The Art of Manliness - Thick Desires, Political Atheism, and Living an Anti-Mimetic Life

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:11.000 the last time we had entrepreneur professor and author luke burges on the show he discussed the

00:00:16.420 concept of mimetic desire which says that we want the things we want because other people want them

00:00:21.920 since that time luke has continued to explore this idea of mimesis and how to resist its

00:00:26.620 negative consequences into substack anti-mimetic today on the show luke and i dig into these ideas

00:00:32.080 and discuss ways we can step outside the tempo cadences and priorities that the world would

00:00:36.540 foist upon us and establish our own rhythms for our lives luke unpacks what it means to have thick

00:00:42.260 desires and become a political atheist and how these concepts can help you live a more anti-mimetic 0.94

00:00:47.400 life after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash anti-mimetic

00:00:56.620 all right luke burgess welcome back to the show hey brett good to be back so we had you on the

00:01:17.840 podcast a few years ago to talk about your book wanting which introduces readers to a theory of

00:01:24.700 why we want the things we want and this theory is called mimetic desire and the reason i wanted to

00:01:31.020 bring you back on the show is because since you've published your book you've gone on to explore

00:01:36.280 different ideas that seem to they're like they're offshoots of you grappling with this idea of mimetic

00:01:43.200 desire so i think before we start our conversation today so we can explore these offshoots i think it'd

00:01:48.900 be helpful for people who aren't familiar with mimetic desire and i'd encourage people to go listen to our

00:01:53.860 our podcast that we did on that i'll put the link to the show notes but just for the listeners aren't

00:01:58.940 familiar can you give us a brief thumbnail sketch of what mimetic desire is sure well the thinker that

00:02:06.460 really inspired my book and is responsible for coining that phrase mimetic desire is bernet gerard

00:02:13.000 a french thinker and he said man is the creature who doesn't know what to want so he looks to other

00:02:20.980 people to help him decide and you know you really wrap your mind around that statement it's pretty

00:02:27.600 mind-blowing right we don't know what we want and we assume usually we take our desires for granted and

00:02:34.140 assume that we know but gerard is saying that in fact we're social creatures and we rely on other

00:02:40.120 people to help us know what it is that we should want and he calls these other people models of desire

00:02:47.240 who are constantly mediating desires to us usually without us even knowing it so this phrase mimetic

00:02:55.140 desire just means imitative desire we're imitative creatures mimetic is a word that comes from the

00:03:00.600 greek word that simply means to imitate so mimetic desire means that we are assimilating almost by

00:03:08.340 contagion the desires of other people around us now we normally think of imitation as being something

00:03:14.900 that's limited to relatively surface level things we know that we learn language by imitation mannerisms

00:03:20.500 things like that right cultural things gerard's insight was that our powers of imitation go way

00:03:28.800 deeper than skin deep right they go down to the level of desire so somebody near us somebody who's

00:03:35.400 important to us who deeply desires something is pretty much inevitably going to influence us at the level

00:03:43.860 of desire not just intellectually but there's something much deeper here so you know if i have an older

00:03:49.920 brother who really wants a career in the military his desire whether i pursue that path or not is going to

00:03:59.040 affect me and shape the way that i think about my myself my own identity and what it is that i should

00:04:05.840 want this happens all the time and it happens from a very very young age and a quintessential example

00:04:12.180 would be turning a bunch of toddlers loose in a room full of toys you know more than enough toys

00:04:18.380 for all of them one of them you know little girl picks up a fancy red fire truck for whatever reason

00:04:24.960 you know maybe her dad's a firefighter or something she's fascinated with it and it doesn't take long

00:04:30.800 for another child to come over and be fascinated with that toy because she is right because she desires

00:04:39.240 that one it sort of imbues it with this almost like mystical value and then once there's two of

00:04:45.100 them well it's even more powerful so it's all the easier for the third and the fourth and the fifth kid

00:04:50.080 to come over and before you know it they're fighting over the same toy and there's like a hundred toys

00:04:54.600 in the room okay so this gets at what mimetic desire is you know we we choose sometimes what to pay

00:05:01.380 attention to based on what other people are paying attention to and what they want and gerard's insight is

00:05:07.200 that mimetic desire actually leads to conflict and rivalry like we see with the toddlers you know

00:05:12.220 all of a sudden they're fighting over the same truck there's a hundred toys in the room and he says

00:05:15.760 this is kind of the way that human beings are right mimesis attracts us to each other and eventually

00:05:21.520 leads to rivalry and you know we see that in the first pages of the bible with cain and abel right

00:05:26.160 you know they they they want the same thing they want to be recognized for a sacrifice that they make

00:05:30.860 it's actually them wanting the same thing that's the cause of their conflict not their differences

00:05:36.240 and that's a really counterintuitive point that gerard makes and he sees this power of mimesis

00:05:41.640 and mimetic desire at the very root of culture and what it means to be human and one of the issues

00:05:47.600 with mimetic desire once you think about it is it explains why you sometimes want things that you

00:05:53.900 don't particularly like right like you you want this thing and then once you pursue it and get it you're

00:05:59.800 like boy i really don't like this this is actually not that great and it doesn't satisfy it doesn't feel

