Why Kim Couldn't Keep Up: The Disease of Desire
Many people are turning against Kim Kardashian and her family since her divorce last month from Kris Humphries. According to the Washington Post, “More than 100,000 people are no longer interested in ‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians,’ and would like E! to stop airing the family’s reality show.” Those 100,000 people have signed an online petition titled “No More Kardashian.” Cyndy Snider, the petition organizer, justified the petition by claiming, “We feel these shows are mostly staged and place an emphasis on vanity, greed, promiscuity, vulgarity and over-the-top conspicuous consumption.”
I’m not a fan of Kim, but I’m not going to sign a petition to get her banned from television. To the extent that I care, I’m disappointed that her marriage only lasted 72 days. I’m disappointed, but of course I’m not surprised. I’m not surprised because Kim has been set up. And we set her up.
Kim is a product of our culture. And we are partly responsible for her life.
Here’s what I mean. In the United States someone can star in a reality show called “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.” This is a clear reference to the American phrase, “Keeping Up with the Joneses.” This idiom is based purely on the anthropological phenomenon of mimetic imitation. This imitation has two steps. First, we unconsciously learn what to desire by observing what others desire. These “others” become our models for what to desire. Second, we unconsciously want to outdo our models. So, we see that a neighbor or a friend just bought a 42 inch flat screen television. That stimulates our desire for a television, only we won’t be satisfied with a 42 inch television – we want a 55 inch flat screen.
The mimetic principle of “Keeping Up with the Joneses” reflects American consumerism. It is an unconscious mentality that seeks to outdo our neighbors and it produces “vanity, greed, promiscuity, vulgarity and over-the-top conspicuous consumption.” It leads to a disease of desire, where we gain a sense of satisfaction by out-consuming one another. This mimetic competition of purchasing stuff becomes an addiction. (Credit card debt, anyone?) Even worse is that in the end, nobody can keep up with the Joneses.
Not even the Kardashians.
Nobody can keep up with the Joneses because once we have the disease of desire the object no longer matters. In fact, once we acquire the object, we are instantly dissatisfied with it. It’s not about the object; it’s about an addiction to desire that no object can satisfy.
And this is how we set up Kim and her family. They are caught up in a mimetic mechanism that is bigger than they are, and they can’t keep up. We wanted to see them live without the limits of desire the rest of us have. (Or should have.) In that sense they are our models for what our culture thinks is an ideal life. For example, Kim’s fans love her because she does “krazy” things on massive scales. Because objects can never satisfy her, she continuously purchases big, expensive things, she takes trips to exotic places, and she held a televised wedding that rivaled the Royal Wedding in viewership and in cost. Nothing in Kim’s life is based on satisfaction; she is addicted to desire, and if that addiction continues she will never find satisfaction. So, after acquiring the object of her desire (her husband Kris Humphries) she wasn’t satisfied. She felt disappointed and let down after her wedding. And so she divorced her husband after 72 days.
And now many of us are turning against her. But what we don’t realize is that we are the ones who set her up. We set her up to be addicted to desire. The title “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” meant that we looked to her to mimetically keep up with herself – to never be satisfied with what she had and to outdo herself in each episode. And we loved her for it. We wanted her to become addicted to desire. And we turned against her for doing just that.
Indeed, Kim and her family need to take responsibility for the position in which they find themselves. I hope they do that. But signing a petition to kick them off television won’t solve our cultural problem of diseased desire that leads to endless consumption and dissatisfaction. Even if the petition is effective, more Kardashian-like shows will emerge. The only way for the Kardashians to be cured of the mimetic disease of desire is the only way for us to be cured of the same disease that infects our whole culture.
About 1600 years ago there was a man named Augustine. He also had the disease of desire, and he soon realized this was a spiritual disease. The disease of desire is spiritual because it is fundamentally about idolatry. Augustine lost perspective as he placed himself above God. He soon realized he would only find satisfaction when his heart rested in something bigger than himself, bigger than the stuff he could acquire, and bigger than his sexual relationships. In his autobiography called Confessions, Augustine referred to God when he claimed, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” The cure to the disease of desire is to realize that a fulfilled life doesn’t depend on acquiring more stuff in order to keep up with anyone. Rather, a fulfilled life depends on the right perspective. A fulfilled life depends on opening ourselves to the God who transforms our desires to competitively “keep up” with our neighbors into a desire to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
It seems to me that Augustine's wisdom from 1600 years ago is as relevant for Kim Kardashian as it is for all of us.