#138 Luke Burgis: The Power of Mimetic Desire | The Knowledge Project

Desire is a positive thing.

It's one of the things that makes us human I think of desire like the the parable of the of the two wolves, right?

you know, we all have these two wolves inside of us that are kind of at war and you know, you need to sort of find out which one of those wolves to starve and which one of those wolves to feed and It's not always easy to tell which one is which when it comes to the things that we want when it comes

to our desires I actually believe that we should feed those enduring desires And that those enduring desires do ultimately sort of see us through the hard times Welcome to the knowledge project podcast.

I'm your host Shane Parrish The goal of this show is to master the best of what other people have already figured out so that you can unlock your potential To that end I sit down with people at the top of their game to uncover what they've learned along the way Every episode is packed with timeless

ideas and insights that you can use in life and business If you're listening to this you're missing out if you'd like special member -only episodes access before anyone else Transcripts and other member -only content you can join at FS blog slash membership Check out the show notes for a link Today I'm

talking with Luke Burgess Luke has founded and led four companies from e -commerce to food distribution and consumer products He's the managing partner of fourth wall ventures which invests in people and companies contributing to a healthy human ecology Luke studied finance philosophy and theology and he's

the author of the book wanting the power of Mimetic desire in everyday life and that's what we're here to talk about This podcast is a deep dive into mimetic desire the core theory of Renee Girard and its implications now if the name Renee Girard sounds familiar that could be because Girard has influenced

the likes of Peter Thiel and Chamath polyhappeteer Girard's mimetic theory rests on the assumption that all of our behaviors are imitative This is both helpful and destructive for instance when it comes to learning Imitation is a fast track to getting to a decent level.

We have no idea what we're doing So we imitate others think of how you learn to play music You must imitate before you can create when it comes to wanting things.

However, it can lead to envy jealousy and violence Imitation leads us to desire things We don't want by things we don't need and in the process for go things that are far more meaningful and valuable I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did It's time to listen and learn A lot of people feel

trapped in jobs They feel something is missing but don't easily find the courage to leave you left an Investment banking job in Hong Kong and came back and started a very unsexy company out of Hollywood Perhaps the mimetic capital of the world.

Let's start with that story Yeah, I arrived in Hong Kong through purely mimetic forces in my life that had brought me to a great undergrad business school at NYU Stern and Went the investment banking route without having really paused and given it a lot of thought as to why I was doing that That's really

the route. I wanted to go on what that career track looked like after I graduated I worked for a private equity company In New York City, but I got I worked on a deal and I got an offer to go work in Hong Kong in investment banking for Citigroup out of their Hong Kong office and at the time it was it's

weird to go from private equity to investment banking, but I Realized that it first of all I wanted to be in Asia There was a lot of very exciting things going on in China at the time I thought it'd give me a good chance to kind of be in China at the very beginning of what we now see was a total Boom,

so I made the move got on a plane and went to Hong Kong Didn't know a soul there other than the guy that recruited me to come out and was working in investment banking and sort of what was A dream role.

I mean they treated me as a junior guy more like I was a VP.

I was doing Crazy things.

I hope this doesn't get anybody at Citigroup in trouble But I was like going to do due diligence on Chinese coal mines by myself, you know It's sending me down and underground mines like hey make sure this company has the assets they say they have like well It looks like a coal mine to me, you know,

I don't know You know and I was putting together pitch books, you know one for a Thai petrochemicals company I was the sort of the senior analyst on the deal and I went there and presented it to the senior management of the company myself I don't even remember why I mean, maybe it's because the The

managing director was out sick or got called away and they didn't want to cancel the meeting.

So I was doing crazy things I mean anybody works in finance knows that this is not normal.

So it was a good gig I was making a lot of money, but I was totally miserable and you know, I've always had the Desire to start something and my cousin and I had been talking around an idea for a business ever since we were in college I went to NYU.

He went to Columbia.

I was a year ahead of him.

So he just graduated and moved out to LA for a girl and Started to call me and email me and say, you know, Luke, you know Why don't we start that business that we've always talked about, you know, you don't see him entirely happy I know this you you're never gonna be satisfied until you find out if this works

or not And the business was quite simple I mean It was a healthy vending machine company is the business that we had in mind, right?

It was just to put the healthy version the healthy alternative of everything that you normally find an eventing machine Into the machines brand of them in a really cool way.

The name was fit fuel Put LCD screens into them so we could display health facts nutrition information sell ads eventually Get people's attention as they walked by kind of state -of -the -art machines And they'd be healthy everything and then would be healthy.

So, you know, the plan was to put these in schools and Airports in any place where it's hard to find healthy food and at the time, you know, that was a pretty novel idea Right.

I mean that that sort of the health food craze was taking off that was the business So here I am in my office in Hong Kong, you know Contemplating whether I should go move to LA to start what is essentially a vending machine company, right?

I just never wanted to talk about it that way So I just say like oh I'm going into the food distribution business or something like that and I'm like, well, you know Here I am I got to move halfway around the world.

I really don't want to go to LA I've never even been to LA before and My business partner is asking me to come to LA and I said, you know, Shawn, I don't know if I've moved to LA Just because you're dating a girl there.

I was like, are you gonna marry this girl?

He's like, I think so But I'm not sure And I said I need more than that.

Do you got anything else?

And he said well There is one other really good reason and that's the location is actually the perfect location For our business because it just so happens most of the large distributors For the kind of products that we want to sell in our machines are all in the area.

They're all in Southern, California So, you know we can order from any of them have the products in our warehouse that practically the next day Shipping costs will be low.

It will just streamline our business and I said all right.

All right So you get those are two good reasons That's enough, you know, so I moved to LA to To start fit what was fit fuel what became fit fuel, you know But it was it was nerve -wracking to be pretty alone in Hong Kong and yeah to you know the next day after I got my bonus asked, you know a few of the senior people

if I could meet with them and Walked into one particular managing director's office and this guy was really eccentric Like he he, you know wore socks around the office and he kicked his shoes off and put his feet up on the desk With the socks and looked at me And was like Luke.

Hey, you owe me a beer.

I said I owe you a beer and I said why he's just because Let's go get a beer.

So we went out and got a beer and I I told Steve Hey, I don't know how to tell you this like I've really enjoyed my time here But I'm leaving and he said what are you gonna do?

And I said, well, I'm gonna go start a company in, California Oh, you're going to Silicon Valley You're gonna go the startup route and I said yeah, and he's will tell me about it and I fumbled around I'm getting into the food distribution business.

So what kind of distribution food?

Well, how are you gonna distribute it and finally there was no way around it I had to just tell him that we're gonna put this stuff in vending machines and scale it You know and I made my best case for why this was actually a massive market, you know He he was supportive but he sort of said Luke.

I want you to understand that if you do this if you leave This soon, you know, I had been less than a year.

You'll never work in investment banking again You know, you won't work in corporate finance because nobody will really trust you anymore Right like once you've sort of got that bug I think he was right but it's kind of a jarring thing to hear at that stage in your career, you know It's like all right.

I'm 23 years old and if I say yes to this opportunity It sounds like I'm closing the door to another one Is that really what I want to do but ultimately made the decision to go to LA and you know moved into a small little apartment In the 101 a little Hollywood apartment with a garage that was just

big enough to house an inventory And we got started and I I didn't know how things were gonna go But you know that that ride back from Hong Kong to Los Angeles Was a very lonely and quiet ride for me.

I don't think I watched a movie.

I didn't listen to any music I just sat there and you know stared out the window and just sort of wondered what in the hell I just did Wow There's four things I want to follow up on there and in no particular order One of the things that you said was money You're making a lot of money, but you're miserable

Can you go deeper on that?

Yeah You know, there's been studies that have shown that once you make over I got cheese I think it used to be 85 ,000, you know that there's no sort of increase in happiness after that The numbers got to be higher now with inflation I think that study came out six or seven years ago at least but I was making

over that and I first year out of school and and I Didn't realize the extent to which I was sort of chasing some idea of Success that I hadn't really spent a lot of time actually thinking about And part of that was I thought that that track was the quickest route to financial security to lifelong financial

security and like, you know, many of my colleagues I thought to myself Well, I just need to do this for five to seven years Go the normal track and you know if I'm smart if I don't squander at all I will have enough money to be set for quite a while, you know And then I can figure out the next thing

that I want to do But everybody went in that way but then I saw guys that had been in for 10 or 15 years that seemed like they never had enough it was never enough and I didn't really want to be like that I sort of realized that it's kind of a slippery slope like when is enough enough and this is way

before I Had ever heard the word mimetic desire, which is what my books about So I just intuitively like sort of understood that there was some force That was going to continue to manufacture Desires that I would misinterpret as needs and probably keep me stuck in this cycle and why wasn't I happy?

Well, I mean I think ultimately I wasn't able to exercise My creativity in the way that I wanted to I mean it turns out that if I don't have a creative outlet You know, my wife would be the first to tell you I'm like a pretty miserable person to be around I need that so even while I was working in finance

I was I mean super weird like I was going home at night and reading classic literature and studying philosophy and I started to recognize that are there some part of me that needs to be nourished that I'm not nourishing So, you know realizing that, you know, I didn't feel free and I didn't feel like

I was able to to exercise my gifts frankly Was a big a big part of why I felt like I would never be happy no matter how much money I made I ended up running into the same problem with as an entrepreneur you know having started a successful company, but I think I Think that I had enough models of unhappiness

around me That I was able to recognize unhappy marriages sort of You know constantly buying talismans of success watches that and I every time I would do it, you know They hit dopamine hit would last like two days and then it would go away and You know, I wanted to look a little deeper We're gonna talk

at length sort of about my medic desire and the models both positive and negative Before we sort of like dive into that part of the conversation You did something that a lot of people talk about but don't really have the courage to do you left a job, right?

Like I used to work with a lot of people who who had the same thing, you know I'm only here for five years then I'm gonna get out gonna make some money gonna get some skills Then I'm gonna go do what I really want to do.

It's like you're borrowing Time almost from yourself But was there a moment that that changed for you?

Was there something that crystallized that I just have to leave or was it this slow sort of like building pressure?

It was both it was a slow building pressure And sometimes I think with that slow building pressure if you don't recognize it and if you don't do anything about it Can actually lead to some sort of a tipping point that Stops feeling like pressure and just sort of makes you dead inside like you almost

forget the pressure If that makes sense like we sort of have a window of opportunity to recognize That and that internal pressure and do something about it or else it just sort of at some point it becomes too late almost like a person with an addiction so the pressure was building and I realized that I

had sort of a window of I don't know call it Existential or spiritual freedom with which I could still do something and I didn't want to lose the freedom I think there are always circumstances that that are involved, too and Oftentimes with decision -making the circumstances the the soil in Which decisions

are made is a really critical and overlooked factor So yes I had Sean calling me and emailing me and sort of kicking me in the ass like hey Now's the time if we don't do this somebody else will But I think what really did it for me was a moment of clarity in my process of discernment So, you know, I

think that it's never good to make a serious big Life -changing decision when we're in a period of desolation or like deep deep anxiety I think we're just more liable to make the wrong decision for the wrong reasons when we're in that place Conversely, I think it's a little dangerous to make a big life

-changing decision when we're in a moment of extreme consolation Right.

