Thick Desires, Political Atheism, and Living an Anti-Mimetic Life
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode, we re-unite with entrepreneur and author Luke Burges to discuss the concept of Mimetic desire, which says that we want the things we want because other people around us want them. Luke has continued to explore this idea of mimesis and how to resist its negative consequences into his new book, "Mimetic Desire: The Theory of Why We Want the Things We Want" which explores the theory of why we desire what we desire.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast
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the last time we had entrepreneur professor and author luke burges on the show he discussed the
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concept of mimetic desire which says that we want the things we want because other people want them
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since that time luke has continued to explore this idea of mimesis and how to resist its
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negative consequences into substack anti-mimetic today on the show luke and i dig into these ideas
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and discuss ways we can step outside the tempo cadences and priorities that the world would
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foist upon us and establish our own rhythms for our lives luke unpacks what it means to have thick
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desires and become a political atheist and how these concepts can help you live a more anti-mimetic
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life after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash anti-mimetic
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all right luke burgess welcome back to the show hey brett good to be back so we had you on the
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podcast a few years ago to talk about your book wanting which introduces readers to a theory of
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why we want the things we want and this theory is called mimetic desire and the reason i wanted to
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bring you back on the show is because since you've published your book you've gone on to explore
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different ideas that seem to they're like they're offshoots of you grappling with this idea of mimetic
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desire so i think before we start our conversation today so we can explore these offshoots i think it'd
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be helpful for people who aren't familiar with mimetic desire and i'd encourage people to go listen to our
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our podcast that we did on that i'll put the link to the show notes but just for the listeners aren't
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familiar can you give us a brief thumbnail sketch of what mimetic desire is sure well the thinker that
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really inspired my book and is responsible for coining that phrase mimetic desire is bernet gerard
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a french thinker and he said man is the creature who doesn't know what to want so he looks to other
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people to help him decide and you know you really wrap your mind around that statement it's pretty
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mind-blowing right we don't know what we want and we assume usually we take our desires for granted and
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assume that we know but gerard is saying that in fact we're social creatures and we rely on other
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people to help us know what it is that we should want and he calls these other people models of desire
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who are constantly mediating desires to us usually without us even knowing it so this phrase mimetic
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desire just means imitative desire we're imitative creatures mimetic is a word that comes from the
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greek word that simply means to imitate so mimetic desire means that we are assimilating almost by
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contagion the desires of other people around us now we normally think of imitation as being something
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that's limited to relatively surface level things we know that we learn language by imitation mannerisms
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things like that right cultural things gerard's insight was that our powers of imitation go way
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deeper than skin deep right they go down to the level of desire so somebody near us somebody who's
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important to us who deeply desires something is pretty much inevitably going to influence us at the level
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of desire not just intellectually but there's something much deeper here so you know if i have an older
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brother who really wants a career in the military his desire whether i pursue that path or not is going to
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affect me and shape the way that i think about my myself my own identity and what it is that i should
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want this happens all the time and it happens from a very very young age and a quintessential example
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would be turning a bunch of toddlers loose in a room full of toys you know more than enough toys
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for all of them one of them you know little girl picks up a fancy red fire truck for whatever reason
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you know maybe her dad's a firefighter or something she's fascinated with it and it doesn't take long
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for another child to come over and be fascinated with that toy because she is right because she desires
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that one it sort of imbues it with this almost like mystical value and then once there's two of
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them well it's even more powerful so it's all the easier for the third and the fourth and the fifth kid
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to come over and before you know it they're fighting over the same toy and there's like a hundred toys
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in the room okay so this gets at what mimetic desire is you know we we choose sometimes what to pay
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attention to based on what other people are paying attention to and what they want and gerard's insight is
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that mimetic desire actually leads to conflict and rivalry like we see with the toddlers you know
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all of a sudden they're fighting over the same truck there's a hundred toys in the room and he says
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this is kind of the way that human beings are right mimesis attracts us to each other and eventually
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leads to rivalry and you know we see that in the first pages of the bible with cain and abel right
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you know they they they want the same thing they want to be recognized for a sacrifice that they make
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it's actually them wanting the same thing that's the cause of their conflict not their differences
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and that's a really counterintuitive point that gerard makes and he sees this power of mimesis
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and mimetic desire at the very root of culture and what it means to be human and one of the issues
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with mimetic desire once you think about it is it explains why you sometimes want things that you
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don't particularly like right like you you want this thing and then once you pursue it and get it you're
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like boy i really don't like this this is actually not that great and it doesn't satisfy it doesn't feel
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doesn't feel good that's one of the downsides i mean mimetic desire could be good like there's
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people who could influence you for the good help you you see someone pursue the good in their life
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and you see that like oh well i want that too and it kind of it can be a good thing but oftentimes we
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see things especially on social media we're like well this guy's doing this and it seems like it's
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you know making him have a great life and then you pursue it and you're like man this really sucks i don't
