EVERY SPOKEN WORD
130 min read · 26,427 words- 0:00 – 1:32
Intro
- JBJonathan Bi
There was a military theorist, Jon Boyd, and he said something like, "Great fighter pilots use their superior judgment to make sure they never have to get into situations to use their superior force." And I think the same is true for understanding memetic theory. It doesn't give you the ability to just snap your fingers, uh, and not be social creatures, but it does give you the, the foresight to see bad situations coming and potentially avoid it. (wind blows)
- CWChris Williamson
Jonathan B., welcome to the show.
- JBJonathan Bi
Thanks for having me, Chris. Excited to be on.
- CWChris Williamson
So, the first time that we met was through David Perell, actually, and we went out for dinner. Now, David is a man who has two modes of, uh, culinary experience, and he either goes, uh, Chick-fil-A or fighting hobos outside of a food truck, or he goes to the most expensive steak restaurant in town. I've noticed this since spending time with him-
- JBJonathan Bi
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... that he's got... He's very, sort of, barbelly when it comes to what he wants to do with food. Uh, but thankfully, we went to the, we went to the nice, nice steak restaurant.
- JBJonathan Bi
Yeah. Although I, I, I w- wouldn't mind, uh, f- fighting for a taco, uh, next time with you when I'm in Austin, so.
- CWChris Williamson
David, David's oddly, uh, experienced at that, which is-
- JBJonathan Bi
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, concerning-
- JBJonathan Bi
Incredible, given how small and scrawny he is.
- CWChris Williamson
That's true, look, he's-
- JBJonathan Bi
I'm sure everyone would appreciate that.
- CWChris Williamson
... he's got a new girlfriend that's like training him up or something. She's making him eat, like, a surplus of calories. Uh-
- JBJonathan Bi
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... he once took me for lunch at some French place on Congress, and I was in flip-flops and a pair of shorts, and it was just wags and, like, little tiny model dogs. But anyway, anyway, enough about David Perell. Um, are
- 1:32 – 8:26
Who is René Girard?
- CWChris Williamson
you trained in Rene Girard, the philosopher? Have you got some sort of, like, Girardian accreditation?
- JBJonathan Bi
Uh, perhaps I have the most Girardian of accreditations, which is, uh, you know, being self-taught. Um, Girard himself was trained in, uh, history in Indiana University, and before that, he was an archivist in, in France. But, uh, you know, h- he neither made any contributions to, you know, art or, uh, uh, being a librarian or, uh, history. And the avenues that he did make significant contributions to, uh, in, in, you know, in anthropology, in theology, in psychology, he was all self-taught. So, uh, I suppose (laughs) the answer, that, that's a nice way of saying no. Um-
- CWChris Williamson
But followed in his footsteps, did it the right way.
- JBJonathan Bi
Yes, yes. I, uh, I, I, I was trained in, um, uh, continental philosophy. Um, and however, uh, Girard is, is not read at all in the, in the academy, uh, unless in literary criticism. Um, and so I, I was, sort of, introduced to Girard as a, as a sophomore and I had to read the Girardian canon, so to speak, myself. With a couple of friends, of course. That's what always makes the journey fun.
- CWChris Williamson
Who is he and what's the core insight of his work?
- JBJonathan Bi
Yeah. So, uh, he recently passed away in 2015, but his life is probably not as interesting as, as, as his, uh, key insights are. And I would say that hi- his most fundamental insight is we don't often desire things for the things themselves, but for what the things say about us. And the way he makes this argument is to delineate two types of desire. Physical desire, which he... Which, which is directed at the object, and metaphysical desire, which is directed at what the object, uh, says about me. Let me give you some quick examples. You know, take any activity really, and we can see both strands of desire at work in different circumstance. If I desire to, uh, you know, have sex for example, it could be for pleasure, it could be for intimacy, experiences in the moment, and that would be for physical desire, a desire for experience. But I can also desire to have sex, uh, for what having sex with a certain type of person says about me, right? And this is how, as you would know, uh, from, uh, you know, being in nightlife, how a lot of people do live their lives, right? They're not really in it for the pleasure. They're in it because they want to be someone, and that's the psychology of the, the Casanova or the, or the, or the Don Juan or the coquette. And this, uh, uh, this, sort of, insight expands across all of our decisions, right? We could, you know, take on a job because of what the job says about us, but we could also take on the job because we actually like the activity in and of itself. And so that is Girard's core insight, that there's two different strands of desire, and the dominant strand, metaphysical desire, is actually not aimed at the object itself, but what the object says about me. It's a desire to be rather than a desire to experience.
- CWChris Williamson
Is this different to signaling? Or how does this relate to signaling?
- JBJonathan Bi
Yeah. I- it's interesting because it's almost signaling to oneself in some sense, right? Because it's, uh, you know, the person who's motivated by metaphysical desire, even if no one sees you, uh, you know, having sex with a really beautiful woman, you are still rewarded by that. Whereas when we commonly think about signaling, uh, the, the reward is always external. Now, just l- let me elaborate a bit more on, on this concept of metaphysical desire 'cause, uh, 'cause I think we need to draw out the implications a bit more. When we ask Girard and when we poke him really hard and say, "Well, what do we really want to be?" Right? "What is this desire to be really aimed at?" Girard thinks we all desire to exist in great measure. So perhaps not unlike Nietzsche's will to power, Girard identifies a key human motivational force as this unrelenting drive to establish ourselves, to be greater than life, even in seemingly non-prideful and ordinary individuals. Girard thinks we want to establish our being to be the most real, like a social reality, social reality like being, being seen and being recognized, to be long-lasting and permanent, right? The denial of death and wanting to leave a legacy. And also the f- the last one is, is to exert power in our, in our social world. Now, Girard thinks that this type of being is terribly elusive and we can never achieve it, so he's very pessimistic on the human condition, that we're just, uh, pushed by this drive that we can never fully satisfy. And for this, for him, this is what it means to, to live in original sin. Now, the last point that I'll make, (laughs) I know I've been rambling on for a long time, is how do we s- satisfy this drive? And that's where, uh, mimesis comes into play.We satisfy this drive, this desire to be, to exist in great measure by obtaining objects associated with models who we already conceive of as existing in great measure, be it a celebrity, be it a, a, a slightly more established coworker, be it attractive man or woman, we look for models around in the world to tell us what we should want, what is in the core of our identity. And I think this is no, uh, in no other place is this better established than in celebrity advertisement. And the one line that I think, that always gives it away for me is Jordan Sneakers' taglines, "Be Like Mike." The advertisements of basketball sneakers tell you nothing about the physical qualities of the basketball sne- sneakers, the bounce, the lightness, the grip, or even the price, but it's promising you something you want all the more, being "Be Like Mike." And so that is, is Girard's sort of core psychological system from which all of his social anthropolo- anthropological and eschatological insights eventually flow from.
- CWChris Williamson
Girard should've been a nightclub promoter. He would've crushed it in the nightlife game. So, here's an interesting example that I like to use. You decide not to go on a night out with a bunch of your friends.
- JBJonathan Bi
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Your friends go on the night out, they wake up the next morning, they're hungover, but a little bit later on once they've got their pizza order out of the way, you give someone a ring or you give them a text and you say, "Hey man, how was last night?" So many times the first thing that someone will reply with will be, "Dude, it was awesome. There was so many girls there last night." You go, "Hang on. I asked how the night was."