00:06:04.860 doesn't feel good that's one of the downsides i mean mimetic desire could be good like there's

00:06:09.340 people who could influence you for the good help you you see someone pursue the good in their life

00:06:14.480 and you see that like oh well i want that too and it kind of it can be a good thing but oftentimes we

00:06:19.700 see things especially on social media we're like well this guy's doing this and it seems like it's

00:06:24.100 you know making him have a great life and then you pursue it and you're like man this really sucks i don't

00:06:27.460 actually like this 100 and i mean i i was walking down the street in new york city just a couple of

00:06:32.980 months ago and i was hit with this case of positive mimetic desire on my phone probably tweeting or

00:06:39.180 something like that kind of head in the clouds thinking about all the things that i have to do

00:06:42.620 affected by negative mimesis really right like seeing people commenting on the news cycle and kind

00:06:47.920 of caught up in it and walking down the street and i saw somebody walk out of a store and bend down

00:06:54.400 and attend to a homeless person on the street and actually bring them out of lunch and ask them how

00:06:59.340 they like their coffee okay i witnessed this happen and it immediately drew me out of myself and i was

00:07:04.880 like why i want what that person wants right i want to be like positively affected by that level of

00:07:10.340 concern because i feel very just preoccupied and somewhat selfish right now with these things

00:07:13.980 and it was you know these things happen all the time they draw us out of ourselves in positive ways

00:07:18.560 too so it's you make a really important point that mimetic desire just is right it's just kind of

00:07:24.020 what it means to be human and it's why the the models that we allow ourselves to be affected by

00:07:29.300 the people that we surround ourselves by are really important because mimetic desire can go

00:07:33.800 in negative rivalrous ways that can make us pretty miserable you know pursuing careers that

00:07:39.920 really we really don't care about right to keep up with somebody else or something like that but they

00:07:45.900 can also be tremendously positive and we can be inspired by people in their lives that want things that

00:07:50.820 we want to want but might not currently want if that makes sense that makes sense so you have a

00:07:56.560 newsletter called antimimetic that i subscribe to and i've really enjoyed and it's where you explore

00:08:01.880 how people can maybe mitigate the downsides of mimetic desire and get some of those good things that

00:08:08.520 sort of the positive aspect of mimetic desire in their lives and one way you propose people can

00:08:14.620 do this is by cultivating what you called thick desires so walk us through what's the difference

00:08:20.700 between a thick desire and a thin desire you could think of a thin desire as this fleeting temporary

00:08:28.360 ephemeral relatively superficial kind of desire that is here today and gone tomorrow you know like

00:08:35.460 something that i want really strongly today you know some new thing that i see in the store and by next

00:08:41.060 week i will have totally forgot about it right like that's the sign of a thin desire there's nothing

00:08:45.000 real and solid there there's no continuity to that desire whatsoever a thick desire on the other hand

00:08:51.560 i think more of like layers of rock if you've ever been to a beautiful national park like zion utah or

00:08:56.920 something you know i'm always amazed when i look at the rock formations you know i see how these things

00:09:02.040 have been built up over millions of years and i think in a life you know it's kind of you think of thick

00:09:07.380 desires as forming in a way that there's continuity to them right they're solid and we don't have to

00:09:14.340 worry about them you know disappearing with the slightest gust of wind and by slightest gust of

00:09:20.060 wind i mean a new mimetic model enters the scene that we become caught up with and we sort of forget

00:09:25.240 you know we forget our desires and the memory plays an important role here you know like i think we're all

00:09:31.300 born with a thick desire to move our bodies for instance right i mean it's kind of like our bodies

00:09:37.940 are designed to move it's joyful when you're moving the way that you're designed to move and how many

00:09:44.380 people get caught up with the thin desires hunched over their computer checking their emails for 12

00:09:49.060 hours a day and they start to have back problems and you know if this continues it starts a really

00:09:53.920 negative cycle of desire where before they know it they don't even desire to move they don't want to

00:10:00.120 run maybe they did five years ago but it's like the thin desires have completely taken over and

00:10:06.720 dominated to the point where we start to want different things so just understanding the difference

00:10:13.100 between thin desires and thick desires you begin to have some pattern recognition and you know well you

00:10:18.700 know luke you maybe you just sort of want to buy a van and drive around the country because you've been

00:10:24.760 looking at instagram a lot and seeing these like van life people and it looks really sexy from the

00:10:29.900 outside but is that really what you want to do you know and my wife will laugh at me and you know i

00:10:34.540 rec i can recognize it as a relatively thin desire right and just knowing where these influences come

00:10:40.580 from we just most of us live our lives taking all of our desires for granted and we just assume that

00:10:46.200 they're all thick and they're not well yeah i think when you're talking about thick desire thin desire

00:10:51.500 one that came to mind is socializing with people in person like having that a really great

00:10:56.940 conversation uh with your friends where it just the conversation just goes different places and you

00:11:03.440 just feel great after it happens but oftentimes i think we substitute that thick desire for the thin

00:11:09.180 desire of just okay we'll do a quick text i'll interact via social media with the like button

00:11:15.360 that's a thin desire and doesn't doesn't sustain you as much but that thick desire the problem with

00:11:20.400 thick desires and thin desires is that thick desires are hard to cultivate thin desires are easy

