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.

Don’t just change the world. Improve it as much as you possibly can.

A month ago I wrote a post titled “Don’t change the world. Improve it.” I talked about my frustration with the huge amount of talk about “changing the world”, and how I believe this focus on change rather than “improving the world” leads many people to feel satisfied and successful with mere change, rather than large improvement.

I now realize that what annoys me even more are the people who try to improve the world, but don’t improve it as much as they could have.

There are a huge amount of smart people on this planet. From engineers at Facebook to biologists discovering new forms of life, there are people who have the knowledge and skills to improve the world. Indeed, many of them do improve the world. They don’t just change it, they fundamentally improve it. This is good.

But too many people don’t improve the world as much as they could.

They’re satisfied once they have improved the world and have earned respect from other people for this improvement. And they stop right there.

Yes, Facebook improves the world. It enabled the Arab Spring, which is something that could not have occurred six years ago. Facebook also has many of the top engineers in the world. Can every single one of those engineers say that their skills are being used to their utmost potential to improve the world? I highly doubt that.

To entrepreneurs creating the huge numbers of mobile and web applications: Yes, many of these apps do improve the world. Yes, many of them make you a fortune. But are you spending your time creating the thing that would allow the biggest improvement in the world?

Math geniuses working at large Wall St. banks making fortunes, biologists, physicists, doctors: ask yourselves. Are you really improving the world as much as you possibly can with your skills?

In some cases, people will underutilize their skills but make a bigger impact. Salman Khan, the creator of the Khan Academy and someone who I admire hugely, for example. He is an incredible mathematician, and was working at a hedge fund before he left to start the Khan Academy full-time. The extent that he uses his skills now (at least publicly) is teaching advanced calculus to high school students. He isn’t fully utilizing his skills, no, but he is having an immense impact on the world of education, and I am sure he can feel satisfied knowing he is improving the world. Even still, perhaps he isn’t improving it as much as he possibly can – that I cannot answer.

If you’re a teenager starting a company, or in your forties and want to quit your job and start one, don’t just go and create a new mobile app. Think to yourself first whether you’ll have the biggest impact you can with your current circumstances.

It seems as though all the brains in the world these days are rushing off to Silicon Valley and starting mobile apps that “help you share your photos more easily with your friends”, and “make your nightlife better”. They may improve the world. But I beg the founders to think about whether they could be having a bigger impact.

When I wrote my last post, I had a few people commenting and asking how I’m improving the world. I gave this answer:

“I’m creating a library of experiences and advice through They Don’t Teach You This In School (http://tdtytis.com).

It’s helping people in over 120 countries [now 150] gain an emotional and social education that they otherwise couldn’t gain. Where Khan Academy provides an intellectual education, TDTYTIS is providing the other side to education – social intelligence.

I’m also helping people to remember their personal history and communication through Duo (http://duoboard.com). People are by nature nostalgic, but the Internet does not allow them to be because we lose the vast majority of our communication. Duo changes that.

These are not just changes – I’m not just creating a product because it’s cool to. They both fundamentally improve the world, because they solve clear problems.

This is just the start for me, but it’s a start that I believe in and will set me up to solve the huge problems that I see with the world.”

Before you ask, I can tell you that I am improving the world as much as I possibly can right now.

I started TDTYTIS and Duo without a minute of real-world business experience. I started them with hardly any money. I started them with my time very limited as I complete high school this year.

I feel proud knowing that TDTYTIS is helping thousands of people in over 150 countries learn life lessons that they couldn’t otherwise, and knowing that Duo is helping people be nostalgic – something which I believe the vast majority of humans fundamentally are. In thinking back, of course there are things I’d do differently, but I feel good knowing that at each step of the way I wouldn’t have done something entirely different.

In the process, I’m gaining experience and learning huge amounts. I’ll also have a lot more time later this year when I’m done with school. This means the amount that I’m able to improve the world will continually increase, and I will increase the amount that I’m improving the world along with that. Like I said in that quote, this is just the start for me – and I’ll be solving the biggest problems I can find going forward.

Think about it. Ask yourself whether you could be doing more to improve the world. And ask others the same thing. If more of us can gradually answer that question with a “no”, the world will be making leaps and bounds.

Some Advice On Taking Advice

Everybody on the planet is coming at life from a different angle. We’ve all had entirely different experiences and upbringings, and they have all contributed to making us entirely different people with different views on life. And yet despite our different views and situations, we try to help each other through offering advice. I fundamentally believe that receiving and acting on advice is one of the key reasons people make ineffective decisions.

From my experience, listening to a single individual’s advice has largely led me to make bad decisions. That doesn’t mean I was receiving bad advice – quite the contrary – but by taking advice from someone, and acting on it, I was subscribing to that person’s life situation and view.

Think about it. My experiences of life have been entirely different to yours, and as a result I have a different view on the world. Let’s say you’re trying to help me with a business decision. Fundamentally, the business decision that I’m trying to make will be a result of my life experiences and views – otherwise I wouldn’t be attempting to make that decision. I can only see things that are in line with my previous experiences and view of the world – we are all naturally blind to anything that isn’t in line with this.