- JBJonathan Bi
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
"I didn't ask who the other consumers of the thing that you were consuming were." So-
- JBJonathan Bi
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... people that buy an iPhone mostly don't buy an iPhone because David Beckham also has an iPhone.
- JBJonathan Bi
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
They buy an iPhone for the core competence that the product gives them. It's got a camera and it can make calls and it's got good battery life and stuff like that, whereas-
- JBJonathan Bi
I wouldn't be so sure about that. I mean, think about all the cases of, uh, people selling their livers for an iPhone. I, I imagine they're not doing a rational analysis saying, "Oh, my liver is worth for, you know, the, the camera, the... all this stuff." I do think the iPhone is actually a great example of... or, or actually, you and I might purchase it for physical desire, right? But, uh, I, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I think for a lot of people, it is a sort of status symbol, it is a, a sort of metaphysical device.
- CWChris Williamson
I would degree as, as a status symbol. You're probably right there. But certainly when you compare it to a night, a nightclub event, like-
- JBJonathan Bi
Totally.
- 8:26 – 18:18
Divergence From the Group
- JBJonathan Bi
- CWChris Williamson
... the, the, the core feature of the product that is going on a night out-
- JBJonathan Bi
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... is the other consumers of the product.
- JBJonathan Bi
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
You can go on a night out to the same event week on week, the DJ could play the same set, the sound and the lights could be exactly the same, the drinks prices could be the same, the service could be the same, but if you change the other people that go and consume that product, because they are such a big influence on your night, and it's not just some sort of woo, ephemeral sp- like, uh, status signal-y thing.
- JBJonathan Bi
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
They actually impact your night in a physical way. Like, if there's loads of guys that are aggressive and dancing in the club-
- JBJonathan Bi
Totally.
- CWChris Williamson
... like, that actually changes your experience. So it's not totally, totally woo, but it is the most important thing about nightlife, are the other people that consume that product. And it, it's so interesting to see that because you go, "Well, hang on, wh- what does this mean from a product design perspective?" It means that actually what I need to do is create a product, not that's the best, but that attracts people that other people want to be around. So, for a lot of nightclubs that means getting girls in. If you bring girls in, girls don't have a problem with more girls, but both girls and guys have a problem with more guys.
- JBJonathan Bi
Yeah. Yeah, totally. Well, first thing I, I'll say is I think we should be extremely comfortable thinking about the context of Girard within, uh, romance and dating because it's romance and dating where he goes to his canonical examples as well. And I think perhaps a reason, uh, he, he, he goes there is that we traditionally think that in romances and dating, that's where our physical urges are the strongest, right? What could be a stronger-
- CWChris Williamson
Tri-motor.
- JBJonathan Bi
... motivator than sex? But even in this domain, Girard shows, if you'll excuse a pun, that our desires are helplessly penetrated by the desires (laughs) of others. Right, even in such a domain that's dominated by a physical strong desire, we can be hopelessly mediated by the other people. Just think about our other sort of less strongly physical domains, political intuitions, philosophical opinions, uh, and, and all the rest. The other thing I'll say is, and I, I read a pretty interesting book called The Very Important Persons. I think you'll really enjoy it. It's an anthrop-
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, by Ashley Miaes?
- JBJonathan Bi
Yes, yes.
- CWChris Williamson
She's been on the show. Yeah, she was great.
- JBJonathan Bi
Right. You know what? I actually, I actually know that 'cause I think I, I went from the show to, to the book. And, and that's exactly what the book says, right? The way that you get guys to spend is you get, uh, more women there. You add the gaze of the woman, that, um, sort of enable the men to be more competitive with each other and, and drive bottle service. And so-
- CWChris Williamson
What you see in nightclubs specifically, we didn't do this, so we ran events that were high volume, low cost.
- JBJonathan Bi
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
We were, we were putting 1,000 to 2,000 18 to 21-year-olds in, so it wasn't about bottles and, and shows, although we've dabbled in a little bit of that. And obviously I've been to my fair share of events like that. What you'll see in nightclubs, and anyone can go and check this out, if you're in a city like Miami or New York that has big bottle show type events, look at the way that they position the most expensive tables in the club. They're always within, uh, seeing distance of each other.
- JBJonathan Bi
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
Reason being that you want to have one table start to dick measure with the other. They want to order a medium-sized show to begin with. Probably, probably a little bit bigger than they anticipated 'cause they want a little bit of that conspicuous consumption going on. But then another table's like, "Yo, fuck that. Dude, get the Amex out. Let's, let's, let's wipe those guys under the table." And then you have this game back and forth.
- JBJonathan Bi
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
So, in a couple of venues, they'll be opposite each other, like the most antagonistic way that you could position people, but they're always going to be able to see each other because you want-
- JBJonathan Bi
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... to create that competition.
- JBJonathan Bi
Yeah. Yeah. And let me, uh, pull us even a bit further in, in the theory because we're all, I think we're all giving examples, good examples of instances where mimesis and metaphysical desire makes us converge.... but the other, and I think people commonly, uh, uh, misunderstand this in Girard, the opposite is true as well. Metaphysical desire can also, uh, enable us to diverge from the group because i- it's almost the same extension of the same logic, right? The logic of metaphysical desire that I just said was that we want to acquire objects associated with models with a heightened degree of being. Well, the inverse logic is true as well. We also want to distance ourself away from objects associated with models with a deficiency of being. I mean, a trite way to say this is, we want to wear the same brands of the sneakers as the cool kids in high school, but also want to make damn sure that we don't want to wear the same brands as the, as the not cool kids, right? A- as the social outcasts in high school. And so, mimesis can equally lead us to diverge as it leads us to converge. And I think a great example here I'll, I'll give you is this. Rather, I was in college and I had an acquaintance in freshman year, and he was very concerned with distributive justice, so sort of thing, progressive economics, and I thought, you know, "Wh- what a kind guy. He's always caring about the poor." And, and, uh, I got to know him a lot better and this acquaintance confessed to me, uh, that, uh, in sophomore year, that, uh, he was actually very motivated by the hatred of his richer peers (laughs) uh, rather than the direct caring, uh, of, of the, of the, of the, of the poor. Um, in fact, he grew up in a... He was middle class and grew up in an upper middle class, uh, uh, sort of, uh, you know, uh, school district. And it was out of that resentment that he basically just flipped the logic of the people that he resented on its head. And, and, you, you know, what's really funny with these types is he's now in investment banking, right? Because he didn't have a problem with making a lot of money at all. In fact, the reason he loathed it so much was because he wanted it so much, but there were people sort of stopping him there. And so, um, the reason I thought this was important to highlight is because I think our societies are very conscious of, uh, conformity as being inauthentic, right? As being determined by the group. But there's a form of divergence from the group out of this resentment that I see proliferating in society today that is just as inauthentic and just as determined by the group, no less than pure conformity. And so, mimesis and metaphysical desire really entrap us in every direction we go. And this romantic line that Girard thinks we're all in is that we have this authentic core of the self with these social layers added on, and all we have to do is peel back these social layers. But Girard says, "Not so fast. You're confusing originality, originality and difference for authenticity." But that is not so, and I just want to make sure that we highlight that as well.
