If you’re starving and before you sit a plate of carrots and a bowl of razor blades, your choice is instinctual.
What if, however, your choice was between peanut butter and vegemite? In this case, your choice depends on where and with whom you grew up.
Sometimes, basic human needs drive our choices. Other times they’re driven by desires. Desires are not instinctual, and our central nervous system isn’t going to weigh in on the matter. Therefore, we look outside of ourselves for a model to help us choose what’s worthy of our desire — mimetic desires.
Our models could be another person, or it could be a tribe.
Mimetic desires lead to benign phenomena such as Christmas toy shortages, the rise and fall of Fireball whiskey, and every fashion trend since the beginning of time.
But they’re also at the heart of many trends we may consider inherent within ourselves.
Why does one choose to include pronouns in their profile?
Why does one choose to “buy American?”
Why does one resonate with the protestors in a clash with the police?
Why does one resonate with the police in that same clash?
If we’re not careful, we conflate mimetic desires with labels such as wokeist, nationalist, racist, or fascist. That’s our natural inclination to look at issues as a toggle switch, good vs. evil.
But the path to a better world recognizes mimetic desires, understands the appeal of models, and respects (if not agrees with) another’s choices.