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actually like this 100 and i mean i i was walking down the street in new york city just a couple of
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months ago and i was hit with this case of positive mimetic desire on my phone probably tweeting or
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something like that kind of head in the clouds thinking about all the things that i have to do
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affected by negative mimesis really right like seeing people commenting on the news cycle and kind
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of caught up in it and walking down the street and i saw somebody walk out of a store and bend down
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and attend to a homeless person on the street and actually bring them out of lunch and ask them how
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they like their coffee okay i witnessed this happen and it immediately drew me out of myself and i was
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like why i want what that person wants right i want to be like positively affected by that level of
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concern because i feel very just preoccupied and somewhat selfish right now with these things
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and it was you know these things happen all the time they draw us out of ourselves in positive ways
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too so it's you make a really important point that mimetic desire just is right it's just kind of
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what it means to be human and it's why the the models that we allow ourselves to be affected by
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the people that we surround ourselves by are really important because mimetic desire can go
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in negative rivalrous ways that can make us pretty miserable you know pursuing careers that
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really we really don't care about right to keep up with somebody else or something like that but they
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can also be tremendously positive and we can be inspired by people in their lives that want things that
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we want to want but might not currently want if that makes sense that makes sense so you have a
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newsletter called antimimetic that i subscribe to and i've really enjoyed and it's where you explore
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how people can maybe mitigate the downsides of mimetic desire and get some of those good things that
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sort of the positive aspect of mimetic desire in their lives and one way you propose people can
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do this is by cultivating what you called thick desires so walk us through what's the difference
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between a thick desire and a thin desire you could think of a thin desire as this fleeting temporary
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ephemeral relatively superficial kind of desire that is here today and gone tomorrow you know like
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something that i want really strongly today you know some new thing that i see in the store and by next
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week i will have totally forgot about it right like that's the sign of a thin desire there's nothing
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real and solid there there's no continuity to that desire whatsoever a thick desire on the other hand
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i think more of like layers of rock if you've ever been to a beautiful national park like zion utah or
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something you know i'm always amazed when i look at the rock formations you know i see how these things
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have been built up over millions of years and i think in a life you know it's kind of you think of thick
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desires as forming in a way that there's continuity to them right they're solid and we don't have to
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worry about them you know disappearing with the slightest gust of wind and by slightest gust of
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wind i mean a new mimetic model enters the scene that we become caught up with and we sort of forget
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you know we forget our desires and the memory plays an important role here you know like i think we're all
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born with a thick desire to move our bodies for instance right i mean it's kind of like our bodies
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are designed to move it's joyful when you're moving the way that you're designed to move and how many
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people get caught up with the thin desires hunched over their computer checking their emails for 12
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hours a day and they start to have back problems and you know if this continues it starts a really
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negative cycle of desire where before they know it they don't even desire to move they don't want to
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run maybe they did five years ago but it's like the thin desires have completely taken over and
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dominated to the point where we start to want different things so just understanding the difference
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between thin desires and thick desires you begin to have some pattern recognition and you know well you
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know luke you maybe you just sort of want to buy a van and drive around the country because you've been
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looking at instagram a lot and seeing these like van life people and it looks really sexy from the
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outside but is that really what you want to do you know and my wife will laugh at me and you know i
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rec i can recognize it as a relatively thin desire right and just knowing where these influences come
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from we just most of us live our lives taking all of our desires for granted and we just assume that
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they're all thick and they're not well yeah i think when you're talking about thick desire thin desire
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one that came to mind is socializing with people in person like having that a really great
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conversation uh with your friends where it just the conversation just goes different places and you
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just feel great after it happens but oftentimes i think we substitute that thick desire for the thin
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desire of just okay we'll do a quick text i'll interact via social media with the like button
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that's a thin desire and doesn't doesn't sustain you as much but that thick desire the problem with
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thick desires and thin desires is that thick desires are hard to cultivate thin desires are easy
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usually if it's a thin desire it's easy to do and to satisfy but a thick desire that takes works it
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takes work to get people in person it takes work to plan an in-person event so you're just like well
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i don't want to do that but whenever i'm in that position where i'm thinking well maybe we should
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get together with people and like plan the dinner i'm like oh man no it's just a lot of work and i
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don't want to do that and then my wife has to remind like well you always whenever you do these
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things you always feel like that was a great time i'm glad we did that so yeah i think that's
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another example of a thick desire i think thick desires need to be cultivated and they're always
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more work 100 and it's one of my thick desires one of the things i like to do the most is to cook
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and be a host you know hospitality is really important for me it brings me a lot of joy
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it always has and there's a difference between things that are meant to be supplements that become
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substitutes so social media is a supplement and it can be useful for keeping up with my friends
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that live in different parts of the world different parts of the country so that's okay
