Luke Burgis: The Power of Mimetic Desire

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/2452cd22a189a630

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.
Um 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.
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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 Gerard
Sounds familiar. That could be because
Gerard has influenced the likes of Peter Thiel and Chamath Polyhapat.
Gerard'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 warning things, however, it can lead to envy, jealousy, and violence.
Imitation.
Leads us to desire things we don't want, buy things we don't need, and in the process forgo 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.
Mm-hmm.
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
uh the mimetic capital of the world.
Let's start with that story.
Yeah, I I arrived in Hong Kong through uh
Purely
mimetic forces in my life that had
brought me to uh 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 uh for a private equity company.
Um in New York City.
But I got I worked on a deal and I got an offer to go uh 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 I realis that first of all
I wanted to be in Asia. There was a lot of very uh 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 uh 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 like what was a dream role. I mean they treated me
as a junior guy more like I was a V P. I was doing
uh crazy things. I hope this doesn't get anybody uh at Citigroup in trouble, but I was like going to do due diligence on Chinese coal mines by myself, you know, they're sending me down in underground mines, like, hey, make sure um this company has the assets they say they have. Like, well, it it looks like a co mine to me, you know, I don't know.
Um you know, and I was putting together pitch books, um, you know, one for a Thai petrochemicals company. Um, 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 who 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
The desire to start something.
and my cousin and I had been talk kicking around an idea for a business
Ever since we were in college. Um, I went to NYU
He went to Columbia.
Um I was a year ahead of him. So he just graduated and
Moved out to LA.
Um for a girl.
and um 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 seem entirely happy. I know this you
you're never gonna be satisfied until you find out if if this works or not.
And the business was is 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 in a vending machine.
into the machines.
Brand them in a really cool way.
The name was Fit Fuel.
put L C D screens into'em so we could display
Health facts, uh nutrition information.
sell ads eventually.
uh get people's attention as they walked by, kind of state of the art machines.
Uh and and they'd be healthy. Everything in them would be healthy. So, you know, the plan was to put these in schools and
Uh
airports and any place where it was hard to find healthy food.
And at the time, you know, that was a a pretty novel idea, right? I mean that the 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, we're I'm going into the food distribution business or something like that.
And I'm like, Well, you know, here I am. I I gotta move halfway around the world. I really don't wanna go to LA.
I've never even been to LA before.
And
My my
business partners asking me to come to LA and I said, You know, Sean, I
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.
Um 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 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've got those are two good reasons. Um, that's enough, you know, so I moved to LA to um
Uh to to start.
fit what was Fit Fuel, what became Fit Fuel. You know, but it was it was nerve wracking to to be pretty alone in Hong Kong and
Yeah, to you know, the next day after I got my bonus.
uh asked uh, you know, a few of the senior people if I could
Meet with them and
uh 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
C
up on the desk with the socks and looked at me um and was like Luke
Hey.
You owe me a beer.
I said, I owe you a beer. And I said, Why? He said, Just because. Let's go get a beer.
So we we went out and got a beer and I I told uh Steve, hey, I'm I I'm 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. So, Oh, you're going to Silicon Valley.
Um you're gonna go the startup route. And I said, Yeah, and he's well tell me about it.
Um and I fumbled around, Yeah, I'm I'm getting into the
food the distribution business. Well what kind of distribution? Food. Well how are you going to distribute it? And finally there was no way around it. I had to just tell them that we're going to put this stuff in vending machines uh and scale it. You know, and I made my best uh case for why this was actually a massive market
You know, he he was supportive, but
He he sort of said, Luke, I want you to understand that if you do this, if you leave
uh this soon.
You know, I'd I it been less than a year.
you'll never work in investment banking again.
you know, you'll 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 twenty three years old and
Uh, 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 to go to LA.
And you know, moved into a small little apartment on Coenga in the one oh one, uh little Hollywood apartment with a garage that was just big enough to house some inventory.
Uh, and we got started.
And um
I I I didn't know how things were gonna go, but you know, that that ride back from Hong Kong to Los Angeles.
uh was a very lonely, uh and quiet
Ride for me.
Um, 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.
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Wow.
There there's four things I wanna follow up on there.
And in no particular order.
Uh one of the things that you said was money.
You were making a lot of money, but you were miserable.
Can you go deeper on that?
Yeah, um
Yeah, there's been studies that have shown that once you make over
I got geez, I think it used to be eighty five thousand, you know, that there's no sort of increase in happiness after that. The number's gotta 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 I
first year out of school and and
I 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.
Uh 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.
uh 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.
Um, but everybody went in that way. But then I saw guys that had been in for ten or fifteen years that um seemed like they never had enough.
It was never enough.
And
I didn't really want to be like that. I I I sort of realized that it's kind of a slippery slope. Like when when is enough enough?
And this is
way before I had her ever heard the word mimetic desire, which is what my book's about. So I just intuitively like sort of understood that there was some force
that was going to continue to manufacture.
uh desires that I would misinterpret as needs.
And probably keep me stuck in this cycle.
And why wasn't I happy? Why I mean I think ultimately I I wasn't able to
Exercise
Um, my creativity.
in the way that I want it 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 ya I I'm like a pretty miserable person to be around.
Um 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 um I started to recognize that ah, there's some part of me that I that needs to be nourished that I'm not
That I'm not nourishing.
So
you know, realizing that you know, I I didn't feel free and I didn't feel like I was able to
to exercise um my gifts, frankly.
Um was a big
a big part of why I felt like I would never be happy no matter how much money I made.
Um I ended up running into the same problem. Um
What
as an entrepreneur. Um
you know, having started a successful company.
But
Yeah, I think
I think that I had
Enough models of unhappiness around me.
that I was able to recognize unhappy marriages, um, sort of
um, you know, constantly buying talismans of success like watches that
And I every time I would do it, you know, the the hit, the dopamine hit would last like two days.
Um and then it would go away.
And um
You know, I I wanted to look a little deeper.
W we're gonna talk at length sort of about mimetic desire and the models, both positive and negative, before 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've left a job, right? Like I 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 wanna do. It's like you're you're borrowing.
Time almost.
From yourself.
Uh 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.
Um
And I 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
um, 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 m Sean calling me and email 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 I think what really did it for me was a moment of of clarity in my process of discernment.
