Mimetic Desire | Hacker News Reader

Mimetic Desire

lukeburgis.com

25 pointsriyadparvez8 comments

Getting a whiffs of Ballardian reality -> symbol -> hyperreality here. The real becomes symbols to others (in Ballard), or models here. Hyperreality is what happens when society starts governing itself by the models it's handed, and worse, iteratively begins making up new models based only on other models.

Defining hyperreality, Ballard says:

> the generation by models of a real without origin or reality

I really really like having a term to describe not the condition or the assemblage- hyperreality- but the agency, the motivator that we have been instilled with, programmed by: mimetic desire. Hyperreality doesn't speak to the programming, towards how we are influenced; it describes the general regime. This term is much more about people, and what happens to us. This is a great article. Thanks for sharing.

You mean Baudrillard, right?

yyyyeesssss oops thank you!

I don’t know, I feel pretty aware of where my desires come from. When I moved to a country where everyone dressed up I feel the need to dress better because it will be more appreciated.

Agreed. I'm trying really, really hard to be hyper-aware of the instinct to react to "your supposedly original thoughts are actually sourced from this schema" with "NO THEY AREN'T!" but I feel like it's not all that difficult to critically interrogate the sources of your own desires if you have the privilege and time to step back and think about those things. I vaguely resent the implication that wanting things is so rarely coming from endogenous desire of self-fulfillment for purely self-motivated reasons rather than sourced from some other source of power or peers.

> I vaguely resent

Why do you resent it? If you have the wisdom to analyze your desires and ignore the exogenous ones, or at least observe them at a distance, then perhaps this article doesn’t apply to you?

Also, I’m envious and have a mimetic desire to model you :)

>Also, I’m envious and have a mimetic desire to model you :)

Well, what is the model then? I would say I roughly understand the sentiment, but if you asked me, I would say that the envy stems from a past positive or negative experience. Being around someone who made you feel "uncool" in comparison, or being perceived as cool and getting recognition.

That's Pavlovian right? You experience an emotion caused by similarities to a past stimulus. Sure, the emotion is triggered by a model of reality. That's pattern recognition though, not "role-modelling." You didn't learn your fear of snakes on TV. That shit's hard wired. (Well, for most people, if you have it. Kind of a weird example because it can be very unconscious. Until you find yourself spontaneously jumping at a garden hose.)

I do think that Burgis' model applies to fad-following behaviour, and does a good job of explaining trend-followers. The example of wearing clothes because you want to look like the model makes sense. Makes sense, but is it true? Do most people experience this? I don't think so. My problem is that you can over apply the theory to situations where there is probably no model, but you can fabricate one if you try hard enough.

>I vaguely resent the implication that wanting things is so rarely coming from endogenous desire of self-fulfillment for purely self-motivated reasons rather than sourced from some other source of power or peers.

You have no way of knowing what is truly endogenous desire, from what's not - even if you perceive it, after some reflection, that it's endogenous... the reality it that it just might not be.

A chunk of us is a product of what surrounded and surrounds us. It's the human condition.

So I maybe the exercise you should do is to accept your humanity? The fact that you are human and that's doesn't have to be a bad thing, to the point of being resented about it. You can see it as a constrain, but it can also be a source of freedom once you accept it.

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