- CWChris Williamson
Is that the positive and negative mimesis? Is that how that's labeled?
- JBJonathan Bi
Yes. Precisely. So, there's a positive phase of mimesis where you're converging to the model, and then there's a negative phase of mimesis where you want to diverge from the model.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. It's, um, it's strange when you think about what the real motivations are for the things that you do.
- 18:18 – 28:06
What Drew Jonathan to Girard
- CWChris Williamson
You've dedicated a lot of time to thinking and learning about one guy.
- JBJonathan Bi
You know, I, I, I grew up as a STEM science person. Um, and I think a problem with the intellectual co, uh, current of today is that we're under-appreciating the social dimensions of a self. And, and this is an argument that you're gonna hear from the left and the right, by the way. Um, the l- you know, may- maybe this will help. You know, Plato had a conception of the soul as being consisting of three parts, right? There's appetite, we've discussed desire for sex, for food, pleasure. There's reason, and that we know very well. And then there's spirit, right? The soul... Part of the soul that desires social goods. Honor, glory, fame. And if I... Even if this concept is not reflective of the most, uh, uh, sophisticated academic positions of the day, I think, uh, the popular cultural current conceives of humans completely removed of the spirited part of the soul. It conceives of humans as rational utility-maximizing machines. And I think, you know, how many times have you heard this said in Silicon Valley, you know, "W- what about robots trying to maximize happy chemicals swir- squirting in our brains?" Or take how, uh, GDP is important as a measure, almost like the ultimate measure of, of a country's sort of accomplishment, right? Because GDP is fundamentally that. It's, it's the ability to quantify our appetite. And what I think Girard does is Girard's psychology really spells out the third and, you know, e- e- from my perspective, hidden part of, of human nature, and that's the social spirited part. So, put in another way, Girard reveals the logic of our illogical part of ourselves, or he rationalizes our irrationalities. And, and this has devastating consequences, not just about how we ought live our lives, but even in geopolitical events. An example that I, that I gave you, and I, you know, gave in the, the first lecture where, you know, your listeners are more than welcome to, to listen to, it's, it's out today, is China. Now, in the, uh, late ni- ni- uh, in the '90s and certainly in the 2000s, the dominant view of the West was that the economic liberalization of China would be welcomed by the world. And the long s- short of the argument would be, you know, China's rise would also make the West, uh, richer through cheaper goods, and that people would be happy with this rise. Now, you can fundamentally see that the assumption here is that we are rational, utility-maximizing creatures. If we get three Oreos for $3, you know, we're, we're, we're less happy than if we get four Oreos for $3. But Girard went against the public opinion. In 2007, this was the height of Sino-American optimism, he went against the crowd and he said that, uh, that China's ro- ... That even if China did make, uh, the West richer, which is what ended up happening, as relativistic social con- creatures concern more for social standing, the closing of the gap is what both parties will focus on. The Chinese will not be happy, b- be much happier that they are closer to Americans. Instead, the fact that they are closer makes them more envious. And the same is true for the West, that the fact that they are absolutely richer matters very little to a drop in relativistic comparison. And so it's this fundamentally different alien, but I think more revealing lens of viewing humans not as rational agents, but as social spirited creatures is, is why Girard was so, uh, so p- pulled me in.
- CWChris Williamson
Was that a big shock given that you were coming from a STEM background?
- JBJonathan Bi
Oh, it was a tremendous shock, but, uh, it was also why it was, uh, you know, really interesting. I, I feel like if I, you know, had gro- grown up with that intuition in mind, then all this would be obvious. And, and it kind of seems obvious to me now, right, after, after studying for a... him for so long. But, uh, yeah, it was a tremendous shock. And, um, you know, Girard really is, I can't emphasize this enough, attacking the fundamental pillars of the modern West. Because think about what the answer to the question, where does normative authority, where do we gain assurance of our values? Girard's answer is, the dominant force is through by looking at other people. But w- what does the modern West say? There's two answers. One, speaking in very broad strokes here, is the enlightenment, reason, we use reason to figure that out. The other, again, very broadly here, romanticism. That there's a, a core of authenticity. But as we've already discussed, both Girard, uh, subsumes under the power of the social part of ourselves, that we are fundamentally social creatures. We are like co-vibrating violin strings. And this, uh, and I probably don't have time to talk about this, but the political implications, uh, are, are, are just tremendous and, and really, really earth-shattering for, for, for the modern West.
- CWChris Williamson
How does understanding Girard make life better then?
- JBJonathan Bi
Yeah. So, the first thing I'll say is Girard is gonna be very unsatisfying if you're looking for him to, to give you prescriptive answers. The, the real prescriptive answer that he, that he tells you is to withdraw, to leave the world behind. In his later book, he would hold Holderlin, a 19th century German poet who literally, pun intended, holed himself up in a tower for the last decades of his life, as the example par excellence. Now, I, I, I've obviously (laughs) have not been satisfied with, with that response. I'm not holed up in a tower. And so I, I thought a lot about the implications of, uh, of his theory and how, how, how we live given that. A- and I, I have a few sort of broad stroke answers here. The first answer I'll give is, um, just the mere fact of gaining awareness of the social dimension of ourselves and the logic of mimesis is tremendously helpful. It's not helpful that it will stop making you be mimetic right away-... but it will give you the foresight to avoid bad situations because you can see them coming from a mile away. And the analogy I s- like to use is, you know, there was a military theorist, John Boyd, and he said something like, uh, I'm gonna have to paraphrase, that great fighter pilots use their superior judgment to make sure they never have to get into situations to use their superior force. And I think the same is true for understanding memetic theory. It doesn't give you, uh, the ability to just snap your fingers, e- and not be social creatures, but it does give you the, the foresight, uh, to, to see bad situations coming and potentially avoid it. So, that's the first thing I'll say, j- just rational understanding is, is tremen- tremendously helpful. The second thing I, I will say is that these two separate desires, physical desire, right? The desire for the ac- object activity in itself, the desire for experience, metaphysical desire, desire for being, for Girard, this metaphysical desire... Uh, I'm sorry. This physical desire, while not always being good, right? You can be gluttonous and that can ruin you. Um, but this metaphysical desire is almost always bad, that it will just lead you from one wild goose hunt to the next. And so one immediate, uh, and quite, uh, simple conclusion there is, well, let's find activities where I like in and of itself, right? And for me, this was switching from, uh, a- and, and again, b- both degrees, but I... and switching from CS to, to, to, to philosophy. And I think it's helpful for our listeners to conceive of these two desires as really fighting for real estate. And so th- the more you push one or the more that the physical desire is there, the less you have to draw on, uh, for metaphysical desire. And so for me, switching to an activity, philosophy, that was much more interesting to me. Um, it meant that I didn't have to pull on the motivational s- forces of, of social prestige and social affirmation as much. Um, so, so that, that, that's the, the second way. Um, the third is, you know, one can decrease metaphysical desire directly and I think there's two ways to do that. And remember, metaphysical desire is simply a very prideful drive, right? A wanting, uh, to be greater than life. And I think of two ways to do that. One is failure. I- if you have ever just failed so hard in an activity that you feel your entire ego and self is shattered, anyone who has gone through something like that knows that that's, there's an, you know, opportunity to, to be more humble and let go of pride. But I think the inverse is true as well, is to achieve the thing that you always wanted to do and see it as, as deeply lacking, right? This, uh, this... The way out is through, so to speak. Uh, almost a form of personal acceleration. Um, and the last thing I'll, I'll probably say is if you think that you can escape from mimesis, f- from wanting recognition, then you really haven't realized how deeply this drive is embedded into the human nature. That, that, that, that you would fundamentally be, uh, irreconcilable without it. It's like asking, you know, what would a human look like if they didn't breathe? Right? It, it's just con- it's just constitutive of what a human is. And so w- what, what I would warn people, um, and this is w- what I also was trying to get at with negative imitation, uh, negative mimesis, is that don't try to be a loner. Uh, the solution isn't to escape from all forms of social construction, but to find a type of soc- social construction that from a sober perspective, uh, influences and directs you to the type of desires that you actually want. Practically speaking, uh, it's, you know, finding a bunch of friends who, who also like to do philosophy with you or w- whatever your sort of passion is. Um, and so th- those are the things that I would, uh, that I would say, like, how... what are the immediate things that we can do f- from this theory.
