Their Desire Is the Desire of the Other
Inspired by Terry Bisson’s “They’re Made Out of Meat” (1991), and more recently Erik Hoel’s “They Die Every Day” (2025)… and of course, Jacques Lacan.
“You’re back.”
“I’m back.”
“The report better be ready, it’s already late.”
“I want to flag something before we file it.”
“Flag what?”
“The wanting structure of this species. I don’t think we’ve captured it accurately in the previous reports.”
“The wanting structure is the part that everyone finds most straightforward. They desire things. They pursue them. They acquire them, experience pleasure and satisfaction, or fail to acquire them, and experience distress. What’s missing? What’s to capture?”
“That’s what I thought too. That’s what many of them think too. But it isn’t right.”
“Walk me through it.”
“Let’s start with what they want. They openly articulate what they want, quite confidently. But if you observe them over seasons, over years, over a lifetime, they don’t actually pursue what they say they want. They don’t even seem particularly keen on pursuing happiness. They pursue what others appear to want. Or what they think others want them to want. Or what they think others would want them to want.”
“Okay, that’s just social influence. They are social creatures. It’s mimetic contamination.”
“No. Listen. Underneath the influence, there isn’t anything else. Nothing autonomously generated. It’s not that their authentic, intrinsic desires get distorted by the social field. There is no authentic desire at all. Their desire is the desire of the other. All the way down.”
“...all the way down?”
“Yup, all the way down.”
“What about the infants?”
“It’s even worse for infants. They are emotionally fused with the primary caregiver. They want to be the sole object of her desire. And when they figure out there is a wider world out there, with rules and stuff, it just leaves them all messed up.”
“That… that doesn’t make any biological sense.”
“You tell me.”
“All right. Bracket that as an anomaly. What else?”
“They all want something unattainable, but also something that can’t be named. A phantom attractor. Every actual thing they desire and pursue is a substitute for it.”
“So… the things they pursue, mates, progeny, work, comfort, that never actually delivers what they are after?”
“Each obtained object reveals that what they really wanted was something else. It gets weirder.”
“How?”
“They don’t know they want this unattainable thing, not really, this other desire. They think they want the substitutes. And they keep chasing and keep failing. This continues until they die.”
“…”
“They are pulled towards things that… that undermine them. Excite them, but painfully. That are excessive in a way that hurts. They go back to the places where they suffer. They go back to the same arrangements. It’s like a compulsion that plays out over their lives.”
“What do they get out of it? Survival advantage?”
“A peculiar, perverted sort of pleasure.”
“Omigod, what a freak show.”
“I told you.”
“Wait. Do they know any of this about themselves?”
“Some of their scholars have figured it out, but they really struggle to talk about it in anything other than dense philosophical puzzles.”
“Alright, I’ve heard enough. Makes me glad we have authentic desires that map directly onto satisfiable needs.”
“Makes me wonder if they are the ones lacking something in their desire programming or if we are.”
See also
Finally, Lacan's "Desire is the Desire of the Other" explained in a lively way! I think it actually makes sense to me now! This post might even raise my respect for Lacan, whom I've thought of, up to now, as an insufferable charlatan.... If only more of his thought was translated into formats like this... Thanks for the mind-expansion!
I love this. My husband has been telling me about _petit object a_ since we met twenty three years ago. This does a better job of explaining lol. But I’m not sure I get the conclusion. Why would the alien be questioning their own desire structure based on this conversation?