121: Luke Burgis, Author of Wanting

Speaker A: Welcome to Square One. This week, we took a turn on the normal type of episode we have. I chatted with the author of one of the most influential books I've read over the past year. It's called Wanting, and the author is Luke Burgess. We all want things in life, but it's hard to pinpoint where those desires necessarily come from. Luke took a deep dive into the origins of desire in his book, and he shares frameworks that give perspectives on how we come to want certain things in life and how we can transform our relationship with desire in ways that allow us to live a more aligned, full, fulfilling existence with other people. This was an especially interesting episode to me because this mentality and mindset applies as much to our professional lives in thinking about how to operate a business or invest in a business as it does to our personal life in leading a fulfilling life. Welcome, Luke. Thanks so much for joining me.

Speaker B: Hey, Ramin. Good to be here.

Speaker A: Yeah. So, Luke, we're going to talk about your book Wanting today. Um, and the concept behind it. It's this really interesting concept called Mimetic Desires. Um, but before we jump into that topic, I want you to set the stage with this experience that kicked off this exploration for you. Um, it's 2008. You're about to sell your company to Zappos. In your book, you have this line that really hooked me, and I'm going to read it. There would be no life changing exit, no windfall, no second home in Sicily. My company was on the rocks. Without the deal, I'd be bankrupt. As the full import of how my life was about to change sank in, something changed. I felt relieved. It was those last three words that hooked me. To read the rest of the 200 pages, just unpack the context of what was going on in your life at that point in time and, uh, how that kind of kickstarted this exploration into memetic desires.

Speaker B: I felt relieved. Um, it was a very unexpected emotion, uh, which surprised me. And getting to the bottom of why I felt this unexpected emotion, um, really drove me after that deal fell through. So, just to take you back one step to the Zappos deal. Uh, my company, Fit Fuel, had grown really fast, but it was 2008 and we were just burning through cash, and I knew that we needed to do something. We either needed to raise money or we needed to sell, and nobody wanted to give us money. Um, in mid 2008, everybody was pretty spooked. So Tony and I had been knocking around the idea of joining forces for a while, and behind the scenes, I was feverishly negotiating, um, a deal for Zappos to buy my company, um, and just hoping that it would happen, uh, soon enough. And meanwhile, I was totally immersed in, um, sort of the Zappos life and culture. I was probably the person who was, um. I don't know. There's probably some Zappos employees that I thought that I was too. I was hanging out with around the company so much, um, but something seemed kind of off for me. Um, I'd sort of lost excitement about the company that I started. So we were an E commerce company. We sold health and nutrition products. Something was off. And selling the company to Tony sort of felt like, um, an out or a way for me to sort of, like, not deal with deeper issues, uh, in my life. For instance, why is this now the second company that I've started, um, that I've grown, um, where I've lost my passion after a year or so? I want to figure out what that's all about because I don't want to keep starting companies that I don't want to run anymore. So to make a really long story short, um, Tony and I. Tony gave me word that the board had approved this sale. We went and celebrated on a Las Vegas strip. We were both based in Vegas at the time. And the next day, I get this really strange phone call from Alfred Lynn, who was the CFO of the company, telling me that the board had essentially changed their minds. On the plane back to San Francisco. They had flown into Vegas for the board meeting. And that feeling of relief that I had, um, was. It was sort of. I felt a freedom for the first time, uh, in a very long time. And certainly, um. I mean, the last time I felt that free was probably when I was a kid. I went through the hoops of high school, was all about getting into the best college, and then college was all about getting the best job. And then, um, right into this sort of startup mentality of constantly comparing myself and looking at everybody else's cap tables and who their investors were and how I was doing. Um, and I felt this freedom. I'd been freed from some kind of compulsion, and I couldn't put my finger on what that was. And it seemed like something bigger than myself. Like, I wouldn't have had the power to stop and do this kind of introspection on my own. I was sort of, um, given this opportunity to, like, redecide what it was that I really wanted to do. So it's like, okay, the deal fell through. This is not going to happen. Um, now it seems like I can do anything I want. And continuing to run this company that I actually have sort of lost my passion about didn't, um, feel like something I was being forced to do. It felt like I gave myself permission to explore what I really wanted to do.

Speaker A: Yep. I wanted to start with that story because it gives us a really tangible example, I think, of this base level hidden force, right, that you talk a lot about that permeates kind of our world, which is this concept of mimetic desires and mimesis. So maybe we can give, maybe we can kind of double click into that. Right? What is mimetic desire? Maybe tell us a little bit more about the concept, you know, the theory of mimesis and its origins.

Speaker B: Mimetic desire is fundamentally, um, desire for something or someone, desire for an object in which the desire for the object, um, doesn't come from anything, um, inherent in that object itself, Even though we usually think that it does. Um, it is desire that is mediated by a third person, a third party, um, that is influencing and shaping our desire for that particular object. So it's mediated desire. And this is very different than the way that we normally think about how we want things. Um, as rational adults, uh, we usually convince ourselves, um, of all of the reasons why it was smart to pursue this thing and heavily discount, uh, the social factors that are involved. Um, and in particular the way that mimesis shapes our desire. The word mimesis just simply comes from the Greek word meaning to imitate. It's a form of imitative desire. It means that we imitate the uh, desires of other people far more than we realize. And this happens on a spectrum. Uh, certain things can be pursued almost entirely due to mimetic desire. I would argue that my wanting to, uh, you know, my wanting to major in finance and work on Wall street at, ah, the undergrad business school that I went to was almost entirely mimetic desire for me. Um, whereas there are other things that you know, were less mimetic. So just that awareness, um, is really important. Um, it sort of takes a certain amount of um, sobriety to be able to look at yourself and realize that, hey, I have been influenced by my friends and my family and what I read about in the news, um, and then seen the ways in which I have. And that was one of the things that that experience with Tony Hsieh and Zappos helped me do is reexamine my life and think about my desires and even the way that they were shaping me as an Entrepreneur.

Speaker A: Yeah. And so where do these mimetic desires come from? Right? Is this something as humans, and maybe this is a little bit more of kind of like psychological academia.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: Is this something that, you know, we're born with? Is it innate? Is it a function of our environment? Kind of the classic nurture versus nature framework, like where, where do these mimetic desires come from and how do they get shaped?

Speaker B: It seems to be something that we're born with. It's just part of who we are, um, part of human nature, I would say. And, you know, this concept, by the way, comes from a thinker named Rene Girard, um, a man with a fascinating life. He was a French academic who sort of discovered mimetic desire starting in literature and then spent, you know, the next 50 years of his life seeing it everywhere and, um, showing the different ways that it shows up and everything from the economy, um, to geopolitics, um, but it did discover that it's innate. And the science is showing that. Um, there's been some fascinating studies with, uh, babies that show that they're imitating as soon as they leave the womb. And in fact, the imitation starts before they've even left them. One of my favorite studies is just about the way that babies cry. Uh, and, you know, different babies born in different cultures cry differently because they're essentially imitating the intonations of their mother's language which they heard in the womb. So, for instance, um, Chinese or Cantonese, Mandarin or Cantonese, highly tonal languages. German is not. So a baby that's born to you, ah, know, a mother that speaks Cantonese, um, cries in these with far greater range. Um, I find that fascinating. And it goes to show how hardwired, um, our powers of imitation are biologically, um, as we get babies. There's multiple studies that show that babies do this. The really interesting thing though, is that we seem to imitate more than just surface level things. Of course, we learn language through imitation. Um, we learn cultural norms through imitation. Uh, we learn how to dress through imitation. Seems that from the time that children are toddlers, though, they're reading underneath the surface level, um, and imitating what they believe other people want. Um, they can even read deception. And if somebody says that they want something, um, even a toddler can see the thing that they really want, um, through body language, like the eyes. Um, like if I'm salivating and really hungry and I tell that toddler that I'm not hungry, um, they would be able to read beneath that and realize that I am right. So we Read the desires of other people and the mimetic desire comes in because we're constantly reading what other people want and using that to calibrate our own desires. And we get better and better at doing that as we get older and as we move into adulthood. And, and we also get better and better at, um, lying to ourselves and convincing ourselves that we're not doing it. Because there's something a little bit embarrassing as an adult to think that, uh, I might be making these decisions based on imitation.

