Wanting: Why We Continue to Want More and What We Can Do About it.
Less than 800 words of ekoPhilosophical life advice for our times.
Dear readers and hello to many new ones, this is a format I have been experimenting with for some time. I love writing and thinking about theory, which I often do within this newsletter. However, the real value of this work, for me, is how it helps me practically in living my life. Practicing philosophy has been literally life-changing and has helped me find answers to many challenges and questions I’ve faced.
At the same time, I have always been reluctant to share these insights, as they take the form of life advice, which I believe no one should impose on anyone else. Additionally, life advice often lacks substance and transformative power.
The word "advice" originates from the Old French "avis," which essentially means an opinion. Many advice columns merely offer one person's perspective. However, the verb "to advise" has evolved to mean "to give guidance worthy of being followed," which sounds a bit better. Both meanings trace back to the Latin verb "to see," implying a fuller meaning of "to see with" or "to be made to see."
In this spirit, what I intend to offer here is a reflection on questions that broaden the perspective, helping to see problems more clearly and deeply and not to jump to solutions.
I don’t believe solutions or answers in the commonly understood sense are what we need. Instead, I see answers as living questions—beings that change, evolve, and might even grow old over time.
So, I want the answers I provide to be understood as living questions. I don’t know yet how to express this in my writing, so for now, I hope you accept this disclaimer. In these posts, which - I promise - will always be less than 800 words (excluding quotes 😉), I convert the ideas and theories I often write about into real-world, practical tools that I use. I hope you find value in them, too.
To adapt and paraphrase Kant, theory without practice is impotent, practice without theory is blind.
In his book "The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life," Luke Burgis, drawing from philosopher René Girard's ideas, explores how we want what others want. We don’t just emulate people's ways of being and acting but also adopt their desires and wants. We want what they want.
“Mimetic desire is a form of desire that is imitative—you want something because someone else wants it, and the process through which this desire forms occurs at a subconscious level. If you are fortunate enough to wake up to the truth of that desire, though, you realize that it’s not the object (the ‘thing’) that is particularly important to you, but something about your relationship with the person whose desires you are affected by.” Luke Burgis
Living in a world fixated on materialism and accumulation, it seems inevitable to keep wanting more. Others want more, so we want more. It's a self-perpetuating feedback loop sustaining capitalism as we know it.
I like nice and shiny things, especially clothes. A part of me dreams of a walk-in closet with something different to wear every day. According to mimetic theory, my desire for nice things influences others to want more nice things too. For someone who deeply cares about the environment and tries to cause as little harm as possible, that's “unlucky.”
So how do I transform my “wanting”?
I can’t just anti-want.
Step I: Understand wanting’s intention.
Wanting, we need to talk. By never ceasing to generate new ideas, you will eventually cause ecological and social collapse.
It seems obvious to blame our insatiable desire for more.
But desire is not as bad as we make it out to be. In fact, it is what makes us human. And not just human—it is what makes life. Our desire for more is the life-energy, our eros, that drives us to connect with others: humans, non-humans, material things. Our desire is what makes us come alive, what makes us feel alive, what gets us excited to get up in the morning and approach the day with vigour.
No wanting, no life.
“Blessed be the longing that brought you here. And quickens your soul with wonder…May you come to accept your longing as divine urgency. May you know the urgency with which God longs for you.” John O’Donohue
Step II: Understand that wanting is misdirected.
Unfortunately, our wanting has been misdirected. We have designed a world that caters to every want, based on the notion that unmet wants cause pain. And we should do everything to avoid pain.
Yet, pain brings growth. When we, as a society, avoid pain by replacing challenging desires—like learning to play the harmonica, exercising for a healthy body, or going on many bad dates to find a good one—with desires that can be easily and always fulfilled, like sugar and TV, we stop growing. We stagnate. We come to a halt. Life begins to feel meaningless, purposeless, soulless. To avoid the pain of feeling meaningless, purposeless, and soulless, we seek more of what didn't work: more goods, more comfort. This fallacy is best understood as misdirected wanting.
Misdirected, because it doesn’t give us what we thought we were here for. Misdirected, because nothing actually seems to fulfil it.
Step III: Re-channel wanting
Wanting is good. What we want ... often not.
We need to want differently (as a side note: according to Girard, we are attracted by people who want differently).
Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as saying, "I now want x instead of y"—try replacing wanting broccoli for ice cream.
To want differently means to reevaluate what we value. And we change our values by living according to our desired values.
To successfully do this, it helps to embed our values in a greater philosophy of life, an overarching story that makes it worth wanting differently. For me, this greater philosophy is the belief that we are life that wants to live amidst life that wants to live—and evolve. By changing who I am, I change what life is. It’s a metaphysical belief that goes beyond my mere individuality. For you, this philosophy likely look very different. Having a philosophy, though, is inevitable in order to change what you want. The philosophy you likely have fallen into—if you live in the Western world—is that of materialism devoid of meaning. Of course, based on this philosophy, all you want is more things.
The more we act upon our chosen values, the more they become a part of us. For example, when we continue to say “no” to mindless consumerism—while it seems strange, alienating, and unsatisfying in the beginning—eventually, it becomes who we are. Others will perceive us as the person who lives with few material possessions, and eventually, we’ll live with few material possessions. That’s why instead of a walk-in closet, I have a drawer. And instead of wearing something different every day, I wear the same thing any time you see me.
Further reading
Please , let me know in the comments below if this sort of format resonates with you.
I really like this piece, Jessica! You artfully outline something that is both important and often escapes attention, pointing to, not exactly a solution as such, but a way to evolve and develop ways forward out of a self-destructive and world-destructive set of traps. Where I would personally take this forward is around a collective approach to practices that help us evolve and develop into more coherence with ourselves and the world. How can we, practically, help each other towards these noble ends?