How much are our desires shaped by what others want?

We tend to desire food, warmth, and safety for rather biological reasons that are common for everyone. But what about everything beyond survival - taste, status, romance, careers, hobbies? How much of what you want is truly your own, and how much is borrowed from the people around you?
In this meetup, we will discuss the mimetic (i.e. imitative) nature of desire: the idea that we often learn what to want by watching what other people appear to want. French philosopher René Girard made this idea famous, arguing that desire frequently has a triangular structure: “I want X because a model (a person or group) signals X is desirable”. Sometimes that imitation creates belonging and shared meaning; sometimes it produces rivalry, envy, and a weird sense of living someone else’s life.
Here’s just one concrete example: the “price placebo” in taste. In experiments, people reported more enjoyment of the same wine when they were told it was more expensive, and even their brain activity in valuation/pleasure regions rose accordingly. At the same time, large blind-tasting datasets suggest price and enjoyment are not reliably correlated when people don’t know the price.
Discussion questions:

• What would count as an authentic desire? Is it even a coherent notion, or is desire always socially shaped?
• Which “advanced desires” that many people have seem most artificial to you?
• If imitation is inevitable, is it bad? Or is it the glue of culture, learning, and love?
• How to prevent imitative desire from ruining your life with envy and resentment?