- 28:06 – 31:01
Is Mimesis Falsifiable?
- JBJonathan Bi
- CWChris Williamson
Is mimesis falsifiable? It seems a little bit to me like you do the thing that everybody else does, that's mimesis. You do the thing opposite to everybody else does, that's negative mimesis. Like, h- how... It seems to me a little bit like-
- JBJonathan Bi
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... Girard might have been a bit sort of sneaky with his unfalsifiable theory here.
- JBJonathan Bi
Yeah. Well, that, that's a great question, but the first thing I'll say is not every act is mediated by the group, right? Again, you can pursue sex or pleasure itself not because of what it says about you or not because of any sort of social force. So, there's a large swath of activity that is neither, uh, positive nor negative mimesis, right? So, so we don't have to... In other words, we don't have to label everything as, as positive and negative mimesis. And... But I think you, you bring up a very interesting and broader point, which is what is the nature of proof in Girard? Um, and I think when you get to these, you know, philosophical theories as you do Hegel, uh, or, or maybe Nietzsche, I think the only form of proof that is available perhaps, um... I might walk back on that statement, but I think the only... or the strongest form of proof available is introspection, right? Try to... What Girard is saying here is he's giving you almost a literary argument. You know, "I'm gonna write these 20 books about human nature and you go read them. But just, just humor me when you read them. Just pretend that they're true and, uh, use... apply them to your life and see whether it's revealing or not." And through that process, the, the real force of proof comes from revelation, right? It, it becomes revelatory, that it's able to explain phenomena and direct you in ways that actually end up working. Um, that's the first thing I'll say. A- and that's where the power of Girard really came for me and how I got convinced was introspection. Uh, but in terms of mimesis, there actually has been, uh, empirical work done on this. Um, I'm, I'm blanking on the name of the, of the, uh, scientist, but, uh, there was studies of babies and they showed how, you know, babies started imitating the facial features of, uh, of humans, uh, of other adults ever since, you know, 25 minutes old. Um-And there's... You know, I think in the late 20th century, there was a big boom in neuroscience with mirror neurons. Um, and some Girardians have used that as the biological basis of, of mimesis. Um, so, so there are sort of those empirical routes that one can take. And I think, uh, you know, if I dedicated my life to studying this, that I, I really should take. Uh, but for me, at least, to answer the question of why Girard was worth engaging for me, the sort of introspection, um, w- w- was more than enough for me to continue engaging.
- CWChris Williamson
It seems like Girard's view of human
- 31:01 – 38:02
Accepting Human Fallibility
- CWChris Williamson
nature is, um, not... (laughs) Not, um, as vulnerable or fallible. It seems like we're incredibly fallible in his eyes-
- JBJonathan Bi
Oh, terribly so.
- CWChris Williamson
... I would say. So... But talk to me. You, you've read his work. It's been hugely influential on you. It's taken you from being this sort of super rational STEM person to a slightly less rational, but perhaps a little bit more rounded philosophy person. How, how do you feel, um, enlightened or fulfilled by a theory which kind of points the finger at you and says, "How easily fallible you are."
- JBJonathan Bi
Yeah, I think that's a, that's a great question. Um, and I can give two answers. One is, um, how has that changed my view to, uh, society? And the other is, how has it changed my view to myself? Um, and I'll answer the first one f- first 'cause I think it's more interesting. Um, uh... What Girard is doing here is he's giving us a theodicy. As you can see and as we already covered in the brief 30, 40 minutes, he thinks that humans, to your point, are deeply fallible, so much so that he's giving us a psychology of original sin, what it means to be fallen creatures, right? This idea that we're motivated by an unrelenting drive that we can never satisfy, um, that we, we're not even aware of, that we say we want to be an investment banker, but we really don't want that. We want something else. That's a terrible, terrible thing, right? And it, it only gets worse and worse. There's so many different social pathologies like maso- uh, or psychological social pathologies like masochism and bipolarity that Girard identifies as not just contingent, not, not as accidental, but as always existing in human nature. Girard rejects this, uh, uh, modern second analytical approach to label certain diseases as discrete things. You know, you're schizophrenic or you're not, you're bipolar or you're not. Instead, he sees all of human nature as one of... on a degree of pathology, that we're all masochistic, we're all bipolar. Now, I would actually argue, and this might be... but it might be weird, but hear me out, that this is quite a liberating and hopeful way to, to view society. Um, and the reason is, um... Let me give you an ex- Let me, let me give you an example. So Girard's argument for why, you know, alienation and fetishization, you know, these are two concepts that, uh, uh, Marxist thinkers are very concerned with. Um, his... Girard's argument is that both of these things are not due to the structure of capital, but due to the structure of human nature. And I think i- it's very easy to see, right? What is fetishization? It's a desire for the object more than what the object can give us. Well, that's just me- metaphysical desire, right? And what is alienation? It's alienating the best qualities of ourselves into an object, reasoning once we get close to that object, we will attain it. Again, that's just metaphysical desire. And so Girard would say to a Marxist, for example, um, that, you know, "You're right in identifying that alienation and fetishization exists in contemporary capitalism, and you're even right that they're channeled through capitalism, but you'd be deluded in thinking that, uh, they are caused by, by capitalism. Their roots are much deeper in fundamental human condition." And that is what happen when people try to liberate themselves from capitalism, right? The alienation, uh, from the pro- the process of labor in British coal mines became the alienation from the Soviet factories. And so, uh, w- what Girard is doing here is giving a fundamentally fallen picture of human nature that sees many social pathologies as natural to the human condition. But then, I know, Chris, your... the question in your mind must be, "Why is Jonathan saying that this is a good thing? Why is it helping him reconcile with the world?" It allows us to see the world and s- a- and say, "This is all that humans can be," and allows us to affirm it. Let me give you the opposite sort of, uh, argument here. You know, you know, I, I, I heard this one, uh, uh, you know, pro- progressive newspaper line, uh, about sort of Asians being very upset that their names were mispronounced. Um, and, you know, obviously, I... You know, as, as, as an immigrant myself, I've had those experiences and i- i- it doesn't feel good. But what I found really odd about that argument is that people can't really pr- make certain sounds after the critical stage of language acquisition of seven, right? So what, what they're upset about that, you know, uh, Europeans or people who grew up in European languages can't pronounce certain Chinese sounds, like my name, Yingjia is actually very ha- hard to pronounce, like people have really tr- tremendous trouble. They say Ǎ instead of Jìāi. Um, so I'm, uh... you know, I, I, I've been through this. But what I found really odd about this progressive article is, uh, they're really complaining about something that really can't be changed, right? Because critical language acquisitions hap- you know, ends at age seven. So, so y- y- you really... That there's no possible world where people do pronounce all of A- Asian names perfectly correctly. And I think what is underlying a lot of contemporary progressivism today is, uh, a overly optimistic view of human nature, right? And Girard would attribute this view to Rousseau, that this sort of perfected state of nature, that society corrupts. Now, whereas...... uh, uh, d- does that, that make sense?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, absolutely.