00:11:25.320 usually if it's a thin desire it's easy to do and to satisfy but a thick desire that takes works it

00:11:30.900 takes work to get people in person it takes work to plan an in-person event so you're just like well

00:11:36.520 i don't want to do that but whenever i'm in that position where i'm thinking well maybe we should

00:11:41.300 get together with people and like plan the dinner i'm like oh man no it's just a lot of work and i

00:11:44.840 don't want to do that and then my wife has to remind like well you always whenever you do these 1.00

00:11:48.600 things you always feel like that was a great time i'm glad we did that so yeah i think that's

00:11:52.260 another example of a thick desire i think thick desires need to be cultivated and they're always

00:11:57.400 more work 100 and it's one of my thick desires one of the things i like to do the most is to cook

00:12:02.860 and be a host you know hospitality is really important for me it brings me a lot of joy

00:12:08.220 it always has and there's a difference between things that are meant to be supplements that become

00:12:14.420 substitutes so social media is a supplement and it can be useful for keeping up with my friends

00:12:20.940 that live in different parts of the world different parts of the country so that's okay

00:12:25.400 but when it becomes a substitute for the real then it's basically an instance of thin desires completely

00:12:33.640 subsuming and taking over the thick desires yeah another i guess an example of thick desires in my

00:12:39.000 life i really enjoy reading a good long form article online or it could be in a magazine or newspaper

00:12:46.460 but the thin desire is just going through a tweet thread it's easy but it's not as satisfying i

00:12:52.820 never i never i don't think about those tweet threads that i read the next day but i there's

00:12:57.140 articles that i've read that i still think about i'm the same way man and and you know people tell me

00:13:02.640 all the time like hey you know you really need to write shorter form like you know basically think

00:13:08.080 in real short form thinking 10 to 30 seconds and i i don't find that much satisfaction in writing

00:13:14.140 those things but there's this tremendous pressure to do that and i have thick desires to make it

00:13:19.840 through you know really challenging novels right i've always liked to do that and i've actually found

00:13:24.940 it's becoming harder and harder for me to do that so it's a reminder for me it's just so many

00:13:30.880 distractions it's a reminder for me that yes luke that is a thick desire that you have to be able to

00:13:35.620 make it through a book as challenging as brothers karamazov but sometimes my thin desires pull me in so

00:13:42.560 many directions and barely make it 10 pages without feeling a tug to go you know check my twitter

00:13:48.060 thread or something like that and you mentioned i think in a substack article that you have this hunch

00:13:53.500 that a lot of people they have a craving for these thick desires the the good the beautiful like great

00:13:58.520 music classical music reading a really challenging but satisfying novel but i think a lot of times people

00:14:03.820 just don't know how to get started with that or it's just it's so much work that they just don't

00:14:07.680 even start so what's your advice how do you start cultivating these thick desires in a world that

00:14:13.120 is awash in making thin desires easy to satisfy yeah what have you found that's useful yeah you know

00:14:21.340 and thin desires are very profitable right when people satisfy them so there's a misalignment of

00:14:26.520 incentives you know i it's true i i do believe that everybody has these thick desires inside and they

00:14:31.940 just need to be woken up they need to be activated it's why i like my job as a teacher i'm a professor

00:14:37.060 in a college it's one of the hats that i wear and i love activating the thick desires of my students

00:14:42.660 they just almost need to be reminded or it's just kind of uh it goes back to something that plato said

00:14:47.500 right all learning is kind of memory we just need to be reminded of our thick desires sometimes i don't

00:14:52.620 think there's any substitute for the real i think you know good technology and good education always

00:14:57.880 points people to the real so you know spending 10 000 hours doing something offline right really sinking

00:15:05.440 deeply into it cultivating relationships with friends and family all of these things that are

00:15:10.460 real i think it's very difficult to do it online because the very nature of our online world right

00:15:16.360 now especially social media is just dominated by thin desires and we need each other to awaken these

00:15:23.420 thick desires in one another because desire is social you know it's important that i have friends that

00:15:30.200 can kind of you know remind me hey luke man like we used to love to golf or we used to like to spend

00:15:36.460 time together you know doing these things or fishing i live on a lake during the summers right and it's

00:15:41.600 like we haven't been to the beach in two weeks what the hell are we doing here like we live five minutes 0.56

00:15:46.160 away right and it's like i need those people to help awaken those things inside of me and remind me

00:15:52.100 to try to do it alone is really folly and i think you know we live in this very individualistic

00:15:58.360 world people are lonely and i just found it to be tremendous value to cultivate a network of good

00:16:03.980 friends and good people that are all pursuing the real and trying at least right to activate and live

00:16:12.320 out these thick desires because it's far more fulfilling okay so find a community so maybe start

00:16:17.480 a book club where you're going to read the great books with some friends and you know you might have

00:16:22.280 some problems with that it could be hard finding people who want to read you know plato's dialogues

00:16:27.360 there's not too many people who just like that that sounds like something i'd like to do for fun

00:16:30.980 but it's worth the effort to find those people because it'll help you because you're creating

00:16:35.260 that positive mimesis in your life the fact that it is hard you know could be a sign that it's not a