If you try to offer me advice, that advice is coming from your experiences and view of the world, which is totally different to mine. If I act on your advice, it means that my decision – which is based on my experiences – will suddenly change course into a product of both my and your life experiences. The resulting decision will, in most scenarios, be less effective than if I’d made the decision on my own, because the decision would have been totally in line with my experiences, and the desired outcome of the decision. There would have been no other factors contributing to my view or decision making.

That’s the problem that I have with taking advice. My clear judgement will become shrouded with someone else’s perspective on life.

Does that mean I’ll never take advice? Not at all. I believe that humans fundamentally like receiving advice from others, for a multitude of reasons. It helps us to delegate some of the responsibility for if that decision turns out to be incorrect. It helps us to take our time with making a decision. It can help us to see things we otherwise wouldn’t have seen.

So no, I believe that we will always take advice.

What I try to do is ensure I take lots of advice from many different people, so that I can look objectively at all the advice and decide what best fits my individual scenario.

If I take advice from one person, I am inclined to think that their advice is good, because I can only see my perspective and theirs. If I take lots of advice, then all of a sudden I can see that some of these people are giving advice that is more relevant to me than others. I can then look objectively at all of that advice and decide what I should take and what I should leave.

In short, I believe that taking advice from one person will damage your decision making, but taking advice from lots of people will enhance it. The value in advice is gaining others’ experience that you don’t have. By taking lots of advice, you can gain all of that experience, and then decide what of that experience will actually help you in making your decision.

Sometimes getting advice from a huge number of people is hard to do. It’s not easy to ask people for advice, let alone a huge number of people. This is another reason I started They Don’t Teach You This In School.

I describe TDTYTIS as a library of experiences, lessons and advice. When you browse the videos on TDTYTIS, you can see a huge number of people’s perspectives on life, and the advice that they give as a result of it. No longer is it hard for people to get access to advice from a large number of people.

You can browse videos by what kind of advice you’re looking for, whether it’s on school or business. You can then see lessons and advice from a huge range of people – some famous, some not – and after listening to all their advice, you can decide what is the most useful to you.

I believe that TDTYTIS will democratize advice. No longer can you only receive advice from people you know personally. You can now get specific advice from the Prime Minister of New Zealand, or from hugely successful entrepreneurs such as Rod Drury and Dennis Crowley. You can get the same advice as anyone else in the world – the result being that you can make as good decisions as anyone else can.

This is another of the reasons why I fundamentally believe in TDTYTIS, and why I want to just go for it and built it into the platform that it should be.

Now I realize that I may have slightly contradicted myself here. I’m giving you advice, saying that you shouldn’t just listen to one person, but should take lots of advice and decide what advice is best for you. Well, I guess you have two options: trust me and hope it works out, or go get more advice.

I’m hoping you all do the latter, or this blog post has been in vain.

New Zealand In My Eyes

I love New Zealand.

I’ve lived here for about half my life. I was born in Washington DC, but moved before I can remember (and I’m not entitled to US citizenship). Since then, I’ve also lived in the Cook Islands, the Philippines, and Spain. I’m lucky in that I’ve seen enough of the world to know what makes New Zealand so great, and also what holds us back.

Whenever I’m overseas, I’ve always felt as though I’m a representative of the entire country. At the schools I’ve been to in other countries, I’ve always been the sole New Zealander (and these have been big schools). Everyone has known me as “the Kiwi”, and I’ve always been proud when called that.

Growing up as a representative of New Zealand – and being lucky enough to know what that means – has given me a truly huge respect for this country. Most of what people say is correct. We are a bloody inventive bunch. We’ve got values and a heart. We are friendly and happy. We have a stable and uncorrupt government, no matter who’s in power and what anyone says. And we’re lucky enough to have an abundance of the colours blue and green – some of the best and most beautiful natural resources in the world.

Going forward, it is of utmost importance to me that New Zealand not only remain relevant in the world, but emerges as a clear leader in the world.

It should be clear to everyone by now that the world is in a rough spot at the moment. Both Europe and America – long the leaders of the world – are clearly on unsustainable courses. Power is shifting. New leaders will emerge over the next decade. China is clearly one, but there is room for others.

I’m writing this post right now because: 1. New Zealand is heading in entirely the wrong direction and will decline in power and wealth over the next decades, and 2. I want New Zealand to be a wealthy world leader.

There are people far more experienced than me talking about these things. Sir Paul Callaghan explains why we’re going to become poorer and more irrelevant on our current course. Derek Handley shows us an alternative path, and inspires us to take action. Andy Hamilton tells us about the role of smart enterprises in a brighter New Zealand future.

New Zealand currently has two key sources of value that give us our place in the world: tourism and dairy. Let’s examine these going forward, drawing on the insights and statistics of Sir Paul Callaghan.

New Zealand has 1.3 million FTE (full-time equivalents, essentially the number of jobs available). We also have a per capita GDP of approximately $40,000. In order to maintain our current GDP of approx. $125billion, we need a GDP of $120,000 per job. Tourism in New Zealand produces around $80,000 per job. That’s two-thirds of the per-job GDP we need to sustain our current GDP, which means the more tourism we export, the poorer we become. We are immediately doomed if we at all try to increase tourism, which is what a large majority of people currently seem intent on doing.