So
You know, I I 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.
w 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.
Um, 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 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.
Um because you're you're sort of not too far on either side.
I came to that place where I wasn't like
totally miserable. I I 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 a a bonus, which is 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, uh, 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 was 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 a 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 um
You know, sort of find that
fertile soil of sort of like peace.
um where things are not totally wild in either direction, where you start to make
uh a decision.
Right, about whether you want to spend the rest of your lives together.
Um, and I don't know if that just applies to to, you know, marriage. I think that can apply to
business deals, business serious business decisions.
Um few decisions are are more important than
who you're gonna become a business partner with.
Um, you know, as many people listening will know.
Um it can feel not a whole lot different than a marriage.
And you know, there there are I think there are ways to test relationships.
in 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
We know we can't wait a year through the ups and downs to see how other people will respond.
Yeah, Covid.
uh great example of time.
um revealing some truths about relationships for me.
you know, the way that some people sort of um
just reacted to it and and sort of I lost touch with some people and other people I I developed a closer relationship with.
Um but we don't always have
these sort of outside things that that are the great uh sort of wedge things that that reveal truths about relationships.
So I do think that 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 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.
uh jobs on the line.
I think it's appropriate to test that.
And
You know, I think some ways to do that.
Um 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, right? Like seeing what happens.
you know, sometimes you know s you can tell based on the reaction, like, well
If that if if I'm not able to 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 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 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 im I can't think of another more consequential time to have open and honest conversations.
Um little things like getting together
Um at our house or at another person's house.
Um to barbecue in the back yard.
It's really a
Act of courtesy.
to clearly define
um boundaries and rules, right?
Like if I'm coming into your house
Um, 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.
Um
So open and honest communication is is really important. And I found some people are just willing to have those conversations and it's easy.
Um and other people aren't. And
I notice 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 t there's some
relationships where you hit you hit a point where there's a block.
Okay. And you're just like, Okay.
I we can't we can't go any further than that, right? We're just gonna have to wait, maybe next year.
Um things will be different. But right now
I I shut down. Okay. There's like a 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.
um, 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 I watch more Netflix than I think I'll watch for the remainder of my life.
Yeah.
You know, and and just, you know, I think finding finding people that are able to just like share vulnerabilities.
um be real, right, about some of our struggles over these last couple of years. Those are the people that I've I've managed to bond with the 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 I've particularly appreciated people
That are able to have
Those kinds of conversations which are especially needed.
uh in 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
Um I think
I 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 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 and it's not going to affect your relationship.
And during the the first part of COVID, 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 you your trust, sorry, was whether you could talk to them.
uh openly and honestly.
uh 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 to sort of do that.
And 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.
Um you know, Michael Polliani um is a philosopher that I like a lot.
And he speaks about tacit knowledge.
So this is these are things that we know.
um 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, um
And 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'd probably have no idea how in the hell to ride a bicycle. Cause you know, you you learned to do that such a long time ago. There's muscle memory. It's like why it's really hard for Tyre Woods to explain
you know, his golf swing to anybody else.
You know, and this comes into play
Uh with with so many things, right? It's like one of my favorite sort of fables is like
Somebody asked the
the millipede, um, how he walks, you know, and 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 then I move this. And and he just becomes paralyzed and curls up in a ball, right? Uh his tacit knowledge on how to walk.
We we know more than we're able to explain that we know.
And I call this
Mm inarticulate knowledge.
Knowledge that I'm not able to articulate to somebody.
And I have inarticulate knowledge about a lot of things.
um including other people.
I could have tacit knowledge of why I trust somebody.
That I couldn't explain to you.
If you ask me to 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 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 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 in a plane.
You know, and I I have to operate with a certain level of trust that the pilot's 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 his walk is a little bit off.
And
You know, he'll notice.
S 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. I I I think like to your point, we we all have that.
in in some ways and in some domains.
And it's important in decision making. I don't think it's the only thing, but it a lot of people just dismiss it outright. Whereas
I I think if we 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 of 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 you're b you're incorporating both
This very rational
uh 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.
uh 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 uh 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
uh mostly trustworthy and
No, I've had the full spectrum.
Um you know, to the point where um
Yeah, I I often say nothing surprises me anymore.
Um, you know, I don't I'm not a a skeptic or a cynic.
I'm one of the ki I'm I'm a the kind of person that waits until
you know, the deal is closed before I before I celebrate.
Um partly because of celebrated early. Um you know, and I've I've had right. So I've learned that through experience and
Um, 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
Um, at least at an earlier point in my life.
Um I would have trusted somebody completely
And then very unexpectedly they they did something that that was extremely surprising.
So
With that
comes a certain sobriety.
Um about human nature.
You know, I think like a lot of
my work
um has been just delving deep into human nature.
it's sort of a it's a really big shortcut for people because there are certain things that just don't change. Um, you know, seeing the full range of possibilities of what people are capable of.
Um how people are affected, how people change. Um
You know, I've learned more about that through through, you know, literature.
frankly, than 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 than than a a way of of
humans interacting, right? It's it's human nature manifesting itself in the real world.
Are there 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's the best.
And I never really understood. I mean it it almost seems cliche to to say, but I you know, I never understood the importance.
Until I saw the 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 Desemona.
He's the one
Pulling the strings.
He's intentionally doing it.
Mm
He's the middle man.
He's the mediator.
And
In 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, uh, and I didn't I was bored.
Um, 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 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.
Then I started to realize, well, there are like yagos in every corporation, too. There are like yagos 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.
Um, you've just identified sort of one of the one of the root causes of problems.
Um
or just one of sort of the root players.
in this system.
And
identifying those mediators is is sort of really key.
Oh, you can't say that'cause that gets me into asking you how to identify them.
Oh no, I've ruined I've ruined the question. So maybe a better way to word this question is how would you teach somebody to identify these mediators of desire?
you need to really embed yourself um in
in a relationship or in an organization.
Um and cut.
Through the bullshit.
Because the bullshit all is always going to obscure
The power.
of the mediator.
Um medi I use the word mediator and model
Interchangeably.
Um
You have to cut through it.
Um 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.
Um and sort of gl gloss over these things.
Um, but there are sort of, I think, ways to ways to draw those things out. I mean, they they 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, um, anonymity maybe.
uh where people can begin to to tell the truth.