00:16:42.500 thin desire and that it's you know it's something that we should look seriously at so it's not that

00:16:47.160 everything that's difficult is necessarily better but in the world that we live in dominated by thin

00:16:51.360 desires most of the things that are going to lead to fulfillment right now do involve swimming

00:16:58.880 against the current a little bit you know it's one of the definitions of anti-mimetic you know dead

00:17:03.900 fish float downstream right live fish are able to swim against the current or even to swim upstream

00:17:09.220 um and yeah so if something feels hard then it's probably anti-mimetic with a thick desire and then

00:17:15.460 another thing if it seems useless that might be another sign that it's a thick desire i think c.s

00:17:21.300 lewis said the the useless things are the most valuable things that's counter to our very materialistic

00:17:27.880 utilitarian world where well i'm only going to do this thing if it provides some sort of you know

00:17:32.720 productivity gain in my life and aristotle and c.s lewis would be like actually that's probably not the

00:17:38.880 most valuable thing if it feels not useful then it's probably leading you towards the good

00:17:45.380 the true the beautiful yeah and and you know the word that aristotle would use is contemplation

00:17:50.400 right the contemplation is a one of the highest goods of life and you know one of my favorite books

00:17:56.260 is by a guy named joseph peeper it's called leisure is the basis of culture and it's just a reminder

00:18:02.680 that some of the best things in life especially today involve feeling like you're not being useful

00:18:13.100 just think of uh spending time with a loved one holding their hand my dad has dementia spend a lot

00:18:19.980 of time with him and you know sometimes we sit there where i'm listening for an hour to the guy

00:18:25.380 that comes in once a month and plays elvis and the beach boys on this little amp in the dining room and

00:18:31.120 i just do that for an hour and you know i'm busy i have a lot of demands in my time but i know that i

00:18:37.820 am cultivating a thick desire to be with my father it ends up being the most satisfying part of my

00:18:43.500 entire month and i feel guilty because i actually still have those thoughts of like what am i doing

00:18:48.320 here do i really need to be here for the whole hour am i wasting my time no that's human that's normal

00:18:53.680 to think that but i've come to see that as me investing in a thick desire something you've also

00:18:58.980 written about is curating your media consumption so that it's cultivates those thick desires so

00:19:05.540 what are some ideas that people can find to fill their book list their to watch movie list their

00:19:11.940 podcast their music list with things that cultivate thick desire and are antimemetic

00:19:17.980 first you know we really have to step back and think about what we value and what our hierarchy

00:19:25.740 of value is right what's really a priority for us and then align our media consumption around that

00:19:32.840 it's not that much different than food right we're consuming these things and we commune in a sense in

00:19:38.900 like a deep sense with the content that we take in so you know if somebody told me you know they want

00:19:44.600 to be healthy and they want to eat fast food every day well there's some kind of a misalignment

00:19:47.860 there but we're talking about thick desires like let's take the example of patience if

00:19:52.800 patience is a value for you in your relationships or in your marriage and you say that's a goal

00:19:57.500 well it's really hard to be patient when all you do is consume 10 to 30 second youtube video clips

00:20:03.820 or tiktoks all day so you know if you're saying that that's the goal you've got to be able to make

00:20:09.260 it through a long novel you've got to be able to sit still for an hour however you want to do that

00:20:14.540 you could be in nature you could look at a tree you could meditate you could pray

00:20:17.780 so the way that we consume things and spend our time is simply got to be aligned with those values

00:20:23.540 i think there's tremendous value in removing ourselves from the algorithm i try my best it's

00:20:27.980 not easy i'm pretty online but i can tell when i'm being caught up in in the algorithm and i still find

00:20:35.420 tremendous joy in walking in a used bookstore and the spontaneity of stumbling on a book that just

00:20:41.080 happens to catch my eye there's nothing algorithmic about that there's something deeply

00:20:44.720 incarnational about that there's something real that i just place more value on that right it's

00:20:51.180 not something that has been tailored to me by some company that's designed to make me follow a certain

00:20:58.180 track so i mean one of the things quite simply is looking at older material that is not really

00:21:04.820 subject to you know the trends that's not fashionable so one of my friends just watches like old

00:21:10.880 classic movies that are really good but that nobody ever talks about anymore he actually publishes a

00:21:15.740 newsletter on this so i follow that one because i find it to be in like i get really anti-memetic

00:21:21.160 recommendations and nine times out of ten you know these things turn out to be way better than you know

00:21:27.100 the latest movies that are top 10 on rotten tomatoes or something like that and the same thing with book

00:21:32.900 recommendations one of my favorite bookstores in dc you fill out a form you tell them something about

00:21:37.200 yourself and the staff literally makes you a mystery box of 10 books based on what you've said

00:21:42.140 and i love that right it's just there's this totally like outside of the algorithm so i i tend to just

00:21:47.560 look for little opportunities like that it's not that i never find things online but i'm really really

00:21:53.760 intentional about the sources of my recommendations all right so look for things outside of the the

00:21:58.880 algorithm or look outside of the internet that's something my wife and i have done over the years with the

00:22:02.920 art of manliness you know we've done some content ideas based off of things that we found in an old

00:22:08.540 book that we found in an antique store in some town in vermont we saw this etiquette book from the