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but when it becomes a substitute for the real then it's basically an instance of thin desires completely
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subsuming and taking over the thick desires yeah another i guess an example of thick desires in my
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life i really enjoy reading a good long form article online or it could be in a magazine or newspaper
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but the thin desire is just going through a tweet thread it's easy but it's not as satisfying i
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never i never i don't think about those tweet threads that i read the next day but i there's
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articles that i've read that i still think about i'm the same way man and and you know people tell me
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all the time like hey you know you really need to write shorter form like you know basically think
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in real short form thinking 10 to 30 seconds and i i don't find that much satisfaction in writing
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those things but there's this tremendous pressure to do that and i have thick desires to make it
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through you know really challenging novels right i've always liked to do that and i've actually found
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it's becoming harder and harder for me to do that so it's a reminder for me it's just so many
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distractions it's a reminder for me that yes luke that is a thick desire that you have to be able to
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make it through a book as challenging as brothers karamazov but sometimes my thin desires pull me in so
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many directions and barely make it 10 pages without feeling a tug to go you know check my twitter
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thread or something like that and you mentioned i think in a substack article that you have this hunch
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that a lot of people they have a craving for these thick desires the the good the beautiful like great
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music classical music reading a really challenging but satisfying novel but i think a lot of times people
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just don't know how to get started with that or it's just it's so much work that they just don't
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even start so what's your advice how do you start cultivating these thick desires in a world that
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is awash in making thin desires easy to satisfy yeah what have you found that's useful yeah you know
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and thin desires are very profitable right when people satisfy them so there's a misalignment of
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incentives you know i it's true i i do believe that everybody has these thick desires inside and they
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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
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in a college it's one of the hats that i wear and i love activating the thick desires of my students
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they just almost need to be reminded or it's just kind of uh it goes back to something that plato said
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right all learning is kind of memory we just need to be reminded of our thick desires sometimes i don't
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think there's any substitute for the real i think you know good technology and good education always
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points people to the real so you know spending 10 000 hours doing something offline right really sinking
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deeply into it cultivating relationships with friends and family all of these things that are
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real i think it's very difficult to do it online because the very nature of our online world right
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now especially social media is just dominated by thin desires and we need each other to awaken these
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thick desires in one another because desire is social you know it's important that i have friends that
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can kind of you know remind me hey luke man like we used to love to golf or we used to like to spend
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time together you know doing these things or fishing i live on a lake during the summers right and it's
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like we haven't been to the beach in two weeks what the hell are we doing here like we live five minutes
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away right and it's like i need those people to help awaken those things inside of me and remind me
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to try to do it alone is really folly and i think you know we live in this very individualistic
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world people are lonely and i just found it to be tremendous value to cultivate a network of good
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friends and good people that are all pursuing the real and trying at least right to activate and live
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out these thick desires because it's far more fulfilling okay so find a community so maybe start
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a book club where you're going to read the great books with some friends and you know you might have
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some problems with that it could be hard finding people who want to read you know plato's dialogues
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there's not too many people who just like that that sounds like something i'd like to do for fun
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but it's worth the effort to find those people because it'll help you because you're creating
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that positive mimesis in your life the fact that it is hard you know could be a sign that it's not a
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thin desire and that it's you know it's something that we should look seriously at so it's not that
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everything that's difficult is necessarily better but in the world that we live in dominated by thin
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desires most of the things that are going to lead to fulfillment right now do involve swimming
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against the current a little bit you know it's one of the definitions of anti-mimetic you know dead
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fish float downstream right live fish are able to swim against the current or even to swim upstream
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um and yeah so if something feels hard then it's probably anti-mimetic with a thick desire and then
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another thing if it seems useless that might be another sign that it's a thick desire i think c.s
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lewis said the the useless things are the most valuable things that's counter to our very materialistic
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utilitarian world where well i'm only going to do this thing if it provides some sort of you know
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productivity gain in my life and aristotle and c.s lewis would be like actually that's probably not the
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most valuable thing if it feels not useful then it's probably leading you towards the good
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the true the beautiful yeah and and you know the word that aristotle would use is contemplation
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right the contemplation is a one of the highest goods of life and you know one of my favorite books
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is by a guy named joseph peeper it's called leisure is the basis of culture and it's just a reminder
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that some of the best things in life especially today involve feeling like you're not being useful
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just think of uh spending time with a loved one holding their hand my dad has dementia spend a lot
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of time with him and you know sometimes we sit there where i'm listening for an hour to the guy
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that comes in once a month and plays elvis and the beach boys on this little amp in the dining room and
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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
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am cultivating a thick desire to be with my father it ends up being the most satisfying part of my