Um about
you know, how certain people
um have a nonlinear effect on on the culture and in and the dynamics
of the organization, right? So this is a very nonlinear domain.
People are not all the same, obviously like a a big figure.
um, you know, uh a CEO with a larger than life personality.
Um
will have an outsize effect, right?
But um I promise you that in most places there's there's very junior people that do too.
And the people that revolve around them. They sort of become the mediators for
you know, getting to the next level.
um and understanding
in internal politics.
So
identif identifying them through
a different type of conversation than than most people
Are usually willing
Willing to have.
I think that's probably the number one thing I would say.
Oh, before we we move on to sort of like the we've been talking in forty five minutes now almost, and we haven't even hit some of the questions, uh the key questions around your book. I love that that we just come in, yeah, totally different direction.
I wanna come back did your friend marry the girl?
He did.
You did. Hap happily married now.
So so I first came across Renee Gerard's ideas when I was learning uh more about Peter Thiel, and once you see
Charard's core idea.
It you can't really unsee it.
So who is
Renee Girard and what is memetic desire.
Rene Girard was a French
Academic.
who moved to the US.
Shortly after World War Two.
uh started out at Indiana University.
and his PhD um
was essentially in history.
And
moved around in the US and um he seems like a guy who is struggling with his vocation. Um
Uh he g like he he wasn't entirely happy just teaching in this narrow domain.
So he began to really branch out, um he was really an autodidact. I mean he started to read everything.
way outside of his area of expertise.
uh anthropology
uh he read sacred scriptures uh he read sociology
And literature.
And
Mm.
It was in teaching sort of getting dragged in, roped in to 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
um literature uh and and s not not only French. He read a lot of uh Russian literature, Tolstoy Dostoevsky.
Um, and he realized that
He saw this reflected in the literature.
And that's important to note, right? Because
l 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?
Um everybody was trying to to find Troy.
through um
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 he thought that there was truth in there, even if it wasn't scientific truth.
Um 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 the uh you know, Homer, he's not accurate, so uh 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.
Um'cause there are truths.
And mythology.
Even if it didn't happen.
I these are these are stories that humans have told.

s deep fundamental truths of human nature.
And
Sure, some God didn't fall out of the sky and and go chase somebody down, but
Um, but there's some truth there. It's like
Ken Kessey said it's true even if it didn't happen, right? He's describing some things, right? There are stories that I 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 um some truth to me.
Even if it's fiction.
Um and I go into it 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 on you know is is listening, like is likes philosophy. But I I I go into him.
with an openness to to receiving some truths and there are truths, right? There are a lot of them. And that's just been a a mindset shift for me.
um approaching everything is an opportunity to learn. So
Gerard did this.
And what he saw reflected first in the in the literature.
um and then it all over in the world around him and 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.
But the choice
of an object.
Is
do solely
Two
the 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.
Gerard says
Um a lot of writers are very r romantic, right?
Fifty Shades of Grey. I have never read Fifty Shades of Grey.
But I had um a 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 um in a s in a s in a heartbeat simply by laying eyes on somebody, right? I mean Gerard said a lot of a lot of um
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.
um and why he seemed to sort of sense this deep truth about human nature. Shakespeare had never read Gerard writes, but maybe he had a tacit knowledge about mimetic desire.
Is because
Desire is shown to be
Very mimetic.
in a great writer like Shakespeare.
He
always seems to write in characters that are models of desire for
For other characters there seem to be mediators who mediate the value
of an object or of a person to somebody else.
So Sherard had this insight.
From reading literature.
And then spend you know
the next um forty years of his life.
uh exploring the world
Um he was one of the most interdisciplinary thinkers that we've seen in a long time.
I I you know there's only a couple other ones that I can think of, but Gerard was a real interdisciplinary thinker.
Um he began to have dialogues with people in different fields.
And then uncover the extent to which
Mimetic desire.
Is a fundamental part of human behavior.
a fundamental part of how organizations operate.
And
that sort of form this idea of mimetic desire formed
the basis of his theory, which is called
uh the mimetic theory of desire and the mimetic 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 to to see, right? Why people buy
Things.
Gerard calls that kind of mimetic desire.
acquisitive desire. You know, we're we're acquiring
Things or objects.
uh in the world that I come from.
Watches are the most obvious example.
Um
You know in any
Um nice
Airport.
Or
First class or business lounge.
in the world and any airport that I've ever seen.
There are like a dozen
uh brands that are modeled
In the magazines.
And you see those same dozen
watches or brands on the wrists of of of a certain kind of man, usually.
The object is just a tool, right? Um, and that's why objects can be swapped out.
So easily.
Right.
Gerard said that the the harder
form of mimetic desire to understand.
Is what he calls
m 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.
Um, I just saw an article in the I think it was in the Wall Street Journal.
Um 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 the 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 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
R
the objects that we're 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 I here I'll tell you a personal story.
So I I 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
Um says something.
And
I 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.
Um, would I have done it or not?
Right. So this happens a lot.
And
you know, there's there's that the hindsight bias where
The stories we tell ourselves.
about why we made the 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.
um to our authority of 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 wanna 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 modelling
Even more than a lifestyle.
He's modelling 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.
Um
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 the role.
To be a politician.
So there's no they're not modeling a role to me.
Period.
But they could be modelling a desire.
And the way that Kanye, I think, models a desire is this.
If he
Totally changed.
His life style.
If he
If he switched and started modeling.
A completely different kind of lifestyle, different fashion.
Um different beliefs.
um move to a different country.
And
Mm started making country music.
There would be
He would s the people would follow him there.
So so it it 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,
Um
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 uh sort of take him as a 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 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? Um Tyler Brûle.
No, man. I get like the the community newspaper. That's all I read. Gotcha. Gotcha. I I I am sure that
some of our listeners will be familiar with monocle.
Um
Tyler Brûle.
Um
is sort of this lifestyle
Um writer.
Um he wrote um a piece called the the the fast lane.
in the financial times for for a few years.
And then he left and started his own lifestyle um media company.
and their flagship uh
magazine now is called The Monacle.
And it's got its own radio program too.
And he sort of
I don't I wouldn't say that he invented it.
But
Mm.
He
I've heard the term aspirational marketing used to describe what he does.
you know, the monocle is become a bit of a joke.