00:22:14.920 1800s pull that out man there's like a cool article here or another one is buying old men's magazines

00:22:20.060 from the 1940s and 50s and it's interesting to see it's fun to see what people were talking about like what

00:22:26.340 it meant to be a man in the 40s and 50s occasionally there's something like that's actually really good

00:22:31.300 it was written in 1945 but it's still relevant today it's still it still resonates and so we you

00:22:36.600 know might write an article based off of that so i think that's another that's a really great way to

00:22:40.820 cultivate an antimemetic media consumption use bookstores antique stores if you have a college

00:22:46.640 nearby go to the archival stacks and just walk through it and pull off a book that just catches

00:22:52.840 your attention and thumb through it and you'll probably find something that you otherwise wouldn't

00:22:57.380 have found uh that could cultivate that thick desire absolutely and even little things like

00:23:03.480 whenever i can i take phone calls while i'm on a walk outside rather than you know both of us huddled

00:23:09.120 in front of our laptops looking at the screen and you know there's even something about that that's

00:23:13.300 antimemetic because you know the movement while we're talking the things that we see all of these

00:23:17.960 things kind of spur things so we're you know any amount of time that i can spend i just try to

00:23:22.680 structure my day where i'm exposed to more of the real this actually this idea of taking control as

00:23:28.460 you're kind of taking control of your desire like your mimesis in your life and it actually reminds

00:23:33.640 me i've been reading kicker guard's postscripts which is this long book he wrote and it's like

00:23:39.960 kicker guard's hard to read he's a weird guy but he has this idea that he calls out that you need

00:23:44.840 become subjective and what kicker had meant by subjective was you need to become an individual

00:23:51.180 individual that doesn't just let life happen to you it's about taking control of all the weird

00:23:59.760 stuff that's going on in your life and fashioning yourself into an individual that you know in his

00:24:04.600 case could stand before god and that requires you to guide your desires so that you desire the good

00:24:11.500 i love that idea love kierkegaard and that idea of the subjective makes me think of agency and i have

00:24:18.180 this theory that in our world people are feeling a loss of personal agency whether it's you know ai the

00:24:25.080 algorithms you know like i see this especially in my students they just seem to lack a sense that they

00:24:31.160 have agency and kierkegaard seems to be saying the opposite like what we need to realize that we

00:24:35.640 actually do have the power to take intentional action and not just respond to the things right not

00:24:41.260 just react to the things that happen to us or the things that are served to us in ads yeah matthew

00:24:46.140 crawford we've had him on the podcast he's the guy that wrote shop classes soul craft he he made a

00:24:50.080 distinction between agency and autonomy and he says a lot of in modern life we confuse autonomy for

00:24:56.940 agency but he says like autonomy is just basically the freedom to choose but oftentimes you can have

00:25:02.920 autonomy but your choices are limited right it's like when you have a kid and you're like well do you

00:25:07.140 want to wear this thing or this thing well you're helping your kid be autonomous but they don't really

00:25:12.380 have agency because they didn't get to construct the choices and a lot of modern life is we feel

00:25:17.740 autonomous because we need to make all these choices between what we watch on netflix and the newsletters

00:25:23.120 we subscribe to and yada yada but often it kind of strips us of our agency because we're just given

00:25:28.480 these choices like a parent gives choices of what color cup you're going to use absolutely yeah i mean

00:25:33.660 it's the difference between freedom from and freedom for freedom for means that you can construct the

00:25:38.880 choices right most people just like to order off the menu literally like the options that are served

00:25:43.820 to them but we can order off menu right i mean maybe the options are more than you know what shows up

00:25:49.020 on google eats maybe there's some amazing restaurants and we just take those things for granted so um you

00:25:53.700 know maybe as as an anti-memetic exercise try ordering off the menu the next time you go out to eat and

00:25:58.640 just see what happens because it's it's literally like i know it sounds silly but it's like a small

00:26:03.440 example of exercising some creative control and agency and you know these kind of things spill over

00:26:08.960 into other aspects of life we're gonna take a quick break for your word from our sponsors

00:26:12.560 and now back to the show something else you've been writing about lately that i i've enjoyed thinking

00:26:22.060 about is how we think about time and organize our lives can be driven by mimetic desires so what does

00:26:28.720 the rhythm of life look like when it's driven by mimesis well i i think of worldly time the time in

00:26:35.760 the world as a metronome you know the device that's used to keep track of time on a piano and it's just

00:26:40.800 ticking really really fast i mean it seems to be ticking faster and faster and you know we can either

00:26:46.560 accept that or we can choose to model our life on different forms of time you know the mimesis on social

00:26:54.720 media on twitter is just moving at a breakneck speed and no wonder people are exhausted and

00:27:00.240 depressed you know the desires are being pulled in a billion different directions on social media

00:27:05.360 and time moves very fast i mean almost everybody i talk to maybe some of it's due to the pandemic

00:27:11.040 everybody feels like time is speeding up i know i have over the last few years and we just take these

00:27:16.720 things for granted oh there's an election site there's an election coming up i have to participate in the 0.91

00:27:22.800 news cycle for that election if i'm a good citizen well that's bullshit no you don't you you can choose 0.77