Speaker A: Uh, I think the latter point is especially interesting, especially if you kind of layer that against the typical ways we think about frameworks of desire in society. So, you know, when we, when we talk about self actualization or desire in society, you know, folks that are listening are going to be very familiar with. We, we often talk about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Right. And there's this kind of very clean linear pathway of going from one phase of actualization to the next. Um, the Gerard kind of thought process around this, and you referred to Renee Gerard earlier, is slightly different. Right. It's a little bit more unstructured and a little bit messier. Maybe you can break that down and kind of explain, you know, what the, uh, what actually the basis of this kind of concept of desire and the chronology of that is in the real world.

Speaker B: Sure. So I talked quite a bit in the opening of my book about Maslow's hierarchy. And I have to say I don't believe. I can't think of any place where Gerard used the Maslow framework. That was my way of understanding mimetic desire. And I tried to, uh, unpack it a bit by contrasting mimetic desire to Maslow's hierarchy because most of us learned it in high school. Um, so just as a refresher, um, Maslow's hierarchy is depicted as a pyramid, um, with a few different layers on it. So there's the base layer of base needs, our physiological needs. Um, once those are met, the next layer of the pyramid are safety needs. Um, things like people, after they've met their physiological needs, they're not starving, they want a roof over their head. You know, that's an example of a safety need. And then it moves up from there. And then the next layer is typically love and belonging. Um, after that is esteem, something that people need. And then the top, um, little section of the pyramid is self actualization. So the issue with Maslow's hierarchy for me is both that it's way too rigid of a structure and the shape of it. Uh, so it sort of gives the impression that as you fulfill the physiological and safety needs, that you're sort of moving up the ladder, up the pyramid in this very sort of clean way. Um, almost like a video game. Like, you sort of beat this level and now you're on the next level. Um, and it gets narrower and narrower as you move up. As if the needs become less and less and more and more focused. Right? And you just zeroing in on these very specific things. But that's simply not the way. I mean basic, like observation and experience. It's not, it's not the way that people actually behave. Um, I know incredibly, uh, wealthy people that have met all of their physiological needs and safety needs. And what happens is they begin wanting, like, weirder and weirder things. Actually. Um, so what. The way that I like to visualize memetic desire is like I say, okay, Maslow, I'll give you the first two levels of the pyramid, all right? Physiological needs and safety needs. Um, after those first two levels though, we might as well cut off the pyramid because we're no longer really in the realm of needs anymore. All of those other things that we talked about, love, um, and belonging, esteem, self actualization, those are more properly called desires. And, um, this is where mimetic m. Desire really, really comes in. Like, we pursue those things not as needs, we pursue those things as desires. And it's sort of like a Pandora's box because we live in this world where there's billions of different desires being modeled to us at all times. And if you don't have a very clear framework, you never really thought seriously about, you know, the, the boundaries of your desire, um, then you're going to be pulled in a billion different directions. Right along with all of those different models of desire that are out there.

Speaker A: Yeah. I think the reason that that explanation versus Maslow, for me at least, really resonated was because I actually think there's even one further level, Luke, which is can we cleanly delineate between needs and desires? Right. And so even in the needs bucket, right. Um, you know, and you, you called this out as an example in the book. I thought this was a really good example. I mean, think about water. Right now, you can have the basic need for water, or you could have the basic need for kind of oxygen or room in space or so. But think about how many kind of branded waters we have now, right? And so the confluence kind of between why do we want a, ah, Fiji water or smart water, different types of waters. Um, I think that also Blends between core need. Right. Like need to actually have water and kind of quench thirst versus mimesis around kind of a branding of water or some sort of affinity we're trying to draw or affiliation we're trying to draw, um, through a specific water brand, for example.

Speaker B: No doubt. I mean, I think there are fundamental needs in the world. We still have needs, but for most people, um, especially, um, Americans, for instance, um, almost all needs have become desires. Needs can easily become desires. And one way to know the difference between the two, um, is whether you have a preference. Um, um, so if I'm really thirsty, uh, and I'm like, hey, Romine, um, you know, can I have a glass of water? And you give me a glass of tap water, and I'm like, well, no, actually, I wanted San Pellegrino. Um, well, that's clearly. That's not a need that I have. That's a very specific desire.

Speaker A: Right, exactly. You have this phrase I really like, and I think it gets at the heart of this idea. You said what gravity is to physics, mimesis is to psychology. Maybe you can unpack that and break that down.

Speaker B: Yeah. It means that mimesis, or mimetic desire is everywhere, and it exists in the space between people. Um, sort of. One way to think about gravity is in this relational context. Right. Um, gravitational force depends on the distance between objects and the mass of the objects. And mimetic desire is very similar. It doesn't, um. It doesn't exist in me alone. It always exists in a. In a relationship that I have with. With someone else, with another person. Um, doesn't even have to be a real person. Right. It could be a relationship that I have with a character in a, uh, Don DeLillo novel that I read when I was in eighth grade or something like that, where this fictional character is, like, modeling some way of talking or being cool to me. And, um, I forgot how big of an influence it is on me. So it's. It exists in the space between people, and it's this powerful psychic force. And as different people come in and out of my world, they come in and out of my life. Um, not just in real life. Um, people come in and out of my life, uh, every second while I'm scrolling Twitter or on social media. Um, they affect the different ways that I'm thinking about wanting things, um, usually on a subconscious level. So thinking of a medic desire as this force, like gravity, I think is really helpful. And gravity just is. It is what it is. Um, I don't think that gravity is, um, good or bad, um, it exists. Um, you know, if we don't know that it exists and we don't do anything about it, if I never work out, um, you know, I end up, it eventually like takes over and you know, forces me to does bad things to my spine and will make it harder for me to walk in my old age. Um, whereas we can also use gravity to do things like, um, catapult ourselves to different planets. Okay. So it's just understanding that the force is there, understanding that the force is all around us, and then just understanding, um, how to live with it, um, and make m it so that it doesn't actually cause us more harm than good.

Speaker A: Yeah. It probably makes sense to pause for a minute before going deeper and talk a little bit about the changing world context we're living in today. You just alluded to it, um, with social media, you know, real time visibility and kind of seemingly every into everything and everyone, it's not as obvious to me whether that helps or hurts our memetic desires. And I think part of that is for another concept you talked about, which is called rival risk desire. Um, maybe we can talk about rival risk desire first and then unpack that a little bit. And then I'd actually love to dig in a little bit on this kind of changing world context and, um, you know, how amplification of information and the velocity of information increases, how that actually affects mimetic desire. But maybe we can talk about the rival risk desire concept first, because I think that's a good, actually foundational concept for folks to understand before we go into, you know, kind of what's going on right now.

