A whole lot of what we do—probably more than we’d care to admit, even to ourselves—is the result of social signals, both received and sent.

That’s the basic premise of signaling theory, at least.

The idea is that we learn how to behave by watching other humans, both when we’re babies (mimicking the adults around us) and when we’re adults (trying to figure out how to speak and stand and dress in different contexts).

This may be the source of many of our wants and assumed needs (according to an overlapping theory called mimetic desire), but it’s also how we learn what signals we should be sending back out into the world: how to express who we are, what we care about, and what groups we’re a part of, among other things.

So over time we figure out how to dress, how to act, how to speak, but also what to value, what metrics to use when gauging things like success and attractiveness, and what moral stances are appropriate, based on the groups of which we’re a part (and of which we’d like to join).

This is something I think about a lot because it (theoretically) shapes who we are, including what we buy, how much or little we pursue wealth, what sorts of relationships we pursue, and so on.

Like most people (I suspect), I don’t like the idea that there are invisible threads pulling me in different directions, nor that my opinions, my preferences, and my stances on things might be inherited (at least to some degree), rather than being the consequence of my own good, thoughtful, unique and special judgement.

That said, I think this can be a useful framing, especially when assessing our own behaviors and where they might have originated.

There’s a good chance, for instance, that the things we want are actually things other people want, and we’ve come to want them because we desire association with those other people, not because we would truly benefit from whatever it is we’ve decided we desperately need to possess.

It could be that our time, energy, and resources would be better spent on something else: something that might not align us as closely (signal-wise) with those people from whom we perhaps subconsciously gleaned the idea of acquiring what we covet, but which may be more directly and powerfully beneficial for who we are underneath all those signals (assuming, of course, we’re not just signals all the way down, which is unnervingly possible).

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