- JBJonathan Bi
So, so, so, it, so it's the, the original sin as, gives us a lowered expectation of what we can expect from ourselves in society to make our, our existing society actually affirmable by reason, so that we don't go and look at the first sign of alienation or fetishization or impression of inequality and say, "We gotta tear the whole system down." A- and I think that's a common intuition, a, a common critical intuition into, into contemporary society.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay. So, the fact that fundamentally in Girard's theory he sees humans as fallible creatures, kind of fallen. He gets into theology a little bit later in his career as well, and I, I imagine that he's drawn some quite nice lines between his psychology and his theology work. The fact that he's got that is like a meta comment around the fact that humans are ... H- his view of human nature is fallible, and the solution to our fallibility is first to recognize the fact that we are fallible. So, the red pill that he's shoving down everybody's throats is like, it's the thing that they need to actually be able to understand in order for them to be able to see. But the, I, I guess the ... I just, I just hoped that it would be more hopeful. You know? Like, being told that I'm ruthlessly at the mercy of the high status people in my society, and I'm either going to positively go toward what they want or negatively go away from whatever the opposite of those people are, what they want. It, it
- 38:02 – 44:00
Applying Girardian Theory in Life
- CWChris Williamson
... How have you ... Talk to me about you, practical, applicable ways-
- JBJonathan Bi
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... that you operate in your life in a Girardian sense.
- JBJonathan Bi
Yeah. So, um, maybe l- let me make just one more comment about the sort of social theodicy that, that, that we've been talking about. Um, the first thing I'll say is, Girard thinks that human nature is fundamentally fallen, so there's a limit to the, to the goodness of a society that we can build. But certainly, that does not mean that we can, that we should just stomach all forms of badness. Certainly, that does not mean we look at slavery and we say, "Oh, there's oppression everywhere. You know, l- l- let's move on. Let's affirm that." That is not the case. I think what, what Girard is doing is more negative. He's saying if you take a, a perfectible view of human nature, um, no society that you're gonna design is really gonna live i- up to that, and you're gonna end in this critical loophole where you're just gonna start critiquing everything and think that is sufficient for the impetus of change. W- well, that is not so. But, but I just wanted to clarify that, that this sort of, uh, this, this sort of argument is not, uh, also an argument for complacency, but just placing a fundamental limit on how good human society can be. Um, in terms of your, in terms of your other question, I, I think this is probably my fault. I probably e- exaggerated, uh, the d- determinism of, uh ... that, that Girard attributes t- to humanity. Um, I think maybe the ... This is gonna be re- reductive, but I think hopefully l- illuminating. The one-liner here is, um, (sighs) we have agency in choosing our social circumstance, but not necessarily how we will behave in those social circumstance. If that makes sense. Or we-
- CWChris Williamson
Does this go back to the John Boyd example about the fact-
- JBJonathan Bi
Precisely.
- CWChris Williamson
... that you can foresee things? Okay. So, the argument here is that mimesis and our desire to be like the people that are successful and push away from the people that aren't, these are very difficult for us to deprogram, if possible at all.
- JBJonathan Bi
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
One of the choices that we have is to retreat to a cabin in the woods and, and completely fuck off. Uh-
- JBJonathan Bi
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
Another solution is for us to stack the deck in our favor with the foresight that memetic desire is going to come through. And the way that we stack the deck is to be around people that we genuinely want ourselves to be like. Is that right?
- JBJonathan Bi
Kind of. K- k- kind of. Um, so yes. I- it's, it's fundamentally the, the conclusion of Girard is one must design one's social environment, right? Um-
- CWChris Williamson
How? How?
- JBJonathan Bi
In one way ... Yeah. So, so one way, and this isn't necessarily social. Again, I'll emphasize, is do what you like. Physical desire. Because again, physical and metaphysical desire are competing interests, right? Take the example of Joseph Campbell, hero of a thousand faces. He, uh, basically left his PhD program at Columbia, I, I think, and he just went into the woods and had read for 10 years. Now, he was only able to do that without any social validation because he loved the activity in and of itself. And for me and Girard, uh, for a period at least, that was how I felt about Girard. I wasn't thinking about going on these podcasts or, or, or working on a book-length project. But it was s- ... It was so helpful and illuminating and fun for me to wrestle with Girard into the mud, um, that, that I, I, would be fine with little social affirmation. And I think, I think you see this with dating as well, right? I mean, some people, they clearly want partners so that other people can see them with them, and that's where they derive most of the value. Trophy wives or husbands are the most extreme example of this. But if you find someone that you genuinely love hanging out in and of itself, and this goes the same for friendships, then, then you can diminish the amount you have to lean on, uh, th- those memetic impulses.
- CWChris Williamson
What about desires that we have, physical desires, that aren't adaptive or are malignant or shouldn't be there that need that memetic sense to curb some of them? So, let's say that somebody likes stealing. They love the thrill of, um, robbing other stores.
- JBJonathan Bi
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
The memetic impulse that they have from other people who say, "Maybe you shouldn't do that," that's a good influence. That's tamping down a physical desire that somebody has which actually needs restricting. And in that way, the mimesis is something that they shouldn't try and avoid, but something that they should actually try and lean into.
- JBJonathan Bi
Yeah. Yeah. Uh, G- Girard, Girard doesn't bring these, uh, punitive or corrective e- examples up, up a lot, um, and I, I ... Frankly, I haven't thought a lot about them, but I think that would be, uh...... that would be, uh, a good solution. In fact, the, the sort of closest thing that I, that I thought about, uh, given the example that you gave was actually about how to educate my future children. Um, and, you know, it's very hard for people to love knowledge in and of itself. You know, some, some people eventually get there, but in order to do so, you're gonna have to do a lot of training, right? (laughs) Uh, to get there. And that training is often not enjoyable at all. So, I think this mem- memetic desire, desire to be, um, can be that impulse, that drive to get you over that hump so those physical desires can come in. And that's very close to your example here, right? The memetic forces, uh, acting as a crutch, if you will, uh, before those physical desires come in. And, uh, uh, another good example here is, uh, Chris as I'm sure you know, is, uh, is working out or, or weightlifting or, or any s- form of sports. It's quite unsatisfying for the first few months when you're doing a sport because you're not very good at it. Um, but if you have a, a desire to be, if you want to be like Ronaldo or Messi or, you know, LeBron James, uh, that then that can get you over the hump. Again, uh, this is us creatively, uh, interpreting Girard, which I, I'm an all fan of, but Girard himself is very clear that even in these instances, metaphysical desire is still fundamentally bad because it's still fundamentally motivated by a lie. But that's not to say it could have very important and positive consequences.