Speaker B: I think it leads very naturally into what's going on right now, um, especially with social media.

Speaker A: So

Speaker B: Girard thought that rivalry was at the very heart of social relations, is at the very heart of human relationships. Um, we don't normally think of rivalry as playing that big of a role in the world. Um, usually when we talk about rivalry, it's something at a distance. Um, you know, we could talk about, um, maybe it's too soon for this. Like Will Smith, Chris Rock. Um, you can talk about, um, rivalries out there, right? Like other people's sports. Right? Talk about sports rivalries. M We don't typically think of rivalry existing at the heart of many human relationships, even ones that we consider relatively normal, um, relationships, um, in office space or in a startup or something like that. And Gerard said that rivalry was at the heart of human relationships because mimetic desire is at the Heart of human relationships. And you only have to. It's only a little bit of second order thinking here to see that mimetic desire naturally leads to rivalry when we don't realize that we're in a memetic relationship. Because if I am adopting, ah, someone else's desire as my own, if somebody has modeled the desire to me, um, for instance, to work on Wall street, which, um, was the case for me when I went to Stern, um, that student who got the job at Goldman, um, gave me a desire to get the job at Goldman and he's in my class and he has de facto become my rival because there's only so many slots, um, and they only accept whatever, two summer analysts a year, and it's either me or him. Um, so that mimetic desire leading to rivalry is kind of the natural default mode of mimetic desire. And it's why Girard thought that rivalry was really, ah, at the heart of relationships. Um, now one of the things that I think, um, technology has done in particular social media has just given us exposure to so many models of desire out there on a daily basis. If you're one who uses it regularly, um, and thinking of, first of all, just understanding that everybody that you interact with online and offline can be a model of desire to you is step number one. That's a huge realization to realize that, um, I didn't just magically start to want a Tesla last year. Um, there's like, I don't know, there's a handful of people that I follow in real life and online, um, and Elon Musk is one of them who clearly mediate the desire to, for a Tesla to me. Um, and social media has basically just. We now have billions of models of desire. And I do think that it's basically exacerbated. I think it's made us a more rivalrous culture. Um, because they're micro rivalries, right? They're not huge rivalries, they're micro rivalries. Um, like I want my take to be sharper than this other guy's take or whatever.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: That's a little form of rivalry. Um, it's not a very dangerous one. I mean, it could be dangerous to me personally, could make me miserable. Um, so, you know, there's this funny thing. I always have like a barbell, um, view of a lot of things taking shape and especially of technology where it's like, this could be both like the best of all worlds and the worst of all worlds at the same. It's like simultaneously at the Same time. So I think that social media is exacerbating mimetic rivalries and relationships. Um, and at the same time, it sort of made them less dangerous because they're just stupid little micro rivalries. And in a way, it's sort of like diffuse things. So, like, we're not out in the streets fighting duels. We're just on Twitter, like, giving hot takes about whatever hit the news.

Speaker A: Yep. It's interesting because, uh, one of the things that was really revelatory when I was reading the book was you made this comment that once you understand memetic desires or memetic theory, you start to see it kind of everywhere around you. And as I was reading the book, more and more, kind of more and more real life examples started coming up in my head. Right. Whether it was rival risk or whether it was, you know, um, different kind of, uh, spectrums of needs or desires or so on and so forth. There was a really cool example you charted out in the book, and it was specifically related to Peter Thiel. Um, I'd love for you to maybe use as a microcosm for this next question, but you, you said that Peter Thiel, obviously, in tech, we all kind of revere Thiel to be highly contrarian. What was interesting to me in the book, what you wrote, was that Peter Thiel himself believes that he's likely more subject to mimesis than others. Uh, I thought that was really interesting just as a nugget. But then what extrapolated from that was it sounds like a lot of the key decisions he's made over the years, whether it was merging PayPal with Elon Musk's company or investing in Facebook, et cetera, they all kind of came back down to this foundational theory of mimesis. And I found that really interesting. Maybe you can explain to us a little bit more just kind of how Thiel has used that concept of mimesis, uh, in a business environment. And we can maybe abstract that to mimesis as a framework for decision making in business or operating in markets, investing, et cetera.

Speaker B: Sure. Well, Peter was Girard's, um, mentee, you could say, while Gerard was at Stanford, while Peter was at Stanford. And Peter never took his class, um, because Gerard wasn't in the philosophy department, um, but he had heard about Rene Girard holding little circles and lunches, um, I think when he was in his junior year. And Peter started to go to these, um, and then, you know, became friends with Rene Girard. And they remained friends until Girard died in 2015. I think Peter even attended his funeral. So massive influence in his life. Um, well known Gerardian 0um to 1. Peter's uh, book is thoroughly, um, Girardian in nature. I mean, like a lot of the things he's talking about in that book, um, you know, when I'm reading it, at least I'm like, whoa, like this is like straight from Gerard. Um, so, you know, it's clearly informed his thinking from a very young age. Um, you know, I think it helped him. His story is not, uh, uh, I mean other than his success as an entrepreneur, he underwent like some very similar experiences to me. Um, you know, he planned to be a lawyer and he sort of realized that he was just on this hyper memetic track that he had been most of his life. Like, why did he want to go to Stanford so bad in the first place? Um, Stanford's a great school, but he just was like checking himself and he saw this inside of himself. And I think even in the early days of PayPal, he began to remember, um, sort of how mimetic he was and how memetic people are in general. More importantly, people are and did make certain decisions, um, that would, um, mitigate Mimetic M rivalry. Um, so I think he merged with um, Elon's company because he realized it would just be a zero sum game fight to the death, uh, and that it would be better, um, to save both companies rather than destroy both of them. Um, he has mentioned that he's been very intentional about not letting people sort of compete for the same things within the company. He likes people to have clearly defined paths forward where they can develop, um, on their own track. Um, otherwise things can just become extremely rivalry. So mitigating rivalries within a company. And he told me, um, pretty much straight out that, that he invested in Facebook because he was betting on mimesis. And there's this kind of idea that if you want to be a good investor, you have to be anti mimetic. And there's something, I think, true to that. Right. I'm not really sure how you generate alpha if you're just constantly mimicking what everybody else is doing. Um, it's like, uh, buying the index fund. I mean, you're just imitating the other people that have already priced capital. You're not pricing it yourself. So you have to be anti memetic in some sense. But there are times when you want to bet on mimesis. Like he did with Facebook. He realized that this was not going away anytime soon. Um, and he Bet on it. So I think maybe the takeaway there is that um, there's a relationship between anti mimetic decisions and mimetic behavior that goes hand in hand. And I guess the best investments are the ones that are antimemetic at the beginning and then generate a ton of mimesis after, uh, the investment has been made. And we see that in the NFT space right now.

Speaker A: Exactly right. You see something early on, you have conviction, you have belief in it. But the only way that something gets mass adoption by definition is there has to be some layer of mimesis that comes into it and comes into effect. I think the most extreme extrapolations actually have this concept. I was thinking about this as you were talking are probably, we saw this in the markets during COVID especially were meme stocks and then a lot of what's going on in crypto. In fact, it shows how mimesis can have this interesting non equilibrium effect of things overextending on the way up and actually overshooting on the way down. Maybe you can talk a little bit more about that concept of volatility with mimesis, because I think for things to actually overextend and go beyond or for things to overshoot on the way down, um, there's this element of mimesis. This is why we get bubbles, crashes, so on and so forth as well.