Because you know, you'd you'd see jet setting lifestyles.
Um, you know, everybody's really good looking and um
you'll see like a a typical article will be like
You have to fly um on this uh transcontinental flight.
Um well it's really important to take care of your skin. Um
You know, and then they'll show like a guy who's got like the perfect size.
bag with all the perfect size things in it and
That kind of
marketing is incredibly powerful, right? Like he he's made himself into a memo 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 um other people that sort of fall into the same sort of flavor
And type of model that that he is.
So you know, get if if that's the kind of luxury brand that you want to build.
Um
staying true to this kind of brand consistency.
Where
You're sort of modelling
um 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.
um, you know, you'd y 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 is average readers.
So the really interesting thing is that
Mm.
a lot of the readers of Monaco, and I'm just using this as an example because I think it's a powerful one. So I basically what I'm saying is that I would probably uh I would probably follow this. Um
A lot of those readers are are are not
even close to living that kind of a lifestyle.
Um 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 um it's it's w uh what I describe in the book as the difference between celebristan and fresh manistan. So there's a 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.
The comfort.
to our own lifestyles.
Right.
Um, 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
uh 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? Cause then it then it seems like I'm competing with this guy. Whereas
Brûle has created an entire brand that's so almost otherworldly
There's no self
reflection or self accusation.
um involved.
In pursuing that lifestyle.
And this is a
I I s 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. Like so it it it 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 at 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 has social media impacted all of this? Like it used to be that like, you know
We we lived in a world where y what you knew and what you saw was like your street
You know, a little bit more in your community.
Um, 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 TikTok 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 theirs, you don't even know it, you have access to everybody who has
uh 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 how does that affect us?
I asked my students to name their
Top five models of desire.
the 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 TikTok influencer.
in Asia. I live in Washington, D C.
Think about that.
I mean
Yes, my dad if I ask my dad what his top five models of desire were
um when he was their age.
They'd all be people that lived in his hometown.
You know?
There'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.
Um, 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 modelling.
to other people in very curated ways, by the way.
Uh it's hard to know whether they even want some of the things that they're modelling.
Or whether they're just getting paid.
To do that.
Um
And you know, we know through anecdotal evidence that some of the people modeling lifestyles
Uh like Van Life.
are actually really miserable and depressed doing that.
um but they don't look like it, right? They're so they're modeling the 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 under 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 be are are now we have billions of of 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 to humanity.
one of the differences that that strikes me from
our current models of desire from your fathers 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 character's like, you don't know how ethical they are. So i do you think that that affects and our identity of ourself too? Like does and maybe maybe the the real underlying question is
d does our thinking and identity also become somewhat a medic?
Identity is absolutely mimetic.
um were relational creatures. Um
Highly relational.
And
Our identity is really formed in and through relationships.
Uh I don't
form my identity on my own.
um my identity can really only be understood in relationship to
The family that I came from, the friends that I have, the the m you know, my
My marriage to my wife.
um the relationships that I have. So I I believe that identity itself is a highly relational thing that can 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 mimetic desire.
plays into our very identity.
I 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 Renee Gerard 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? They're 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 we think of a lot of the the greatest
conflicts in the world, uh like world wars and things.
uhistly
There's been more more internal violence than there has been external violence.
Um
you know, genocides within countries, for instance. Um
uh 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 of of 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 they're
too close to us for comfort.
Two, we normally don't like to identify them um 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 influenc us the most.
But here's the thing.
with social media.
with modern technology.
That line
between the external models of desire and internal
And
Is all but gone.
'Cause 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 I can say are are s they feel like internal
Mediators of desire.
Um, and that's just something to be aware of where
Um, it's almost like a 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 I
Um
w in my conversation that I had with Peter Thiel when I talked to him for this book.
He sort of mentioned 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.
um there's really not a strong possibility of of you ever coming into contact with them or competing with them, you know, for the same
um spouses or anything like that.
Um or the same houses, what whatever.
Um yet.
It's really powerful and you know, Instagram and TikTok have 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.
Um
That's that's
powerful, right? Um'cause the the internal ones are always the ones that
that we're were more I I I don't know if obsessed is the right word.
Um
But they observe a s 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, right? 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 we really don't until
you know, you walk you walk in somebody else's shoes. And you know how often
You know, we project so many things in life.
um and and project things onto 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.
um is that we project um, you know, happiness onto 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 pickup 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? Um, I forget. This book came out.
probably fifteen 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 it's essentially the idea of the wingman.
It's the idea of
If you really, really want to effect
um the desires of somebody. Let's just
Say that you're a guy.
You know, you find um
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.
Um 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, um, that will
instantly sort of affect the way that the guy is perceived.
by by the other women in 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 hire one of your girlfriends to like be an actor and act like
She's you're the sexiest guy in the room, essentially, right?
Um but
It it actually
It works because it's it's a way to hack
Mimetic desire.
And
There's there's other ways to to do that too, right? I mean, um I mean I think it's really unethical. I mean they they talk in that book about
uh if 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
uh 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 the crux of Gerard's theory.
is that these mediators of desire determine attraction.
and desire for objects and people.
Way more than we ever imagined.
And and another way to see this is
In a breakup.
Make a decision, hey, this isn't working. Um, 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 uh athletic
um wealthy, successful guy.
who just thinks that she's the greatest thing in the world and you know, you start second guessing yourself, like geez, what have I done?
Right. Like what about maybe I made like a huge mistake.
Whereas until I saw that, the th that thought never crossed my mind. Well
What's the difference? Now I have some model or mediator of 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 i 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
Uh 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 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.
It's worthiness.
And you know, when this comes to people, that's that's not not a good thing.
in in 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 I'm not really comfortable unless I see, you know, a second or th 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 I I think it has more I think it's we we rationalize it, right? And we say that
Well, this this is um it's like a totally rational thing, right?
where oh they're just a f um stress testing my assumptions and things like that.
But uh 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 mimetic 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 the the first domino is the most important one.
Um so it works it works on the way up and it works on the way down, as we see in in her 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 mimetic desire really
Push us further.
Um, 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.
um is is exactly what pushes people to endure.
you know, the desire for freedom.
Right.
led many people to do heroic things, right? To to sort of fight for their country and to
Um
you know, to liberate others from from tyranny and oppression. You know, it's that
I would call that a
Pretty perennial desire though.
