Lessons from the Playroom

What can two kids and a bag of marbles teach us about keeping up with the Joneses? And what does that mean for our everyday lives?

When I got to spend time with my girlfriend’s nephews, who are five and two respectively, they were unabashedly brothers. With toys strewn throughout the living room, they each grabbed their toys and played with them. Among them was a bag of marbles, as they lay untouched on the floor. Eventually, the older one wandered over and grabbed the marbles. Suddenly the younger one scrambled over and grabbed them. A fight sprung out of nowhere, yelling, screaming, and crying filled the playroom. As the parents tried to use this moment to teach the boys about sharing, the whole interaction piqued my interest.

These marbles, which had been sitting alone this whole time, had suddenly become the hottest toy in the living room. Why? Because they were suddenly given immense value from the simple fact that someone else wanted them. This is the basis of mimetic desires, imitation, and desire. Desire is wanting what we don’t have. It might be a new car because our car is old and needs to be updated. But it could also be something deeper, respect, love, or intimacy. Imitation comes from being social creatures. The old saying, monkey see, monkey do, rings particularly true. We see an old friend wearing a new jacket and suddenly we want to go shopping. We see a celebrity who touts a new weight-loss drug and inexplicably we want to seek a prescription. This hidden desire is present in all our lives but bringing it into the light can help us fight back against it.

Why Do We Care About a Tire Company?

The Michelin Guide is known worldwide as the preeminent fine dining rating system. In France, the annual release of the Michelin Guide is akin to the Academy Awards, with a media storm focusing on all the updated reviews. This exclusive rating system, built around secrecy, is huge in the food industry, with chefs around the world working 80-100 hours a week perfecting a dish and making sure their staff is fully organized. Michelin stars are the gold standard that any serious chef strives to acquire. This begs the question, why do we care? If Bridgestone or Goodyear started a restaurant review guide, nobody would blink twice. So why do we care when Michelin awards 3 stars?

Simply put, we care because everybody else cares. We crave the respect, desire, and exclusivity that comes with a Michelin star. The awards and media coverage are all byproducts of respect and exclusivity. So chefs work to death at the chance to land on the Michelin guide: to earn the respect and love of patrons, critics, and themselves.

While there is immense pressure to obtain a Michelin star, it’s overshadowed by the pressure to keep it. Once a restaurant receives a Michelin star, they are now separated from the pack. People book a meal expecting excellence. But the race has now narrowed. It’s no longer enough to have one Michelin star. Now it’s about getting to the second Michelin star. But you can’t only have two Michelin stars since it’s falling just short of having three Michelin stars. Even when you have three Michelin stars, it becomes dangerous because you’re so focused on keeping those stars.

In 2003, Bernard Loiseau committed suicide over the potential loss of a Michelin star. Of course, it’s a little more nuanced, but the largely mythicized story behind this was to blame the Michelin guide for the pressure they put on chefs. The Michelin team doesn’t put undue pressure on the chefs they review, but the status ladder is so strong that chefs feel stressed to keep up appearances.

So What Now? (A short guide on how to fight Mimetic Desires)

There are ways to fight back against these hidden desires. Some people are bold enough to explicitly want out, like Sebastien Bras. A 3 Michelin star chef, Bras requested that his restaurant be removed from the Michelin Guide (which Michelin eventually complied with). Citing “We want to proceed with a free spirit and without stress, to offer a cuisine and service that represents that spirit and our land”. Bras is bold, being one of less than 150, 3 Michelin-star restaurants in the world, he decided to opt out of the race so his team could focus on what they wanted to do, rather than what the people and the Michelin guide wanted from them.

There are other areas we can see mimetic desire creep into our lives, such as family. Especially in immigrant families, the path of “You can be a doctor, lawyer, or engineer” is put out because those careers have high-status symbols. As an immigrant, you are typically cast as the lowest of the status ladder. To have a child who becomes a cardiologist suddenly shoots you into the highest ranks of society in a single generation. Yet, when children who do not want to be a doctor, lawyers, or engineers, get forced down this path, they grow miserable. Whining and moaning about their careers, waiting for retirement, not because of what they wanted, but because of what their parents wanted.

We need to be pursuing what Burgis calls thick desires. He distinguishes between thick and thin desires. Thin desires are the fleeting desires, a pair of pants that you run across in the mall and then forget about by the time you leave. Thick desires are the deeper, satisfying desires. We all want to be loved, respected, and healthy. An overused example is social media. We all want to be connected with the people we love, yet we settle for a like on Instagram or a quick text rather than a sit-down conversation without phones.

This isn’t to say that knowing about thin desires suddenly frees us. But, like many things, being able to point out the specific desire and give it a name is the first step in a long line of steps. And the next time you see kids fighting over a toy, you’ll think of me.

This is an ode/love letter/short review/summary of Luke Burgis’s book, Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life. I’d highly encourage you to go read it yourself, but if not, hopefully, I piqued your interest.

Side note: I just started as a writer for the Unicorner. I’m excited and I’ll be sharing parts of my experiences here!

-Derek