00:27:28.800 how you want to engage in the consumption of that this kind of comes back to the question of agency 0.65

00:27:34.400 same thing with emails you know i get 500 plus a day and i can be on that time of when those things

00:27:42.160 flow into my inbox but i'm not sort of moving to a system where i don't even see most of the emails that

00:27:47.120 i get and i talk to my assistant once a week and we go over all of them we go over what's important

00:27:51.520 and we organize them so making those intentional choices about about pulling back and you know i

00:27:58.320 one of the things in my life that's been you know tremendous good for me it's not for everybody um

00:28:04.400 but i i'm catholic and one i learned later in life about this ancient tradition in the church called the

00:28:11.280 liturgy of the hours where typically monks in the monastic tradition they would pray what's called

00:28:17.600 basically morning prayer afternoon prayer evening prayer and night prayer and there's a couple more

00:28:23.200 hardcore monks actually wake up in the middle of the night like at 3 a.m and they have another one

00:28:27.120 but you know this is available to anybody right and i bought myself this beautiful

00:28:31.520 bravery where it's got psalms and prayers in it and i don't do it every day i don't do it four times a

00:28:36.560 day but there's a rhythm of life to that right regardless same thing with feast days and these things do not

00:28:42.400 map on to you know the holidays that we have in the u.s it's almost like operating outside of time

00:28:48.880 a little bit right so for me you know that's been one way of me living my my faith in my particular

00:28:55.040 tradition that i you know i found that as a tremendous tool i think other people can find their own way

00:29:00.480 nature operates at a different rhythm than technology does and simple things like i'm here at the lake house

00:29:08.960 for the summer and time moves completely different for me here than it does when i'm in dc where i

00:29:14.560 live for part of the year and when i lived in italy for three years my concept of time totally changed

00:29:19.760 i mean i learned what it was like to have a two and a half hour lunch i would have told you that was

00:29:23.920 crazy before i lived there we can immerse ourselves in different rhythms of time and not just accept

00:29:30.240 the ones that are presented to us i guess maybe observing of sabbath even if you're not religious

00:29:35.440 you could observe a sabbath a day where you just you're not online you just take it off and it's

00:29:40.000 completely useless this is again doing a sabbath is the most useless thing in the world you're not

00:29:43.920 getting any productive work down but as aristotle and cs lewis said the useless things are the most 0.93

00:29:48.800 valuable things absolutely yeah and then also i think you think on the bigger picture scale of you

00:29:55.520 know you talked about the liturgical hours of prayer that you do that goes throughout the year like

00:30:00.160 there's you know different feast days and fast days and maybe you find a schedule there that you

00:30:05.840 can kind of sync your life up to that kind of gives a rhythm to your life that's outside of the

00:30:11.120 forensic social media hyper capitalist individualistic memetic time cycle yeah i mean intermittent fasting

00:30:20.720 is a great example of that i mean it's something that that you know i've just started relatively

00:30:24.640 recently and it's not according to any kind of external model right there's a rhythm to that

00:30:30.080 so all of these things kind of help me build something that that makes me feel like i have

00:30:34.640 more intentionality about how i'm spending my time and even i mean intermittent fasting even just i don't

00:30:39.520 even have to who said i have to eat on this specific schedule or that i need to work nine to five monday

00:30:44.800 through friday where did that come from and we've just internalized some of these ideas so deeply about

00:30:50.400 this kind of worldly time when i started my first company it took me like years to break out of that

00:30:56.640 mentality and realize that hey if i want to go golfing at 1 p.m on a wednesday afternoon or go to

00:31:01.680 the grocery store or something like that i can do that and i can actually do it without feeling guilty

00:31:05.920 about it but it was it was shocking to me how deeply ingrained those concepts of time actually were

00:31:11.600 so something else you've written about that piqued my interest in your newsletter

00:31:15.520 is you mentioned that renee gerard the guy who came up with this whole idea of mimetic desire

00:31:21.040 in theory he once used the phrase political atheist in passing and he didn't really explain

00:31:27.680 too much what it meant so you've been grappling like what did he mean by this what is a political

00:31:32.880 atheist you've never i've never heard those two words together so based on your sort of thinking

00:31:38.000 about this and writing about it and also talking about it with other people what's your hunch about

00:31:43.120 what you're meant by this political atheism he coined that term in his very first book which is

00:31:48.640 called deceit desire and the novel and he said that the great french writer stendhal seems to be a

00:31:56.000 political atheist and stendhal was his famous book is called the red and the black it took place during

00:32:02.400 the french restoration after the french revolution where there was this big battle playing out kind of

00:32:08.080 between monarchy and liberalism is kind of an undercurrent through the whole book and it's a funny

00:32:13.120 book you know it's the protagonist is this young guy named julian kind of from peasant stock but

00:32:18.480 he wants to rise up the ranks and he's trying to figure out the fastest way to do that and in the

00:32:24.160 book you know stendhal kind of shows that this opposition between these two political parties is

00:32:30.160 really flimsy and you know characters kind of switch between the two of them all the time and he helps

00:32:37.520 the reader see like different dynamics that are operating under the surface where the temptation is to

00:32:42.960 kind of believe in all the promises that any character makes when they just flip parties like