Um so I think there are there are root desires. There are there are some things.
um that I usually call thick desires.
in opposition to to thin desires, which are the more sort of mimetic ones that can change on a dime.
And I think cultivating those
Uh is important.
And
finding out what those enduring
Thicker desires are.
begins to act as a bit of a hermeneutic.
For
Um
What to say yes to, what to say no to.
You know, when we we've identified
A kind of like lifelong desire, let's say.
that that a person has
Um
Where you actually
want the desire to to grow and get stronger. You want to reinforce that desire.
um you know to leave a certain kind
of a legacy.
in the world.
And that's an incredibly good thing. So
one thing I I really want to make clear.
Is that
Desire is
Just it is what it is. We're desiring creatures, right? I'm I'm not really a stoic in the sense that
I I think that in general
Uh
Sort of like
Like the two I'm 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.
Um the wolves representing desires.
And you know, you need to sort of um 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.
Um so I actually believe that we should feed
those enduring desires.
um 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 uh you call them thick desires, but less sort of like
Think of them as enduring human desires.
What are we born with desiring?
uh in a sense like what's in our nature
versus like what's created after that from culture or environment and everything else.
We have um a desire for
Deep.
human relationships to to to know and to be known by others.
is is fundamental. And I'm
And I'm speaking of the things that come after
are hardwired.
biological needs, right? I mean, we're we're born thirsty and hungry and stuff like that right away. So but but after that
Um
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?
Um
certainly certainly a a a thick desire that I think everybody has, right?
you know, classic virtues. Um
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.
Um
you know, it's to achieve excellence in these areas and, you know, various virtues to to develop, right? Which is
I guess
If
I 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 temperant person.
than to not be a tempered person, right? Like a person that is has the ability
to moderate their desires so when it comes to alcohol, for instance, right, um, 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.
uh then it will cause me pain.
Eventually.
En I and I I go back to some of these clasic examples.
Because they're the things that will never disappoint.
um when when developed. I've never had a single person
you know, tell me that they've developed um
some some some of these classical virtues and a are worse because of it.
Um, but I think to the the desire to know and be known is one of the most important ones. Um, you know, that's something
You know, we can we can work on.
I suffered a lot during Covid, right? Just knowing people at a s at a fairly superficial level.
Um on screens.
Uh and those those are thick desires. But I I mean a s those are I would say universal.
In my opinion.
Thick desires.
But I think that each person has their own.
Um I I do think this this can become highly personal.
And identifying those is really
hard work, right? And 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 and to write, 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. I mean there's nothing more satisfying to me.
um than to be able to do to do those kinds of things. Um
And it's it's one that I'm sure that will never disappo 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 um are you ever able to satiate it? If you can't satiate it, there's probably something a really, really deep well there that you can just continue to go down.
desires happen uh w through both the the external and internal are unconscious and
Our unconscious controls us in a way that
Uh
we're unaware of by just the 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 that 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
um 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 I 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.
Two
change your habits and affect your habits. I think it's why
Group exercise classes are really important for some people.
Um
You know, so much of this is indiv is is personal though.
Um
Some people are need more positive mimetic influence in
some domains more than others.
So I think that
Our
level of
Mimetic.
Tendencies.
Dep 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.
Um, but my wife loves them and sort of needs them. And it really is is is the way to 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.
Um
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
uh when it comes to things like
reading and stuff like that and certain like
uh groups of of of people that I get together with and like talk about ideas. Um
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.
um 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's some desires that we want reinforced.
Like that one for me.
There are other desires, you know, that I don't want reinforced.
Um
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 effect.
What we want.
you know, something that you said, I I I think this is a critical point. So much of this is unconscious.
Subconscious, pre conscious.
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
Mm
The more accurately
We can name sort of desires. I mean that contains
uh Wickenstein 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 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. Could be Warren Buffett as an investor.
Um it could be somebody who models a great family life, whatever um
Usually we can come up with those
off the top of our heads.
The negative ones are a little bit harder to name.
Uh 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 th 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 behut behaviors.
Before you need them.
by creating these sort of like rituals, by
um 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 in b 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.
um 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 mimetic desires.
The reasons why I
Choose.
the goals that I choose.
Are the very product.
of a mimetic 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 enough about well, how do we choose the goals that we're gonna set in the first place.
For the first

More than that, a few years.
of my post college life.
It would d I had different
goals in college.
Um 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 to get out of school? Well, you go work on Wall Street'cause bonuses are high.
everything I was doing was optimizing for that. So my desirely around that.
Um
the change for me happened when I I identified different models
who were optimizing
For different things. Um, 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 w life became a lot more important. But the goal change 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.
um that I thought were healthier things, things that I I decided
We're ultimately
Going to
To
Fulfill me more.
And it's not that I I never optimize
for profit or fine I mean I want financial success and 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.
Um we all think that we have willpower and we can just stop our bad habits, but uh I I don't I don't tend to believe that that's the case personally.
It 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 wanna replace a bad model with a good model.
There has to be a greater good.
I I believe there has to be a greater good.
In order to stop an unwanted behavior.
uh if there's not a greater good then the unwanted behavior just becomes a complete elephant in the room.
Um, 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 the
the you know, it just becomes bigger and bigger and bigger.
um whether it's a temptation, just w whatever it is. Um whereas and you you're 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 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 uh 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 you have a good example around this with Claire, your wife, and and dinner. Can you share that with us? Yeah. I'm really bad at shutting it down for the night.
Um, always have been. You know, I've been
Uh
an entrepreneur, sort of my own boss since I was twenty three and
Uh, don't work normal hours and
you know, when I get on one, when I get in the zone, um
Mm.
I I can work until nine, ten or later.
And
you know, Claire just doesn't come from that kind of mindset. She never had that lifestyle.
And
Food's always been a really important part of her life, you know, grew up having meals with with the family every night.
Um
And sh in fact that she made that her career path. She got a master's in food studies and and
uh now works for a food company um but but loves to cook and
You know, when we um
started dating and especially since we've been married.
five o'clock, six o'clock rolls around and, you know, she'll
ahead 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. It's not purely mimetic, right? It's probably a probably a physiological response that that I have to that, but
Uh I get up and and and I go and 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, um, because I've been doing the same thing for fifteen years and it took Claire.