We're like everything's great.

Like we're we're riding this high And you do things that maybe you shouldn't be doing it's kind of like I lived in Vegas for years So you're riding a hot streak at the table.

You may not be thinking clearly one of the best places is kind of just in this in between sort of moment of Sort of neutrality and and peace where you could feel like you could go either way, right?

It's like really fertile ground for decision -making Because you're sort of not too far on either side I came to that place where I wasn't like totally miserable I had like a week of this where I was in that place and and then I had clarity About what I wanted to do.

So I think so some of the emotional factors that were involved like oh Gosh, this managing director just asked me to pull an all -nighter and I'm pissed off and I make the decision in the middle of the Night, then I'm gonna leave and go start this company probably not wise, you know Hey, I just got a bonus.

It's more money than I've ever seen in my life And I'm gonna decide to stay another year because that felt really good.

I wasn't in either place I was sort of in the middle place and that gave me the personal confidence that I needed to know That I was more likely making the right decision about something that was an authentic desire that I had Talk to me a little bit more about that soil In terms of decision making

and how it manifests itself and other decisions that you've made Well, I think relationships is a great example you know, I just married last summer and my wife and I were together for quite a while before we got married and I think this is sort of true with any relationship is you sort of you know

Need to be with it with a person at least somebody you're considering Marrying in in both of those periods right, you know through when times are really good and when times are really bad I think that's kind of a really good test of a relationship, right and then You know sort of find that fertile soil

of sort of like peace Where things are not totally wild in either direction where you start to make a decision Right about whether you want to spend the rest of your lives together And I don't know if that just applies to marriage.

I think that can apply to business deals business serious business decisions Few decisions are more important than who you're gonna become a business partner with You know as many people listening will know It can feel not a whole lot different than a marriage and you know There I think there are ways

to test relationships In the same way that we can test our desires like like my desire to leave my job Do you think that we should intentionally test them or do you think time just tests them?

I think time will always test them.

I think time will test them naturally, but sometimes we don't have time sometimes You know, we can't wait a year through the ups and downs to see how other people will respond, you know, kovat great example of time Revealing some truths about relationships for me you know the way that some people sort

of Just reacted to it and sort of I lost touch with some people and other people I I developed a closer relationship with But we don't always have these sort of outside things that that are the great sort of wedge things that that reveal truths about relationships So I do think that there there are ways

to appropriately test Relationships it depends on the kind of relationship, right?

I think they're like unethical ways to to test a relationship right like putting somebody under, you know, severe stress Right the way that you know that they would do in a special ops boot camp or something like that but I think if you're if you're going to enter into a very consequential Business

relationship with somebody whether they're a client or a partner a lot of money on the line Jobs on the line.

I think it's appropriate to test that and You know, I think some ways to do that.

I don't think it's appropriate to lie, but I think you can Speaking a hard truth is one of my favorite ways to do that speaking a hard truth right up front and Just seeing what it does like seeing what happens, you know, sometimes you know You can tell based on the reaction like well if that if I'm

not able to speak truthfully to this person Hard to imagine that we'd be able to have a healthy four or five year relationship So something you said that was really interesting to me and I think a lot of people had the same experience but I'm curious as to What led to your experience and what lessons

or conclusions you've taken from it is that during covid you got closer to some people?

And other people who you might have thought you were gonna get closer to you.

You got further away from why is that?

I Don't know if I know the answer.

I've thought a lot about it I think one of the big things is Open and honest communication right the people that I feel like I can communicate with openly and honestly Are the ones that I feel really comfortable?

Investing in in those relationships and I mean, I can't imagine I can't think of another more consequential time to have open and honest conversations Little things like getting together At our house or at another person's house to barbecue in the backyard, it's really a active courtesy to clearly define

Boundaries and rules right like if I'm coming into your house And think of this as a metaphor for a lot of things in life Okay Even a business if I'm a guest in your house It actually causes me a lot less anxiety to like know where we stand what you want to do How you think about this and you know,

we should have had those conversations way before I showed up at the front door So open and honest communication is really important and I found some people are just willing to have those conversations and it's easy And other people aren't and I noticed like that.

There are some people that I would sort of I knew that Having certain conversations was going just we just couldn't go there, right?

There's some there are some Relationships where you hit a point where there's a block, okay, and you're just like, okay I can't we can't go any further than that, right?

We're just gonna have to wait maybe next year Things will be different.

But right now I shut down.

Okay, there's like a sign blocking that road We have to take a different road can't force somebody necessarily into that more opus open and honest communication You can model it Which I think is one of the most important things to do, but you can't really force it to happen So I would say that's the that's

the number one factor, you know, and then everybody's you know has had different coping mechanisms I watch more Netflix than I think I'll watch for the remainder of my life You know, you know and just you know, I think finding finding people that are able to just like share vulnerabilities Be real right

about some of our struggles over these last couple of years Those are the people that I've managed to bond with the most rather than you know Just get on zoom calls every week and just act like we're all good We haven't all been all good all of the time and you know So I think I've particularly appreciated

people that are able to have those kinds of conversations which are especially needed In the corporate world, right and there's not a lot of space for them.

They happen underground They happen when people go out for beers, but I think I think those are the ones that I've leaned into more.

I think high uncertainty Makes trust more important not less important And so when I think of that question What comes to my mind is like the people that you can have those conversations with you trust more because you trust that you can have that conversation that's not going to affect your relationship

and During the the first part of kovat there was a massive amount of uncertainty So not only did you get to witness people under stress you get to see how they think But you also the the proxy for your test was whether your trust Sorry, it was whether you could talk to them openly and honestly Whether

it's even something as simple as like have you done a rapid test before coming over or here's what I'm comfortable with Because like you're you're exposed to me and I'm exposed to you and having those conversations I noticed a lot of people were really hesitant to sort of do that When I think that that's

like your intuition telling you something about the relationship Intuition is an important word tacit knowledge is really important concept in my life You know, Michael Polanyi is a philosopher that I like a lot and he speaks about tacit knowledge So this is these are things that we know That we can't

necessarily explain how or why we know them an example of tacit knowledge could be you know Shane if I asked you how how to ride a bike Now I assume you know how to ride a bike But if I asked you to explain it it would probably be in relatively vague terms You probably wouldn't get into the physics

of how it works and and the mechanics of how it works and if you wrote it down step by step and An alien came down and read what you'd written.

He probably have no idea how in the hell to ride a bicycle Cuz you know you learned to do that such a long time ago.

There's muscle memory It's like why it's really hard for Tiger Woods to explain, you know You know and this comes into play With with so many things right?

It's like one of my favorite sort of fables is like somebody asked the the millipede How he walks, you know, and he says well, you know, well first I move this this leg Wait, no, wait, that's right first.

I move this leg and then I move wait a second No, I move this and and he just becomes paralyzed and curls up in a ball, right?

Now is tacit knowledge on how to walk we know more than we're able to explain that we know and I call this inarticulate knowledge Knowledge that I'm not able to articulate to somebody and I have inarticulate knowledge about a lot of things Including other people I could have tacit knowledge of why I

trust somebody that I couldn't explain to you If you asked me to give you specific things, I wouldn't be able to point to that Oh, there's that one time when we were hanging out together because it's probably not any one particular thing It's probably a series of things call it a gut feeling I just

have that and I have the same thing for for mistrust, right and I think that this kind of tacit Knowledge inarticulate knowledge is undervalued in our society It's undervalued because you know We always want to be able to like explain the science and give the give the the hard reasons for it But a lot

of life doesn't work like that, you know, like I get on a I take public transportation I get on a plane, you know And I have to operate with a certain level of trust that the pilots not drunk when I get on the plane You know and and if I notice that's just something is a little bit off It sends up some

kind of a of a red flag for me I've friends that are in in special forces and it's like amazing hanging out with them because you know when they walk down the street I mean, it's just crazy walking on the street.

They could notice something a block away.

It could just be a Guy who's just walking.

His walk is a little bit off and You know, he'll notice So I don't know.

I don't know if he'd even be able to explain to me how he notices But he knows because he's internalized that knowledge He knows what the pattern of something different looks like and he's recognizing that pattern and I think like to your point we all have that in some ways and in some domains and It's

important in decision -making I don't think it's the only thing but a lot of people just dismiss it outright Whereas I think if we look at chess, right like Herbert Simon did this study on chess grandmasters And one of the things that he found was like their intuition comes up with the move within a couple

seconds And then they spend the rest of the move like validating Is that the right move is what I'm seeing correct?

Am I putting myself in a bad position is and then if that any of those things happen So it's like you're about you're incorporating both this very rational Component as well as this very intuitive component.

Yeah, when they go together I think that's a really important point when they go together That's a powerful tool For decision -making and sometimes when when one or the other is missing something feels a little bit off Do you think we have better intuition when the knowledge is earned versus borrowed?

Absolutely. So so based on that then does your your intuition around trust Come from the fact that you've been let down and also had high trust situations Like you've had this high variability of people in the past so that you're better able to recognize it or has everything in your background like

your life just been mostly trustworthy and no, I've had the full spectrum, right, you know to the point where Yeah, I often say nothing surprises me anymore You know, I don't I'm not a skeptic or a cynic I'm one of the kind of person that waits until you know, the deal is closed before I before I celebrate

Partly because of celebrated early, you know, and I've had Right.

So I've learned that through experience and I've had the full gamut.

I mean, I've had I've been very lucky Right.

I've had people in my life that I've worked with and been partners with for well over a decade now where there's just this really high degree of trust and then I've had other situations where At least at an earlier point in my life I would have trusted somebody completely and then very unexpectedly

they did something that that was extremely surprising so With that comes a certain sobriety about human nature, you know, I think like a lot of my work Has been just delving deep into human nature It's sort of it's a really big shortcut for people because there are certain things that just don't change

You know seeing the full range of possibilities of what people are capable of how people are affected how people change You know I've learned more about that through through, you know literature frankly Then I have from from most business books and that's why it's such a powerful thing to explore because it's

about human nature and What else is business then then a way of?

Humans interacting right?

