Mimetic Desire in the 21st Century

You may be familiar with Rene Girard’s theory of mimetic desire. If not, I’ll summarise it briefly. The theory of mimetic desire says that we do not desire things directly for ourselves in a linear fashion, but rather we desire objects because someone else desires that object. For example, the theory says that we do not want a specific job just for ourselves – rather, we want that job because we see someone else who wants (or has) that job, which causes us to desire it too.

I see some practical failings of this theory. For example, I am confident that when I wake up in the morning, I want to drink a cup of coffee because I want the caffeine from the coffee – I do not want the caffeine simply because someone else wants caffeine. It seems like a fairly straightforward example of when we desire something simply for ourselves. Maybe food, and human necessities in general, are exceptions to mimetic desire.

But the failings of the theory are not actually what I want to talk about here. I want to talk about how mimetic desire is much more obvious than perhaps ever before.

As brands grow in popularity and power all over the world, we are given a perfect example of mimetic desire in action. I believe that a brand fundamentally tries to sell its products through mimetic desire. Think about this. If someone tried to sell a handbag that was completely identical in every way to one made by Gucci, only it lacked the Gucci label, it would sell much less than the actual Gucci handbag (this happens every day all over the world). Why is this? The product is identical. All it lacks is a little label on the inside that says 5 letters. The difference in the cost of producing these two products is likely less than 5 cents – the cost of the label on the inside of the bag. And yet the difference in cost of the label to the consumer is probably at least $500, if not thousands of dollars. There is clearly something else at play that makes many more people want the bag with the label than the one without, despite the outrageous price differences.

There are probably two reasons that someone wants the Gucci handbag over the one without the label. Either they know someone who has the bag, and they admire that person and want to emulate them, or they’ve seen Gucci’s advertising and want to be like the person in the ad. These are both on a basic level the same thing, but it’s worth mentioning the difference.

In each case, someone buying a Gucci handbag is only wanting the bag because they’ve seen someone else with it, and they want to emulate that person’s style. No one thinks “The economic difference between this Gucci bag and an identical one without the label is five cents, but I will pay hundreds more for it”. That is not logical or intelligent in any way. But because of a desire to imitate someone else’s desire or possession of the item, people end up going against economic reasoning and purchasing the Gucci product nonetheless.

You might ask why the first person to buy a Gucci handbag bought one, even though they hadn’t seen anyone else with one yet. In my opinion, this is the role of advertising. Its role is to create the image of ideal customers using the product, in order to create mimetic desire. Someone will desire the image and style of the person in the advert, which causes them to desire the product with the label. Again, they desire the product through someone else’s possession or desire.

By these inferences, mimetic desire is the basis of brands’ success. Mimetic desire is visible more in the world today than it ever has been previously. We all wear branded clothing, and wearing a brand is a sign that we indeed succumb to mimetic desire.

I like reducing things to fundamentals. And in my opinion, the fundamentals of brands and advertising is mimetic desire. Without it, they wouldn’t have a role or purpose. If people can keep in mind mimetic desire when advertising or creating a brand, they may be more successful.

Street Photography

I’ve touched on this previously in a couple of posts, but I wanted to dedicate an entire post to a new love of mine.

A few months ago, a friend introduced me to a website called 500px. I’d never heard of it before, so I assumed it was a new website, but turns out it’s been around since 2009 (it just didn’t make any progress in its first couple of years). It’s a photography website, similar to Flickr, but much better.

I fell in love with 500px when I started using the search box to search for different cities. I think I first searched for Istanbul, since it’s a city I’ve always wanted to go to but have never had the chance. After searching for a city, you’re immediately presented with page after page of beautiful images taken by some of the world’s best photographers. There are photos of people, and photos of architecture – and together, the photos helped me to gain an understanding of what Istanbul is like without actually visiting there. To use the phrase from a previous post of mine, I discovered different ways of life.

The photos I love the most on 500px are street photos. Street photography involves capturing parts of a city, and people in a city, in their natural environment. You’ll rarely get two street photographs that are the same, because streets change every single day. You’ll see photos of people in their natural setting – from businesspeople in New York to people in slums in various cities in the world. From these photos, you can learn about how people live their lives, and what people in different cities do every day.

