(2021-12-13) Burgis 25 Antimimetic Tactics For Living A Countercultural Life

Luke Burgis (Epsilon Theory): 25 Anti-Mimetic Tactics for Living a Counter-Cultural Life. Luke Burgis wrote a book that I think is really good. It’s called Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life.

The word ‘mimetic’ was coined by the French social theorist Rene Girard. It is related to the word ‘mimic’—the human propensity to mimic what the people around them are doing. But Girard’s finding went deeper: it’s not only what they do, but what they want that we also mimic.

Below are some of the ways that we might cultivate some ‘anti-mimetic’ habits so that we’re not constantly struggling to keep up in the hamster wheel of desire

Being “anti-mimetic” does not mean being a ‘contrarian’ or refusing to imitate one’s peers. That’s what every hipster thinks he’s doing, too. “Everyone leaves the beaten path only to fall into the same ditch,” wrote the social theorist René Girard. Being anti-mimetic means have the personal freedom to counteract negative forms of mimetic desire — like the kind that leads to polarized politics, unhealthy obsessions, envy, hustle-porn, and never-satisfied striving for things that won’t ultimately matter to impress people who don’t love us.

Before we get to the 25 ideas, one interesting note: the word “anti-mimesis” has been used to refer to an artistic philosophy, with Oscar Wilde as its most famous advocate. He meant ‘anti-mimetic’ in a slightly different way that I mean it here. Wilde was referring to art and making the point that art is not what is ‘mimetic’—art doesn’t imitate life.

The artist is a creator par excellence. The artist brings new realities into being and changes how we see and experience the world.

Wilde believes that lying—“the telling of beautiful untrue things”—is the proper aim of art. It’s “an art, a science, and a social pleasure,” and its decay is responsible for the decay of literature.

“if something cannot be done to check, or at least to modify, our monstrous worship of facts,” he writes, “Art will become sterile and beauty will pass away from the land.”

The older I get, the more I realize that most of life is a matter of what we pay attention to — of what we attend to, with focus. There are many different ways to attend to reality; most of us spend our lives stuck attending to it in only one or two modes. Part of the purpose of Wilde’s work, and I hope my own, is to propose some new ones.

here they are, in no real particular order (well, except for the last few — which I think are the most important).

25. Anti-Mimetic Scheduling

Each of us has the power, though, to make our experiences a bit less stressful and more enjoyable if we take advantage of the off-peak times when we have the freedom to do things on our own time. Some of my favorites include: going to the bar of a restaurant between 2–5pm when I’m the only person in the place and knocking out some work over an appetizer; going to museums (I live in DC, so there are a ton of great ones) during weekday mornings

24. Building a Deep Bookshelf (book list)

allocate 10% of your annual reading to books where you know you’re not going to ‘agree’ with the fundamental premise.

23. Don’t Participate in the Shark-Tankification of Worth

‘business plan competitions’ and ‘incubators’ function like beauty contests, and they attract entrepreneurs who self-select based on emotional needs.

22. Learn to Navigate without GPS

Anthony Bourdain on the topic: the joy is in finding “this little out-of-way place, that discovery is often the result of a happy mishap or an accident

21. Watch stellar old films that never benefited from mimetically-inflated popularity

Here is one of my favorites: Out of the Past (1947)

20. Read Foreign Newspapers

their ‘takes’ on the stuff going on in our own country

19. Stop Writing to Please

18. Filter Feedback

some feedback is good, some feedback is bad. And too much feedback is detrimental — especially to a Creative.

17. Invest in Deep Silence

Silence is the great mimetic quieter

16. Set-up an Anti-Mimetic Environment

It’s extremely hard to escape the negative forces of mimesis while you’re standing shoulder to shoulder with a bunch of other people who are caught up in it

15. Look for the Coincidence of Opposites

in higher levels of spiritual development, there is no hypocrisy or contradiction between things that we don’t ordinarily think are compatible

14. Pay Attention to Real Things

Escaping the throes of some of our most unhealthy mimetic desires happens when we’re rooted and grounded in the Real.

13. Social Media with a Purpose

purpose, or mission, on social media? Is it to gain followers? Sell books? Build a Substack list? What? You have to be able to answer the question. If you have a vague answer, dial it in immediately.

12. Start Going Analog

A hard copy of a book (printed book) is metaphysically different from a digital one

11. Clean Up Your Consumption

I try not to consume anything that is totally frictionless — because it was made frictionless for a reason

There’s nothing wrong with consuming; it’s consumerism that is dangerous. Consumerism is a spirit that enslaves us to our own desires and leaves no room for others; it undermines human freedom by short-circuiting our ability to respond to non-economic values

10. Autodidactism

the force driving the learning path is one’s interest and desire generated by the material itself

an infinite game. Follow the footnotes, follow the desire.

9. Price Capital Well

the anti-mimetic approach is to look at ways to invest your capital well in the things creating long-term value — not a flash value.

8. Speak the Truth

Speak the truth in accord with your conscience no matter what the cost. Otherwise, the truth becomes subordinate to mimesis. In a post-truth world, the tyranny of relativism is a constant threat to us all.

7. Become Skilled at De-escalation

Good parenting and leadership in general is dependent on this skill, and it’s never to learn it.

6. Cultivate an Interdisciplinary Mind

When I speak about the connection between Athens, Jerusalem, and Silicon Valley, I’m referring to the connections between Reason (Athens), religion (Jerusalem), and technology (Silicon Valley). I don’t believe we can understand the world we’re living in without spending some time at the intersection of these three places.

5. The Marriage of Anti-Mimetic and Anti-Fragility

becoming more anti-mimetic necessarily makes one more anti-fragile.

4. Seek Positive Mimesis

some people desire to be a part of intentional communities where desires are modeled in healthy and non-rivalrous ways. The Rule of Saint Benedict — the set of rules for community-living drafted by Saint Benedict, which has guided monastic communities for nearly 1,500 years — is the best anti-mimetic handbook ever written. It specifically identifies positive models of desire to emulate

3. Return Anger with Kindness

Mimetic aggression is the easiest of all mimesis; a free and loving anti-mimetic response has the power to change hearts and minds.

2. Forgive Someone. Repeat

I believe mercy and forgiveness are the supreme anti-mimetic act in life.

Here are René Girard’s closing words in his book, The Scapegoat: “The time has come for us to forgive one another. If we wait any longer there will not be time enough.”

1. Live Out Your Personal Vocation (My Calling)

Consider the primatologist Jane Goodall. She had such a strong sense of mission to understand chimpanzees for a long period of her life that she knew what she had to do — and she wasn’t bothered by much else.

She had cultivated a thick desire. Everything, in a real way, coalesced around serving her mission; her decision-making became viciously prioritized and easy: if something helped her get closer to fulfilling her mission, it was likely a yes; otherwise, it was a no

I realize that many don’t yet know their mission — and that’s okay. Each of us can take some steps this week to shed some of the obviously thin desires that are keeping us from discovering it.