René Girard says we all want to belong.
That’s our superhumanity, our ceaseless need to be.
That’s why we watch and imitate the beliefs, behaviours and actions of those people we wish to be. Girard calls these people the models, the mediators. They’re the bridge between consumption and production, from subject to object, from person to product, from person to person.
When we watch the models, the mediators, and pattern our desires off theirs, we’re learning to mimic them. We’re striving to become them or become like them.
Girard calls this phenomenon mimetic desire.
We don’t want, we want to be.