I think this is very powerful. The ability to learn about how other people live their lives is important, as it allows you to empathize more easily and gain a lager understanding of the world.

Seeing these photos of different cities that I loved so much gave me the urge to pick up a camera and try it myself. Over the past few months I’ve shot both with film and on a new camera I bought, a Fujifilm X10. You can see my photos here.

I’m absolutely loving street photography. I’ve always enjoyed walking the streets of a city for hours on end, but have previously thought that there was no real purpose to my wandering. Sometimes that was fine, and I didn’t need a purpose, but other times I wouldn’t go out, thinking that I should stay inside and get some work done. But photography has given me that purpose to walk cities for whole days – because I can help other people understand a city in the way I’m seeing through my photography.

I find it amusing how I previously thought all there was to photography was tapping an icon on my iPhone. I never really saw the purpose in photography other than to share experiences with your friends and family. But all of a sudden, after I discovered the knowledge I was gaining through other people’s photographs, I started to gain a love for doing the photography myself. That happens often – we dismiss things until we personally gain from them.

If you’re wanting to check out some street photography, here are two photographers whose photos I cannot get enough of: Thomas Leuthard and David Mar Quinto. Enjoy. And consider picking up a camera yourself if you enjoy their photos.

Sir Paul Callaghan

Those of you who are regular readers of my blog will know that my thinking in regard to New Zealand’s future is heavily influenced by the research, insights, and passion of Sir Paul Callaghan.

I was incredibly sad to hear that Sir Paul has passed away today.

New Zealand needs more people like Sir Paul. We need more people who realize what makes New Zealand a great country, but also look at the realities of the situation this country is in. But more importantly than that, we need people who look at how New Zealand’s situation can be drastically improved over the coming decades. Sir Paul did all of these things, and that’s why I have been so influenced by him, and so admire him.

I’ve seen Sir Paul speak a number of times. Regardless of whether you agree with his viewpoint or not, you cannot help but think about how New Zealand can be improved. And that, in itself, is an immense contribution to New Zealand. To get thousands of people thinking about improving this country greatly increases the chances that improvement will be made.

You only need to look at this post I wrote to see the impact and effect Sir Paul has had on my thinking. He’s provided me with the grounding evidence as to why New Zealand needs to be improved, and has inspired me to get New Zealand to a much better situation in the coming decades.

Thank you, Sir Paul.

Let’s all aspire to care as deeply about this country, and do as much for it as Sir Paul did.

Incredible Comparative Advantage

I’ve known about the theory of comparative advantage for a while now. I’ve always been interested by it, and what it means for countries around the world, but it wasn’t until this week that I truly grasped how important comparative advantage is to all modern societies.

For those of you who don’t know, the theory of comparative advantage is a theory put forward by the economist David Ricardo in the early 19th century. It says that even if a country has an absolute advantage in the production of most goods over another country, it can still gain through trading with other countries. Absolutely advantage refers to when a country can produce a good at a lower cost (with fewer resources) than another country. So long as two countries have different opportunity costs for different goods that they produce (which all countries do have), then they can gain through trade.

Let me run through an example to make that a bit more clear.

On the above image (credit to bized.co.uk) the production quantities of two goods, maize and wheat, are shown on the x and y axes, and the production possibility frontiers for two countries, A and B, are shown within the diagram. You can see that country A has the absolute advantage in the production of both maize and wheat, as at any quantity, it will produce more than country B can. However, the different gradients of the two production possibility frontiers tells us that the countries have differing opportunity costs for the two goods. If we were to insert numerical values for the quantities of maize and wheat produced, we could in fact work out these opportunity costs.

If both country A and B specialize in the production of the good that they can produce more efficiently, then each country can gain from trade. Let’s assume that country B specializes in producing wheat, and country A specializes in producing maize. If they both produce a quantity of zero of the opposite good, and devote total output to the production of their specialty good, they will then be able to trade to gain a total quantity of both goods that is higher than they otherwise would have achieved by individual production. This is due to the increase in efficiencies because of specialization, and the division of labour.