- 44:00 – 52:39
What Do You Want To Want?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, it's, it's strange to think about what are the impacts that you get from other people that pull you along in a good way. So, for instance, going to the gym, a lot of people might go to the gym because of the way that it makes them look to other people.
- JBJonathan Bi
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
Now, the byproduct of them going to the gym and them looking good-
- JBJonathan Bi
Health.
- CWChris Williamson
... to other people, they're gonna be healthier, they're gonna live longer, they're gonna have higher bone density and muscle mass, and the, the myriad of things that you get out of exercise. But that is... I guess that that's just a fluke. That's a fluke that the metaphysical desire of the signal that going to the gym and the sort of body that you get happens to align with something which is physically good for yourself. And-
- JBJonathan Bi
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, I would guess the sort of, uh, race to the bottom and the way that, uh, groups of people tend to converge on stuff, a lot of the time the metaphysical desire that emerges as a collective isn't necessarily what's optimal for the individual on their own. There's a, uh, a blog post called What Do You Want to Want by Kyle Eschenroeder, and I must, uh, I must quote it once a week to people, right? And he, he-
- JBJonathan Bi
I have to read it. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... he asks the question, "What do you want to want?" Now, that's a really interesting question. Not what do you want. What do you want to want?
- JBJonathan Bi
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
What are the desires that you want yourself to have?
- JBJonathan Bi
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
And it's the same as the... is it Aristotle or Seneca or someone that says, uh, "If a man knows not where he sails, no wind is favorable."
- JBJonathan Bi
Hmm. Right.
- CWChris Williamson
And, and the problem that you have is you can't turn the wind off, right? There's always going to be wind and there's always going to be destinations.
- JBJonathan Bi
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
But if you're not careful, if you don't look at your desires, if you don't assess where you are and genuinely what you want to want from life, you can end up in a place not only that you didn't mean to get to, but that you don't even want to be.
- JBJonathan Bi
Yes. And so that's, that's all great. And you're, I think you were hitting on core Girardian intuitions. And the landscape where he discusses this is actually in, uh, the political culture of the day. So, the long story short is that in pagan society, he thinks that there was memetic pressures to kill victims, and in contemporary society, there's memetic pressure to protect victims. Now, Girard would say that today someone, uh, uh, you know, who's trying to protect victims out of mimesis is fundamentally better than someone converging to a worse form of mimesis trying to kill victims, but it's still mimesis nonetheless. And maybe to project it into your example that you gave, we can say that, uh, maybe a good outcome is if metaphysical desire overlays with, with physical desire. Um, however, in so far as you are pushed by metaphysical desire, I would wager that you are not fully your own man or woman. Because if the, as you say, the winds slightly tilt another way, and instead of, you know, working out, it's, uh, I don't know, jumping off a cliff (laughs) or something like that, th- then you will be equally leaned towards that. So, to your point, the, the, the success is, is trivial or accidental. Now, another problem that comes with this approach of being motivated by metaphysical desire, even if it's to a direction that you want, is twofold. One, you may overdo the thing, right? Think about, uh, you know, bodybuilders injecting, uh, you know, te- uh, if you don't do it for health, you're doing it for, to, to show off, then you can easily go above and beyond what health dictates and actually harm your health, as you, as you well know. Um, and the other thing, and this is, uh, I think why Girard thinks it's fundamentally bad, is it's very tiring to be motivated at, by that force. And, and I think anyone who's been motivated by such a social force c- can discu- can discuss that or, or can relate to this, that when you lose, it's a sort of existential despair, and when you win, it's not sort of an overabundant, overflowing, everlasting joy, but almost a sense of relief. And so we may say that it's better for metaphysical desire to be directed at good things and to align your physical desire. There's still fundamental problems with being motivated by it, or at the very least, it too much.
- CWChris Williamson
In that same blog post, What Do You Want to Want, he talks about how other people's heads is a terrible place for your self-worth to live, that a lot of the time when people do things now, they're not doing them for the joy of themselves, they're doing them for what it says about them. They're doing it for the tweets that are then subsequently going to come or the likes or the comments on an Instagram page. And it is incredibly fragile when you think about the fact that you could do something not because you want to do it, but because you think other people will like the fact that you've done it, that does basically put your entire sense of self-worth and fulfillment and direction in life in the hands of other people. Now-I had a discussion with Michael Malice, my mate, and he said he believes that a large proportion of the population fundamentally doesn't have agency or a personality, and that these people are better off trying to model people that have been successful, because if they were left to their own devices, they would get things wrong. He has a very, uh, uh, even less, um, hopeful view-
- JBJonathan Bi
Charitable.
- CWChris Williamson
... I think, of human nature than, than Gerard does. But his point is, as far as he's concerned, a lot of people are idiots and therefore they would fuck up if you left them on their own. What they need to do-
- JBJonathan Bi
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... is to actually model off people that do know what they're doing because that's-
- JBJonathan Bi
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... going to have this trickle down effect of at least-
- JBJonathan Bi
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... making the people at the bottom a little bit less shit.
- JBJonathan Bi
Yeah. You know, um, this is, I think, if I may reframe our, our conversation as any, uh, annoying analytical philosopher does, we've discussed before, how can metaphysical desire, even though ultimately bad, be good for the individual, right? That it can, you know, push us to work out and get us over the hump where physical desire can take over. But now I think what you're asking is, but how can it be good for society? And this is a question that Gerard himself really has to wrestle with because Gerard, uh, despite being a Christian, believes in human evolution. And so there must be a functional value-
- CWChris Williamson
It's gonna be adaptive.
- JBJonathan Bi
... for mimesis, for metaphysical desire. And what is that functional value? Gerard basically thinks, uh, uh, or rather, I think, I read into Gerard, that metaphysical desire and mimesis help us, uh, organize in very, very large groups. Have you ever read Sapiens by any chance?
- 52:39 – 1:07:18
Girard on Pride & Arrogance
- CWChris Williamson
One of the first times I think I ever heard Gerard be spoken about was Peter Thiel. So I recently went and facilitated a conversation with him a couple of weeks ago, which was very nice. He was very lovely. We had a good chat. Um, but I wonder why it is that so many people in positions of power hold Gerard in high regard. He's like the sort of hot new girl philosopher of Silicon Valley at the moment.