It's human nature manifesting itself in the real world other particular sort of like books in literature that you would recommend that give you Like this classic enduring lens into human nature if you're open to seeing it there there are many I think Shakespeare is the best and I never really understood I

mean it almost seems cliched it to say but I never understood the importance Until I saw the way that the characters in Shakespeare respond to Models of desire so in Othello Yago is this Mediator to everybody in the story right between Othello and Desdemona.

He's the one pulling the strings He's intentionally doing it.

He's the middleman.

He's the mediator and Almost all of Shakespeare, you know, if you go back and read it and I read it in high school I read it in college and I didn't I was bored It wasn't until I came back and read it in my adult life with sort of a new lens That I began to see all these fascinating things play out

and I was like, okay So I didn't realize that Yago is this mediator who's pulling the strings and making people want different things and he's basically you got everybody wrapped around his finger in this story and Two gentlemen of Verona same thing pretty much any Shakespeare play has these really

powerful mediators and their influence is hidden You don't really understand it the first time that you read it, but I started to realize well There are like Yago's in every corporation to they're like Yago's in most schools there are these people that are powerful mediators to other people and if you

can identify Who those people are and how they're operating You've just identified sort of one of the one of the root causes of problems or just one of the sort of the root players in this system and Identifying those mediators is sort of really key.

Oh, you can't say that because that gets me to asking you how to identify them.

Oh Teach somebody to identify these mediators of desire You need to really embed yourself in in a relationship or in an organization and cut Through the bullshit because the bullshit is always going to obscure the power of the mediator Media I use the word mediator and model interchangeably You have to

cut through it And that means you know getting people when they're vulnerable hearing hearing them explain their motivations For for doing something or pursuing some path and then hearing all of the things that they didn't say People are people are usually very protective of their sort of deeper motivations

and deeper desires And sort of gloss over these things But there are sort of I think ways to ways to draw those things out I mean it comes from trust right when people feel like they're in a context of a trusting relationship They'll say all kinds of things right?

It's like speaking to a therapist I think there are ways to recreate that within organizational environments where you know people where there's confidentiality where there's trust Anonymity maybe where people can begin to tell the truth About you know how certain people Have a nonlinear effect on on the culture

and in the dynamics of the organization right?

So this is a very nonlinear domain people are not all the same obviously like a big figure You know a CEO with a larger -than -life personality Will have an outsized effect right, but I promise you that in most places There's there's very junior people that do too and the people that revolve around to

them They sort of become the mediators for you know getting to the next level and understanding in internal politics so identity identifying them through a Different type of conversation than most people are usually willing willing to have I think that's probably the number one thing I would say before

we we move on to sort of like We've been talking in 45 minutes now almost and we haven't even hit some of the questions the key questions around your book I love that that we'll just go in the totally different direction.

I want to come back.

Did your friend marry the girl?

He did he did happily married now So so I first came across Renee Gerard's ideas when I was learning more about Peter Thiel and once you see Gerard's core idea You can't really unsee it So who is Renee Gerard and what is the medic desire?

Renee Gerard was a French Academic who moved to the US Shortly after World War two started out at Indiana University and his PhD was essentially in history and Moved around in the US and he seems like a guy who was struggling with his vocation He wasn't entirely happy just teaching in this narrow domain So

he began to really branch out and he's really an autodidact I mean he sort of to read everything way outside of his area of expertise anthropology he read sacred scriptures he read sociology and literature and It was in teaching sort of getting dragged in roped into teaching a class on European literature

that he had his first really big insight into something that had been overlooked about human nature for a very long time and He came to this insight through reading Shakespeare through reading a lot of the French classical Literature and not only French.

He read a lot of Russian literature Tolstoy Dostoyevsky and he realized that he saw this reflected in the literature and that's important to note right because literature fiction even is written by people and these people leave clues about human nature embedded in the literature even if it's fiction so reading

fiction and Mining it for truths about human nature is what Gerard did and I think it's because he viewed fiction that way like his starting point Was like oh I can discover fascinating truths in this fiction I don't think he would have ever seen what he saw if he hadn't set out with that realization It's

kind of like the discovery of the lost city of Troy.

Okay Everybody was trying to find Troy through Only sort of scientific sort of reasoning and the guy that actually found Troy read Homer and he went into reading Homer under the assumption that Maybe some of the things that are in this this work will point me to finding the lost city of Troy and Within two

years he found it and his map was Homer was the Iliad and the Odyssey So he thought that there was truth in there, even if it wasn't scientific truth Or if it could have been truth disguised, but he went into it Looking for answers and he found them and Gerard did the same thing.

I think of that as sort of like useful versus accurate, right?

Yeah, so the idea was totally useful, but we dismiss it because it's not a hundred percent accurate.

So we just ignore it Well, you know Homer he's not accurate He's probably not useful and it should be the other way around right the true test of an idea is is this useful and under What circumstances is it useful and the more circumstances the better?

Yes, and that's this is why people don't understand mythology Because there are truths in mythology even if it didn't happen these are these are stories that humans have told to reflect some deep fundamental truths of human nature and Sure some God didn't fall out of the sky and in go chase somebody

down But there's some truths there.

It's like Ken Kessi said it's true.

Even if it didn't happen, right?

He's describing some things right there are stories that I could tell it's like well That's true.

Even if it didn't happen because it says something that's actually like really true about this person And it opens up our world it opens up our minds when we start to view everything as having the ability of Revealing some truth to me Even if it's fiction and I go into philosophers that I don't I don't

necessarily agree with most of the things that they say I have a lot of qualms with Heidegger if anybody and you know is listening like is like philosophy But I go into him with an openness to receiving some truths and their truths, right?

There are a lot of them and that's just been a mindset shift for me Approaching everything is an opportunity to learn so Gerard did this and what he saw reflected first in the in the literature And then all over in the world around him and in history in politics and social life is Mimetic desire and you

ask so what is mimetic desire?

Mimetic desire means that a person's choice of an object is Not determined by the object itself But is fundamentally or at least mostly determined By a third person or a third party, which is a mediator or model of desire So there's always sort of a hidden Third party to the transaction that helps determine

the choice of the object While humans almost always convince themselves that the choice of an object is do solely To the objective qualities of the object itself This could be a pair of shoes This could be a job.

This could be a romantic interest We convince ourselves that there's a one There's a straight line between us and the objects of our desire and Gerard calls that The romantic lie.

He said that's a romanticized way of thinking about human desire, right?

Like love at first sight.

Yeah, it's a very sort of romantic ideal and he said Julius Caesar I came I saw I conquered the romantic lie and Gerard says a lot of writers are very Romantic right 50 Shades of Grey.

I've never read 50 Shades of Grey, but I had A girlfriend of mine show me a passage in it and it was the romantic lie It was like this this desire is sort of stirred up In a in a in a heartbeat simply by laying eyes on somebody right?

I mean Gerard said a lot of a lot of Poor sort of fiction and writers that are not accurately portraying human nature Sort of lean into this romantic lie the reason why Shakespeare is so compelling And why he seemed to sort of sense this deep truce about human nature Shakespeare had never read Gerard

writes, but maybe he had a tacit knowledge about memetic desire is because Desire is shown to be Very memetic in a great writer like Shakespeare He always seems to write in characters that are models of desire for for other characters There seemed to be mediators who mediate the value of an object or of a person to

somebody else So Gerard had this insight from reading literature and then spent, you know, the next 40 years of his life exploring the world He was one of the most interdisciplinary thinkers that we've seen in a long time There's only a couple other ones that I can think of but Gerard was a real interdisciplinary

thinker And he began to have dialogues with people in different fields and then uncover the extent to which memetic desire is a fundamental part of human behavior a fundamental part of how organizations operate and That sort of formed this idea of memetic desire formed the basis of his theory Which

is called the memetic theory of desire and the memetic theory of human behavior So if some obvious examples of this are like shoes and Rolex and cars What are some non obvious examples of how this affects us things are the easy things to see right why people buy things?

And Gerard calls that kind of memetic desire Acquisitive desire, you know, we're acquiring things or objects In the world that I come from watches are the most obvious example You know in any nice Airport or first -class or business lounge in the world in any airport that I've ever seen there are like

a dozen Brands that are modeled in the magazines And you see those same dozen watches or brands on the wrists of a certain kind of man Usually the object is just a tool right and that's why objects can be swapped out so easily Right Gerard said that the the harder form of memetic desire to understand is what he

calls Metaphysical desire and it's a desire that goes way beyond any any form of object and it's where somebody basically desires to Desires the desire of another person not what they have.

Okay, so it's it's a desire for desire I just saw an article in the I think it was in the Wall Street Journal About like Kanye how like there's like a bunch of people he's got his own fashion line out now And there are a bunch of people that are that are dressing like Kanye, but that's just for the things,

right? I mean, it's clearly not that's not where the desire ends, right?

The desire is much deeper than that and it's really a desire for It's a desire to be a certain kind of person, right?

It goes down to the level of identity and that's where when somebody has taken another person as a model when the model changes their interest in or desire for something are The objects that were interested in change along with them because it was never the object that was the important thing in the first

place It's the model that was the important thing.

So one area where people miss this all the time and Here I'll tell you a personal story So I actually lied to you when I told you the story about why I left investment banking There was an important piece there that I left out Somebody that I really respected that I worked with Left a few months before

I did to go start his own company.

I don't know how much that affected my Desire to leave or my willingness to you know to commit but certainly it was a factor.

I mean the fact that I remember says something and You I have to wonder, you know if he hadn't modeled the possibility to me If you hadn't modeled that desire and then done it Would I have done it or not?

Right? So this happens a lot and You know, there's there's the hindsight bias where the stories we tell ourselves About why we made the decisions that we did very very often leave out a model of Desire or a model of that behavior because I don't know because maybe it's some it's an affront to our independence

to our rationality To our authority of being an independent decision maker We don't necessarily as humans like to acknowledge the influence of a model of desire on us Is it fair to say with Kanye and the clothing line that you know, he's not selling clothes.

He's selling a lifestyle and I want to be like Kanye even just a small part of Kanye So I'm going to mimic him or is there is it deeper than that and I don't see it He's modeling a lifestyle, but I think he's modeling Even more than a lifestyle.

He's modeling a desire and here's an here's an easy way to think about that Kanye is more than a role model.

So a role model just models a role They could model a lifestyle or a certain kind of behavior, but a role model is different than a model of desire There there I can't think of a politician off the top of my head That is a role model for me because I don't desire their role to be a politician So there's

no they're not modeling a role to me period But they could be modeling a desire and the way that Kanye I think models a desire is this if he totally changed his lifestyle If he if he switched and started modeling a completely different kind of lifestyle different fashion different beliefs moved to a different

country and Started making country music there would be he was that people would follow him there So so it's not it's so it goes beyond the lifestyle because he himself is the model of desire and people desire the desire So when Kanye's desire changes the desires of those who look to him seriously as

a model also change So for me that goes a little bit deeper than than than the lifestyle to the person because long after Kanye is gone There could be somebody else that comes along that models that particular kind of lifestyle as well or better than him But the people that really sort of take him as

a as their model They look to him if he wants something totally different they will follow and that's the power of a model of desire I think that's really interesting.