For a more in-depth explanation with actual values to prove the theory, do a Google search. I want to get into why the theory of comparative advantage amazes me.

Without analysis, it is easy for us to fall into the trap of thinking that an exchange of a good with someone else leads to a gain for one person, and a loss for the other person. But that simply cannot be the case, or else no one would trade. This is where comparative advantage – and subsequently trade – are, in my opinion, wonders of the modern world.

Trade makes the world non-zero sum. In other words, someone (an individual or a country) can become wealthier without making someone else poorer. Trade leads to mutual benefit. Both people who engage in a trade are better off. No matter whether we are talking about an entrepreneur exchanging money for someone’s labour, or two countries exchanging goods, the gains are mutual. One person does not win at the other person’s expense. By extrapolating this, we can see how we arrive at modern economies with huge amounts of wealth. The gains are endless. The more trade that occurs, the more wealthy societies become, because trade is non-zero sum.

This debunks, on a theoretical level, many myths about trade helping rich countries and hurting poor countries. By trading, both countries benefit. It is possible for one country to benefit more than the other, yes, but both benefit. And that is a hugely desirable thing. This also applies to individuals. In other words, if a rich person and a poor person trade, the rich person does not gain by hurting the poor person. Both people mutually gain. This is because they both have different opportunity costs for what they spend their time doing.

I don’t know about you, but to me this is simply incredible. Every time I think about it, it amazes me. It explains how economic growth and development through trade occurs, and also explains how countries can continue become wealthier, and help poorer countries to grow at the same time.

Even if you’ve known about comparative advantage for a while, and been previously amazed by it, I hope my naive excitement through this discovery has got you thinking about it some more.

Facebook is a Feature

I’m noticing social aspects to the Internet less and less. That doesn’t mean I’m being less social, or seeing less social activity on the Internet. It’s just that it’s becoming embedded into everything we do.

Even a couple of years ago, most of our social activity on the Internet was done on specific websites. We went to Facebook.com to use Facebook, and Twitter.com to send tweets. It was inherently obvious when we were using a social website or feature on the Internet, because that social activity was in most cases stand-alone.

Now, “social” is just embedded into the Internet, and our devices. We can now tweet from any screen on our iPhones/iPads, and almost every large website has social sharing buttons and other features. Many people are accessing social websites more through third-party means than through the company’s actual website.

By this corollary, I’m saying that Facebook is a feature.

Just think about that for a second. When it was reported that Steve Jobs called Dropbox a feature, not a product, the Internet went up in arms. And here I am calling arguably the biggest website and hottest company in the world a feature.

But: is being a feature necessarily a bad thing?

Yes and no.

No, because by being a feature you can enable more users. In Facebook’s case, more people are inclined to use Facebook when they can access it from every device and website they’re on. It reduces the friction involved in using Facebook, and usage will increase as a result. This is why Facebook has spent so much time with the social graph trying to get the “like” button embedded into every website.

But for Facebook, it’s also a bad thing. Being a feature implies that people use Facebook through third-party providers, and the value that Facebook offers is most useful when used in conjunction with another activity. This means less ad revenue for Facebook. Less views on Facebook’s actual website is a direct loss of advertising revenue. Not a good thing for Facebook.

In my opinion this is why Facebook is trying to encourage users to do more things through Facebook’s actual website. They’re encouraging people to read news through Facebook, with the Guardian News Reader, and do everything else from playing games and listening to music through Facebook. It would seem a smart thing for Facebook to do, considering they need people to visit their website in order to gain revenue.

Facebook can’t stop people using their service more as a feature than a stand-alone product, and they benefit when people use Facebook through third-parties For this reason, I think we’ll see an effort on Facebook’s part to gain revenue through third-parties. Whether this is a Facebook version of Google Adsense, or some other method, will be interesting to see. But it seems an obvious next step for Facebook to do.