Speaker B: Yeah, Girard, he actually called the stock market the most memetic institution in the world. And he said that when analysts say that psychology is getting into the market, he put that in quotes and laughed. He said, well, they don't really know it, but they're talking about memetic desire, which always tends to distort reality. Um, and mimetic desire has this distorting effect. Um, and things can move very quickly when a certain tipping point of mimesis is reached. We overshoot on the way up, we overshoot on the way down. And Girard said that often the crash happens a lot faster than on the way up. And um, being this interdisciplinary guy, he literally used an example from literature and he said in these great books like in Balzac, um, you know, the French author, he goes, you constantly see that when um, you know, one, when, when one woman is abandoned by one lover, all of them abandoned her simultaneously or vice versa. Like, um, you know, everybody's constantly looking to what everybody else is doing. And, and you know, when one person leaves every, everybody leaves. And I think, you know, you see this with, um, you see this in business all the time. Um, when there's like a defection or somebody gets cold feet, um, or leaves a company in a public nasty way or something like that. I mean somebody else follows. And if that cascade is not stopped, it can lead to bad things really quickly. So that just plays out in the stock market all the time.

Speaker A: You see this investing all the time too, Right. Even in early stage startups and stuff. For as much as folks like to say that they don't ask who else is involved, who else is investing, et cetera. Oftentimes the mimesis of understanding who else is making a decision to make a bet influences the decision making. Right. When ostensibly that's a proxy and it has nothing really to do with the company.

Speaker B: Right, Absolutely.

Speaker A: There are two types of models in memetic desire you talked about in the book. Um, and I really liked the way you, the naming convention, naming convention of both of them. So Celebristan and Freshmanistan. Right. And both are important to delineate. Maybe you can define and unpack both of those and then we can talk a little bit about the interrelation between the two. Sure.

Speaker B: I clearly, clearly read to LEP because that's where the idea for that came from is Mediocristan, I think is what he calls it an anti fragile. Um, so Girard clearly delineates two major types of models in the world. Um, there are only two in his opinion, two big categories. One is the external mediator of desire. This is somebody that mediates desire to us from outside of our world. And um, meaning, um, we have no possibility of coming into contact with them because they're either dead or, um, they're fictional. Um, so characters in books can uh, affect our desires, but they're outside of our world. Um, they exist in a different dimension. And even when there's a huge gap, um, in celebrity, for instance. Right. It creates the situation. And that's why I call it Celebristant. There's just a huge gap. Um, I'm not going to be competing with Kanye west as a fashion icon anytime soon. He just exists in a different world. Um, the other kind of model is an internal mediator of desire. These are just simply people that are inside of our world. People that we have the possibility of coming into contact with. And most importantly, because we have the possibility of coming into contact with them, um, not physical contact, but just social existential contact. There's the possibility of conflict because they exist inside of our world and it's usually easier for us to name external models of desire. Um, kids are taught the Power of role models from a young age. And it's usually easy for us to name our role models, um, or the external ones, um, the internal ones are harder because they might be, um, somebody in our family or something, or a friend, um, who is affecting our desires, by the way, good and bad ways. This is not just negative. So, you know, understanding the difference between those two worlds is important because I think that, um, we have, uh, basically almost both feet entirely in freshmanistan, which is what I call the internal, um, world of desires. Um, because, you know, being a freshman in high school or college, uh, feels like that, right? You're all in the same boat. You're all sort of looking to each other to decide what to want, who's cool, like what colleges to go to. Um, you know, you have a lot of things in common, which is another key factor to Freshmanistan. And a lot of us live in freshman in a, just a different version of Freshmanistan, um, for most of our lives, right. I think like even celebrities that are, you know, competing for Oscars, that's their Freshmanistan.

Speaker A: Yep. What are some non obvious examples of mimesis? I mean, we're gonna, we're gonna pivot here just in a little bit, Luke, and kind of talk about, you know, as we've established this kind of concept of mimetic desire, how do you actually break through that? Or so I think you, you aptly put it in the book, which is, you know, the goal is not to get rid of mimetic desires, right? That's, that's not possible. It's kind of innate and built in us. We talked about that a little bit earlier in the discussion. Uh, but it's to harness the self awareness around it, right. And kind of have a toolkit where you can actually harness that in a positive way. But maybe before we kind of dive into that, I'd be curious just to hear some non obvious or counterintuitive examples. I think most folks that are listening can absolutely resonate with the idea of, okay, you know, let's take the education system, right? We want great grades, we want to go to Ivy League schools, we want to work at certain types of firms, et cetera. People have experienced that there's, I'd say there's easier layers of memetic desire that you can be self aware about. And then there's more subtle ones that are a little bit more difficult. Maybe I'm curious, what are some kind of counterintuitive ones or not as obvious that might meet the eye?

Speaker B: Education system is a really Good one. Um, because it's one that I think all of us have exposure to. Um, I mean, there are so many. I think one example is, um, when there's any kind of a sort of mentor, mentee relationship. So it's important to understand that we can move between these worlds. Um, and oftentimes when there's a collapse in distinctions or a collapse in, um, hierarchy, um, it leads to a lot of, uh, confusion. So one of the examples that I gave in the book and why, although I think there are many reasons why sure is a positive thing, there's mimetic danger involved with it. And I think, you know, we saw this play out at. At in the Downtown project in Zappos, where all distinctions between people were sort of dissolved very quickly. Um, they adopted Holacracy. Nobody had titles anymore. And, um, nobody even knew how much they were making. And sort of everybody was sort of put into what I would call this, like, mimetic cauldron of similarity. Um, so it exacerbated, um, it exacerbated all of the problems that you typically see in Freshmanistan. Um, uh, and that is, I think, that it's not obvious why the loss of difference would lead to increased, um, mimetic chaos, but it does because it's unclear who the models are. It's unclear who to be looking toward. And I think that's one of the subtle dangers, um, of social media too. It's like it's not clear who the models are supposed to be. Um, there are some people, um, what's the goal here? And I think whether we're talking about social media or within an organization, it is important that there is clearly articulated, um, values. Um, because if there's not, they just simply become memetically derived, which means they're extremely volatile. And the value system can change in practically a daily basis.

Speaker A: Yeah. I think the best example that actually I could think of of memetic desires when I was reading the book, because it was very reflective of my own life, and I think probably for many of those that are listening as well, was actually this idea of goal posts and goals. So I think we spent a ton of time setting goals, uh, but not nearly as much correlative time asking if those goals are the right ones. And then naturally, if you accomplish those goals, you keep moving the goalpost. Right. And so one kind of goes into overdrive, you know, Via two, you. You talked about in the book that it's important not. It's not enough just to understand mimetic desire. You analogize it to kind of a Faustian bargain. And so that what we really have to do is develop the machinery inside of us to deal with mimesis. Right. Or being anti mimetic. We're going to talk a little bit more, you know, now in, in the second kind of half of this conversation about anti mimetic. Um, maybe you can help us understand what you meant by that Faustian bargain idea and why, you know, why it's not enough just to understand mimetic desire, but there's this need to kind of develop this machinery inside of us.