00:32:48.800 the next month you know so he said stendhal sees something deeper under the surface he's trying to call

00:32:54.480 our attention to he called shakespeare political atheist alexis to toqueville and he said perhaps in in

00:33:00.560 private conversation gerard said maybe christ was also a political atheist super provocative statement

00:33:06.960 and i think what he means by that he would gerard would say that you know christ specifically

00:33:13.600 de-sacralized worldly politics de-sacralized it in the roman empire the emperor started to become

00:33:20.880 associated with the son of god and all these things and the veil was torn back and we started to see that

00:33:26.560 you know we can't invest sacred authority in any kind of worldly leader and by political atheist i think

00:33:34.640 gerard meant that i reject the call and the demand for me to believe in any one political leader that

00:33:43.120 tries to set themselves up as a savior any even any one political party that tries to set itself up as

00:33:48.960 a savior and says that they can solve all of our problems and you know he would probably say like i

00:33:53.760 reject that that demand to believe or to idolize even a whole political system and to kind of step back

00:34:01.920 and have some spiritual distance from that to not be caught up in the riptides that are so easy to be

00:34:08.720 caught up in in modern day politics so i would say that it's a it's kind of a de-sacralization of

00:34:14.320 worldly politics and in my opinion american politics have become incredibly sacralized there's almost a

00:34:19.680 religious aspect to them you know maybe it's because there's been a decline in religion and people kind of

00:34:25.200 are putting their faith in politics more i don't know i've got all kinds of ideas about what might be

00:34:29.360 happening there but i the political atheist intrigues me so much because i i think if gerard were alive

00:34:34.960 today he passed away in 2015 he'd probably say you know it's more important to be a political atheist

00:34:40.000 than ever before and that doesn't mean disengaging with the world burying our head in the sand and

00:34:46.560 acting like there's no problems we're all political animals i am too but you know perhaps being a political

00:34:52.800 atheist we can reject this total immersion in the political promises that you know stendhal in that

00:35:01.200 book sort of exposed to be relatively empty we might even say often driven by manipulating the thin

00:35:08.320 desires of people so perhaps you know one way of being a political atheist is we rediscover some thick

00:35:14.400 desires that we have some of the political machinations that are happening just become a little less

00:35:19.680 i mean serious i guess would be one way to say it or we can at least have some perspective and some

00:35:25.440 critical distance from them i this idea that americans really secularized politics i am toqueville

00:35:32.480 noticed that even in the 1800s like he was just amazed about how much you know americans he talked to

00:35:38.800 they're like they all they do they talk politics and they talk about i'm going to this meeting and i'm

00:35:42.480 going to go to do this i'm going to join this campaign something about america like our founding kind

00:35:46.800 of set in place this idea that where politics becomes infused with everything like our our you

00:35:52.240 know it's always been kind of connected with religion in a way but also you see it today confused with

00:35:57.440 even what we consume like the media we consume the clothes we wear the brands we decided politics is

00:36:03.040 there and so being a political atheist is trying to separate those or maybe see behind what's going on

00:36:07.440 there yeah one friend of mine said there's a bull market in politics you know and it's literally

00:36:12.960 true in the sense that i think if you look at the last uh 10 to 20 years like the amount of money

00:36:17.040 that's been poured into politics and campaigns is like there's been exponential growth in it so it's

00:36:22.480 like what's going on there is that bubble going to burst um so the people that are political feists

00:36:27.680 right that maybe have invested too much of themselves and their lives into politics or into one particular

00:36:33.840 candidate or something like that may be in for a rude awakening or some some kind of real

00:36:38.320 disillusionment you know when when that bubble bursts kind of like the stock market we had a

00:36:43.520 podcast guest on the show last year robert talise he's a professor of political philosophy

00:36:48.560 and he wrote a book called overdoing democracy and he made this case that by infusing politics

00:36:54.320 and everything we do the sports we watch etc we actually hurt democracy in the process it makes democracy

00:37:00.960 not possible because it just mucks everything up so one case you can make becoming a political atheist

00:37:06.240 can also allow you to allow politics to thrive in a more productive way exactly and i would agree

00:37:14.560 with that i mean sports serve a really important function in our society in my opinion a ritual function

00:37:20.720 a cathartic function joy play both professional and amateur and you know once politics takes over

00:37:27.360 absolutely everything those things can no longer serve their function in fact they can become miserable

00:37:31.840 right make it's just it's it's too much uh we can only handle so much and you know politics is part

00:37:37.200 of life we are political animals but it's not all of life and when it starts to take over all of life

00:37:42.320 it seems to me that uh some political atheism is a very healthy thing what do you say to the people

00:37:47.600 sometimes when you tell people you know i just i'm trying to like i want to be a political you say

00:37:52.560 it in some sort of way well i'm not trying to be political about this but someone will say

00:37:55.440 well you know what you're actually taking a political stance by not being political and it's

00:38:01.440 privileged to do that to say that you're above it all what's your response to that sort of talk

00:38:06.320 yeah i mean i i would say you know it doesn't mean that i that i'm not going to vote it doesn't

00:38:10.000 mean that i'm not going to engage but it means that you know i'm going to vote and then i'm going to

