A guide you can use right now, no matter how old you are.

Three Kinds of Wanting

Every time you want something, that wanting comes from one of three places inside you. Think of it like being in a triangular boat with three motors, one attached to each corner, each pulling in a different direction. The boat goes wherever the combined pull of all three motors takes it. Most of the time, you do not get to see which motor is pulling hardest. You just feel the boat move.

Motor A: Your Body ("Appetites")

Your body tells you when it needs things. Hunger, thirst, feeling cold, needing sleep, needing safety. These wants go away once you get what your body needs. You eat, and the hunger stops. You sleep, and the tiredness goes away. Motor A has an off switch: once the need is met, the pulling stops.

Motor I: Your Curiosity and Joy ("Intrinsic Motivation")

Sometimes you want to do something just because doing it feels good, all by itself. Drawing a picture nobody will see. Solving a puzzle for fun. Learning how something works because you are curious. Playing music alone in your room. Motor I does not need anyone watching. It does not need a prize. Its pull gets stronger the more you follow it, not weaker.

Motor I has an off switch too, and it is called boredom. Boredom is what you feel when something you were enjoying has run its course: the puzzle is solved, or there is nothing left in it for you to find out or get better at, so the pulling stops, the same way the hunger stops once you have eaten. Boredom is not a problem to solve with company or entertainment from outside. It is a prompt to find the next thing that genuinely interests you, something you can do on your own without needing someone else there. When you find that thing, Motor I starts pulling again, on something new.

Motor M: Copying ("Mimetic Desire")

Sometimes you want something because someone else wants it, or because other people will see you have it. You did not want those shoes until your friend got them. You did not care about that game until it became popular. Motor M is a noticing machine. It notices whatever stands out around you, and its strongest trick is picking up wanting from the people around you, so fast and so silently that you never notice it happening. By the time you feel the pull, it already feels like it came from you.

Here is the important part: there is nothing wrong with Motor M. Everyone has it. It is part of being human. The problem is not that it exists. The problem is that you cannot feel it pulling. Motors A and I announce themselves clearly (your stomach growls, or you feel bored and restless). Motor M is silent. It copies without leaving a trace.

Because you cannot see the motors directly, and because your boat is always moving, you need ways to figure out which motor is doing most of the pulling. That is what the rest of this guide is for.

The Two Questions

Because Motor M hides, you need a way to find it. You cannot feel it directly, but you can figure out whether it is running by asking two questions. These work by ruling things out: if your wanting is not coming from Motor A, and not coming from Motor I, then it must be coming from Motor M, because those are the only three motors there are.

Question 1: Does my body need this?

Am I hungry, thirsty, cold, tired, in pain, or in danger? Would this wanting go away if my body felt fine?

If the answer is yes, Motor A is probably pulling hardest. That is a real physical need, and meeting it is important.

If the answer is no, move to Question 2.

Question 2: Would I still want this if nobody ever saw me do it, have it, or know about it?

Imagine every other person in the world has gone to sleep and will never find out. Do you still want it just as much?

If the answer is yes, Motor I is probably pulling hardest. You genuinely enjoy this for its own sake.

If the answer is no, Motor M is probably pulling hardest. The wanting depends on other people seeing, knowing, or caring. It was copied, not created.

Question 1: Does my body need this?	Question 2: Would I still want it if nobody knew?	What is probably pulling hardest?
Yes	Yes	Body need plus genuine enjoyment (Motors A and I)
Yes	No	Body need mixed with copying (Motors A and M)
No	Yes	Genuine enjoyment (Motor I)
No	No	Copying (Motor M)

Remember: This is not about judging yourself. There is no "bad" answer. Most of the things you want involve all three motors at once. The point is simply to notice which motor is pulling hardest, so you can decide for yourself whether to keep following that pull or not.

The Skill of Saying "I Don't Know"

Most people are uncomfortable with not knowing things. When a question comes up and we do not have an answer, our brains rush to fill the gap with something, anything, that feels like an answer. This happens with all kinds of questions: why did that happen, whose fault is it, what should I do, why do I want this, what does this mean. The brain grabs the first story that sounds right and locks it in, often before we have had time to think properly.