I think one way to approach this is how would you go about creating a luxury brand?

Knowing what you know now about models of desire from scratch Well, my one of my favorite examples of a luxury brand is Monocle magazine you familiar with that.

I'm Tyler brulee No, man, I get like the the community newspaper.

That's all I read Gotcha.

Gotcha. I I'm sure that some of our listeners will be familiar with monocle Tyler brulee Is sort of this lifestyle?

writer he wrote a piece called the the fast lane in the Financial Times for for a few years and then he left and started his own lifestyle media company and their flagship Magazine now is called the monocle and it's got his own radio program, too And he sort of I don't I wouldn't say that he invented

it but He I've heard the term Aspirational marketing used to describe what he does, you know, the monocle has become a bit of a joke Because you know, you'd see jet -setting lifestyles You know, everybody's really good -looking You'll see like a typical article would be like you have to fly on this Transcontinental

flight. Well, it's really important to take care of your skin You know in those show like a guy who's got like the perfect size bag with all the perfect size things in that and that kind of Marketing is incredibly powerful, right?

like he he's made himself into a mama into a mimetic model for a certain kind of lifestyle and he's such a Powerful model that he's managed to build an entire media company out of that by recruiting Other people that sort of fall into the same sort of flavor and type of model that he is So, you know

get if if that's the kind of luxury brand that you want to build Staying true to this kind of brand consistency Where you're sort of modeling An aspirational lifestyle to people that never seems to really change, right?

It's not as volatile as it probably is for the people that are actually trying to live that lifestyle Right with their ups and downs and relationship problems You know you you make it seem like you know the most important thing you have to worry about is what facial creams that you use before you get

on a flight to Europe or something and I think one of the reasons that it works is that There's a really large gap between the the kinds of things that He's modeling and I think his average readers.

So the really interesting thing is that a Lot of the readers of monocle and I'm just using this as an example because I think it's a powerful one So basically what I'm saying is that I would probably I probably follow this A lot of those readers are are not even close to living that kind of a lifestyle

You would you might think that they are but that's that's like the magic of it, right?

That's that's why it works There's a far enough gap That there's like it's it's What I describe in the book as the difference between celebrity stand and fresh, manastain So there's there's a big enough gap where it's like it's almost as if you're reading about celebrities But they're not celebrities.

These are just people that live a certain lifestyle and that has a really powerful effect I think it's way more powerful than if he was too close to comfort to our own lifestyles, right?

if he's too close for comfort, then we sort of enter into the uncanny valley of Marketing for a luxury good.

It's the uncanny valley of like oh, well, you know, this guy Makes a little bit more money than I do and he's got this kind of a watch But I could never aspire to that Because that's weird, right?

Because then it then it seems like I'm competing with this guy Whereas brulee is created an entire brand that's so almost otherworldly There's no self reflection or self -accusation Involved in pursuing that lifestyle and this is a I don't want to go off on a tangent But Seinfeld is very similar to this.

I know this sounds totally unrelated but the reason that Seinfeld is genius and the reason that it works is that He's talking about these real things that like we can relate to these truths about human nature But in sort of such an absurd way that it doesn't cause The the viewer to see themselves in in the actual

Craziness of what's happening, right?

I like so it works because there's not there's not any kind of like self reflection And I think there's there's a similar principle that work there It has to do with the space between us and the model and that's why a luxury brand has to work really hard it always Maintaining a bit of otherworldliness

from the readers. How is social media impact at all of this?

like it used to be that like, you know We lived in a world where what you knew and what you saw was like your street, you know a little bit more in your community But you you know if somebody got a new car on your street It was like a big event and and you know You saw it but it didn't happen frequently

and now you you open up Instagram or tik -tok and you know People are on vacations all the time.

They're flying around the world They're taking pictures in front of cars that aren't there.

So you don't even know it you have access to everybody who has More resources than you do and they're always living this lifestyle that like to your point There's a huge gap between where you're at and what you're seeing.

How does that affect us?

I asked my students to name their top five models of desire that the top five people that are influencing them and I Really encourage them to be honest and I'll get answers like this particular Instagram or tik -tok influencer In Asia, I live in Washington, DC Think about that.

I mean Yes, my dad if I asked my dad what his top five models of desire were when he was their age They'd all be people that lived in his hometown, you know They'd be people that he went to high school with that, you know Maybe played on the varsity team when he when he didn't quite yet.

They'd all be very familiar people So what social media has done?

from a psychological perspective has taken The desires from around the world, which people are modeling to other people in very curated ways, by the way It's hard to know whether they even want some of the things that they're modeling or whether they're just getting paid to do that And you know, we

know through anecdotal evidence that some of the people modeling lifestyles Like a van life are actually really miserable and depressed doing that but they don't look like it right there So they're modeling a desire that may not be the one that they actually have it's taken the desires from around the world

and essentially Shrunken them down and put them onto the head of a pin which we're all standing on if we're on social media At least if we're big scrollers on social media and and we don't have any boundaries The desires are now we have billions of models of desire rather than a handful And I just don't

think that we've really come to grips yet with with what that has done to humanity One of the differences that that strikes me from our current models of desire from your father's per se is It's not people you know now.

It's people you have no exposure to in the real world You don't know what their characters like you don't know how ethical they are So do you think that that affects who we are in our identity of ourselves to like does and maybe maybe the real underlying question is Does our thinking and identity also become

somewhat a medic identity is absolutely a medic we're relational creatures highly relational and Our identity is really formed in and through relationships.

I don't form my identity on my own My identity can really only be understood in relationship to The family that I came from the friends that I have the you know my my marriage to my wife The relationships that I have so I believe that identity itself is a highly relational thing that could only be understood

that way and Given that given that we're social and that that we're relational and that mimesis is rampant of course mimesis and the medic desire plays into our very identity I Here's an important.

I think distinction to make There are really two major types of models of desire in the world And this is comes from René Girard himself.

He says that we have external models of desire and External models of desire are those that are outside of our world that we have no possibility of coming into contact with whether because They live on the other side of the world at least in an age before social media or because they're historical figures

Or they just live in a different sphere They're external to our world and that means that there's no possibility of us encountering them or competing with them the other kind of model is an internal model of desire and An internal model is in inside of our world right there the people that we have the possibility

of coming into contact with Traditionally that would be the people in our family That would be the people in our community the people that we work with You know and it's why?

You know traditionally you know we think of a lot of the greatest Conflicts in the world like world wars and things Historically there's been more more internal violence than there has been external violence You know genocides within countries for instance Most murders between people that know each

other okay or inside families so this is this is kind of a really I think important point to understand because the internal models of desire affect us differently than the external models of desire They're way.

They're a lot harder to recognize and to name Frankly because one they're too close to us for comfort to we normally don't like to identify them Because we like to think of ourselves as independent We don't like to think that the people close to us are probably the ones influencing us us the most But

here's the thing with social media with modern technology that line between the external models of desire and internal is Is all but gone because it's almost as if Everybody can be an internal model of desire now There are people on Twitter and social media that I've never met before That I feel like

I know way better than I do right that I can say are they feel like internal mediators of desire and that's just something to be aware of where It's almost like like a game to be played.

I think a lot of celebrities do it intentionally I think it's one of the most powerful things that they can do and I My conversation that I had with Peter Thiel when I talked to him for this book He sort of mentioned to this himself and said it's really powerful when a celebrity Sort of straddles the line

between an external and an internal mediator of desire where they're really kind of an external Mediator of desire.

There's really not a strong possibility of you ever coming into contact with them or competing with them You know for the same Spouses or anything like that or the same houses what whatever?

Yet it's really powerful and you know Instagram and tik -tok have allowed them to do this making Millions of people feel like they're more of that internal mediator of desire you can DM them that's that's Powerful right because the the internal ones are always the ones that that were more I don't know

if obsessed is the right word But they absurdist a far greater force on us because they feel like they're more similar to us We can relate to them a little bit better and we see glimpses into their their private lives, right?

so we feel like we're in a way seeing a friend write these Instagram stories where they're at a party and they're showing you You know what's going on?

You almost feel like you know them in a way that you don't have any idea about them Yeah, and we really don't until you know You walk you walk in somebody else's shoes and you know, and how often you know, we project so many things in life And and project things on to other people Without having any

any clue as to what's going on in their life And you know, that's one of the great dangers of social media for sure is that we project, you know Happiness on to other people who may not be happy at all How can mimetic desire help us understand why we're attracted to certain people more than others?

Like don't pick up artists sort of like effectively exploit this or a hacker human desire.

Yeah What's the guy's name who wrote that the art of the pickup?

I forget this book came out Probably 15 years ago, but it's about that sort of secret community of pickup artists that lived in the Hollywood Hills.

Yeah Yeah, and one of the very specific Tactics that they talk about in that book It's got a specific name and I can't remember what it was, but it's essentially the idea of the wingman it's the idea of If you really really want to affect The desires of somebody let's just say that you're a guy, you

know, you find a girlfriend and Bring her into a bar or into some setting But people there other other women there might not necessarily know that she's a friend And you know, she she seems to be really interested in everything that you say really seems to be into you really seems to desire you that will Instantly

sort of affect the way that the guy is perceived by by the other women in the room and in that book They have ways to sort of like hack attraction and that's one of the ways to hack it I mean they go so far as to basically suggest How you're one of your girlfriends to like be an actor and act like she's

you're the sexiest guy in the room essentially, right?

but it actually it works because it's it's a way to hack the medic desire and There's there's other ways to do that too, right?

I mean, I mean, I think it's really unethical or I mean they talk in that book about If there's somebody that you really want to talk to sort of go talk to their friend instead Right and then like stir up a bunch of insecurity and stuff like that But all of these things if you notice they have to do

with the mediator there's always a mediator and this is the crux of Girard's theory is that these mediators of desire determine attraction and desire for objects and people Way more than we ever imagined and another way to see this is in a breakup make a decision.

Hey, this isn't working This is not the person that I want to spend the rest of my life with it wouldn't be fair to her to stay with her so end a relationship and a couple of months later some really athletic wealthy Successful guy who just thinks that she's the greatest thing in the world and you know

You start second -guessing yourself like well jeez, what have I done, right?

Like what about maybe I made like a huge mistake Whereas until I saw that the thought never crossed my mind Well, what's the difference now?

I have some model or mediator desire that I didn't have before Two thoughts that sort of come to mind from that is one of which is do we need somebody else to want what we have?