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entire month and i feel guilty because i actually still have those thoughts of like what am i doing
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here do i really need to be here for the whole hour am i wasting my time no that's human that's normal
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to think that but i've come to see that as me investing in a thick desire something you've also
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written about is curating your media consumption so that it's cultivates those thick desires so
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what are some ideas that people can find to fill their book list their to watch movie list their
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podcast their music list with things that cultivate thick desire and are antimemetic
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first you know we really have to step back and think about what we value and what our hierarchy
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of value is right what's really a priority for us and then align our media consumption around that
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it's not that much different than food right we're consuming these things and we commune in a sense in
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like a deep sense with the content that we take in so you know if somebody told me you know they want
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to be healthy and they want to eat fast food every day well there's some kind of a misalignment
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there but we're talking about thick desires like let's take the example of patience if
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patience is a value for you in your relationships or in your marriage and you say that's a goal
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well it's really hard to be patient when all you do is consume 10 to 30 second youtube video clips
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or tiktoks all day so you know if you're saying that that's the goal you've got to be able to make
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it through a long novel you've got to be able to sit still for an hour however you want to do that
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you could be in nature you could look at a tree you could meditate you could pray
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so the way that we consume things and spend our time is simply got to be aligned with those values
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i think there's tremendous value in removing ourselves from the algorithm i try my best it's
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not easy i'm pretty online but i can tell when i'm being caught up in in the algorithm and i still find
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tremendous joy in walking in a used bookstore and the spontaneity of stumbling on a book that just
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happens to catch my eye there's nothing algorithmic about that there's something deeply
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incarnational about that there's something real that i just place more value on that right it's
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not something that has been tailored to me by some company that's designed to make me follow a certain
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track so i mean one of the things quite simply is looking at older material that is not really
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subject to you know the trends that's not fashionable so one of my friends just watches like old
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classic movies that are really good but that nobody ever talks about anymore he actually publishes a
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newsletter on this so i follow that one because i find it to be in like i get really anti-memetic
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recommendations and nine times out of ten you know these things turn out to be way better than you know
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the latest movies that are top 10 on rotten tomatoes or something like that and the same thing with book
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recommendations one of my favorite bookstores in dc you fill out a form you tell them something about
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yourself and the staff literally makes you a mystery box of 10 books based on what you've said
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and i love that right it's just there's this totally like outside of the algorithm so i i tend to just
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look for little opportunities like that it's not that i never find things online but i'm really really
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intentional about the sources of my recommendations all right so look for things outside of the the
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algorithm or look outside of the internet that's something my wife and i have done over the years with the
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art of manliness you know we've done some content ideas based off of things that we found in an old
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book that we found in an antique store in some town in vermont we saw this etiquette book from the
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1800s pull that out man there's like a cool article here or another one is buying old men's magazines
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from the 1940s and 50s and it's interesting to see it's fun to see what people were talking about like what
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it meant to be a man in the 40s and 50s occasionally there's something like that's actually really good
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it was written in 1945 but it's still relevant today it's still it still resonates and so we you
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know might write an article based off of that so i think that's another that's a really great way to
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cultivate an antimemetic media consumption use bookstores antique stores if you have a college
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nearby go to the archival stacks and just walk through it and pull off a book that just catches
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your attention and thumb through it and you'll probably find something that you otherwise wouldn't
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have found uh that could cultivate that thick desire absolutely and even little things like
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whenever i can i take phone calls while i'm on a walk outside rather than you know both of us huddled
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in front of our laptops looking at the screen and you know there's even something about that that's
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antimemetic because you know the movement while we're talking the things that we see all of these
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things kind of spur things so we're you know any amount of time that i can spend i just try to
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structure my day where i'm exposed to more of the real this actually this idea of taking control as
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you're kind of taking control of your desire like your mimesis in your life and it actually reminds
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me i've been reading kicker guard's postscripts which is this long book he wrote and it's like
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kicker guard's hard to read he's a weird guy but he has this idea that he calls out that you need
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become subjective and what kicker had meant by subjective was you need to become an individual
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individual that doesn't just let life happen to you it's about taking control of all the weird
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stuff that's going on in your life and fashioning yourself into an individual that you know in his
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case could stand before god and that requires you to guide your desires so that you desire the good
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i love that idea love kierkegaard and that idea of the subjective makes me think of agency and i have
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this theory that in our world people are feeling a loss of personal agency whether it's you know ai the
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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
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
00:27:28.800
how you want to engage in the consumption of that this kind of comes back to the question of agency
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
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
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
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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