This is not laziness. It is how brains work. Gaps in understanding feel uncomfortable, the way an itch feels uncomfortable, and the brain scratches the itch by making up an explanation. The problem is that fast explanations are often wrong, and once they are in place, they feel true, which makes them very hard to swap out for better ones later.

The skill is simple to describe and difficult to practise: learn to sit with "I don't know" without rushing to fill the gap.

This applies to everything, not just the two questions above. When something goes wrong and you do not know why, resist the urge to grab the first explanation. When someone asks you a hard question, it is okay to say "I'm not sure yet." When you feel strongly about something and cannot explain why, that is useful information, not a failure.

"I don't know" is not ignorance. It is an open door. It keeps space for a better answer to arrive. The moment you fill that space with a fast guess, the door closes.

A Rule of Thumb: Where Did the Information Come From?

Not all information is equally trustworthy, and one of the most useful habits you can build is asking: how do I know this, and where did it come from?

Some information you can check for yourself. If you boil a kettle with a thermometer in it, you can watch it reach 100 degrees Celsius. You can run that test anywhere in the world, as many times as you like, and you will get the same answer. That information is solid because you know exactly where it came from: you watched it happen.

Other information comes to you through people. A friend tells you something. Where did they hear it? From another friend. Where did that person hear it? They are not sure. Nobody in the chain actually checked. The information might be perfectly correct. But you have no way of knowing, because nobody can point to the moment where someone actually tested it, saw it, or measured it.

The general rule of thumb is this: the more people the information has passed through, and the less you can trace it back to someone who actually checked, the more doubt you should have about whether it is correct.

This does not mean you should distrust everything anyone tells you. It means you should notice the difference between "I know this because I tested it" and "I know this because I heard it." The first deserves more confidence than the second. The second deserves a question: where did this actually come from?

There is a second half to the rule. Some of what you learn at school is true because somebody ran the test, even if you never ran it yourself. If you remember only the answer and not how it was checked, other people's doubts can wear it away over the years, a little at a time, without you ever deciding to change your mind. So when you learn something true, learn how people found out it was true, and when a doubt comes along, ask where the doubt came from before you let it count. Knowing the proof is there does nothing on its own. You have to use it, and keep using it, because remembering how something was checked is a skill you keep up, not a lesson you finish.

One more question is worth asking about anything you believe that could be checked. Would your friends, or your group, think less of you if you changed your mind about it? If they would, be extra careful, because that is a reason to keep believing something that has nothing to do with whether it is true.

This matters because Motor M does not just copy wanting. It copies beliefs too. Ideas can spread from person to person the same way desires do, picked up and passed along without anyone stopping to ask whether they are true. The more people who repeat something, the more it feels like a fact, even when nobody in the chain ever checked. Popular does not mean correct. It just means popular.

Saying "I don't know where that information actually comes from" is not being difficult. It is being careful. And careful is almost always better than fast.

Practising

You can practise this the way you practise anything:

When you catch yourself jumping to a conclusion, pause and ask: "Do I actually know this, or did my brain just hand me a story?"
When you feel the itch to have an answer right now, notice the itch without scratching it.
When someone tells you something confidently, ask yourself (or them): "Where does that come from? Who actually checked?"
When someone else says "I don't know," treat it as honesty, not weakness.

Watching What You Do Over Time

Words can mislead, including the words you say to yourself. But patterns of behaviour are harder to fake.

The two questions are useful in the moment, but a single check can be wrong. You might convince yourself that you would still want something in private when, honestly, you would not. Or you might dismiss something as Motor M when it is genuinely Motor I. One snapshot is not enough.

The fix is simple: pay attention over time. Instead of relying on a single moment of self-examination, watch what you actually do across days and weeks, and notice patterns.

Here is what to look for:

Does the wanting go away once you get the thing? If you wanted new headphones, and once you have them the wanting stops completely, that is Motor A or Motor I at work. They have off switches. If you get the headphones and immediately start wanting the next model, that is Motor M. It resets the target rather than turning off.

Does the wanting change when the audience changes? If you love drawing when you are alone in your room, that is Motor I. If you only feel like drawing when you know someone will see the result, that is Motor M pulling. Track this across several weeks: does your interest survive in private, or does it need an audience?

