How to know what you really want | Luke Burgis | Big Think

How to know what you really want, with Luke Burgis

There are two kinds of desire, thin and thick. Thick desires are like layers of rock that have been built up throughout the course of our lives. These are desires that can be shaped and cultivated through models like our parents and people that we admire as children. But at some level, they're related to the core of who we are. They can be related to perennial human truths: beauty, goodness, human dignity.

Thin desires are highly mimetic (imitative) and ephemeral desires. They're the things that can be here today, gone tomorrow. Thin desires are subject to the winds of mimetic change, because they're not rooted in a layer of ourselves that's been built up over time. They are like a layer of leaves that's sitting on top of layers of rock. Those thin desires are blown away with a light gust of wind. A new model comes into our life; the old desires are gone. All of a sudden we want something else.

In the stream of daily life, we're pushed and pulled in a million different directions. And if we don't extract ourselves and find time for recollection, we won't be able to listen to our lives, to listen to others, and to understand the way that our relationships and our desires are growing and emerging. We'll be surprised if five or ten years from now, we've pursued desires that have led us to a place that we really may not have wanted to go. Listening is critical to the transformation.

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About Luke Burgis:
Luke Burgis has co-created and led four companies in wellness, consumer products, and technology. He’s currently Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Director of Programs at the Ciocca Center for Principled Entrepreneurship where he also teaches business at The Catholic University of America. Luke has helped form and serves on the board of several new K-12 education initiatives and writes and speaks regularly about the education of desire. He studied business at NYU Stern and philosophy and theology at a pontifical university in Rome. He’s Managing Partner of Fourth Wall Ventures, an incubator that he started to build, train, and invest in people and companies that contribute to a healthy human ecology. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife, Claire, and her crazy New Orleans cat Clotille.

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Read more of our stories on mimetic desires:
The social brain: Culture, change and evolution | A Big Think Long Take
Mimetic desire: How to avoid chasing things you don’t truly want
The ugly psychology behind scapegoating

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[nazifdanesi]

It takes a lot of humility or pain to understand that you are a product of other people's desires

[Catwoman]

I just want a little house with a nice garden and a little shed to keep my painting stuff in, maybe a room for making clay figurines and other creative stuff. That would be great.

[VallisYT]

Billions of years of evolutionary heritage, millennia of societal conditioning, a good hundred years of psychological education, and still we have difficulty maturely navigating through the chaos of our emotions.

[rayhanmorales]

This is a really valuable lesson in today's world, where it's too easy to lose track of our true selves and become the product of media influence.

[conversationcorner]

Its hard to say you really want something unless you've really experienced having it before.

[SuperAlphaKirby]

For those who want to know why we should have desires in the first place, it's because progress = happiness. It's not the attainment that is the fulfillment, but it's progress towards them. Life becomes an adventure. Letting go of them is not inherently a good thing, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't practice gratitude for what you have.

[dohduhdah]

Gaining knowledge, understanding, insight are usually very rewarding experiences. Enjoying culture (music, art, etc..) is also potentially an inexhaustible source for enjoyment and the more you enjoy it, the more nuanced and refined your appreciation tends to get. We live in amazing times where we can store whole libraries of books or albums on a smartphone that fits in your pocket. You can kind of skim the cream of human culture and enjoy stuff that consistently gets very high ratings from both the critics and the general public and this is usually a fairly reliable indication that time spent exploring it will be an extremely rewarding experience.

[ankushhh]

That was really helpful, however I can't notice such patterns. At some point of time, I want to live an over ambitious life while at another I just want to sit in peace.

[NickNotas]

What you have now was once something you only dreamed or hoped of having. If you are constantly advancing and evolving, you will have fewer desires. -Emma

[thechancellor-]

To the *incredible person* that's seeing this, I wish you all the best in life❤ don't over blame yourself, accept things and go forward. Don't let others define what “success” is for you. Get up, learn the skills needed and get after it, all the keys to a happy life is in your hands. Keep pushing.

[mikabee]

"listen to [your] life, telling you who you are." Love it! ❤️

[Aaahahahahahaha]

Oh goodness, I'm so happy others have words for this!

All my life I've called mimetic desires ghosts. It didn't matter if the person was alive or not, I just knew I felt a part of them guide me. I also knew that it felt bad to do those ghosts wrong. In essence, ghosts to me are the remnants of human consciousness in our own psyche that we can understand and build expectations off of.

I've had so many crisises (crisis-is?) wondering who I really was, and if it was possible to ever be happy with so many ghosts so strongly affecting my sense of self worth. Expressing this openly has allowed me to create and maintain beautiful friendships. In a letter to one of my best friends, I recently came of the conclusion that we are all quilts, a patch work of everyone else. I realized that no one really knows how to be human, and that we model ourselves off of others.

That thinking has allowed me to view my anxieties about fulfillment with the love and grace I try to extend to others. I love my ghosts, but I also know that in the end, they're just that, ghosts. My body loves the sun and movement; my heart loves humans and their lives; and my mind loves challenges and biology. I'm studying public health in hope of becoming a field epidemiologist!


I honor those who love me by honoring myself.

Thanks for the video, I know I'll need to talk to my friends to be able to grasp mimetic desires, but at least I have a word for it other than ghosts!

[DemetriPanici]

*”However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.” – Stephen Hawking*

[OrganicFreedom]

3:59
“Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I have to listen my life telling me who I am”
👏👏👏

[natasha.r.m]

I grew up without parental love and support. The only thing I've ever really wanted was to meet someone with whom I'd experience a true mutual love, so that we could spend the rest of our lives together. That dream never came true. I'm almost 50 and I've given up. Today, I feel lonelier than when I was a child. I guess it's because the hope is gone.

[rosevalentine]

Wow. Im so glad there are people who actually listen.

[rezadaneshi]

Levity and bad memory are prerequisite to a happy life of looking forward to something, Thick or thin

[clankenstein]

I see a lot of this advice 'think back to a time when you felt happy/fulfilled/at peace' or whatever. I can't recall an authentic time like that. Any brief happy times have been on the attainment of what I knew, even at the time, to be extremely 'thin' desires. There's nothing thick to latch onto!

[fdfac]

This was so good and valuable, thank you.

[m.f.richardson]

At my age, I have all I want and need.
I am blessed 💕🇺🇲