Dire Desire?

What really drives our desire as humans. What drives our wants as individuals and how individual is the drive? I mean why do we almost always feel a compulsive urge to get something we feel like we do not have. On paper, there is no homogeny to our wants. Since there are differences to each and every human technically, if each and every one of us was to pursue our individual desire we should end up pursuing vastly different things shouldn't we? 

According to me, none of our desires are truly ours. None of these things we yearn to appease stem from within us. Let me expound... I shall start by asking you what do you really want right now at this point in your life? After you answer that ask yourself the reason you want it so badly. Then finally ask yourself what is the main factor influencing that reason. When I did that assessment I found out that majorly, my current desires are influenced by my current environment. Things I see on my socials things I hear people talking about and things I see every day. That had me questioning the desires entirely, why do I feel the need to do things that I may not even want as much as I think I do? Am I an NPC? ( I personally think it's crazy how easy it is becoming to control human desire). 

I think our 'desires' stem from our competitive and social tendencies. We are a communal and sentient species. One of the blessings (or curse) of sentience is self-assessment and communal living comes with comparison. You mostly look at yourself in relation to the herd. The herd is more or less the blueprint of ideals whether it's a fear of ostracization or a love of fitting in, our brains are almost certainly wired like that. Buddhists claim that desire is the root of all evil. I have very vague knowledge of the Buddhists but I think one of their biggest teachings is that in order to become one with the universe you must first do away with desire. It's hard to argue with their logic because, at least to me, if you were driven by nihilism (belief in nothing) and you were comfortable existing in nothingness you would be at peace. The eradication of wants, it's actually an interesting pursuit, don't you think?