🐰 How Do We Know What We Want?

Oct 03, 2024 7:01 pm

🐰 Down The Rabbit Hole 🕳️

“The essence of human conflict lies not in the struggle between individuals or groups, but in the mimetic desire that drives us to compete for the same objects and goals. This desire is the root of much of our suffering and strife.”

- René Girard,

Violence and the Sacred

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Greetings!

A subject rarely addressed, but that plays an increasing role in the lives of all people is that of desire, and in particular: how do we know what we want? As always, historical perspective is enlightening: before the dawn of modern advertising (and the industrialization that it was created to market) there was a great deal less desiring things (largely because there were far fewer things to desire, and we weren’t being marketed to 24/7).

The next Neil Postman quote we’re going to look at is also from his best-known work, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, and it will give us a place to begin to consider the question of desire a bit more deeply. Here’s the quote:

“Television is our culture’s principal mode of knowing about itself. Therefore—and this is the critical point—how television stages the world becomes the model for how the world is properly to be staged.”

- Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

One of the dangerous things about technology is that once it becomes embedded in society, its unintended side effects and the changes it creates become very difficult to discern. Happily, Neil Postman wrote an entire book looking at television and considering its unintended consequences on society, and we will eventually read this book together (so…stay tuned!)

It’s hard to properly appreciate now, but the introduction of television had profound effects on our society. One of the chief effects was that television has become one of the main ways our culture understands itself: how television presents the world influences our perception of reality.

One classic example of how this works can be seen in the experiments of social psychologists Douglas T. Kenrick and Steven Neuberg, whose research provides a strong argument that exposure to more physically attractive potential mates decreases the subjects’ commitment to their current partners. Humans are deeply affected by what we see, and since its introduction to our society, television sets the standard for how we think the world should be, and in turn shapes our opinions, values, and cultural norms.

The great historian, literary critic, and philosopher René Girard referred to this tendency within humans as “mimesis.” Here’s a quote from Girard:

"Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires."

Girard is an important figure, and we will eventually discuss him and his ideas in greater depth. For now, it’s simply important to note that television both reflects and actively shapes our culture. If we are to preserve our internal freedom and to find our true selves, we need to recognize how television influences our perceptions. As a general rule, You Are Not A Machine promotes a low-media diet. In future videos, I will discuss this in greater detail. For now, I simply want to point out what a profound impact media (and in this case, television) has on ourselves and on society. If you were ever tempted to think that television is a neutral force, I hope this discussion has helped to disavow you of that delusion.

Ultimately, each of us must use our free will to make important decisions about what is important to us, who we want to be, and what influences we want to have in our life. At very least, through looking at technology in this way, we will have a better understanding of the nature of these decisions.