In in a way to validate it and if that is sort of the case Then it is the core of this that we're all afraid of wanting the wrong things So wanting other people's things sort of like has this first pass filter where it's like well somebody else wants it So then I have to want it and I'm not making a decision.

And if I'm wrong I'm not wrong alone at least Wasn't that how a lot of fundraising works in the investment community?

Everybody's terrified to want the wrong thing.

I think you're really hitting the nail on the head we want our desires to be validated and if you've ever wanted something or someone and Have a hard time finding anybody else that wants it you begin to doubt yourself we like competition in Almost a twisted way, right?

I don't think the competition is a bad thing But we almost use the competition for something to validate its worthiness and you know when this comes to people That's that's not not a good thing In the business world.

I see it all the time, right?

You know, I'm trying to raise money for my company and the first investor in objectively speaking on paper This all makes sense to me Ask me well, you know, who else is interested who else is competing for the deal?

Well You're the first person I'm talking to take it or leave it right?

You're gonna get the best terms Well, you know, I'm not really comfortable unless I see, you know Second Earth or a third investor come to the table classic example.

I think of this where it brings an added level of validity to What we want or what we think I think it has I think it's we we rationalize it right and we say that well this this is it's like a totally rational thing, right where oh, they're just a Stress testing my assumptions and things like that,

but I just don't think that's the case, right?

I mean look at Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes, right?

That wasn't the case with that, you know She essentially used magnetic desire and could point to models of like powerful models of people that had invested in her company To draw in other models now, I don't know how she got the first one But you know the first Domino is the most important one So it

works it works on the way up and it works on the way down as we see in our case Do you think there's positives to sort of wanting things even if the things we want won't really fulfill us?

Like aren't our desires sort of predictors of what we'll do and what we'll endure to get what we really want So it doesn't doesn't this whole Human instinct towards memetic desire really push us further To get off our butt to do more to persevere.

I think that desire is a positive thing It's one of the things that makes us human and that desire sort of oriented and channeled in the right way Is is exactly what pushes people to endure?

you know the desire for freedom right has led many people to do heroic things right to sort of fight for their country and to You know to liberate others from from tyranny and oppression that you know It's that those are I would call that a pretty perennial desire though So I think there are there are root

desires there. There are some things That I usually call thick desires In opposition to thin desires which are the more sort of memetic ones that can change in a dime and I think cultivating those is important and Finding out what those enduring thicker desires are begins to act as a bit of a hermeneutic

for What to say yes to what to say no to you know when we've identified The kind of like lifelong desire.

Let's say that that a person has Where you actually want the desire to grow and get stronger you want to reinforce that desire?

You know to leave a certain kind of a legacy in the world and that's an incredibly good thing so one thing I really want to make clear is that Desire is just it is what it is.

We're desiring creatures right.

I'm not really a stoic in the sense that I think that in general Sort of like you like the two I think of desire like the the parable of the of the two wolves, right?

You know we all have these two wolves inside of us that are kind of at war the wolves representing desires, and you know you need to sort of Find out which one of those wolves to starve and which one of those wolves to feed and It's not always easy to tell which one is which when it comes to the things

that we want when it comes to our desires So I actually believe that we should feed those enduring desires And that those enduring desires do ultimately sort of see us through the hard times Talk to me a little bit more about those thick you call them thick desires But let's sort of like think of them

as enduring human desires.

What are we born with desiring?

In a sense like what's in our nature versus like what's created after that from culture our environment and everything else We have a desire for deep human relationships to know and to be known by others is Fundamental and I'm and I'm speaking of the things that come after our hardwired Biological needs

right I mean we're born thirsty and hungry and stuff like that right away, so but but after that You know this desire that every child has right to be to be known Right to be known and loved by their parents and and and to develop healthy Relationships with with other people and and deep friendships

right Certainly certainly a thick desire that I think everybody has right you know classic virtues I think there's a reason why human beings for thousands of years have you know I identified basic virtues as Desirable right as things that contribute to human happiness right Aristotle's kind of the the what is happiness

It's to lead the good life, and what is the good life?

You know it's to achieve excellence in these areas, and you know various virtues to develop right?

Which is I guess if I come from a place where human nature is not an unknowable X If human nature is an unknowable X then you know this might not make a lot of sense, but if if human nature is is is knowable and You know we can agree that it's it's better to be a temperate person Than to not be a temperate

person right like a person that is has the ability to moderate their desire So when it comes to alcohol for instance right you know?

That's a that's like I think of it as a muscle right I I have the ability to do this thing If I don't have the ability to do that thing Then it will cause me pain eventually and I go back to some of these classic examples Because they're the things that will never disappoint when when developed and I've

had a single person.

You know tell me that they have developed Some some some of these classical virtues and are worse because of it But I think to the desire to know and be known is one of the most important ones You know that's something you know we can we can work on that suffered a lot during Covid right just knowing

people at us at a fairly superficial level on screens And those those are thick desires, but I mean those are I would say Universal in my opinion thick desires, but I think that each person has their own I do think this this can become highly personal and Identifying those is really hard work right

and can take a really long time you know I've identified for instance that one of my thick desires is to Is to communicate and to enter right right and to communicate things that I think are important truths and to sort of sit at this intersection of these sort of different life experiences that I've

had and to try to put put them together and communicate them and there's nothing more satisfying to me than to be able to do to do those kinds of things and It's it's one that I'm sure that will never disappoint Exercising that is insatiable other words like I can never I can never do it to the point

of satiation that's one way to determine I think a thick desire is Are you ever able to satiate it if you can't satiate it there's probably something really really deep?

Well there that you can just continue to go down Desires happen with through both the the external and internal are unconscious and Our unconscious controls us in a way that We're unaware of but just a nature of our unconscious, but we can use our conscious mind to construct an environment right so like

one of the things that I've experienced is that you adopt sort of the habits and thinking of the people you're closest to and This again like this is at the subconscious level and one implication of this is that you want to be very careful about who you Spend a lot of time with but if we take that just

a little bit deeper You get to really interesting sort of insights Which is you can effectively choose your habits and choose some of your thinking by choosing who you hang around and you want the default behavior of the group or people To you know because it can override your individual desired behavior So

you can choose the model by choosing the people whose default behavior is your desired behavior There are more implications, but how are you responding to that in your head?

Well, I think it's absolutely true I talked to James clear about this and he's got a section in atomic habits where you know He identifies this as one of the most powerful ways to change your habits and affect your habits I think it's why group exercise classes are really important for some people You

know so much of this is into is is personal though Some people are need more positive mimetic influence in Some domains more than others.

So I think that our level of Mimetic tendencies the pet is domain dependent to a certain extent.

I Don't like group exercise classes, right?

I'm like a rugged individualist when it comes to the way that I like to work out But my wife loves them and sort of needs them and it really is Is the way to help her develop a positive habit of getting to the gym, right going to spin classes and going to CrossFit and stuff like that Not for me, but there

are other areas of my life where I I need sort of like positive mimesis you know when it comes to when it comes to things like reading and stuff like that and certain like Groups of people that I get together with and like talk about ideas Incredibly positively mimetic for me because they they're constantly

like pushing me to think Deeper about certain things right and that's why I think like getting together with them And probing really important questions and holding each other accountable is important and frankly I wouldn't do it on my own unless I'd surrounded myself by by those People that also desire

the same thing that I do and we reinforce each other's desires So desires are reinforced and there are some desires that we want reinforced like that one for me There are other desires, you know that I don't want reinforced And it's just important to know the difference between the two, but in general

I absolutely think that choosing in an intentional way the people that were closest to is The most important thing that we can do to affect what we want, you know something that you said I think this is a critical point so much of this is unconscious subconscious preconscious and the work is Bringing

it to light and being able to name it I mean being able to name things is a lot more important than we realize it's important to be able to name emotions It's important to be able to name our desires most of us can't even name our desires.

We just sort of vaguely want things and The more accurately we can name sort of desires I mean Vic and things Wittgenstein said like our our universe is basically as big as our language, right?

Like we don't have a word we can't name something.

We sort of don't we don't really know that it's there We don't know that it exists.

We certainly don't have any power over it.

So naming our desires is critical And naming models is critical both the negative models and the positive models And I would bet that it's a lot easier for most people listening to name your positive models of desire, right?

It could be Warren Buffett as an investor.

It could be somebody who models a great family life, whatever Usually we can come up with those off the top of our heads The negative ones are a little bit harder to name because it makes us uncomfortable Strikes me that you can Identify your negative models, but just things that aren't moving you closer

to your goals your actual goals, right?

Like if you can identify and name those sort of core goals the the other thought that I had there and This could be completely wrong was as you were talking about sort of like work to name it and label it which is super important What you're really talking about is recognizing and sort of reflecting

a little bit But then you you take this and you do something with it in the moment, right?

So in the moment you have this discipline around it or you have this energy around it where you can choose to do something That your subconscious will later respond to so you can you can automatically choose be future behaviors before you need them by creating these sort of like rituals by Shaping your

environment by shaping who you hang around and who you think about you can sort of like choose your future self Yes, and they they they're sort of shortcuts in a way There's a lot of I think in embedded wisdom in the world that acts as a shortcut So we don't have to figure everything out from scratch

every day when we wake up in the morning and good positive systems of desire Do that for us where we don't have to wake up every single morning and decide what it is that we're going to want Or what's the most important thing to want?

And again, that's why identifying the thick desires is important Something else that you said is really important though And this is you know goals and you know how we can evaluate our goals in this way I think a lot of this depends on what we're optimizing for and We have to acknowledge that many times

our goals themselves are the product of memetic desires the reasons why I Choose the goals that I choose are the very product of a memetic relationship that I'm in and we don't talk a lot about That it's usually about well, here's how to achieve your goals and not not enough about well How do we choose

the goals that we're gonna set in the first place?

for the first Couple of years more than that a few years of my post -college life I would I had different goals in college I was optimizing solely for financial success Right.

And why was I optimizing for financial success?

Well because everybody around me was optimizing for financial success What's the best job to get out of school?

Would you go work on Wall Street because bonuses are high?

Everything I was doing was optimizing for that.

So my desires were were completely around that The change for me happened when I I identified different models who were optimizing for different things And that's that's sort of what allows allowed me to sort of change So like optimizing for balance and and the ability to develop healthy relationships

in my life became a lot more important But the goal changed in the first place because I expanded my universe of models I looked outside of the world that I was in outside of it.

I I found different models that wanted different things that I thought were healthier things things that I I decided were ultimately going to Fulfill me more and it's not that I I never optimized for profit or find it I mean I want financial success and security.

It's just that it's not the it's not I'm only optimizing for those things, right?

Now it's just one piece of a bigger puzzle.