Speaker B: Yeah. So it's a, it's not enough to understand it because um, I understand a lot of things that I think are good for me that I don't necessarily do. Right. So just like an intellectual grasp on something is, doesn't mean um, that I accept it or that I'm willing to do it. Right. Um, there's more of the whole person is sort of involved in assenting to something or recognizing something is true. Um, there's sort of this old joke like the more you see mimesis around you, probably the less you see it in yourself. Um, and ah, it's a Faustian bargain in that we constantly trick ourselves into believing that the next model that we've chosen is the right model. And the really strange paradox is this. Um, if somebody is modeled to us a desire for something. Um, uh, just to use a simple example, we'll say that it's um, achieving a certain career goal, um, and you have a certain amount of status or prestige. Um, the word prestige by the way comes from a Latin word that literally means illusion. Prestige is always an illusion. Um, that's why that movie with Christian Bale, um, it's such a great name. Um, you work hard and you achieve the object of that desire and then you're still not totally fulfilled. So uh, what a person does is they assume that they just picked the wrong model. You just go in search of another model. Well, there must be a better model out there. And there's an infinite number of models actually. Um, in achieving the thing we destroy the reason for the models being and we'd have to discard it and look for another one. So that's a never ending game. Um, and recognizing that there are certain kinds of models that um, will always be throwaway models. I mean I think there are different kinds of models and that's. This is kind of what antimemetic is about that are not. So to go into that, what I mean by antimemetic, the superficial way to think of it is, which is not accurate would be like, well, to be anti memetic means to be a contrarian. Um, to look at what everybody else is doing and to do the opposite. Um, that's not at all what antimemetic means. Um, because that's literally a form of mirrored imitation. That's all it is. Um, like the old joke, like, why do all hipsters look alike? It's like rejecting, um, popular culture. And if now we all take each other as models. Right. So you're rejecting one model and just adopting a new model. Right. It's kind of funny. Um, and we all do that in some way. So it doesn't mean being a contrarian. Um, uh, it means in some sense having the muscles, I would say, um, to withstand m. The mimesis when it's all around you. Um, you could almost think of it as like standing, um, in water, like chest deep in water and there's a strong current. Um, and somebody who's mimetic always is swept away in the current and somebody who's anti memetic is able to stand there with their feet planted in the ground, um, until they have a chance to decide which way they want to go with some degree of self possession without just being swept, swept away in the current every time. So that's what I mean. Um, and you know, that's. This is an internal thing. I don't think there's like an easy fix for it. It just comes with, uh, self awareness growth, um, maturity development, uh, over many years, frankly. Um, but that's a really important skill to develop. I mean not only for professional success, so that you're not just chasing the next bright shiny object and buying too high and chasing bubbles. I, uh, mean it's also important for obvious reasons in our personal lives too.

Speaker A: Yep. What are the frameworks that you would use or some that you've identified for folks that are trying to be antimemetic? Right. So you have the self awareness. You kind of understand mimesis and the concept of it. Now, now we're actually trying to invoke it, let's say kind of in our personal life. Right. What are the frameworks or the tools to push towards, uh, anti mimesis?

Speaker B: So I discuss 15 things in the book, um, and I'll kind of go into two right now. Um, two that I think are particularly important. Um, one of them is establishing, uh, some hierarchy of values. So I think there's a really interesting relationship between values and desires. And I think there's A primacy on values. Um, don't get me wrong, I think some values are derived mimetically, but those are sort of cheap values. I think, um, when people have values that seem to change every year, um, it might be because those values are somewhat mimetic. Like as the culture's values change, my values change too. Um, I think there are other kinds of values that are not really subject to that. Um, give you, um, a simple example, um, from my life for instance would be I was passed on from a young age. Maybe I received this memetically from my family. Um, but the idea that Sundays were special day and they weren't for work, um, that has. And then I spent probably seven years working 90 hour weeks and working every single Sunday and running myself into the ground at a certain point I knew that that was a value that I wanted to adopt, that I was going to put a different value on that day of the week and that I was going to try not to work. Um, and I knew it intellectually that this was good and that I wanted it as my value. Um, but I didn't want it. So in a sense like, like nailing down values is like what do I want to want is one way to think about it. And what I wanted was to value my Sundays more and not use them for work. So the value, in a sense, I said, dammit, I need to block this off. I need to set boundaries. I'm going to stop, stop working all day on Sunday. And I did. I fell many times, uh, over. It took me years and now I'm pretty good at it. Um, I block it off and now I want to make my Sundays a certain kind of way. My wife and I go out for brunch, um, and I'm pretty, I read. But I didn't always want to do that on Sundays I wanted to work and now I don't. And it's because I set the value there and it takes precedent. I don't take calls on Sundays unless they're from friends. It's family time. So it's in a way the values guide the desires so we can intellectually know what we want to be a value, prioritize it and it ends up shaping our desires in a pretty non memetic way. That value is not. It's anchored in something that goes beyond the mimetic desire of the day or the week. So I think that's critical to have whatever yours are, you know, to anchor yourself in some non memetic values like that. That's one of mine, another really important thing is exploring the desires in your life that have sort of have shown themselves to be shelf stable, that have shown themselves to be enduring. Um, these could be things that you've wanted since you were a kid. And many of us have forgotten some of those things, right? We have very selective memories. And in my case, like I'd forgotten about some of the experiences or actions or projects that I did when I was a kid that brought me this tremendous sense of satisfaction and fulfillment. Um, like one of them was when I was in fourth grade. Microsoft Publisher just come out and I put together what is essentially a tabloid or gossip column for my school in Microsoft publisher. It was one page and I wrote I like a 40 minute ride to and from school with all the kids up through high school. And I started just like hawking this thing. I printed like a hundred copies and I would hand it out on the bus and then I started charging for it like a quarter. And I ended up like, I don't, I love doing that, right? I ended up making like a good amount of money and I'd forgot about that, um, experience and what it says about me. Um, partly what it says about me as an entrepreneur and sort of how I like to be creative and how I like to sell. Um, I forgot about that until long after I, um, went through college and sort of went the banking route. Um, I had to recover that desire. That was some core desire. And in fact stories like that have played out time and time again in my life. And one of the exercises I recommend in the book is doing sort of a map or history or biography of your own desire. Um, you might need a biographer, a friend to help you do it, somebody that knows you really well. But if you do that, you begin to identify what I refer to in the book as thicker desires, thick desires. And they're the ones that are just less subject to the mimetic changes. Um, they've likely been with you, you from a young age. Um, they're sort of what makes you tick, they're what drives you. So I recommend going through that process, um, in your own way and begin to sort of find a pattern. And that pattern represents something that's deeper, it's under the surface and it gives you sort of something solid that you can come back to, um, when uh, you sort of experience a bit of the sort of liquid modernity that we live in where sometimes it feels like there's no solid ground. And I can't tell you how many people I've talked to that are, have made Job changes, career transitions, especially over these last couple of years. And like Luke, how do I know what I really want? How do I know what I really want? And usually the first thing that I say is, well, why don't we. Let's take a step back. Let's go back before last week, before last year, and let's take a deep look into your life and see how you've traditionally, um, undertook things that seem to give you this deep sense of satisfaction. Yeah.