For me to break
What I would say was a pretty bad habit of me.
like eating dinner sometimes at my desk.
Um, and you know, and now we reinforce that.
In one another.
Um
You know, we 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 kinda like a exercise or fitness.
Right.
You actually wanna do it.
And it's not hard anymore. You desire it and if and if you're not able to do it.
Um, you feel it. You feel the pain.
G go deeper on that 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 if we follow that desire, will bring us to a place
Where
we're in a different position than than we were when we started. It's kind of like evaluating past decisions.
Um
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 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 desire 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 throughout the course of a year.
Or more.
or throughout the course of a decade.
Um
You remember
Yeah, you don't forget.
Oh, I really wanted to um 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 about 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 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.
Um
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
Uh have a very healthy breakfast.
And go work out.
So if I
If I feel like shit tomorrow morning.
Um, because I go out and pound five beers with one of my buddies tonight.
Um, 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.
Um five, six, seven steps.
you'll in 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 to
That you're going to want to do the next step.
in the flywheel.
And this is highly personal.
You know, um
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 um
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 a 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 if you map these out
Um sometimes it's actually easier to start with a negative uh flywheel of desire.
than it is with the positive.
uh flywheel of desire because the positive one is often just a mere
Of of the negative one.
So uh I can think of one for me that's um
You know, time time management.
you know, the way that I sort of my my week works and our our example of cooking dinner and taking a break is is definitely a part of that.
Positive.
desire for me.
Starts with
Um
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.
Um
Getting up.
Early?
Um
Spending
the quality time that I need first thing in the morning f to read.
Um and to meditate.
Um to do those things. Um
Go for a run. Um
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
Um
sit down and and focus starting at eight or eight thirty.
uh whether it's writing or or whatever I have to do.
Um
If I haven't done that.
uh it starts sort of a 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 it just permeates my entire
Work day.
If I don't do it first. Okay.
Um
I usually take a break um around lunchtime.
Um
The break is really important. Um
Yeah. So
Sometimes I I'll
Actually um
Just go sit in a
And I
church n near 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 flywheck.
'Cause the silence, just the total unplugging from everything from social media. I don't my phone's off, can't get a hold of me during that half hour. It's only a half an hour. The the rest of 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.
Yeah.
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
that if this affects if I if I do this
Um
consistently Monday through f and then stopping at five.
eating dinner with my wife Claire.
Um
That affects the way that the rest of the night goes so that we're not eating at nine o'clock.
And now I like I said, I want
To stop?
At five o'clock the key word here is I want to.
Okay.
Um
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 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
Um if I had na if I didn't have that balance that I'd created in my 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. Um, 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 fly will of desire. That's what we wanna 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 wanna do the things that you wanna do when you don't wanna do them.
I have never heard that before.
But I I like that.
A lot.
And I I think what you're talking about really is
If if we eliminate the word habits and discipline and all this stuff
What it sounds like is the counterbalance to human nature.
This sort of ritual.
Ritual is key.
I think we're
Or ritual creatures.
And
rituals I think we all we have a lot of rituals in in our in our world. Um, but I think we've lost a lot too.
Um, especially rituals around like time keeping.
Um, I think that was a big problem with the pandemic.
I don't know about you or other listeners, but
Um 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 uh 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 gargain amount of
Effort, frankly, and it was painful.
Um, just like it is, you know, if you haven't worked out for six months to go for a run.
So I I I'm I'm a I'm an outlier in in in at least the world of Silicon Valley and that I'm and that I'm a
a pretty uh spiritual person
Uh I'm a c I'm a practicing Catholic and I mean obviously um rituals is is a huge part of of of my life because of that.
Um
And I think it's I think there's the lesson that I've learned in in those rituals. I mean, like even throughout the course of the year, right? There are different seasons. Um
Uh that
on on a on a on a annual level.
On a monthly level.
And on a weekly level.
The rituals.
um 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.
Um it affects me negatively.
when I'm able to sort of step step away from things and gain perspective. Um, it helps me a lot. You know, I've typically built in a silent retreat.
Um
Into
almost every year of my life for the last ten years, totally unplugged, for at least five days.
Um someplace remote.
Um, and that's a ritual.
That's a one of the most important rituals.
Um I've started to invite other people into these now. Um and and I just realize it's a positive how positive
of an experience it it is.
And part of what that does is just gain
perspective.
On my life.
Um it's usually the time of the year when I
when I test my desires, I sort of reorient them. Um
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 I thought they would?
I go back and revisit decisions that I made at the start of the year.
Um and that's probably one of the more important rituals that I've that I've instituted in in my life. But
I think the the daily ones are equally as important.
Do you think it's fair to say what desire starts?
Discipline continues and rituals continue.
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,'cause d does desires are
Desires.
Need
more than desires in order to really
um 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? Like
There's an objective, there's the 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 I intellectually
No.
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 d like to think of I think of when when you said that I thought of a stool with three legs.
Іно 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 is is 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 um
Rituals important for
you know, cultural memory, organizational memory.
it's important in our personal lives too, right? Like ri ritual is sort of a 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
Um
you know, history can repeat itself in a in a in a negative way, right? We can just c continue to make the same mistakes over and over. So a positive ritual, I I mean there are negative rituals too.
There are like unhealthy rituals that people have in their lives.
Um
But a but a positive ritual.
Reinforces
the desire and the discipline.
That we've decided
Is one
That we want to nurture.
'Cause 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.
Uh neck tomorrow?
Or next year?
Um
I've decided to reinforce it through discipline.
And I've and
I think we naturally
develop rituals. I I don't even know how intentional we need to be. I mean a lot of rituals develop
in a in a relatively uh n natural way.
That really
form the third leg of that stool.
Thanks for riffing on that. I uh I find that really interesting to sort of think about and it it sort of like ties a couple of the concepts we've talked today about together.
Uh in any
um 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 mimetic desire that we have
for other things uh and goals that aren't our own. And I I 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.
Uh but being happy with who we are.
I know people that
A 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 if we're saying happy with what you have in the sense that you don't need more and you're not c you you're not constantly dissatisfied with what you have.
Um, whether it's um material things or you with a spouse.
Um
You
Th the 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 is one way to say it.
Um
I think the the the greatest cause of unhappiness
Um
that I've seen are people that

do not want to be who who they are.