Does the wanting follow what other people do? If you trace back when you started caring about something and it lines up with when a friend, a celebrity, or a social media account started caring about it, that is Motor M’s fingerprint. Motor I does not track what other people do. Motor A does not care what is popular.

Does the wanting deepen or just repeat? Motor I gets more interesting the more you do it. You notice new details, develop new skills, find new layers. Motor M does not deepen. It just moves to the next target, or gets louder about the same one.

You do not need a notebook (though one helps). You just need the habit of looking back. Once a week, ask yourself: what did I spend time wanting this week, and which motor does the pattern point to? Over time, the patterns become obvious in a way that single moments never are.

The Presumption Against Scapegoating

When things go wrong for a group of people (a school, a town, a country), a pattern shows up so reliably it might as well be a law of nature: someone gets blamed.

The blamed person or group becomes the explanation for everything that is wrong. If we could just get rid of them, or punish them, or silence them, the problems would stop. This feels obvious and urgent. It feels like the answer.

Almost always, it is not.

The reason is structural, not moral. Real problems (poverty, conflict, unfairness) usually come from the way systems are set up, not from any single person or group being evil. Blaming a person is easier than understanding a system, because people are visible and systems are invisible. Your brain prefers a visible cause, even a wrong one, over an invisible cause, even a right one.

Before the Three Tests: Check the Grievance

Before you evaluate whether someone else is responsible for a problem, stop and ask three things about the grievance itself.

Step 1: Is this grievance actually mine?

Did I personally experience the harm? Can I describe what specifically happened to me, in concrete terms? Or if the harm was not to me, is there a real person I can name, and a real thing they lost that their body needed or that their own work and interests needed, which I saw myself or heard from them?

Or did I pick up the idea that "these people are a problem" from the people around me, from social media, from conversations where everyone seemed to agree? Do I actually know anyone who was directly harmed by the blamed group, or do I just know people who are also angry at them?

Motor M does not just copy wanting. It copies blame. If a group of people around you have all decided that a certain person or group is the cause of a problem, that belief can spread from person to person the same way a desire does: quickly, silently, and without anyone checking whether it is true. By the time you feel it, it feels like your own conviction. But if you trace it back, you may find that nobody in the chain, including you, was actually harmed by the people being blamed. The belief was passed along socially, and it gathered weight through repetition, not through evidence.

The rule of thumb from earlier applies here: the more people the belief has passed through, and the less you can trace it back to someone who actually checked, the more doubt you should have. If you cannot point to a specific harm that happened to you, or to a real person you can name whose harm you saw yourself or heard about from them, and if the people who told you about the problem also cannot point to a specific harm that happened to them, then what you are holding is probably a copied belief, not a verified one.

Step 2: Does my body need the thing I am being denied?

Am I going hungry, losing shelter, being put in danger, or being blocked from something my body genuinely requires?

Step 3: Would I still care about this if nobody ever knew?

Would I still feel the loss if it were completely invisible to everyone else, if no one could ever compare my situation to anyone else's?

How to read the results:

If Step 1 reveals that the grievance is not yours, that you picked it up from a social group with no way to trace it back to a real person and a real harm, then stop. You are carrying a copied belief, and the three tests below are not yet relevant. The first thing to do is apply the "Where Did the Information Come From?" rule. Who actually checked? What specific evidence exists? If no one can point to verified, specific harm, the belief may be nothing more than social copying.
If Step 1 is satisfied (the grievance is genuinely yours, or belongs to a real person you can name who experienced specific harm, and you saw it yourself or heard it from them), check Steps 2 and 3. If the answer to at least one is yes, the grievance has a real foundation (a body need being unmet, a genuine engagement being damaged, or both), and you should proceed to the three tests below to evaluate whether your target is the right one.
If the grievance is genuinely yours but the answer to both Steps 2 and 3 is no, then what you are feeling is probably Motor M pulling. You want something because of how it looks compared to what someone else has, not because your body needs it or because you genuinely love it for its own sake. Removing the person you are blaming will not fix that feeling, because the feeling does not come from them. It comes from comparison itself, and comparison will simply find a new target.