Speaker A: You use this concept in the book called fulfillment Stories as a way to kind of find that out. I thought that was particularly interesting. And maybe you can unpack that concept, because I think one of the challenges, the cynical way to maybe react, Luke, to what you're saying is we all have passions, we all have motivations, et cetera. But, um, how do we find out? Um. Um, you know, does this distill to kind of very abstract advice, which is, you know, basically, just follow your passions and don't worry about the rest? And I think we could probably have a separate discussion from a career advice perspective, you know, whether that's great advice. Right. Especially for folks that are younger in their career or not in their career. Right. There's a lot of things that you do early on, you talked about it with building your company, certainly in my company, um, and projects I'm involved with that you don't necessarily love, you're not necessarily passionate about, um, at the micro levels. And potentially they lead up to some sort of macro passion, uh, or maybe not. Right. Um, and it's. It's a kind of. It's a difficult. It's. It's a. It's a difficult exercise of self discovery to kind of figure that piece out. But putting that aside, kind of putting a pin in that, the fulfillment stories concept I thought was really interesting because I didn't actually see a counterexample or a way that you could actually poke through that logic, which was that at least gets you to surface. Right. What some of these core kind of values are, as opposed to, you know, even thick desires or thin desires. Right. As you talked about in the book. So maybe you can talk about the fulfillment stories concept a little bit more.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, the fulfillment stories, um, are actually trying to go deeper than passion.

Speaker A: Right. Um, Right.

Speaker B: And I. There's. That's. That's a problematic idea, I think, in many ways. Right. Because, like, passions are often just. Then desires and passions change. I mean, this is exactly what I was describing. That was. That was the story of my life. Um, so there's something that needs to be deeper than just be passionate about it. Right. You know, by the way, you know, you, you have to be able to make money at it. You have, it has to be a real problem that needs solving. Like, passion alone means nothing to me really. Um, and it can be very deceiving. Fulfillment, uh, stories, um, very different because they're getting at something much deeper than passion. So it's typically, it's a fulfillment story has a few elements. It has to be in action, right? Like something that you did, like where you took action. Okay. Um, and you achieved something that was important or meaningful to you. And three, and most importantly, it gave you a deep and enduring sense of joy or satisfaction that lasted. That's. This is the whole key, right? That, that, that lasted. Right. So if I'm telling a fulfillment story, and I just told you one, I, um, in a way, right. I told you about in fourth grade when I started my little business. Um, just thinking about it makes me happy. Right. It makes me. It sort of like, helps me like relive the experience of doing that. Um, triggers all kinds of positive sentiments. And, um, I just remembered a few details of the story and telling you that I think I might be the first time I've ever recalled them actually. Right. So, I mean, that's incredibly powerful to do that. Um, and then one fulfillment story, though, um, doesn't yield a lot of good information. Um, it's when you put you string together eight, nine or ten of them, even a few. Right. So the exercise that I typically guide people through is three, right? I want three. Because you can begin to connect some dots, you can begin to see some patterns. Um, and that's the key, right? Is there something that seems to be persistent, um, in sort of who you are? Right. So this is, I guess, call me like an essentialist in a sense, right. I think that people have, um, there's some essence to most people, to everybody. Right. And I like to try to understand, like, what's essential about Romine, what's essential about my wife, um, what's essential about the people that I work with, um, that makes them uniquely who they are. And if you understand that, um, that's incredibly powerful. I mean, not just for yourself, but also for the people that you interact with. Right. If I'm starting a company, I really want to understand how my co founders and employees are wired. Like what their core motivational drives are, what those stories are for them. Because if I know what those stories are for them, um, it helps me from everything, from understanding the kinds of roles that they would want to be in in a project, to understanding how to put a team together, uh, to understanding what we need to come back to when we start to lose our way, um, or when we start chasing the thin desires.

Speaker A: Yeah, I really like the fulfillment stories example for leaders and founders. When you're thinking and looking inwardly to your business. There was another idea in the book I really liked for founders and leaders in business. When you're thinking externally or you're thinking of how to scale your business, it was this idea of transcendent desires. Basically how to elevate above mimesis. Um, maybe you can unpack that a little bit and we'll talk a little bit more broadly also about the implication of transcendent and non transcendent desires. I think in society. I think there's an interesting philosophical discussion there. But maybe first we can kind of talk about it more pragmatically of if you're a founder, a leader, et cetera. This concept of transcendent desire is kind of a time ticked and proven way to elevate above, uh, above mimesis and mimetic desires.

Speaker B: Yeah. Well the um, the societal connection I think is a fascinating one because I think that if there's no transcendent desires, we become decadent. Exactly. That's what the culture is. Um, in a company, um, to have to be a leader that has a transcendent desire means that you just have a desire for where you're going that transcends the company itself. That's one of the ways that I define it. Right. So all of the desires are not sort of inward. You're not only looking at your industry competitors, you're not only looking at internal metrics. You have some goal, um, not just for the company, but for the people in the company that transcends the company itself. Um, easy examples of this would be um, people that um, leaders who actually help people, um, transition out of the company when that's the best thing for the person. Right. Um, because there's a transcendent desire there, it's not like it's not serving the company or the person for them to stay in a bad fit. So I think the people that have that transcendent desire and are thinking beyond the company itself, right. To this person's life, that's much easier for them to sort of see the value in that. Right. Um, there's numerous examples of companies, Zappos, ah, used to do this. They actually used to refer customers to their competitors sometimes. Um, if they could Serve them better that way. And it's part of why they got such a great reputation for customer service. Right. Um, so when the goal of the business is beyond the business itself. And we could have a whole discussion about sort of corporate social responsibility. It's a term I don't even like that much. But, um, that comes into play here a lot. Um, I think a beautiful example of this would be a school that, uh, I've spoken with recently and that I work with. Um, have a big focus on education these days. I think it's critical and needs to be disrupted. And we need people to have transcendent desires in education and just, like, rethink about what's the purpose, what's the telos of education in the first place. So there's no transcendent leaders, very few transcendent leaders, um, in education that have a desire that goes beyond just keeping their enrollment up. That's an imminent desire all the way. If your desire is just to keep your enrollment up. Right. It's self preservation at its worst that ultimately is harming young people. Um, so I had a conversation with the school. Um, they're part of this network called the Christo Rey Network of Schools. So they serve really, really poor students. And, um, they give them work study opportunities. So the way these students affect the school, um, is that, um, a corporate sponsor comes in and buys, you know, for $50,000 or whatever, they buy those students to work for them one day a week. And that essentially funds the education. So four days in the classroom, one day actually working. So they're getting real words, real world skills. Um, under. It's a beautiful model of high school education, in my opinion, and the economics work. But this principal told me, he said, well, Luke, my goal actually is that none of these students are in poverty, um, 10, 15 years from now in this community. And my goal actually is that we're so good at what we do that we cease to exist 20 years from now. Right. Um, and I was like, wow, that's somebody right there who's not in it for self preservation. This is the leader that has a desire that transcends the thing itself because he realizes that if he's successful, um, there shouldn't be a market for that. And he'll adopt and he'll serve other students. Um, but that just really. I thought that was a, uh, profoundly beautiful way to say it. And we need more people like that.