It's something that I take into account But it's not the most important thing it seems to me with habits that it's a lot easier to replace a bad habit with a good habit and We all think that we have willpower and we can just stop our bad habits But I don't I don't tend to believe that that's the case

personally It sounds like what you're saying is it's also the same with these models of success replacing a bad or models that we're following You want to replace a bad model with a good model?

There has to be a greater good I believe there has to be a greater good in order to stop an unwanted behavior If there's not a greater good then the unwanted behavior just becomes a complete elephant in the room.

I can't do this thing I can't do this thing I can't do this thing and the more you start thinking about that the You know, it just becomes bigger and bigger and bigger Whether it's a temptation just whatever it is Whereas and you you're actually looking at the very thing that you don't want to do and it

looms larger and larger in your Mind whereas if there's a greater good you've in a sense, you know turned away from the unwanted path or behavior or whatever it is and You're spending more time focused on the greater good And if you think of the greater good as in terms of models of desire, I think

it works the same way So, you know, you can you can replace it's not enough to just sort of get rid of the negative ones There has to be a one that's more powerful in the positive sense to replace it You have a good example around this with Claire your wife and dinner.

Can you share that with us?

Yeah I'm really bad at shutting it down for the night.

I always have been you know, I've been An entrepreneur sort of my own boss since I was 23 and I don't work normal hours and you know when I get on one when I get in the zone, um, I can work until 9 10 or later and you know, Claire just doesn't come from that kind of mindset never had that lifestyle

and Foods always been a really important part of her life, you know grew up having meals with with the family every night And in fact that she made that her career path she got a master's in food studies and and now works for a food company, but but loves to cook and you know when we Started dating

and especially since we've been married five o 'clock six o 'clock rolls around and you know, she'll head and start prepping dinner and That's a positive enough of a model for me that I mean the smell of the foods, you know Helps a little bit There's not purely memetic right?

It's probably a probably a physiological response that I have to that But I get up and and I go and we do it together And you know if I if I if I didn't have her modeling that for that desire for me I don't think that I would have it I think it's pretty fair to say that I wouldn't because I've been

doing the same thing for 15 years and it took Claire For me to break what I would say.

It was a pretty bad habit of me like eating dinner sometimes at my desk And you know and now we reinforce that in one another You know, we reinforce that we're now there's been times where now I've been the one to initiate it because it's so it's just part of It's been ingrained in me now for a while

now. I want to do it.

And that's that's the beauty of Of how this this flywheel of desire works When you begin to desire something in a positive, it's kind of like exercise or fitness, right?

You actually want to do it It's not hard anymore you desire it and if you're not able to do it, you feel it you feel the pain good cheaper on the flywheel of desire we have ways to set up our lives for success when it comes to desires so desires are path dependent and One desire Can bring us if we follow

that desire will bring us to a place Where we're in a different position than we were when we started.

It's kind of like evaluating past decisions I know you you do this and this is part of the decision -making journal Where you look back at the state of mind that you were in when you made a past decision It's not the one that you're probably in today So it's really important to sort of understand where you

were at and why you did that The same is true with your desires, you know And I think it's important to actually sort of keep a desired journal in a sense, right?

Like If you if you're sort of keeping track of what you want on a daily basis And you see the way that your desires change throughout the course of a year or more or throughout the course of a decade You remember you don't forget.

Oh, I really wanted to Explore that thing sometimes we forget things that we really wanted because we didn't I don't know life chokes them off chokes off What might be positive desires all the time and we forget it could just be a book that you you really wanted to read And then you just forgot about it.

So I think this is really important.

So the flywheel of desire is understanding the way that your desires have a cumulative effect and How one desire leads naturally to another desire now the easiest place in my opinion to see this Is with basic wellness stuff There are certain desires that I can feed tonight that will Make it far more

likely that I'm going to want to wake up tomorrow morning and Have a very healthy breakfast and go work out So if I if I feel like shit tomorrow morning Because I go out and pound five beers with one of my buddies tonight I am NOT going to want to work out like we all know this.

Okay, this is just obvious but if you if you actually map out a flywheel of desire Five six seven steps You'll and where the last desire kind of feeds back into the first one Okay so like whatever your goal is You design a flywheel that makes it increasingly likely that you're going to want to do the next

step in the Flywheel and this is highly personal, you know, I know what they are for me in different domains I know what they are for me when it comes to exercise.

I know what they are for me when it comes you know to like going down bad spirals of like Frustration when I see things on social media, I mean it works in the positive way and in the negative way So this is just like catching yourself at the beginning stages of a negative spiral You know where you

sort of like go down to like go to a dark place, right when you start reading things and hearing things But if you recognize that at the beginning and you catch it, that's a negative flywheel of desire And when you when you think about these flywheels, you always have to know what what the negative

side is In order to know what the positive side is.

That's that's the way that they work.

So if you map these out Sometimes it's actually easier to start with a negative flywheel of desire than it is with the positive Flywheel of desire because the positive one is often just a mirror of the negative one So I can think of one for me That's you know time time management, you know The way that I

sort of my week works and our example of cooking dinner and taking a break is definitely a part of that positive desire for me starts with Positive time management at least Starts with me going to bed at a decent hour and not not staying up until one in the morning Watching something stupid that's not going

to improve my life Getting up early Spending the quality time that I need first thing in the morning to read and to meditate to do those things Go for a run and And then that naturally leads me into sort of the way that my entire work week flows it makes it more likely that I'm going to want to Sit

down and and focus starting at 8 or 8 30 Whether it's writing or whatever.

I have to do If I haven't done that It starts sort of a negative spiral where I spend most of my morning thinking about When I'm going to work out when I'm gonna find time to read when I'm gonna find time to meditate It just permeates my entire workday if I don't do it first, okay I usually take a break

around lunch time The break is really important some sometimes I'll actually Just go sit in a in a church near where I'm at and just spend a half hour just sitting there in the dark I'm usually the only one there and That is a flywheel effect because the silence just the total unplugging from everything

from social media I don't my phone's off can't get ahold of me during that half hour It's only a half an hour the rest the other half hour I eat lunch Okay, so it's an hour break that half hour of silence completely resets me, but more than resets me it it actually Increases my desire to work for the afternoon.

It's kind of like going for like a great like lunchtime jog or something like that and That if this affects if I if I do this Consistently Monday through Friday and then stopping at 5 eating dinner with my wife Claire That affects the way that the rest of the night goes so that we're not eating at 9

o 'clock And now I like I said I want to stop at 5 o 'clock the key word here is I want to okay For the first month of doing it.

I didn't want to I forced myself to do it now.

I desire it It's funny how that works.

You know like sometimes we we we don't know what we want, right?

We have to sort of orient ourselves in a direction that we objectively or intellectually know is good for us But that we don't want like I don't want the things that are good for me So sometimes I just have to do it and I eventually want it It's kind of how virtues work and that sets up my entire week

the positive flywheel is by Friday I don't want to spend my whole weekend working the way that I would If I had if I didn't have that balance that I'd created and that that flywheel had created in my life I won't want I live in Washington DC.

We've got wonderful museums.

They're all free And you know now it's become sort of a habit of ours to go explore the city when we're in town on the weekends Right, and that's that's part of that positive flywheel of desire.

That's what we want to do You know this that's been constructed not just as they are habits But habits are closely related to our desires Because the habits that were most likely to develop are the ones that we want to continue to develop Effectively you want to do the things that you want to do when you

don't want to do them I've never heard that before but I like that a lot and I I think what you're talking about really is If we eliminate the word habits and discipline and all this stuff What it sounds like is the counterbalance to human nature is sort of ritual ritual is key I think we're we're ritual

creatures and Rituals I think we all we have a lot of rituals in our in our world, but I think we've lost a lot too Especially rituals around like timekeeping.

I think that was a big problem with the pandemic.

I don't know about you or other listeners, but There was a time when my flywheel wasn't working so well during the pandemic the one that I just described and one day started to blend into the next day and One week started to blend into the next week and one month into the next month and that lasted

for about six months for me And then I got the flywheel restarted again, which just took a gargantuan amount of effort frankly, and it was painful Just like it is, you know if you haven't worked out for six months to go for a run so I I'm an outlier and in at least the world of Silicon Valley and that I'm

that I'm a pretty Spiritual person.

I'm a practicing Catholic and I mean obviously Rituals is a huge part of my life because of that And I think it's I think there's the lesson that I've learned and in those rituals I mean like even throughout the course of the year right there are different seasons that On a on a on a annual level on a monthly

level and on a weekly level the rituals Matter a lot in terms of the way that I perceive time and my level of happiness When the time is all sort of blending together It affects me negatively when I'm able to sort of step step away from things and gain perspective It helps me a lot, you know, I've typically

built in a silent retreat Into almost every year of my life for the last 10 years totally unplugged for at least five days Someplace remote and that's a ritual.

That's a one of the most important rituals I've started to invite other people into these now and and I just realized it's a positive how positive of an experience it is and Part of what that does is just gain perspective on my life It's usually the time of the year when I when I test my desires, I

sort of reorient them I Take stock of hey did the things that I pursued they have the desired outcome Do they make me feel the way that I thought they would I go back and revisit decisions that I made at the start of the Year and that's probably one of the more important rituals that I've that I've

instituted in my life But I think that the daily ones are equally as important Do you think it's fair to say what desire starts?

Discipline continues and rituals cement.

Yes Part of the reason I like that So much so what desires start discipline continues and ritual cement is that right?

Yeah. Yeah, cuz desires are desires need More than desires in order to really Grow and develop and mean anything, right?

I mean if we all just did what we want first of all, it'd be total chaos, right?

There's an objective there's the intellect right plays a role here It's sort of what I was describing right like I know that this thing is good even though.

I don't want it yet I intellectually know that it's good even though I don't want it So that's really important and that's where discipline comes in too So like to like to think of I think of when you said that I thought of a stool with three legs You know the desire alone is not enough the stool cannot stand unless

there's the discipline and unless there's the ritual and one of the things that ritual represents for me is memory is Memory right it reminds us why we were doing the things that we're doing or why we wanted the things that we wanted and Rituals important for You know cultural memory organizational

memory. It's important in our personal lives, too Right like ritual is sort of a way of recalling some decision that we made in the past Right and we and we call it to mind and if we don't have those rituals You know history can repeat itself in a negative way, right?

We can just continue to make the same mistakes over and over so a positive ritual I mean there are negative rituals, too.

There are like unhealthy rituals that people have in their lives but a but a positive ritual reinforces the desire and the discipline that We've decided is one that we want to nurture because we've decided that hey, that's a thick desire This is an enduring desire that I don't have to worry about disappointing

me at neck tomorrow or next year I've decided to reinforce it through discipline and I've and I think we naturally Develop rituals.