Was the s the second part of your question was the the last part, dominance hierarchies.
Animals have a relatively stable
Dominance hierarchy.
For the most part.
Once it's established.
It's just there.
Um, I just went to the the Smithsonian Zoo in D C and we saw the
um lowland gorillas and there's like the Silverback
There's like um three of of of the other sort of like sub adult males, I 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 I'll call it a liquid. Um
Sort of
given we we sort of live in a liquid modernity. We have a liquid
dominance hierarchy.
For the most part.
where it uh it can really change, right? Depending on
you know, somebody could um
There's people that have made tens of millions of dollars in crypto in the last couple of years, right? And change is 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.
uh physical traits, uh popularity, celebrity thing things like that.
But
Just d due to the nature of human status.
uh it can change
practically overnight sometimes. I mean 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.
uh instantaneously.
Um
Mm.
We're constantly
We're constantly juggling.
the hierarchies that we want to be
a part of or the the hierarchies by which we
measure ourselves. Okay.
So let me give you like one example of this.
Um
You could have
Um
A few entrepreneurs.
that are competing fiercely.
um to grow their businesses.
And
Uh you know, one of them is hyper successful.
Um another one um you know has to shut down.
And
Um
That
that entrepreneur who shut down
His company.
Well you can start another company.
Um, or he could choose to opt out of the of the hierarchy of of um building a unicorn company.
And he could choose a different hierarchy.
Overnight.
And he could say
Uh well now
Um, 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 taken on like a different form.
So that's
We all sort of have
that kind of hierarchy of of of desire.
Um
that we and we can move in and out of them really quickly. I I have a whole chapter in my book about
Um 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 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 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 mimetic desire is that if we adopt a model of desire
Um
we begin to pursue the things that our model is pursuing.
our our our model, you know, wants uh this kind of a lifestyle.
Uh
We we pursue that kind of a lifestyle.
Let's say that we 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
Um
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. They're they're basically infinite.
And he uses this
Haunting line.
uh near the end of one of his books. I can't remember which one.
And he says,
Um
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 uh a a fixation.
with our our 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 we need that sort of
um pursuit.
Mm.
The other thing that came to mind is is sort of coming back to
models for desire. If other people are models for uh 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 it hits home for me in a real way, because one of the
Uh
many hats that I wear is is as a um a college professor. I I
teach a class called um it's basically an introduction to business.
And
I realize that
I'm not just doing a knowledge transfer.
or an information transfer.
From my mind to my students.
Um 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 um
A person who's transferring information to them that I'm a model of desire and every teacher.
I think um
is in in in some way.
comes a ton of responsibility.
On my part.
a ton of responsibility. I mean, my my students subscribe to my sub stack. They're paying attention to everything that I say.
Um and the things that I want.
Right. And it's like, hey, Professor Burgess, like
You know
Just the only thing he seems to care about is like making a killing in Bitcoin. I mean
Th they that's that's what they're going to to uh you know to to to see and and and maybe to want. So
Um
You know, all of us are to other people.
Um
I promise you that your 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 I I say that to everybody listening.
Um
Some some you know.
And some you don't know.
But the point is the same.
You know, that that
um we affect each other deeply. And you know, I I I say in the very last sort of lesson
um that I leave off with in 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.
uh we have the freedom of choice
But we are social and we do influence.
One another.
uh deeply. You know, we we are a brother's keeper to a 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.
uh 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.
Um who seems to want
The
Let's say want the wrong things. Like let's say want something that's not aligned with mission.
um, or is consumed by some kind of a rivalry, just something that's just destructive. You know, it's just a net net.
Just not gonna make
Anybody
Um
Not gonna 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
um or something like that, or or you know, implementing new rules and policies is simply um finding a model and putting a positive model and putting the positive model close to them.
Or being the positive model ourselves.
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 I've sort of learned that. Like my 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 one relates to the Michelin chef and uh 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 you're this rated chef, you become obsessed with maintaining it.
Which takes away your creativity.
Um
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 s our position in that
So whether we're 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 this guy 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 um
unhealthy systems of desire that we might be caught in.
And I think it was easier for him, actually. I I I don't think that
His he didn't have the lost version 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.
Um
Now I can opt out. You got a ton of positive PR for it. That's another story. Um
And it actually benefited him.
Yeah, so he
it it may not be the best use case because
He didn't lose much business.
Um 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.
You 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
And now you have two stars instead of three.
Um
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 he's man seemed incredibly at peace with himself.
Um
Yeah. 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 and in fact, you know, you've had people
become suicidal from losing um 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 the feel, everything is conformed to what the inspectors want to see.
So I think that's absolutely right. Like'cause there's 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 is important to do.
Now this doesn't this isn't sour grapes. I I think it's important to like understand.
that it's it's not just sour grapes. Like sometimes the grapes are actually sour.
Yeah. You know, and and and sometimes it's it's 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.
Um 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.
um, you know, I don't know, win the Olympic medal or whatever it is.
Or decide that in the long term.
Now is the time for me to take this pivot.
Um I'm you know I know it's gonna come with sacrifice.
Um, 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.
Um
Then
Even if I had a ch if I pursue
Let's call it the gold medal for the next ten years.
Even if I got it.
Even if I achieved it, I'm st I still feel confident.
that this path uh will will have led to more satisfaction.
So so I wanna come back to something you said about being semi masochistic 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 they make them seem more worthy of pursuit.
Because our models
become

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's the
Mimesis explains why humans want most of the things that they want.
It was also a theory of conflict.
Yeah, 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
de facto they they just naturally lead us into some form of rivalry, if you think about it.
You know, if I take
If I take um another person as a model
And begin to want what he wants.
Um
I'm looking to him constantly.
as as my model of desire to kind of measure myself, compare myself
And it it will just naturally lead to to me sort of taking him as a rival.
I think there are there are positive rivalries. I give one example in the book between
uh Lamborghini and Ferrari.
Yeah. Could have become negative.
Um but I think
Oftentimes um 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.
Um'cause some of the
greatest things in life.
Our 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, I was 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 the with to th thinking of ourselves as unworthy of things.
to to humans generally thinking of themselves as unworthy of good.
Um and I think this is more more common than we think.
Um 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 the velvet rope in front of a nightclub.
uh is 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.
Um
You know, velvet rope make um I I walk by, I went to
college in New York City.