Speaker A: I think that's really cool. I think. And it ties in actually really nicely to thinking about this. Not just at an individual organizational level, but at a societal level. Because I think when you actually extrapolate this idea of transcendent and non transcendent desires at the society level beyond one in one individual institution, there's a whole array of implications. I had Elad Gill on the last episode and we talked a lot about this concept of a mindset of abundance versus a mindset of scarcity. And that's actually probably the best framing I can think of or that comes to mind in our discussion. Even Luke, on this idea of when you have more and more institutions or more and more leaders that are thinking from a place of transcendence as opposed to non transcendent. There's a very clean parallel there to leaders of organizations that think from a mindset of abundance, expanding the pie versus a mindset of scarcity and kind of splitting up the pie.

Speaker B: Yeah, and I think that's absolutely right. Um, and thinking about creating um, I mean so many of our discussions presuppose some kind of a zero sum game. Um, and it's just wild. And there just simply doesn't seem to be an understanding of, I mean the role of an entrepreneur in society for one thing. Um, you know it's, it's really important um, because they're literally creating, um, creating things that, that did not exist. And, and you know that by, by definition like one of my definitions of, of a good entrepreneur is they by necessity they have to transcend any kind of existing frameworks or they're not going to be in business for long. Right. They have to do something new. Um, and that is um, that is I think the societal implication. Right. I mean like we certainly, our government doesn't seem to be thinking with any sort of like transcendent desire. Right. So it's like it's up, it's up to other, it's up to us, it's up to other people, um, to do things that um, are going to break us out of these paradigms. Education is a great example. Right. Like I'm not sitting around waiting for anybody, um, to sort of fix this from the top. Right. It's going to take um, entrepreneurs and it's why I'm constantly trying to identify and work with and invest in those that have a desire to totally radically um, think differently about this. Um, so I think that the concept in general is important for on the macro level, not just the micro level.

Speaker A: Yeah. I think any industry that is in one in which supply is restricted and demand is subsidized faces the same issue. Right. So education, housing construction, Healthcare, et cetera, all face the same exact issue. Let's break down the five things that transcendence leaders do, and maybe with some examples. And maybe what I can do, Luke, is I can kind of fire each off at you and you can unpack it, because I think it was a really elegant. It's actually a really elegant framework and a pragmatic framework for you are a founder, a leader of a company, a leader of a business unit, whatever it might be, which a lot of the folks that listen to this, this show are. Um, it's a really elegant framework on how do you actually harness this idea of transcendent desires and elevating above mimesis and actually pragmatically enact the positive effect of that in your organization. So maybe what I'll do is I'll go kind of through each one of. And there's five of them, and maybe you can give an example and you can. You can kind of unpack each. So the first principle was this idea of shifting gravity.

Speaker B: Yeah. So shifting the center of gravity. Um, I think we all know companies in which the founder or the CEO is like the sacred center of the organization around which everything turns. And when that happens, like, everybody's looking, looking sort of inward at this one person. Um, and it doesn't lend itself to any sort of, like, outward looking, sort of, you know, transcending the boundaries of what this. Of the company. Right. Everything, every goal is imminent, internal of the company. There's not, there's no way to transcend this sort of boundaries because that person or that group of people, it's not necessarily one person, is this sort of sacred center around, um, which everything turns. So I think desacralizing the person or the group is really important. Um, and putting the center of gravity outside of the company in some way. So you could think of, like, rather than standing, looking at each other, we're standing shoulder to shoulder looking at something beyond, and the leader stands there with everybody else. Um, so for instance, um, for one of the many hats that I wear is as a professor, uh, I teach a class to a lot of freshmen, and I feel like if I'm doing my job, then me as the teacher, um, am not the center point of the class. Right. Like, if I'm. If I'm really, really good, um, they stop, like, they stop trying to do everything to please me and make me happy. Professor Burgess, what font should this paper be in? What do you want? And it's like I break them out of that. So they, in a way, they Forget that I'm their professor and they just stop like pandering to everything that I want, um, because I'm hopefully giving them a certain amount of freedom to go out there and experiment and break shit and think like entrepreneurs. And, um, I try to implement this very principle in the classroom where the center of gravity is not me. It's always something outside of the classroom. And anytime that I see something getting too sort of like focused on the small things, um, like font size, right. We have a discussion about what this is really all about, right? Because it's never about the thing that they think it's about. And that's like battle number one. So I think a good leader, um, is able to help people, um, see, like they can come to come down off the pedestal that people naturally want to put them on. Um, but it sort of takes an intentional effort to do that. It's not easy. Yep.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a good rule, especially to enact in the classroom also, because it starts to inculcate the reality that in the market there aren't really rules.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And in the confines of a classroom, where it's a safer space and it's more structured, there, there might be these rules. Um, but in the market, you know, there, there just aren't rules like that. I mean, that's the reality.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: The second one was speed of truth.

Speaker B: So I have a fundamental belief that the health of any organization is the speed at which truth moves within it. Um, you know, this is just basic, like an evolutionary principle, right? I mean, like, you have to adapt, things are going to change. And if truth moves slowly, then you're not going to be able to adapt fast enough. So truth is sort of anti memetic by its nature, like Big T. Truth is anti memetic by its nature. And truth is one of those things that I think organizations need to value above all else. Um, above not hurting people's feelings, above, um, political pressures. The truth matters. And the faster that it moves within an organization, the healthier that it's to. Going, going to be. Um, and I think that there are objective ways to actually measure this. Right. Um, um, I've, I've quite literally, um, planted a piece of information in an organization, um, and you know, sort of tracked the amount of which should have and needed to get to certain important people within that company and literally tracks how long it took. Um, I've done this multiple times and in some cases it never gets to them. Um, in some cases it gets to them within a week. Um, in other cases it gets to them within literally 60 seconds. Um, and those latter companies um, are just much better positioned to grow. And in the absence of that, what ends uh, up becoming more important than truth, uh, are mimetic rivalries are all of the things that don't actually serve the best long term interest of the company.

Speaker A: The third one was discernment. I thought this one was really interesting.

Speaker B: So I think that um, discernment is a layer deeper than decision making. And there are certain things that you can give me all of the information in the world. Um, and we have an overflow of information in the world today. I mean I just can't. I drowned it. Right. And discernment is sort of um, a shortcut for decisions, for certain kinds of decision making, um, where knowing all the facts is not going to ultimately help me. And I think there's, you know, it's just a skill that I wish were taught because that you know, there are certain ways to discern. Well, um, one of the little, um, you know, there's been volumes of books written on this so I don't, we don't have time to get into how to discern. Well, but um, because decide desires by their nature are something that must be discerned. Right. Um, you know, ultimately you have to make a decision about which desires to follow and which ones to cut loose. Um, but before the decision happens there has to be a period of discernment. And you know, you can't treat a desire the way that you would treat an investment decision. They're different. Um, you don't have all. You don't know where desire is going to lead because it's in the future and we don't know the future. But there are ways to probe the future and test it and find out. Um, I really like um, sort of a future authoring exercise. Right? It's one little tool of discernment where you're weighed with a decision. You spend one day where you literally project out and imagine yourself and write, write a page or two about pursuing that desire to the end. And you sit with it for as long as you need to and you sort of see what happens to that desire. Um, it's a way to sort of test them without actually following them.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: You can sort of test their um, solidity. Um, you can even take that and project yourself all the way out to your deathbed. That's a very powerful way to do it. But that, that sort of brings desires, it probes desires, it allows you to test them. Um, and it's a skill That I find that most people don't have, especially in sort of this very. I mean, we live in a, in a, in a sort of calculating world. And I think it's a, it's a lost skill. And for, you know, if anybody. Listen, I think there's probably a lot of people that are, um, either entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial minded. I mean, it's, it's the most important skill, in my opinion, for an entrepreneur to have is to be able to discern. Well, because there is no playbook for a lot of the things that are going to happen to you. Um, you know, there's going to be things that you just simply have to have the spirit and willingness to take time and discern.

