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What it argues
Wanting is Luke Burgis's attempt to bring René Girard's theory of mimetic desire to a general audience. Girard, a French literary critic and anthropologist who spent most of his career at Stanford, argued that human beings don't actually know what they want on their own. Instead, they borrow desires from other people — specifically from people they look up to or identify with. Those people function as what Girard called "models." We want things because our models want them, not because of any innate preference.
Burgis walks through the mechanics of this. Mimetic desire is invisible precisely because we experience it as internal and personal. The person who suddenly wants a particular career, a particular neighborhood, a particular status symbol — they feel like they're choosing freely. Girard's argument is that they're mostly responding to signals from their social environment. The more two people share the same model, the more likely they are to become rivals for the same thing, even when there's more than enough to go around.
What it gets right
- 1.
Humans don't generate desires independently. They borrow them from 'models' — people they admire or compete with — through a process Girard called mimetic desire.
- 2.
Mimetic desire is invisible because it feels like authentic wanting. Most people never realize how much of what they chase is borrowed from their social environment.
- 3.
The closer two people are to the same model, the more intense their rivalry becomes. Girard called this 'mimetic rivalry,' and it explains why competition is fiercest between near-equals.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Luke Burgis is an entrepreneur and author who studied the philosophy of René Girard extensively before writing Wanting. He has founded multiple companies, worked with Peter Thiel's network of entrepreneurs, and taught at the Busch School of Business at Catholic University of America. His writing bridges Girard's academic theory and practical application in business and personal decision-making. Wanting, published in 2021, is his first book and became a widely read introduction to Girard's ideas for a business and general readership.
