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Discovering and developing thick desires protects against cheap mimetic desires—and ultimately leads to a more fulfilling life.
Thick desires are like diamonds that have been formed deep beneath the surface, nearer to the core of the Earth. Thick desires are protected from the volatility of changing circumstances in our lives. Thin desires, on the other hand, are highly mimetic, contagious, and often shallow.
134
454 reads
MORE IDEAS ON THIS
Mimetic models(subconsious imitation) lie in wait every time we glance at our phone. The families of childhood friends post photos in which every day looks like a Christmas card, and Instagram models with bleached white teeth show us how they eat their nutritious breakfasts.
The universe of...
138
1.04K reads
Models are the gravitational centers around which our social lives turn.
If you look hard enough, you will find a model (or a set of models) for almost everything—your personal style, the way you speak, the look and feel of your home. But the models that most of us overlook are models of de...
143
1.43K reads
There’s something strange about our relationship to imitation. Humans possess advanced capabilities of imitation that allow us to create new things. Our ability to imitate in complex ways is why we have language, recipes, and music.
We are generally fascinated with people who have a differe...
137
871 reads
What we commonly call “social media” is more than media—it’s mediation: thousands of people showing us what to want and colouring our perception of those things.
Smartphones are like slot machines. Both work through the power of intermittent variable rewards—pulling the lever of a slot mach...
139
692 reads
Silence is where we learn to be at peace with ourselves, where we learn the truth about who we are and what we want. If you’re not sure what you want, there’s no faster way to find out than to enter into complete silence for an extended period of time—not hours, but days.
All of hum...
149
488 reads
Discernment is an essential skill because it’s a process for making decisions that includes but also transcends rational analysis. It’s critical for deciding which desires to pursue and which ones to leave behind.
Desires are discerned, not decided. Discernment exists in the liminal space b...
129
433 reads
People set goals and make plans to arrive at a future point called “progress.” But will it be progress? How can we be so sure? Some goals—even good ones—overstay their welcome.
But it’s worth asking where goals come from in the first place. Every goal is embedded within a system.
Mime...
129
479 reads
The ultimate way to test desires—especially major life choices such as whether to marry someone or whether to quit your job and start a company—is to practice this same exercise but to do it while imagining yourself on your deathbed. Which choice leaves you more consoled? Which choice causes you ...
149
477 reads
We don’t want things that are too easily possessed or that are readily within reach. Desire leads us beyond where we currently are. Models are like people standing a hundred yards up the road who can see something around the corner that we can’t yet see.
So the way that a model describes so...
148
1.14K reads
If someone’s primary objective is innovation for the sake of innovation, they usually end up in a mimetic rivalry with everyone in their field to compete primarily on the basis of originality.
Being different for the sake of being different is the ethos behind shock-value art and academics ...
133
557 reads
We don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems. From the standpoint of desire, our goals are the product of our systems. We can’t want something that is outside the system of desire we occupy.
The obsession with goal setting is misguided, even counterproductive...
135
511 reads
Desire is a path-dependent process. The choices we make today affect the things we’ll want tomorrow. That’s why it’s important to map out, the best we can, the consequences of our actions on our future desires.
Start by thinking seriously about what a positive cycle of desire might look lik...
136
535 reads
Rivalry is a function of proximity. When people are separated from us by enough time, space, money, or status, there is no way to compete seriously with them for the same opportunities.
Celebristan external mediators of desire. They influence desire from ou...
132
757 reads
It’s a sign of maturity to be able to hold on to two conflicting desires or two opposing ideas at the same time without immediately rejecting one or the other before there has been time for careful discernment. To live with desire is to live with tension.
Wise people have said that it’s bes...
141
451 reads
Desire is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want
139
573 reads
One hundred years ago, there was a much wider gap in knowledge between someone who had a doctoral degree and someone who didn’t. Today, with the world’s information at nearly everyone’s fingertips, the knowledge gap between people with a great amount of formal education and those with less has na...
131
686 reads
Wanting well, like thinking clearly, is not an ability we’re born with. It’s a freedom we have to earn. Due to one powerful yet little-known feature of human desire, that freedom is hard-won.
People don’t choose objects of desire the way they choose to wear a coat in the winter. Instead of ...
151
1.82K reads
Imitation is natural to man from childhood, one of his advantages over the lower animals being this, that he is the most imitative creature in the world.
145
2.85K reads
There is no person we encounter—not even in the most uninteresting interaction of our day—whom we do not help desire in one of these three ways. The changes are usually imperceptible. But like a giant flywheel, we are gently nudging other people’s desires in one or another direction.
The tr...
134
467 reads
Smartphones project the desires of billions of people to us through social media, Google searches, and restaurant and hotel reviews. The neurological addictiveness of smartphones is real; but our addiction to the desires of others, to which smartphones give us unfettered access, is the metaphysic...
137
605 reads
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