Mimetic Desire (Girard)
We want what others want.
"Most ambition is borrowed."
What is Mimetic Desire (Girard)? We want what others want. Companies copy competitors instead of choosing.
Career envy. Strategy envy. Product envy.
Companies copy competitors instead of choosing.
Examine wants for sources. Decide what you'd want with nobody watching.
Use the model. Pick the move.
We want what others want. You've just seen this: Career envy. Which lever does the model recommend?
Pick a lever. There are no neutral ones — every incentive funds a behavior somewhere.
Pick a reaction to Mimetic Desire (Girard)
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The full taxonomy entry
Every concept in the Atlas uses the same structure — so Mimetic Desire (Girard) can be compared, recombined, and cited like an element on a periodic table.
- Business
- Leadership
- Government
- Healthcare
- Education
- Sales
- Marketing
- AI
- Negotiation
- Media
- Public Policy
- Relationships
- Where in our org would Mimetic Desire (Girard) most often show up unnoticed?
- Which metric, ritual, or contract clause quietly rewards Mimetic Desire (Girard)?
- If we removed every payoff for Mimetic Desire (Girard), what behavior would replace it?
- Who benefits when Mimetic Desire (Girard) persists — and who pays the cost?
- People defend the status quo using the language of mimetic desire (girard).
- Decisions cluster around the easiest narrative rather than the strongest evidence.
- New data changes the slide deck but not the decision.
- Anyone naming the pattern is treated as the problem.
Every Atlas entry is a node in a knowledge graph. See the related rail below to follow the connections.
See Mimetic Desire (Girard) through this lens
Each layer of the Incentives OS reframes this concept with its own thinkers, vocabulary, and diagnostic question.
Do you actually know Mimetic Desire (Girard)?
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Which best describes Mimetic Desire (Girard)?
Worked example, counter-example & concept map
On-demand AI analysis grounded in the Lab's research. Cached on your device after first run.
When you encounter Mimetic Desire (Girard), your default mode network folds the experience into your ongoing story-of-self — which is why the same fact lands differently depending on who you think you are.
Self-referential thought, mind-wandering, narrative-of-self, mental time travel. Most of your waking thought is this network running scenarios about you, your status, your past, and your future.
See Default Mode in the Brain Atlas →Picked for you, from the Atlas
Ranked by shared learning paths, overlapping chips, and what you've saved.
A group decides on a course of action that nobody actually wants, because everyone assumes others prefer it.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
We attribute our own actions to situations but others' actions to their character.
We favor people who are similar to us or who like us.
Sacrificing for others without expecting a personal reward.
Masking the sponsors of a message to make it appear grassroots.
Send the card, not just the link
A pre-rendered social card with the title, eyebrow, and URL. Copy the link, post it anywhere, or download the SVG for slides.
More definitions to follow
Every term in the Atlas connects to a dozen others. Pick any of these and see where it takes you.
Some processes converge to the same equilibrium regardless of where they started — history stops mattering.
Spending money triggers genuine psychological pain — and credit cards quietly mute it.
A group assigned to challenge plans and find weaknesses.
Ideas, behaviors, and attitudes spread through social networks.
Strong in-group loyalty paired with out-group skepticism.
Inventory of models, data, tools, and dependencies in an AI system.
Assuming the conclusion in the premise.
CTR-driven distribution rewards misleading framing over accurate reporting.
The best way to get a right answer online is to post a wrong one.
Giving someone artificial early progress increases the chance they finish.
We overweight one aspect of an event when predicting its impact.
Behaviors you can't change are usually protecting a hidden, competing commitment.