Um you know
So I 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 in.
You know, back when I went to college, it was Bungalow Eight, man. 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 found a way to get into Bungalow Eight. And I was very proud of myself. But why?
I mean
Were the drinks? I mean, was it I mean, I don't know. It's just like it's just a funny thing. We're we're just very attracted to those.
'Cause everybody else wanted to be there, yeah.
Wha the Zappos guy. What's his name? Tony Tony Shay.
You had a conversation with Tony Shea and asked him if he was ever gonna get married and he basically asked you
If you could prove to him that he'd 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. Um
back in two thousand seven, eight, and nine.
And this was right around the time he was starting his downtown project in downtown Vegas. So I I'd relocated um 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, in a very popular little
uh 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 um
have sort of a shift in my thinking. I'd sort of I've I'd taken a spiritual turn in my life and I think Tony was really intrigued by that. Cause I I mean, in my mind, he was somebody that was really searching for
And
we started talking about marriage and and I asked him if he was ever gonna get married and
Yeah, he he
His his approach was, you know, basically
in a very empirical one, you know. It was like well
I need like evidence, right? I I need evidence that I will be happier
Married than not married.
And
you know, I didn't really know what to s 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'd be happier. Now happiness was
Kind of the driving
sort of thing with Zappos, right? Their their whole theme for their company was delivering happiness.
His whole motivation for the building the company culture and starting the downtown project was
uh 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.
When it comes certain things
Like
Marriage.
Um
Well first of all, let's just say
Um 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 a right. And like
So it's just not it's not like you're thinking of marriage as this abstract thing, but like marriage is like actually to like a flesh and blood
human.
Um, 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 Xs and O sort of analysis like like you know, we're designing
Um
you know, a a a company strategy.
It's much more complex than that.
um much more complex. I think tacit knowledge comes into play.
um 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 of of discernment comes into play.
you know, spending time with that person through different
ups and downs, right, and and all of those things.
Uh and the fact is, you know
uh you know, sadly he he he was never married and and sadly he's passed away. But
Um, I don't think that he ever if that was his criteria, he never would have been able to.
Right,'cause 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 will just sort of never get us to the point we need to be at.
And you know, with marriage also comes
Um
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, uh in in
last summer, so it's been a little bit more than six months now.
Um this is very real for me.
Um I have a 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 went like this and uh 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 of real reflection. There was tacit knowledge. Um, there were objective criteria.
That came into play.
clearly objective criteria that came into play. But then there's discipline. Those these are the the daily things that we do.
um that help cultivate and nurture our relationship.
Um there's the rituals.
And and then there's there's simply the commitment that I made.
Um
And
You know, it was um it's sort of that conversation really haunted me because it was very much
I didn't really have kind of the the
The
view that I have now at the time. So it's 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 it was long before I was married.
Um, I think it was because I knew
That there was um
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 and and prove. And I mean it comes down to call it what you want. Okay, call it, you know, belief, faith, um, sort of like step stepping out and making a commitment without necessarily knowing what the outcome is going to be.
Um but really like leaning into it.
Um
In good faith.
And then you're long for this beautiful sort of journey of emergent possibilities and learning things and and deepening your knowledge of another person and
being known in a way that deeper way than you've ever been known before.
Um
So
the point I'm trying to make there is that
the the fruits and the benefits.
Um
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 there's emergent knowledge, frankly.
Um
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 it it's sort of it sparks so many ideas in my head, not only
uh 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 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 in my IMAC.
uh makes a better product.
I 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, uh, and you have to they're they're on a continuum, obviously. I don't know if it's definitely either or
Um
But I I do think that there's some choices in life where y you you wanna be sort of
maybe less rational about the evidence and more emotional where you're making relationship choices based on
uh things that you feel more so than reasoning. Not to say that you shouldn't reason.
Uh, 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. Um I sometimes like to call it l layered thinking.
You know, there's the rational layer.
There's the tacit layer.
um then there there might be other layers and they're all important, you know, and
uh we can't just make the decision based on on
Any one layer, frankly.
um and certainly the top layer. So I think we all have to sort of um understand like
What's our um
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?
Um
And maybe one of the better definitions of tacit knowledge is
um would be
When
Um you call this wisdom, like embedded wisdom, when all of the layers
um just sort of become one and a person almost instantaneously is able to sort of see
Um to sort of see something.
The the conversation I have with Diana Chapman, we talk about this in it 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 line into the they're 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 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.
Then then that is a form of a whole body yes to you.
Yeah, and the well the body is another fascinating point'cause that's a that's a lift physical is important.
Um you know, there's like the sometimes like our our our bodies tell us things, right? Our bodies tell us stories and
And that's another layer, and sometimes even
um intellectual
um choices and things
Um
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 a life changing decision. It could be changing jobs. It could be making some sort of radical
Um
you know, risky decision.
Um, 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 um
a really important point.
Uh uh I wanna end with a question you've probably been asked a million times, but we we often ask on the show, which is what is success for you?
I am still figuring that out, you know. I I wish that I I could say that I had a
a clearly defined sort of um
vision of success, but the reason I don't is because it's changed so many times already.
So
Um, I would be it would be stupid for me to think that it's not probably going to change again.
It's changed many, many times.
Fortunately I've attended some
uh some funerals over the last couple of years and uh
more than I ever have, uh, in my life. And
you know, just just have listened to um
I've read obituaries, I've listened to eulogies, I've given a eulogy.
And
in doing that, um
you know, I've I've reflected a lot and kind of, you know, what I would want people to say about me. So I think
tha 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 sixty years left. Um, I don't think that people will care or remember some of the little companies I started when I
when I left uh finance.
Um
but really kind of the the the the legacy that I left. Um
know, the way that I loved. Um, I mean I think that ultimately that's the only measure for me is is the sort of the the level of
of of charity that I show. I mean, not just within my family, but but but to others.
Um
That's that's ultimately I I I know it's related to that. And maybe that sounds
Too vague, um, you know,'cause it's not always measurable.
But I think that, you know, I I hope the 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 or are people in my life.
Hey.
And a Luke Burgess affected my desires.
in a positive way, or like model 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, as 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.
Um
Beautiful, man. Thank you so much for your time.
Thanks, Shane, man. It's really good to be with you. Thank you.
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