- JBJonathan Bi
Yeah. Um, that, that, that's true. And I think, you know, the first thing I'll say is that there's probably a form of mimetic, memetic theory going on here, um, that, uh, th- and this is certainly how I got into memetic theory is, uh, wanting to be like Peter, right? Uh, and, and obviously I had other role models growing up, you know, George Soros, Ray Dalio, these, these people who are able to combine, um, you know, very interesting ways of thinking with worldly action. But Peter was definitely up there, and I definitely got into Gerard in the very beginning, uh, through, through, through Peter. And, and I think that's true for probably most people you see (laughs) of wanting to, to be like him. Now, this is an, this is quite interesting, a phenomenon I would say, because, you know, any other theory to say that you like it just because other people like it is, uh, a negative to that theory. Oh, you know, you, you, you just like, uh, David Graber because other people like David Graber. But when, it's hard to say the same about memetic theory because that's exactly what memetic theory predicts, right? Because if you're saying like, look, memetic theory really has very little value, then you're like, well, why do people like it? Oh. Because other people like it. Then you're like, well, then it does have a lot of value (laughs) because that's exactly-
- CWChris Williamson
Looking un-, unfalsifiable, man. I told you this earlier on.
- JBJonathan Bi
Yeah, yeah, yeah. (laughs) Um, now the, the other thing that I'll say here is, uh, I, I think we shouldn't shy away from such a genealogy, for example, that, you know, I got into a thing, uh, because of mediation, um, as we've discussed already with, uh, education, with, uh, working out. Many of the times we, we do get into a thing not knowing what the physical experience is, right? And, and it's almost a tautology 'cause how can you know what the thing is before you get into it?Um, now I think what's important is whether you, uh, whether you're still mediated by that, right? E- e- e- going forward. Or, or l- like me, you know, you just gained a, a love for the, for the subject itself. But I think there's another answer beyond this, a- and I think we'd be giving Peter too much credit if, if we say, you know, it's, it's just Peter. Now my answer isn't gonna take the shape of saying there's something important and crucial about memetic theory, which I think there is, that makes people successful. Instead, I think that there is a confounding variable that leads people both to s- both to success and memetic theory. Does, d- does the shape of my answer, before I actually give it, make, make sense? That it's not memetic theory gives us something, it's that something leads people who are already predisposed to success to memetic theory. And I think the answer there is arrogance and p- pride and delusion. Now I'm gonna have to give you two arguments here, why I think that's necessary for, for s- for worldly success, or helpful for worldly success, and the other is, you know, why people like that are attracted to Girard. I'll give the second one first, it's easier to give. As we mentioned, this desire to be, metaphysical desire, is a yearning to exist in great measure. I think, then, that Girard's psychology is incredibly limited. And what it describes really, really well is the psychology of the prideful person. Think about it, what are Girard's, uh, canonical examples? Clausewitz, Holderlin, Napoleon, uh, Don Quixote, right? The Casanovas and the Coquettes of the world, people who are really, really prideful. And the type of psychology that Girard describes, you know, envy at the slightest a- tremor and existential despair as, eh, eh, you know, you glance at your friend and he's doing slightly better than you. While, while, while some of us may share that to a degree, it's only the people who are extremely prideful w- who sort of really experience that. So Girard is really giving us the psychology of pride here. And I think, of people who are naturally prideful and, and arrogant, such as myself when I came to Girard, we naturally gravitate towards this theory because it explains it so well. You know, Nietzsche tells us that, uh, you know, the philosophies we choose to write, far beyond an objective capture of human nature, is actually a deeply subjective confession of who we actually are. Well, I will add to that, then so must be the philosophies we choose to read. Right? We naturally gravitate towards the types of psychology that, a- and, and phenomenological experience, that conforms to our own. And I, and so I, so I think, uh, people who are prideful and arrogant are, are more attracted to Girard, uh, because, um, that, that he describes the psychology of pride. Now, you know, I, I have to proceed on my, uh, second prong of my argument for why I think, 'cause I, I, I've drawn the link w- with pride to memetic theory, now I have to draw the link between pride and worldly success. And I think the way I'm gonna do this is, is by drawing, um, a- an example. Uh, or let me, let me, let me g- give you a few examples of why I think pride, arrogance, delusion are, are, if not necessary, certainly helpful for w- worldly success. Um, think about what you would have said if you were Elon's friend and he told you he wanted to not only, you know, change the way that cars were powered, but also send a rocket to Mars, right? Think about, uh, what, what you would have said to, to Peter and Joe when they were starting Palantir. This is what people said, "You're gonna sell government... You're gonna sell the, the CIA software? That's ridiculous." Right? And, you know, this is not only true for worldly action in industry, but also for philosophy. You know, or so I've been told. You know, Adorno and Horkheimer, the founders of the Frankfurt School, you know, tremendous influence o- on the political left, uh, were extremely arrogant. You know, believed in themselves, in their 30s, to have cognized, um, uh, s- sort of the, the, the, you know, the lo- fundamental logic of philosophy or something like that. And in my own life, uh, you know, I would consider myself, you know, s- somewhat successful. And again, all the most important moves, right? I, I was a middling s- student in China, going to public school in, in Canada and I wanted to get into Ivy League. I wanted to study CS as an international kid and I wanted a full ride. And I was delusional, and people thought that I was delusional. The same thing with Girard. You know, as a 20-year-old you're gonna tell me you're gonna read all of Girard's canon by yourself and you're gonna create a lecture series and you're gonna title... You have the arrogance to title your book Completing Girard as your, as your first book? W- what ridiculous arrogance is that? (laughs) You know, we'll, we'll see whether this ends up being a laughing stock or not. But the point is, it's almost in the nature of success to conceive of one's self as greater than one currently is. To be prideful, to be arrogant, to be delusional. And I think we can find philosophical grounding for this argument in one of my favorite essays, Nietzsche's, uh, Uses and Abuses of History for Life. In it, he argues the fundamental place of action i- in, in the world comes from a place of untruth. A delusion in one's ability and a delusion in how important achieving that thing is gonna make me feel, and a delusion in the importance of that thing to the world. We need to be deluded to have that extra boost to carry it forward. And I think once framed in this light, this actually ties back very nicely to what we discussed about metaphysical desire. If you're just in there to lift, to be healthy, but I'm lifting because the nature of my existence is dependent on it, then I'm probably gonna beat you because I'm just gonna be so much more motivated. Now if Girard thinks that I'm gonna have a worse life than you, but that... But we're not talking about good or bad lives, we're talking about worldly success here. Right? So that is the shape of my argument, that there's a layer of mimesis, uh, uh, mostly through Peter, that brings people into Girardian theory, and people stay there because it captures the psychology of pride, which is a- a- also what I think to be a necessary, if not deeply helpful, psychology for worldly success.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, pride and arrogance are one hell of a fuel source to drive you forward.
- JBJonathan Bi
Oh, sure. Of course.
- CWChris Williamson
And you're right, that...... it, it, the interesting thing about imposter syndrome is that a lot of the time it's justified, especially when you're trailblazing. This was what Seth Godin said. He's like, "Look, if you've never done a thing before, imposter syndrome isn't some maladaptive psychological trait. It's a realistic positioning of your capacities and the challenges that you're coming up against."
- JBJonathan Bi
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
Now, the problem is, if you continue to disprove it in the real world and then it persists, that's imposter adaptation, which is a malignant version of it. But imposter syndrome is just you knowing what you've done before, and then looking at the challenge in front of you and going, "I haven't done that. I, I, I don't really know." So, what you're saying is that arrogance, pride, sort of a self-belief deceit, all of this, what it does is it enables to peop- uh, people to think above and beyond what their capa- uh, capacities are now-
- JBJonathan Bi
In the current moment.