Speaker A: Yeah, Silence was your fourth one, and I want you to break that one down. But I'm curious, based on the way you just explained discernment, how much this idea of silence and kind of blocking out the noise, you know, also relates or falls into discernment as well?

Speaker B: Yeah, they go hand in hand. You know, they're sort of grouped together because I don't think that one can properly discern without, um, creating space from the environment that we're in.

Speaker A: Um,

Speaker B: so silence is so important for discernment, um, because we can't. The example would be like this, right? Like where we live in our daily lives, like we're on a trampoline and a bunch of other people are on that trampoline with us, right? So there's this principle of like, reflexivity where they move and it affects everybody else that's standing on the same trampoline. Um, and you know, if you want to sort of see, like understand your own balance, you have to get off of the trampoline. Um, and in order to sort of test the way that your body feels when it, when it, when you distribute weight and when you move, um, otherwise it's only going to be in relationship to other people. So silence, like unplugging, totally, you know, from tech unplugging, um, is a way to sort of do that in a different way. Um, and it's where discernment happens. I just don't think it's possible to do, to drop down and get below the surface of the mimetic craziness of the world that we live in in our day to day lives. Um, without, without creating space. Um, and I did it. I mean, I take a week every year and you know, I'm totally unplugged. Usually. Often some remote Airbnb or cabin or retreat center or something like that and I'm able to do a different kind of deeper discernment that I could never do um, in my day to day life. And it's not to say that it's not important to do on a daily basis too. I mean I try my best to unplug for a half hour in the middle of every day. Total silence. Can't get a hold of me. Um, um, But I think those deeper periods of unplugging um, are really critical.

Speaker A: Yeah, these, these two last ones, discernment and silence are also related to your, your kind of fifth and final one of filtering feedback. I found this one particularly tricky. Interesting because I think especially with movements like the lean startup movement, et cetera, we've, we've probably over indexed in tech towards um, feedback. Um, and I say that not to denigrate the importance of feedback, but I say it more so in the, in kind of the paradigm of mimesis of what we've been talking about today. Right. So by definition gathering tons and tons of feedback and reacting to that feedback is a form of falling into mimesis as opposed to original thought or original thinking. Maybe you can break down that filter feedback, uh, one as the last principle here.

Speaker B: Sure. Well there are two sides to it. The first side is that um, if I fall, and I agree with you, I think we've just flipped to one extreme. Um, in the world that we're in, um, that we both sort of live and move in, I think we flipped to the extreme and um, if all I do is receive feedback and react to the feedback, then I sort of tend to create um, lowest common denominator things or write a lowest common denominator book. Right. So um, like as a creator, right, like um, somewhere along the way like I'm going to get the feedback to you know, to be careful writing that sentence that might, you know, piss somebody off or something like that. So if I take all of that feedback into account, I'll just never say anything interesting at all. Um, and I think there's just, there's a principle here that applies to companies like at some point, right, like you have to decide as a founder, as an entrepreneur, you have to decide on what direction that you're going in. So you, you know, it's not that there's anything wrong with feedback, but I think there have to be boundaries like, well, how much feedback is enough feedback, right. And from who? And not all feedback is equal. Right. Feedback from some people is just more valuable than feedback from others. So be very clear about your relationship to feedback and um, when you're going to decide and when you're going to move out and when you need to reject feedback. I mean, I can't tell you how much bad advice I've received in my life. I've received a lot of bad advice from well intentioned people that sound smart and wise at the time. Um, but they're, you know, and they're trying to help, but you know, they were just in different circumstances than I was and it just, the advice doesn't apply, you know, so just like being, it's really important to be. And then like as you said, the other side of it is on a personal level, you're the more feedback that you receive, um, the more you're at risk of getting caught up in like memetic entanglements with the very people, um, that are giving you the feedback. Um, because, you know, uh, people give feedback for all kinds of reasons, um, some of them good, some of them bad. Um, oftentimes people, people's feedback says more about the person giving the feedback, um, than anything else. Right. It's kind of like a lot of book reviews, right? I mean it's like you, they sort of like reveal more about the person writing it than about the book itself. And a lot of feedback works the same way. So, you know, just a critical skill to avoid mimesis. And also, I mean, I don't know, I've never been excited as a founder, um, to build things that are solely the product of what, uh, other people have told me I should build. Um, this comes back to transcendent desires, right? Like I'm doing what I'm doing because I feel like I have a desire to do something that I, that I haven't seen done before. You know, and in fact, if I could find out what that thing is just by polling enough people, um, then I don't know, it'd probably already be done by now.

Speaker A: Yep, totally. As we, as we round up the conversation, I want to, I want to get your feedback or your thoughts on this kind of closing thought. It was, again, it was a sentence from the book and I thought it was perfectly apt and a really nice way actually for us to round out the discussion. You wrote, mimetic desire is a paradoxical game. Winning is how you lose.

Speaker B: Yeah, I've certainly experienced that myself. And you know what that means, um, is that you have to opt out of the game of mimetic desire because if you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. And the prize for winning a tiny mimetic Game, um, is a fleeting moment of satisfaction, um, followed by the adoption of another sort of mimetic model. Um, and you can be in sort of the never ending hamster, ah wheel of never pursuing any thick fulfilling desires. So the flip side of that quote I guess is um, in one sense losing or opting out um, at the right times is actually um, how you win. Right? And when I say losing, I mean Gerard talks about this when he describes like great novelist, um, you know, they've all undergone a kind of death, uh, you know, kind of death to their ego. Uh, kind of like um. Yeah, a death to what they were trying so hard to do or be. And after they've undergone that death, um, they're just more authentic, they're sharper, they're fresher, they're um, able to write better stories. Um, and I think that you know, that's not just something that applies to writers or novelists. Um, I think, you know, that sort of transformation of dying to you know, whether it's caring so much about what other people are wanting or doing or saying or think about, um, our journey, um, that's part of the process of growing up. And not everybody goes through that death. But um, that's. That's the flip side of it, right? That's, that's the part of. That's probably the um, very difficult sort of way um, to turn mimetic desire, uh, from what could be a destructive thing into something that um, can lead to creativity, um, and can be powerful and beautiful and help us to create those transcendent things that our world so badly needs right now.

Speaker A: Luke, this was a ton of fun. I so appreciate you taking the time to come on. I um. This was definitely one of the best books I've read in the last year or so. And I think it's especially important for founders, leaders in business, et cetera, to be self aware about concepts like this. Um, because I think as you have more experience in business, investing whatever it might be, you recognize that so much of business outcome is a function of your own psychology and how you think about uh, and how you kind of experience the world. And I think this idea of not only having the toolkit or having the self aware witness to deal with mimetic desires in your own personal context, but seeing this concept of ah, mimesis permeating this kind of a foundational layer in our world, it actually brings a lot of structure and understanding to a lot of complex topics that seem not to have some sort of explanation behind them. So really enjoyed having you on. Thanks so much for writing the book. I really encourage folks listening to read the book. Um, and we'll. I'm sure we'll do a round two of this someday in the future.

Speaker B: Sounds good, Ramin. Thanks for having me on.