“Wanting” by Luke Burgeis 4/5
“Wanting” by Luke Burgeis 4/5
The book is a distilled presentation of mimetic theory proposed by Rene Girrard - French polymath, historian, and philosopher of social science.
Controlling our perception is the key to happiness. The book covers the origins of desire and wanting. It presents a few tactics on how to make sure that we follow positive and important desires (thick desires) and get rid of trivial and superficial ones (thin desires), but not to the extreme of some philosophers who say a truly free man is one who wants nothing.
This exploration of human nature, leadership and psychology is better than I expected. I thought that it would simply repeat that we want things because we mimic others and that is it - but there was much more to it.
I bought this book under the mimetic influence of interviews that I had heard in a podcast called “The Knowledge Project” . The guests on the podcast are models that I am sure I mimic unconsciously, and some of them have read this book before.
It was a refreshing read because it delivers a lot of interesting facts about our cognition and it is authentic thanks to the stories from the author's life.