The Law of Covetousness
Become an elusive object of desire by mastering the psychology of wanting
Humans are marked by a continual desire to possess what they do not have. Too much presence suffocates; absence spurs interest. We are creatures of the grass-is-always-greener syndrome, always imagining something better beyond our current circumstances. This is rooted in three features of the brain: induction (positive generates contrasting negative images), negative bias (evolutionary alertness preventing complacency), and the neural equivalence of imagination and experience.
Greene teaches you to reverse your perspective: instead of focusing on what you want, train yourself to focus on others' repressed desires and unmet fantasies. Create mystery around yourself and your work. Associate your offerings with something transgressive, novel, or forbidden. Use strategic absence and withdrawal to intensify desire rather than saturating attention.
The framework also addresses the personal dimension: overcoming your own covetous tendencies by developing a deeper relationship with reality, embracing your actual circumstances, and channeling restlessness productively rather than endlessly chasing chimeras.
- It is not possession but desire that secretly impels people; once they possess something, its value begins to lower.
- Absence and mystery are more powerful than presence and transparency in creating desire.
- Human desire is never individual; we want what others visibly want, creating competitive chains of desire.
- The forbidden and transgressive have inherent allure because every no sparks a corresponding yes in the mind.
- To overcome your own covetousness, develop a deeper relationship with reality rather than endlessly chasing distant fantasies.
- Reverse Your PerspectiveStop thinking about what you want from others. Instead, study what others want and imagine how they perceive you and your work from the outside. Objectify yourself and what you produce so you can strategically shape others' perceptions rather than hoping they naturally appreciate you.Pro tipOthers see none of your intentions, effort, or hopes. They only see an object that inspires curiosity and excitement or indifference. Start from their perception.
- Master Strategic WithdrawalCultivate a touch of coldness and unavailability. Do not reveal all your opinions. Add blankness and ambiguity to who you are. Once you have engaged people's imagination, use physical absence to intensify desire. Be less available. Create emptiness they want to fill.Pro tipMichael Jackson mastered this by spacing album releases, limiting interviews, and surrounding himself with mystery, making himself an object of continual desire.WarningWithdrawal only works after you have first created genuine engagement. Withdrawing before establishing interest just makes you invisible.
- Create Rivalries of DesireMake it visible that others desire you or your work. Create the impression of ubiquity without direct intervention. Encourage word of mouth, even controversy. Get tastemakers to champion you. At a certain point, enough people feel the pull that others do not want to be left out.Pro tipChanel gave clothes to well-connected women and even encouraged piracy of her designs, understanding that spreading desire mattered more than controlling access.
- Use Induction and the ForbiddenAssociate your offering with something slightly transgressive, unconventional, or progressive. Play on the secret resentment of constraints and taboos. What you offer should contrast boldly with the conventional and familiar. Give the impression of revealing forbidden secrets or crossing boundaries.Pro tipVoyeurism is a near-universal desire. Give the impression you are revealing secrets that should not be shared, and curiosity will do the rest.
- Overcome Your Own CovetousnessRecognize the grass-is-always-greener syndrome operating within yourself. Distinguish between productive restlessness that motivates improvement and chronic discontent that wastes time. Develop a deeper relationship with reality by absorbing yourself in what is nearest rather than fantasizing about what is distant.Pro tipReality offers infinite depth if you engage with it. The people around you, your environment, your work all have mysteries to explore that distant fantasies cannot match.WarningDo not moralize about desire itself. It is the source of innovation and imagination. The goal is conscious direction, not suppression.
Chanel transformed from a coveting orphan into the most coveted fashion figure of the 20th century. She created mystery around herself, associated her designs with androgynous transgression, gave clothes to well-connected women to create visible desire, and launched Chanel No. 5 with a subliminal campaign of spraying stores and slipping unlabeled bottles into wealthy clients' bags.
After fourteen years out of business and wartime disgrace, Chanel launched a comeback at age seventy. She encouraged rumors but gave no interviews. Her first Paris show was panned. Unfazed, she targeted American women who matched her sensibility and within a year had reestablished herself globally.
Greene traces the pattern from the Old Testament through modern life: people who gain the Promised Land immediately start complaining, people in satisfying relationships imagine someone better, and workers fantasize about different careers. The pattern repeats because the brain inherently contrasts what is present with what is absent.
Greene tells the story of Coco Chanel, who grew up an orphan in a convent craving everything forbidden to her. After trying to satisfy her longings by becoming an actress and then a courtesan, she had an insight: instead of being the one who covets, she could become the object that others covet. By wearing men's clothing in a novel androgynous style, she created something women had never seen and desperately wanted. She then built an empire by consistently understanding what people desire but cannot have, from her revolutionary fashion to Chanel No. 5 perfume.