00:38:14.320 go home and give my wife and my daughter a hug and then i'm going to go to bed and i'm going to get

00:38:19.520 up and i'm going to do my job with excellence the next day right it's eyes up rise up and we can't get

00:38:23.920 sucked into the centripetal force that politics wants to pull us into so that it consumes our

00:38:28.960 whole life so it would just be wrong to interpret political atheism as total disengagement you know

00:38:34.960 the word atheism is in there for a reason it's a rejection of a certain kind of belief in politics

00:38:41.120 as trying to be something more than it can be that maybe only god can fill that role so it's a rejection

00:38:48.640 of a belief and i think we live in a world right now where people are trying to you know make

00:38:53.600 really stark dividing lines kind of you're either for us or you're against us put people into camps

00:38:58.560 and that's really dangerous and you know there's kind of a manichean undercurrent to all of this

00:39:04.320 right the world is divided up into good and evil people are parties are uh like i reject that so

00:39:10.400 that's part of being a political atheist is rejecting some of these premises that we just take for granted

00:39:16.240 and we can very easily get sucked into them and say no no i can be engaged but i'm not going to be

00:39:22.080 engaged in that way in that way that you are demanding um which would make me sort of lose

00:39:28.240 myself so we got a presidential election coming up here in a year and as you talked about that's one of

00:39:34.320 those mimetic time cycles we can get sucked in right we're just everything that's going on on the

00:39:40.080 internet in the news and the newspaper it all is driven by this presidential cycle so any advice on

00:39:46.960 being a political atheist during a time when it seems like so much of society is a flame with

00:39:51.200 political passion i mean i know what i what i'll do i'll regulate my consumption of media very very

00:39:57.440 carefully i will not get caught up and guilted into you know you have to watch every debate i i know what

00:40:03.680 i need to know to make an informed vote right and that doesn't mean i need to consume the amount

00:40:08.160 of information in the 24-hour news cycle that they want me to believe that i do i will put it in

00:40:14.000 perspective people have been saying that every single election for the last 150 years is apocalyptic

00:40:19.600 i mean i'm not kidding if you go go back and read the new york times in 1900 and it will say that you

00:40:24.800 know if this person gets elected it's the end of the world right this is the most important election

00:40:28.800 in our lifetime you can do like an engram tracking of google on that that's been used for well over 100

00:40:33.760 years you know in print so you know which one is it which so so you know and i make an intentional

00:40:40.400 effort i mean one thing that i do that i i think helps me mentally helps my mental and spiritual

00:40:45.680 health is i'm intentional about cultivating relationships with just a diverse array of

00:40:50.400 people right i don't want to live in a place or interact with people that that agree with me and

00:40:54.880 i will likely and i've done this before is you know try to host a dinner with nine people for instance

00:41:01.520 and it'll be three republicans three democrats and three independents and i have seen in my life that

00:41:08.240 it's what i see in my home when i do things like that is completely different than what you would

00:41:14.640 believe would happen right if you if you believe and you trust in the news like not possible to have a

00:41:19.920 wonderful wonderful evening in conversation with that mix of people well it is and i've seen it and i

00:41:26.800 bet i could think of three or four groups of nine people that i could do that with maybe i'm lucky

00:41:31.120 but i i've really made an intentional effort to do that kind of thing and because i've seen that and

00:41:36.960 experience those things it really makes some of the things that we'll hear during this coming

00:41:43.040 president election seem a little bit silly and i can sort of see them for i see it for the untruth

00:41:49.600 that it is when we're sort of told that we need to invest things or that people are a certain way 0.59

00:41:54.640 or that these people are not reasonable it simply does not do justice to the complexity of the human

00:42:00.240 person and their ability to engage when they're actually spoken to and loved and treated like a

00:42:06.160 person whose opinions actually matter i like that so host a political atheist anti-memetic

00:42:12.000 dinner this presidential election cycle there you go let me know how it goes all right we'll see how

00:42:17.680 that goes and maybe other people will let us know how it goes well luke this has been a great

00:42:21.280 conversation where can people go to learn more about your work thanks brad i really enjoyed it

00:42:25.360 luke burgess.com is my website i think all my stuff is there and i write a sub stack usually weekly

00:42:31.280 called anti-memetic you can find that i'm sub stack and it's also at read.lukeburgess.com

00:42:36.560 fantastic well luke burgess thanks for your time it's been a pleasure thanks brett it's all my

00:42:40.080 pleasure my guest today was luke burgess he's the author of the book wanting it's available on amazon.com

00:42:45.360 and bookstores everywhere you can find more information about his work at his website lukeburgess.com

00:42:50.400 also check out his sub stack anti-memetic at read.lukeburgess.com also check out our show

00:42:55.920 notes at aom.is slash anti-memetic where you find links to resources and we delve deeper into this

00:43:00.560 topic well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at

00:43:12.720 artofmanless.com where you find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles that

00:43:16.720 we've written over the years about pretty much anything you think of and if you haven't done

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00:43:31.760 the continued support until next time's brett mckay reminding you to listen to aom podcast but put what

00:43:36.880 what you've heard into action

The Art of Manliness - July 10, 2023

Thick Desires, Political Atheism, and Living an Anti-Mimetic Life

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