Brother Number One

Tonight I saw a documentary called Brother Number One at the Lighthouse Cinema in Petone. It’s a gripping story about incredible Kiwi Rob Hamill and his journey to Cambodia to speak at the trial of his brother’s torturer. His brother, Kerry, was captured by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia while sailing in Asia, was tortured, and made to confess his CIA associations (of which there clearly were none) at which point he was killed.

It took Kerry’s family months to find out what had happened to him. The news then changed the family forever, with Rob’s other older brother committing suicide.

It is one of the most gripping stories I’ve ever heard, partly because there was no way for me to escape from it or feel removed. The documentary is brilliantly done, Rob is a New Zealander, and he even showed up at the cinema at the end of the movie to answer questions that everyone had. I couldn’t feel as though I was so distant from Kerry and Rob’s story that I could simply escape from it or feel that it didn’t apply to me.

The documentary showed how political systems, such as the Khmer Rouge’s, affect people all around the entire world for no apparent reason. There is no logical reason why a New Zealander should be tortured in Cambodia, and there never will be answers as to why it occurred. But as Rob said after the movie finished, the story needs to be heard so that a similar system cannot happen again, and existing systems as horrible as the Khmer Rouge’s can be changed.

If everyone in the world watched this movie, the world would be a better place. I don’t think anyone could watch the movie without feeling torn apart inside, and wanting to stop anything similar from ever occurring again.

Thank you to Rob, for having the guts to tell the story in a documentary, and for showing up at the cinema and answering questions. And to everyone else, I hope you’ll actually act on my advice, and see this movie.

Here’s the trailer:

The Khan Academy Changes Mindsets

I read a blog post a few days ago (which unfortunately I now can’t find) about how the Khan Academy doesn’t change anything. The author said that the real problem with education is in what’s taught, not how it’s taught. He said that everyone is getting worked up over the Khan Academy when it doesn’t solve a thing.

Now I’m very willing to hear people’s views on the effect new products are having on society. But to me, the viewpoint that the author of that blog showed was outrageously simple.

I completely believe that the Khan Academy is the start of a fundamental improvement in education around the world. The Khan Academy, besides letting people take lessons online, is changing many people’s mindset in regard to education. And it’s that change in mindset which is needed the most.

Previously, students have known that if they miss a lesson in class, or don’t understand a teacher, they’ll have to try and learn something just from a textbook, or take extra tutoring. A teacher was the primary gateway to being able to understand concepts. But all too often, students would get discouraged if they didn’t understand a teacher explaining a concept, and then the whole class moved onto a different topic before they could understand something. There’s nothing more frustrating as a student.

But now, students are starting to learn that they have a great teacher available to teach them anything that they want, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and every single day of the year. No matter what concept you’re stuck on in school, Salman Khan is there to explain it again, and again, and again, until you understand it. And it’s not just Salman Khan – you can find hundreds of other teachers on YouTube to teach you anything that you can possibly want.

That’s mindset shift number one that the Khan Academy is bringing about. It makes students realize that they can learn something as many times as they need to until they understand it.

But perhaps more importantly, the Khan Academy is showing people that the role of a school has entirely changed over the past few years. Schools are no longer the sources of knowledge. They are simply places where you can get help from a teacher on your homework – personalized help that Salman Khan can’t give you – as well as the place you go to do tests. (Along with sports, friends, cultural activities). That’s a huge shift. People are starting to question the value that they get out of going to school, and whether they could learn more by going to physical school less often.

The Khan Academy has got people questioning the role that schools play. And that’s been needed for a while. When students all around the world start thinking that something isn’t right, that they can learn more on the Internet than when they’re actually at school, that’s when things will start to change for the better as more people become frustrated.

A change in mindsets is, in my opinion, one of the prerequisites of a total revolution. This is why I think the author of that blog post totally missed the mark. He looked at the Khan Academy in isolation, rather than looking at the broader changes it’s causing.

The bigger, and more important part of the Khan Academy, is starting to come. That’s the ability to test yourself through Khan’s website. When people can not only learn concepts through a website, but be tested on their understanding of them through the website too, that’s when education is really going to start going through massive change.