And one more thing, which matters more than the check itself. If the grievance passes, that does not mean you have permission to go after anyone. It means you have found something real that needs fixing, and what fixing it looks like is getting people what they were missing: the person harmed first, and then, if the person who did the harm was themselves short of something they needed, them too. That last part sounds wrong and it is not. You cannot undo what already happened. What you can do is stop the same thing happening next time, and people who have what they need do less harm than people who do not.

None of this means the feeling is not real. Copied grievances feel exactly as real as personal ones. Losses that come from comparison feel exactly as urgent as physical ones. That is the whole reason these checks matter: your feelings will not sort this out for you, because Motor M makes everything feel like it came from you. The checks are a substitute for what feelings alone cannot do.

The Three Tests

If your grievance has passed the check above (it is genuinely yours, and it involves a body need or a genuine engagement being harmed), then evaluate whether the person or group you are blaming is actually the right target.

Test 1: The Immediacy Test. Is this person or group literally and directly blocking you from what you need, right now? Not "they benefit from the system" or "they have more than me," but are they physically, right now, standing in your way?

Test 2: The Mechanism Test. Can you describe the specific, clear way in which this person or group is causing the harm? Not "they are part of the problem" or "it is obvious," but exactly how, step by step, does their action produce your specific loss?

Test 3: The Builder Test. Did this person or group actually design and build the system that is causing your problem? Not "are they part of the system" or "do they benefit from the system," but did they personally create it, put it in place, and set it running?

Most of the systems that cause widespread harm (expensive housing, unfair job markets, unequal access to resources) were not designed by any single person or group. They emerged from thousands of separate decisions, none of which was intended to produce the result. The people who are most visible inside these systems are usually participants, not builders. They may benefit from the system without having created it.

A common mistake is to think that benefiting from a system is the same as building it. It is not. Many people benefit from systems they did not create, did not choose, and would change if they could. If you catch yourself thinking "well, they didn't build it, but they're benefiting from it, so they're still responsible," stop and ask: is benefiting from something the same as designing it? If the answer is no (and it almost always is), then what you are looking at is a participant, not a builder, and targeting them will not dismantle the system.

If the answer to any of the three tests is "no" or "I'm not sure," then blaming that person or group is probably not going to solve the problem. The blame might feel satisfying. It might feel righteous. But if they did not build the system, targeting them leaves the system intact. The real question becomes: what would actually fix it?

This does not mean no one is ever responsible. Sometimes a person really is directly, specifically, and by their own design causing harm, and all three tests come back "yes." The tests are not designed to protect wrongdoers. They are designed to protect you from wasting your energy on the wrong target when a real solution is waiting to be found.

Asking, Not Demanding

There is a difference between asking someone for something and demanding it. The difference is not about tone of voice. It is about what happens when they say no.

Asking is when you tell someone what you need or want, and they can say no without anything bad happening. No guilt. No cold shoulder. No “well, I guess you don’t care about me.” No update to some invisible scoreboard of who owes what to whom. They say no, and the relationship is exactly the same as it was before you asked.

Demanding is when saying no comes with a cost. Guilt. Blame. A shift in how you treat them. The silent message that they have failed some test. That cost might be obvious (“after everything I’ve done for you”) or subtle (a slight withdrawal of warmth, a look of disappointment designed to be noticed). Either way, saying no is not really free.

Motor M is almost always involved in demanding, because the cost of refusal is a status cost: you are a bad friend, a bad sibling, a bad person. That is Motor M’s currency.

The important point: nobody owes you anything, and that is a good thing.

Food, somewhere safe to sleep, medical care when they are ill: those are different. Everyone must have them, and that is not one person's job to provide to another. It is something everyone needs to work together to make sure no-one goes without. Everything after that is what this section is about.

This sounds harsh, but it is the opposite. If nobody can demand things from you, then every time someone helps you, they are doing it because they genuinely want to, not because you pressured them into it. And every time you help someone, it comes from your own choice, not from guilt or fear of what they will think of you. Motor I (relatedness, competence, autonomy) is driving the help, not Motor M (obligation, scoreboard-keeping, status).

Here is how it works in practice:

Asking is good. Let people know what you need. That is how needs become visible. Just make sure the other person can say no without you punishing them for it, even subtly.

Demanding is the problem. The moment you make someone feel bad for saying no, you have turned an ask into a demand. The giveaway is the consequence: if they would feel guilty, ashamed, or worried about the relationship after refusing, it was a demand.

