Desire infection - How our desires are influenced by others
Hi!
In "Can you stop yourself being infected with other peoples’ desires?, Bence Nanay, professor of philisophy discusses the concept of desire infection, where the desires of others end up influencing our desires.
Desire infection can happen in 2 ways:
1. Indirect desire infection - Where we start to want what another person wants based on their testimony. For example, I have no first hand experience what Jiro's sushi tastes like, but have received enough testimony about how good it is that I too want to eat it some day.
2. Direct desire infection - Where we form a desire for something merely because another person had the same desire, independent of their beliefs, and with no concern whether they provide reliable testimony. This could happen through watching an advertisement where a celebrity endorses some product.
While Bence has not shown any empirical studies for these concepts, and bases them on anectodal evidence, I think his observations about us are quite true, especially considering the amount of money that goes into marketing and advertising. To the marketing world, this is probably nothing new, they have always known that they can generate additional demand for goods far beyond actual utility or necessity.
Direct desire infection is dangerous. It can happen without us even realising it. As we become more connected and can "see" others lives more easily, there are many more avenues to be infected.
Worse still, we are bad at filtering out desires obtained by direct infection. An an indirect desire infection scenario, we can challenge the testimony and reject it if it does not come from a credible source. For direct desire infection, there is nothing to challenge as it is based upon nothing at all. We end up more likely rationalising the desire and justifying it to ourselves.
Taking on desires merely by infection is a scary prospect. Too many desires is bad for us, it leads us to consume more, and distracts us from our own goals. This is even worse when the desires come from external sources. Our desires are an important part of who we are, yet, if we can be infected externally, it means we have even less control over ourselves. Externally generated desires could also conflict with our internal desires (think of seeing a mcdonald's advertisement when you really want to lose weight). We end up spending valuable willpower suppressing some desires, feeling guilt from being unable to carry out some desires, or chasing goals that do not bring us real happiness when achieved. Even when the infection is positive, such as wanting to learn a new skill, we could end up wanting to learn many things, but only having the bandwidth for one.
As technology and connectivity improves, the marketing industry is getting better and has more avenues to artificially create these desires in us. I think that, the regular person must also do their part to strengthen their mind and thoughts, to learn how to spot and resist desire infection. We should constantly be asking if the desire is something we wanted to have in the first place, and questioning if we were somehow infected with it somewhere. Most importantly, we need to look inward and know ourselves and what we truly want, so that we have a north star to recalibrate ourselves.
Have a great week ahead!
James
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