If You're Curious About These Questions...
You should listen to this audiobook
- Have you ever wondered why you suddenly want the exact same things as everyone else, from your career path to your lifestyle choices?
- Did you know that your deepest desires might not actually be yours at all, but rather a reflection of the people you admire most?
- What's the secret to breaking free from the cycle of comparison and finally choosing the goals that will lead to genuine fulfillment?
Listen to Wanting — Free Audiobook
Loading player...
Key Takeaways from Wanting
- Discover why your desires are rarely your own by exploring the theory of mimetic desire, which reveals how we subconsciously imitate what other people want.
- Understand how the subconscious drive to imitate others compels sameness and fuels intense, sometimes dangerous rivalries in our personal and professional lives.
- Learn how to take back control of your decision-making by identifying and naming the hidden models who influence you, especially the peers you least want to see succeed.
- Find out how businesses and PR experts manipulate mimetic desire to sell products by using trusted figures, like doctors, to subtly shape your consumer habits.
- Master the distinction between distant models in 'Celebristan' who inspire safely, and close peers in 'Freshmanistan' who trap you in toxic cycles of jealousy and competition.
Wanting — Full Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: Recommendation
Chapter 2: Mimesis governs everything we desire.
Chapter 3: Models are all around us, and we weaken their influence by naming them.
Chapter 4: Models influence us differently depending on whether they’re within or beyond our social world.
Chapter 5: Mimesis can become a virtuous cycle, provided someone ultimately breaks it.
Chapter 6: Mimetic crises can only be resolved once a scapegoat is chosen and punished.
Chapter 7: Mimetic structures tie us to contrived, unrewarding objectives.
Chapter 8: Business leaders need to reflect on the desires they are shaping.
Chapter 9: Compassion breaks mimetic deadlocks and ignites constructive patterns of desire.
Chapter 10: We need to move from designing desire to reshaping desire.
Wanting Summary & Overview
Wanting (2021) provides a riveting, philosophical answer to the question Why do we want the things we want? Drawing on theories originally developed by the celebrated polymath René Girard, it reveals an uncomfortable truth: that our desires are all ultimately a product of other people’s desires. The point isn’t to eliminate them, but rather to choose, carefully and consciously, which ones we should actually strive for.
Who Should Listen to Wanting?
- Lovers of philosophy, psychology, and literature
- Dedicated self-improvers
- Young entrepreneurs and business leaders
Books Similar to Wanting
Readers who enjoyed this also liked these titles.
The Desire Map
★ 3.8 / 5 • 68 ratingsA Guide to Creating Goals with Soul
To Have Or To Be?
★ 4.5 / 5 • 157 ratingsA classic about the psyche and socioeconomic change
Ambition
★ 4.3 / 5 • 15 ratingsHow We Manage Success and Failure Throughout Our Lives
Curious
★ 4.4 / 5 • 175 ratingsThe Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It