Helping from your own choice is best of all. When you notice someone could use help and you have the ability to give it, doing so without being asked is the strongest form of genuine care. It runs on Motor I rather than Motor M.

A Quick Check for “They Owe Me” Feelings

When you feel like someone owes you something, run the two questions from earlier:

Does my body need the thing they are “supposed to” provide? (If yes, that is a real need, and there are proper ways to get it met, but guilt-tripping one person is not the right mechanism.)
Would I still feel this resentment if nobody else could ever find out about the situation? (If the resentment would evaporate once the imagined audience disappears, it was Motor M all along.)

Most “they owe me” feelings fail both tests. The actionable response is not to demand harder. It is to notice the Motor M origin, let go of the claim, and redirect your energy toward helping where you can, from your own capacity and your own choice.

There Is No Such Thing As a Normal Person

A lot of hurt comes from one simple idea: that there is such a thing as a "normal person," and that you are supposed to be like them.

People say things like:

– "Normal kids like this." – "Normal people don't feel that way." – "Why can't you just be normal?"

It sounds like they are describing a fact, the way "water boils at 100 degrees Celsius" is a fact. But they are not. They are repeating a picture that came from copying, not from measuring.

What looks "normal" in any group is just whatever most visible people in that group seem to be doing, feeling, or wanting. If you moved to a different school, a different country, or a different time in history, the picture of "normal" would change. Your brain would quietly copy the new picture and start calling that "normal" instead.

Motor M loves the word "normal."

– It turns copying into a rule: you are supposed to want what they want, feel what they feel, do what they do. – It turns differences into problems: if you do not match the picture, something must be wrong with you.

But there is no such thing as a normal person. There are only people with different mixes of:

– Motor A (bodies with different needs), – Motor I (interests and joys that light up in different places), and – Motor M (copying from different groups at different times).

When you catch yourself thinking "Am I normal?", try swapping the question:

– "What is my body actually needing here?" (Motor A) – "What do I honestly enjoy, even when nobody is watching?" (Motor I) – "What might I be copying, just because it looks important to other people?" (Motor M)

The point is not to pass some test called "normal." The point is to understand what is really happening with your three motors, and to take care of yourself and others from there.

Putting It Together

The Knowledge Patch is not a single tool but seven things that work together:

Learning the vocabulary (the three motors: Motor A, Motor I, Motor M). Without names for the three kinds of wanting, you cannot even ask the right questions. This is the foundation everything else depends on.
The Two Questions. A quick check you can run on any desire to figure out which motor is pulling hardest.
The skill of saying "I don't know." The trained ability to hold a question open instead of grabbing the first answer, on any topic, not just about wanting. This includes the habit of asking where information actually came from before trusting it.
Watching behaviour over time. Words can mislead (including the words you say to yourself), but patterns of behaviour are harder to fake. Does the wanting go away in private? Does it come back every time a certain person posts on social media? Does it fade once you have eaten or slept? Watching what you actually do, over days and weeks, is more reliable than asking yourself how you feel in a single moment.
The grievance check and the three tests before blaming. When a group starts pointing fingers, slow down. Check whether the grievance is actually yours, whether it involves a body need or genuine engagement, and then apply the Immediacy, Mechanism, and Builder tests before joining in. If the three tests come back "no," ask the real question: what would actually fix this?
Asking, not demanding. Nobody owes you anything, and you do not owe anyone compliance on pain of guilt. When you need something, ask cleanly. When someone asks you, feel free to say no without guilt. When you notice someone needs help and you have the capacity, help from your own choice. The difference between demanding and asking is not politeness; it is architecture: demands run on Motor M, asks and freely chosen help run on Motor I.
Remembering there is no such thing as a normal person. "Normal" is just a copied picture, not a real measuring stick. When you notice yourself or someone else being judged by that stick, swap the question "Is this normal?" for "What are the three motors actually doing here?"

None of this requires you to become a different person. It does not require you to stop wanting things or to judge yourself for wanting them. It asks only that you notice, as often as you can, which motor is pulling hardest, and then decide for yourself what to do about it.

That noticing is the patch.

End of Appendix 18A.

The Knowledge Patch for Children