I don't even know how intentional we need to be I mean a lot of rituals develop in a relatively natural way that really form the third leg of that stool Thanks for riffing on that I I find that really interesting to sort of think about and it sort of like ties a couple of the concepts We've talked today

about together In a neat package, which I think is is sort of beautiful in its simplicity Thank you.

I think happiness is sort of like being satisfied with what you have but often We don't seem satisfied with what we have and part of that is probably Relates to this memetic desire that we have for other things and goals that are on our own and I think part of it is also we have a biological sort of instinct

towards hierarchy and part of that hierarchy is status symbols whether it's it's sort of mates or goods in terms of shoes or cars How do you think about that?

I don't think that happiness comes primarily from being happy with what we have But being happy with who we are.

I know people that are very For the most part are happy with what they have But not happy with who they are.

I think the two things Go hand -in -hand If we're saying happy with what you have in the sense that you don't need more and you're not you you're not constantly dissatisfied with what you have whether it's material things or you with a spouse You Do you you you're just content with what you have and you

learn to want what you have in a deeper way?

That's a really important thing.

I think learning to want what you have is Is one way to say it?

I think the the greatest cause of unhappiness That I've seen are people that just simply do not want to be who they are Was the second part of your question was that the last part dominance hierarchies animals have a relatively stable dominance hierarchy For the most part once it's established.

It's just there I just went to the Smithsonian Zoo in DC and we saw the Lowland gorillas and there's like the Silverback there's like three of the others sort of like sub adult males or forget their name and then there's the females and it just doesn't change Right.

I mean like once that troop is established.

It's just there and in most of the animal kingdom It's the same way doesn't change with humans.

It's not like that.

So Gerard sort of realized that we have a I'll call it a liquid Sort of given we sort of live in a liquid modernity we have a liquid dominance hierarchy For the most part where it can really change right depending on you know, somebody could There's people that have made tens of millions of dollars

in crypto in the last couple of years, right?

It changes the dominance hierarchy, right doesn't have anything to do with physical strength So we're talking about status and the different things that contribute to status wealth being one of them Physical traits Popularities celebrity think things like that, but just due to the nature of human status

It can change Practically overnight sometimes right and I know that there are huge disparities between poor and wealthy that that don't change overnight But especially with social media and the ability of people to adopt new models Instantaneously We're constantly we're constantly juggling the hierarchies

that we want to be a part of or the hierarchies by which we Measure ourselves.

Okay. So let me give you like one example of this You could have a Few entrepreneurs that are competing fiercely to grow their businesses and You know, one of them is hyper successful another one, you know, it has to shut down and That that's entrepreneur who shut down his company.

We could start another company or he could choose to opt out of the of the hierarchy of building a unicorn company and he could choose a different hierarchy overnight and he could say well now I'm a family man and now I'm gonna be the best like sort of dad out there and I'm gonna model what it means

to be You know great father and a great husband or something like that And you know, it can just quickly quickly slide into some like ridiculous like different hierarchy.

That's the constant It's basically the same thing, right?

It's just taking on like a different form.

So that's we all sort of have that kind of hierarchy of desire That we and we can move in and out of them really quickly I have a whole chapter in my book about a chef that opted out of the Michelin star system, you know, he basically told Michelin not to rate his restaurant anymore because it was making

him miserable and I realized in reading that story that we all kind of have a Michelin star system like most of us have a Michelin star system and we can change the Michelin system just depending on like you know what system we opt into and and that's where things get tricky with dominance hierarchies

is that they're very liquid because They the models can change.

Okay, we can just adopt a new model and the scary thing is and Gerard says this He says the scary thing about memetic desire is that if we adopt a model of desire We begin to pursue the things that our model is pursuing our Model, you know wants this kind of a lifestyle We pursue that kind of a lifestyle

let's say that we achieve that lifestyle and then we're sort of like equalized with that model and We're still not entirely happy Well, then what a human being does in Gerard's view is we assume that we chose the wrong model in the first place well, I'm not entirely happy yet and I don't know what's

going on. I must have just picked the wrong model.

So what do we do? we just go pick a new one and Unfortunately, there's just there's simply no shortage of models there.

They're basically infinite and he uses this haunting line Near the end of one of his books.

I can't remember which one and he says You know man is like a creature that Starts lifting over all of the rocks on earth looking for the one thing he really wants and Comes to find or comes to decide in his mind That the one thing that he wants must be under the only rock that's too heavy for him to

lift So it's almost a Fixation with our ability to convince ourselves That what we want is the one thing that we can't have which is basically a form of masochism If you think about it, totally there's just so many thoughts that I have there in terms of like obstacles and then We almost need obstacles

in our in our way to get what we want.

We need that sort of pursuit and the other thing that came to mind is is sort of coming back to Models for desire if other people are models for a desire for us Then we're models of desire for other people And if we see ourselves as models for desire for other people it makes us an exemplar and if it

makes us an exemplar Do we behave better just by recognizing that we are that model for other people just as they are to us we should and hits home for me in a real way because one of the many hats that I wear is as a college professor I teach a class called it's basically an introduction to business

and I realized that I'm not just doing a knowledge transfer or an information transfer from my mind to my students I am a model of desire for the students now they're watching me very closely to see what I'm doing and what I want even now and With that recognition that I'm more than just a Person who's

transferring information to them that I'm a model of desire and every teacher I think Is in some way comes a ton of responsibility on my part Ton of responsibility.

I mean my my students subscribe to my sub stack.

They're paying attention to everything that I say And the things that I want right and it's like a professor Burgess like, you know Just the only thing he seems to care about is like making a killing a Bitcoin I mean that they that's that's what they're going to to you know to see and and maybe to want

so You know all of us are to other people I Promise you that you're a model of desire to somebody that you know You don't even know that you're a model of desire for at this point.

Probably I say that to everybody listening Some some you know and some you don't know but the point is the same, you know that that We affect each other deeply and you know, I I say in the very last sort of lesson That I leave off with and in my book is you know live as if you have a responsibility

for what other people want and you know, that doesn't mean that You know you determine what other people want?

We have freedom of choice But we are social and we do influence one another Deeply, you know, we are our brother's keeper to it to an extent right and we can't Shirk the responsibility that we have.

I mean, I think every parent knows that this is true when it comes to what their children want We don't I don't think we see it as clearly when it comes to what our friends and what our colleagues want and You know, I think oftentimes if there's somebody in our organization, let's say Who seems to want?

the Let's say want the wrong things like let's say want something that's not aligned with mission Or is consumed by some kind of a rivalry just something that's just destructive, you know, it's just a net net It's just not going to make anybody Not going to benefit anybody the most important thing I

think we can do Is rather than try to solve the problem through some kind of a top -down system or reorg Or something like that or you know implementing new rules and policies is simply finding a model and putting a positive model and putting the positive model close to them or being a positive model

ourself and Seeing if that affects the behavior It doesn't always you know But it's worth a try to see if that happens and I've sort of learned that like my go -to is always well There needs to be a new model of desire in this particular place Let's see if that if that has a positive effect and then

we'll go from there points before we sort of switch gears a little bit here one relates to the Michelin chef and asking to be no longer rated and a couple of things strike me about that one of which is like once we get into this hierarchy and You're this rated chef you become obsessed with maintaining

it which takes away your creativity But you also would feel the loss of it a lot more than the gain of getting it in the first place because loss aversion Has to come in.

So if we think of humans as biologically Instinctive or all animals have this biological instinct towards hierarchy the loss of that hierarchy loss of our position in that So whether we're picking our own hierarchy or choosing one or if it's like a work structure Like a demotion would be felt a lot

more than a promotion.

How do you think that impacts us?

Yeah, it's extremely difficult and I would argue that the chef Sebastian bra who is the chef owner of a restaurant called le suquet in France?

He's the sky that opted out.

I would say that it was Easier for him to opt out than it is for most of us to opt out of Unhealthy systems of desire that we might be caught in and I think it was easier for him.

Actually, I don't think that His he didn't have the loss aversion that we have because he'd already achieved the three stars You know, in other words, it's like hey, I did this thing.

I achieved what I said.

I was gonna reach achieve I've maintained my three stars for ten years Now I can opt out you got a ton of positive PR for it.

That's another story And it actually benefited him You know, so it may not be the best use case because he didn't lose much business There wasn't a lot of pain or sacrifices.

There was uncertainty associated with it I don't think he knew what was gonna happen, but it turned out that he was able to laugh about it He didn't have the Michelin stars for that year And the joke was kind of on him because Michelin came back the following year and said oh by the way We decided it's

not up to you and we're gonna put you back in the Michelin guide And now you have two stars instead of three And you know, I asked him Well, how did that make you feel and he just said I laughed about it and I will say man seemed incredibly at peace with himself And but he laughed about it in part probably

because he opted out But I bet you if you you look at the body like if you look at the sample size of three stars that have gone To two or one, I bet you they're not laughing about it.

No, they're not and in fact, you know, you've had people become suicidal from losing a star and you know chefs like work their whole lives and can form Everything about the restaurant from the menu to the look and feel everything is conformed to what the inspectors want to see So I think that's absolutely

right like because there was freedom in that you know He he made that choice and if he hadn't made the choice, I think it would have been incredibly painful so Opting out of a negative system of desire without having to first win.

I think it's important to do now This doesn't this isn't sour grapes.

I think it's important to like understand It's not just sour grapes like sometimes the grapes are actually sour You know and and and sometimes it's good to opt out but I think it's harder if you're like on a track and You and you change that track before you've achieved the pinnacle and let's just be

clear I mean three Michelin stars is the pinnacle in France for a chef It's harder.

It's harder to do that before you've reached the pinnacle So the question becomes like do I hold out until I achieve the pinnacle you may never You know, I don't know when the Olympic medal or whatever it is or decide that in the long term Now is the time for me to take this pivot.

I'm you know, I know it's gonna come with sacrifice But the the the good that I see in this pivot and in this different kind of life and desire that I'm gonna choose to pursue I think is ultimately in the long term going to lead to greater satisfaction Then even if I did if I pursue Let's call it the gold

medal for the next 10 years.

Even if I got it, even if I achieved it I'm I still feel confident that this path will have led to more satisfaction So I want to come back to some of these set of it being semi -massachistic And and why is it that we all seek out these obstacles?

Does that make our accomplishments seem better to us?

Or more worth pursuing because of mimetic desire They make them seem more worthy of pursuit because our models become our obstacles This is a really important part of what Gerard was trying to say His theory was not just a theory for why humans want what they want Which is according to him mimetic desire

that Mimicis explains why humans want most of the things that they want.