Dairy, in contrast, produces $350,000 per job. Sir Paul Callaghan says it succinctly – “Without dairy, we would be desperately poor”. However, dairy is finite in capacity. We only have so much land to farm on, and we’re not too far off its capacity.

I’ll repeat: the current course that New Zealand is on will not allow us to even sustain our current GDP, let alone grow.

Countries like Singapore and Hong Kong didn’t grow through their natural resources (they don’t have any). And remember, thirty years ago New Zealand was providing aid to Singapore. Now they both have GDPs twice as large as ours. New Zealand will never become relevant in the world, as Singapore and Hong Kong are, if we continue to focus on growth through our natural resources.

Throughout New Zealand’s history, our key weakness has been our physical distance from the rest of the world. It costs huge amounts and takes a long time to export to other countries. It takes ages to travel anywhere. We’ve actually done remarkably well exporting dairy and tourism, considering this.

In the twenty-first century, New Zealand’s physical distance from the rest of the world became a competitive advantage. Well, it would have, if we’d pursued other sources of growth.

The Internet. You’ve heard it before. It breaks down physical barriers. That’s what it does best. No longer do we write physical letters, or need to travel across the world to see people. No longer do books and newspapers need to be printed and sent here. No longer is New Zealand restricted to growth through bringing people to the country or sending goods out.

The Internet is the biggest opportunity New Zealand has ever had, and ever will have. It allows us to achieve growth and sell products at absolutely no additional cost to what it costs other countries to produce. We can reach the rest of the world in milliseconds, compared to the previous days. Furthermore, our physical distance from the rest of the world becomes a competitive advantage to us because the smartest people in the world will want to come and live and work in a beautiful, pristine island.

And here New Zealand is building a national cycling track to encourage tourism, destroying areas of forestry to turn it into farming land, and then selling great chunks of our land to the Chinese.

The stars are aligned for us. Global power is shifting at the same time that the Internet gives us another path to growth. I refuse to let my country miss the biggest opportunity it will ever have. I refuse to let New Zealand become poor and irrelevant, when it could become a rich world leader.

This post marks my commitment to doing whatever I possibly can to create a rich and powerful New Zealand. This will be a core tenet of my life.

Watch Sir Paul Callaghan and Derek Handley’s talks. Follow Derek’s advice on what you can do right now. Think about the New Zealand that you want and how we might get there.

To finish, I’ll quote Derek, as he says it best:

“As we continue through the twenty-first century, New Zealand can choose to be an idle bystander, or it can choose to be a shaper of this century. The former path is a path to failure and irrelevance as a country – and those failures as a collective will cast a long black shadow over the Land of the Long White Cloud for many, many years to come”.

Respect for the Motor of the World

I ordered some clothes online on Tuesday from a British retailer. They arrived in the mail this afternoon (Friday). I haven’t thought about mail companies or courier services in the past – they’ve always seemed a bit boring and unimpressive. But for some reason today I started thinking about how it all works and became amazed by it.

For a little parcel to be sent from a warehouse in Maidstone in the UK to my home in Wellington in just three days is just incredible. It was sent by DHL, and I could track it every step of the way. From Maidstone, it was sent to London Heathrow, then to Leipzig, then to Singapore, then to Auckland, then to Wellington where my house is.

Think about it. At each of those places it had to be transported on the ground as well, and scanned so that they could track its progress and update it online for me. It likely passed through at least six ground transport vehicles and was presumably handled by a similar number of individual humans on the way. That’s on top of the five flights it made (two long-haul).

DHL probably has tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of parcels being sent simultaneously across the globe to an almost equal number of individual destinations. And DHL is just one of the courier companies in the world (albeit one of the biggest).

Companies like DHL literally make the world go around. Without them we wouldn’t have economies or really be considered a globe. It’s a huge feat to deliver a product from one building on the top of the world to another building at the bottom of the world in three days. For fifteen pounds. This happens every single day, with millions of items (and people) and I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve never felt in awe of this machine before. In it’s broadest sense, that’s what the collection of global companies is – it’s a machine, or a motor, that makes the world function as we expect it to.

I’ll admit that I take most of the modern world for granted. Computers, mobile phones, skyscrapers, airplanes, supercars, and, yes, the ability to buy things from the other side of the world and receive it within three days. I’ve expected it without thinking about it in the past. Recently, however, I’ve been noticing how complex so many of these systems are and how great a feat they are.

There’s a couple of ways to look at all of these incredible things that the modern world gives us, in my opinion. The first is we can look at it all and say “It’s such an incredible world and individual humans are such a small part of it”. Or, the way I look at it, is we can say “It’s such an incredible world, and all of this incredible stuff was created by human beings”. Yes, it’s a machine that makes the world go around. But the machine was created, and is maintained, by humans. We’re pretty impressive creatures.

I’m gaining a healthy respect for most of the things I’ve previously taken for granted. If you take them for granted too – I hope you’re thinking about them in a slightly different way, like I now am.