to us by chance cannot be changed; our attitude and mindset towards it can. Similarly, the things we have every moment are always enough — if we choose to see it that way.
Marcus Aurelius said that “very little is needed to make a happy life.” Turns out that everything that’s needed could be everything you already have.