It was also a theory of conflict You know, it was it was a theory of human conflict and And violence if you take it far enough because the the models that we choose Defacto they just naturally lead us into some form of rivalry if you think about it You know, if I take if I take another person as a model

and begin to want what he wants I'm Looking to him constantly as as my model of desire to kind of measure myself compare myself and It will just naturally lead to me sort of taking him as a rival.

I think they're they're positive rivalries I give one example in the book between Lamborghini and Ferrari It could have become negative but I think oftentimes We become fixated With our models and our models become obstacles and like I said if something is too easy to achieve We start to doubt its value

and I think that's a big it's a big mistake because some of the greatest things in life are Our total total gifts, right?

I mean falling in love, right?

I mean, it's not necessarily like the girl that was the hardest one to get is not necessarily the best one Sometimes, you know something just like some beautiful spontaneous thing sort of happens and you know It's like what she fell in love with me I don't know why but you know Like I guess I'd better

go find another one right because I'm not worthy of this, you know We I think it comes down with what to thinking of ourselves is unworthy of things to humans Generally thinking of themselves as unworthy of good And I think this is more more common than we think but from a Girardian perspective We like

our obstacles. We're almost obstacle addicts because the obstacles determine The worth, you know, it's like the velvet rope in front of a nightclub It's not there to keep people from getting out of line.

It's there to keep people Sorry, it's there to make people want to get in line, you know You know velvet rope make I walk by I went to college in New York City You know, so I've a lot of experience with this I walk by I see the velvet rope It looks hard to get into I want to get it, you know back when I

went to college It was bungalow eight men and and it's like that was the hardest place to get into That's the only place that I wanted to get into and I'll be damned if I I've found a way to get into bungalow Eight and I was very proud of myself.

But why I mean where the drinks better I mean was I mean, I don't know.

It's just like it's just a funny thing where we're just very attracted to those Because everybody else wanted to be there.

Yeah, well the Zappos guy, what's his name?

Tony? Tony Shea You had a conversation with Tony Shea and asked him if he was ever gonna get married He basically asked you if you could prove to him that he would be happier if he got married Can you walk me through that conversation and why it's haunted you for years?

Tony and I became pretty good friends Back in 2007 eight nine and This is right around the time he was starting his downtown project in downtown Vegas So I I'd relocated my company to Vegas He was right down the street from me Zappos is right down the street from my headquarters and we were spending

a lot of time together and we were downtown Vegas right off of Fremont Street and a very popular little underground bar there called the downtown and Late at night and Having a conversation about life And I think this is around the time when I had begun to sort of Have sort of a shift in my thinking

I've sort of I've taken a spiritual turn in my life And I think Tony was really intrigued by that cuz I mean in my mind He was somebody that was really searching for for something He couldn't find and we started talking about marriage and and I asked him if he was ever gonna get married and Yeah, he

his approach was, you know, basically In a very empirical one, you know, it's like well, I need like evidence, right?

I need evidence that I will be happier married than not married and You know I didn't really know what to what to say to that because like the only thing that would have satisfied him Was if I could somehow prove prove to him that he would be happier now happiness was kind of the driving Sort of thing

with Zappos right there.

Their whole theme for their company was delivering happiness his whole motivation for the building the company culture and starting the downtown project was to have happy people and In my mind he'd sort of made happiness into a into a science and to a certain extent It can be measured right?

It's something that can be measured right?

But when it comes certain things like marriage Well, first of all, let's just say There's the idea of marriage in the abstract Okay and I think there are certain scientific studies that can show like on the whole married people generally seem to Express higher life satisfaction, but then there's like

the marriage to a very specific person and I think I remember saying well Like Tony like I I don't know it depends on who right you could marry like Right and like this is not it's not like you're thinking of marriage is this abstract thing But like marriage is like actually to like a flesh and blood

human so that's that's one thing and and I don't think that we want we can go about that kind of a decision through Like a very sort of X is a no sort of analysis like like, you know, we're designing You know a company strategy, I just think it's it's much more complex than that much more complex I

think tacit knowledge comes into play Things like trust and mistrust all of the things we were talking about at the beginning of this phone call and like an amount of Discernment comes into play, you know spending time with that person through different ups and downs right and all of those things And

the fact is, you know You know sadly he was never married and sadly he's passed away But I don't think that he ever if that was his criteria, he never would have been able to right because there are just certain things in life where that sort of narrow understanding of reason and Empirical evidence

will never get us all the way.

It would just sort of never get us to the point We need to be at and you know with marriage also comes You know commitment I mean I guess I think some of the traditional decision -making criteria that we use and I have having just got married In in last summer so it's been a little bit more than six

months now. This is very real for me I have I made a commitment, you know And I can't sort of take out my sort of decision book at this point and be like well I sort of thought things would go like this and they've went like this and All right, that wasn't the decision didn't quite pan out the way that I

did There's a whole nother aspect to this kind of the three stool thing that we talked about earlier.

There was the desire That was the fruit of years of of real reflection.

There was tacit knowledge There were objective criteria that came into play clearly objective criteria that came into play But then there's discipline those these are the daily things that we do That help cultivate and nurture relationship There's the rituals and and then there's there's simply the commitment

that I made and You know, it was it sort of that conversation really haunted me because it was very much.

I didn't really have kind of that The view that I have now at the time So it sort of caught me off guard and I've spent years trying to figure out Why it haunted me so much and I think I think it was because as long before I was married I think it was because I knew that there was There was something

there was something more to Those kinds of like life commitments and decisions that we make That I would never be able to reduce to something that I could put on a plate and prove and I mean it comes down To call it what you want.

Okay, call it, you know belief faith Sort of like stepping out and making a commitment without necessarily knowing what the outcome is going to be But really like leaning into it in good faith And then you're long for this beautiful sort of journey of emergent possibilities and learning things and deepening

your knowledge of another person And being known in a way that in deeper way than you've ever been known before So the point I'm trying to make there is that the the fruits and the benefits Were Have been totally different than what I thought that they would have been before I did it and I only know

them because I did It so there's sort of like these emergent there's emergent knowledge frankly that Relied on a decision So, I mean how often is that the case where we have to make one decision in order to learn The next thing or to even learn the benefits of that thing.

That's beautiful I mean it's sort of it sparks so many ideas in my head not only like not everything can be proved and the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence and so like But you also have in my head going on is like Apple versus Google, right where Apple takes this very aesthetic You

can't prove that it's better You can't prove the fact that there's symmetry in the motherboard in in my iMac makes a better product And whereas Google takes a more analytical purely analytical View which is like which shade of blue gets the most clicks And I think these things sort of like merge and you

have to they're on a continuum.

Obviously. I don't know if it's definitely either or but I do think that there's some choices in life where you you want to be sort of Maybe less rational about the evidence and more emotional where you're making relationship choices based on Things that you feel more so than reasoning not to say that you

shouldn't reason But that the weight of that decision might the balance on where you are on that spectrum might change Yeah, and that's just a layered approach.

I sometimes like to call it layered thinking, you know, there's the rational layer There's the tacit layer And there might be other layers and they're all important, you know And we can't just make the decision based on any one layer frankly And certainly the top layer so think we all have to sort of understand like

what's our This is different than first and second and third order thinking.

This is layered thinking I think we have to understand like what's our top layer.

What's our second layer?

And maybe one of the better definitions of tacit knowledge would be when You call this wisdom like embedded wisdom when all of the layers Just sort of become one and a person almost instantaneously is able to sort of see to sort of see something The conversation I have with Diana Chapman we talked about this and in through

a different lens and instead of layers She calls it the whole body.

Yes Which is when your IQ your EQ and your BQ all align into the same direction And then when that happens you have a whole body Yes And I thought that was a really powerful way to think of it and in the way that you're approaching it sort of like when You're rational and your tacit knowledge line up

in the same direction That then that is a form of a whole body.

Yes to you Yeah, and the body is another fascinating point because that's that's a lip physical is important You know, there's like this sometimes like our bodies tell us things right our bodies tell us stories and and that's another layer and sometimes even intellectual choices and things Do things

to us? Physically and those are other little signs that go into a decision -making process that often, you know We just overlook and we just misattribute to something we ate for breakfast or something like that But oftentimes when we're faced with a like a life -changing decision, it could be changing

jobs It could be making some sort of radical You know risky decision Those that kind of anxiety or whatever very often manifests itself in physical ways So when you said that it just just struck me as a really important and often overlooked, you know, the whole body.

Yes, right a Really important point.

I Want to end with a question you've probably been asked a million times, but we often ask on the show Which is what is success for you?

I am still figuring that out you know, I wish that I could say that I had a Clearly defined sort of Vision of success, but the reason I don't is because it's changed so many times already So I would be it would be stupid for me to think that it's not probably going to change again All right.

It's changed many many times unfortunately, I've attended some some funerals over the last couple of years and more than I ever have in my life and you know, just just I've listened to I've read obituaries of listened to eulogies.

I've given a eulogy and In doing that You know, I reflected a lot and kind of you know what I would want people to say about me so I think that that's one of the things that has really brought this to light and You know I certainly don't want it to be Listing off my resume and the boards that I was on and the companies

that I started I don't think that I don't know.

I might hopefully have got 60 years left I don't think that people will care or remember some of the little companies.

I started when I when I left finance But really kind of the the legacy that I left You know the way that I loved I mean, I think that ultimately that's the only measure for me is the sort of the level of Charity that I show I mean not just within my family but but but to others That's that's ultimately I

know it's related to that and maybe that sounds too vague You know because it's not always measurable But I think that you know I hope the number of people that I've been able to That will be able to look back and say, you know, whether it's my students that I have now are people in my life.

Hey You know Luke Burgess affected my desires in a positive way or like Modeled modeled this desire that I I wouldn't have I wouldn't have thought I wouldn't have thought to to pursue But as you know his ultimate made me look higher made me look at Expanded my universe of desires, you know that that would be

something that's that's incredibly fulfilling to me Thank you so much for your time thanks Shane man, it's really good to be with you.

Thank you The Knowledge project is produced by the team at Fernham Street I'd love to get your advice on how to make this the most valuable podcast you listen to email me at Shane at FS dot blog You can learn more about the show and find past episodes at FS dot blog slash podcast To get a transcript

of this episode go to FS dot blog slash tribe or check out the show notes Can you do me a small favor go online right now and share this episode with one friend who you think would love it?

Thanks for listening and learning with us Till next time

[Decoding Human Desire: Insights from Luke Burgess on Mimetic Theory]-[#138 Luke Burgis: The Power of Mimetic Desire]

📋 Summary

Understanding the Architecture of Mimetic Desire

The Mimetic Nature of Human Desire

Internal vs. External Models

Breaking the Cycle: Thick Desires and Rituals

The Flywheel of Desire

Conclusion: Seeking the Good Life

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript