In Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life (Amazon,) Luke Burgis lays out the “why” behind why we want things.
The gist of it is that we want things that we think others want. Everything else flows from it.
Desire is manufactured. Just look at the influencer marketing industry that grew from $1.7 billion in 2016 to $9.7 billion in 2020 and $13.8 billion in 2021. You might think that it doesn’t affect you but desire is our primordial concern. Long before people can articulate why they want something, they start wanting it.
Are we destined to me miserable, running in an hamster-wheel of desire? The book presents some things that you could try.
Recommendation: Worth flipping through.