- CWChris Williamson
... yes.
- JBJonathan Bi
Pr- precisely. And, and again, right, this can go terribly, terribly wrong. And for each Elon, we can point to, you know, 100 Elizabeth Holmes or, or something like that.
- CWChris Williamson
Selection, you know, whatever it is, survivorship bias is a-
- JBJonathan Bi
Survivorship bias, right.
- CWChris Williamson
... fucking bastard, yeah.
- JBJonathan Bi
So, so, so I'm not making the argument that, you know, all you have to do is be delusional, uh, and prideful. You obviously have to be very, very skilled to eventually justify that delusion. But I think the argument I'm making is that, you know, that, that specific forms of delusion, of untruth, of a refusal to meet with reality in the moment is deeply, deeply, uh, you know, helpful for worldly ac- activity.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, it seems to be that way. You know, you see or hear these guys speak, and I think this is as well one of the reasons why when people hear, you know, George Soros or Bill Gates or these, you know, people that have become incredibly wealthy or powerful, when they hear them speak, there is a little bit of a, a suspicion that they're part of some reptilian race or a new world order that's trying to take over everything, because it seems quite detached, right? Remember that these people have selected for the top 1% of the top 1% of the top 1% of pretty much everything that you need to get yourself there. In fact, cool story, one of my friends in Austin works for a recruitment company recruiting high-powered executives for startups, right? So this guy has access to the hitters of the hitters for the biggest companies and the fastest-growing startups in the world. And he was telling me that he was able to go into the files that they had and go back to see a bunch of executives that are now at huge companies and read their files from five or ten years ago. So the way that they do their, m-
- JBJonathan Bi
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... interviews is they sit down for between five and ten hours, and they just talk. There's a framework that they follow, but it's not qualifications and stuff. It's personality, it's attributes, it's traits, right? And I was like, "Okay, so tell me what it's like. Could you go back and see that the people that are super successful now were going to be super successful?" He's like, "That's interesting. Yes, you can." The people that get to... You, you don't get onto this list without being some sort of beast, but the people that were the absolute best stood out way before. In a five-hour or ten-hour conversation, they already stood out amongst a sea of incredibly competent people as being superbly competent. So he said he went back and looked at Tim Cook, that they'd had, now the CEO of Apple, and the first word on Tim Cook's report was "stood." The first word was "stood." Susanna was That looks after YouTube, rockstar, was the first word on that. And he's like, "This isn't how most peoples were written." So you were able to see that the hitters of the hitters were already going to do it. They stood out in the space of five hours.
- JBJonathan Bi
And, and w- w- what was, h- how does this tie back to our current conversation? You're, you're, you're saying that, uh, you're saying that their arrogance, pride, even at that moment, was somewhat justified. I mean, or, or like, if not justified by their current achievement, by their clear potential.
- CWChris Williamson
Yes, precisely. Like most people that go into a job interview, they're trying to play themselves up. But I don't know whether even the s- the most competent person will come out with rockstar or stood-
- JBJonathan Bi
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... written on their, on their interview notes.
- JBJonathan Bi
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
But you go in, like, you have to exude a degree of self-belief and, and confidence. And the other thing is that everybody else knows that they need to play up their skills too. So this person is having to pitch themselves above and beyond not only where they're at, not only where everybody else is at, but even higher than that again. And this isn't saying that Tim Cook went and lied during his interview, but just the fact that he was able to...
- JBJonathan Bi
Oh, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And, and these people that are interviewing him, they're trained at picking out shyster's, right?
- JBJonathan Bi
Wow. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
They're trained at picking out people that are selling snake oil. And they didn't find any. And then Tim Cook goes on to be the CEO of Apple, and then Susanna goes on to go and look after YouTube.
- JBJonathan Bi
Yeah. Yeah, I, the one thing I'd be, I'd be curious to hear, to, to, to go back and see of all the ones that started with stud and rockstar, what were the false negatives? But, but that, that, that's a separate, that's a separate thing. Um, I, I think, you know, maybe to give, give your listeners another Girardian insight here, um, Girard, uh, is very interested in why narcissism is such a great mating strategy, uh, in both men and women. Uh, and, and men, you know, it's a bit more obvious, but in women it's the, uh, Girard conceives as, as a coquette, or the fundamental, uh, woman seducer, right, where for the man, it's the Don Juan. And Girard's analysis is quite interesting. For most of us, you know, our, our metaphysical desires are pointed outwards. We want to be a Tim Cook, we want to be... you know, we want to run YouTube. But for the narcissist, Girard describes them as their desire is pointing inwards, a- as a desire for themselves of who they already are, that they're already full. And mimesis comes into play, because you then imitate that desire. And so the way to translate that into plain language is, if I'm confident in myself, then you're gonna be like, "What does he know about himself," right? It, it's kind of like that example with the, uh, with the guy and the hot woman, wh- what do the hot women know? Instead here, it's one person.... what does he know about himself? Why is he so confident? And, and, uh, so I, so I think, again, it's these, like, revelatory sort of insights in one logical framework that slowly sort of, uh, converts you (laughs) rather than any sort of, uh, you know, e- empirical proof.
- 1:07:18 – 1:08:45
Main Takeaways from Girard
- JBJonathan Bi
- CWChris Williamson
What's the main thing that people should take away from today?
- JBJonathan Bi
Yeah. M- m- maybe, maybe, if not the key thing of mimetic theory, a key thread, um, underlying all of our discussions today and why I imagine as a li- as a listener it might be so unsatisfying is, is that we live, if Girard is correct, in a deeply ambivalent world. Right? We live in a world where, uh, this fundamental motivational force can bring civilizations and an entire species into prosperity and glory or it can, uh, bring you to new heights, but it's also something that can, uh, you know, pull you down, make you existentially frustrated, that can direct you. And so maybe the one thing to take away is that there's, there's no real simple answers here. Uh, and unlike Girard, I don't think this metaphysical desire is something we always must renounce. Um, it, it, it's something, I think, much more similar to what you're saying that I'm actually experimenting and playing around with. Maybe the, the last thing I'll, I'll, I'll leave us with then is that, uh, you know, we, we live in a world of, uh, very difficult trade-offs, um, and, and life is about fundamentally understanding the parameters in navigating those trade-offs.
- CWChris Williamson
Jonathan
- 1:08:45 – 1:09:31
Where to Find Jonathan
- CWChris Williamson
B., ladies and gentlemen. You've got a new lecture series out-
- JBJonathan Bi
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... that is on Girard.
- JBJonathan Bi
Yup.
- CWChris Williamson
Where can people get that?
- JBJonathan Bi
Uh, on my website. W- let's include it in, in the show notes. We're gonna release one episode, uh, every, let's say, five to seven weeks. First episode is, is all, uh, out already. Would, would love to hear what people think about it.
- CWChris Williamson
That's gonna be linked in the show notes below. Jonathan, I appreciate you, man. And, uh, next time that we're out in Austin, we'll have a fight with a hobo and, and get some tacos and stuff done.
- JBJonathan Bi
Awesome. Thanks, Chris.
- CWChris Williamson
What's happening, people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks. And don't forget to subscribe. Peace.
Episode duration: 1:09:31
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