Speaker 1: If you think you're enlightened, go spend a week with
Speaker 1: your family. That's what the spiritual teacher Ramda said, and
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Speaker 1: dot net slash Spiritual Habits to join the program. Enrollment
Speaker 1: is open now through October twelfth. That's when you feed
Speaker 1: dot net slash Spiritual Habits. I think there's a typical
Speaker 1: attitude that people want what they want, and whatever they
Speaker 1: want is fine. What's true, but not everything we want,
Speaker 1: not everything we desire, is going to be good for us.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 1: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Luke Burgess,
Speaker 1: an entrepreneur who has founded and led multiple companies. He's
Speaker 1: currently Director of Programs at the Center for Principled Entrepreneurship
Speaker 1: at the Catholic University of America. He's also the founder
Speaker 1: and director of Fourth Wall Ventures and incubator for people
Speaker 1: and companies that contribute to the formation of healthy human ecology. Today,
Speaker 1: Luke and Eric discussed his book Wanting the Power of
Speaker 1: Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life. Hi, Luke, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hey Eric, thanks for having me on. I am really
Speaker 1: excited to talk with you about your book, which is
Speaker 1: called Want the Power of Mimetic Desire and Everyday Life.
Speaker 1: I think the concept of what we desire and why
Speaker 1: is so fascinated and so important. So we'll get into
Speaker 1: that in just a second. But let's start like we
Speaker 1: always do with the parable. In the parable, there is
Speaker 1: a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 1: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 1: and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about
Speaker 1: it for a second, and he looks up at his
Speaker 1: grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And
Speaker 1: the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 1: to start off by asking you what that parable means.
Speaker 1: To you in your life and in the work that
Speaker 1: you do. I've thought about this parable for many years, Eric,
Speaker 1: and I've come to understand it on three different levels.
Speaker 1: But all of those different levels have to do with desire.
Speaker 1: So for me, the parable is about which desires we
Speaker 1: should starve and which desires we should feed. So the
Speaker 1: first layer of that, for me, I would call just
Speaker 1: a basic relational level, how I'm in relationship with other people.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I have the desire to right my perceived wrongs,
Speaker 1: to own somebody in some kind of an argument um
Speaker 1: I for an eye, kind of desires and those are unhealthy.
Speaker 1: And those are the kinds of desires that I want
Speaker 1: to starve. And I want to feed empathy and compassion
Speaker 1: and understanding, the desire to listen, the desire to know
Speaker 1: understand somebody else's perspective that might be different from mine.
Speaker 1: And of course, you know, on that basic level, there's fleeting,
Speaker 1: ephemeral desires, the desire you know, to indulge myself with
Speaker 1: you know, alcohol or um, little fleeting instant gratifications that
Speaker 1: I know are not going to lead to long term
Speaker 1: fulfillment for me. So those are the kind I want
Speaker 1: to starve. The second layer I would call a spiritual layer,
Speaker 1: maybe even a theological layer, you know, and I'm a Christian,
Speaker 1: so I would understand certain desires as being sinful um,
Speaker 1: which is really a source of alienation, and then other
Speaker 1: desires being the ones that lead to fulfillment or love UM.
Speaker 1: And those are the kind of desires that lead to
Speaker 1: to union into healthy relationships. And the third layer is
Speaker 1: a mission oriented layer. So I believe I have a
Speaker 1: mission in life. I think that everybody does. And certain
Speaker 1: desires arise in me that are not aligned with my mission,
Speaker 1: their desires that, if pursued, will take me off track.
Speaker 1: And very relevant example of this is some desires that
Speaker 1: arose in me just during the pandemic. In the course
Speaker 1: of the pandemic, especially last year early I hadn't even
Speaker 1: finished reading my book yet, and I was dealing with,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to keep my elderly parents safe. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to plan a wedding um, which you know has
Speaker 1: been moved and you know we're married now. But that
Speaker 1: was a whole story in itself, and focused on writing
Speaker 1: this book and communicating these ideas, and everywhere I looked,
Speaker 1: different desires are being modeled to me. You know, the
Speaker 1: desire to move to upstate New York, the desire to
Speaker 1: start trading in the markets hardcore, you know, from crypto
Speaker 1: to getting in on the on the Bowl market last year.
Speaker 1: And I have a background in finance and investing, so
Speaker 1: it's incredibly tempting for me to want to get in
Speaker 1: on that. And you hear about, you know, the success
Speaker 1: that other people are having even earlier this year with
Speaker 1: some of the meme stocks, and there was an incredible
Speaker 1: desire to allocate a lot of my time enough for
Speaker 1: it into doing that. I'm also a very competitive person,
Speaker 1: so I was incredibly attracted to the idea of getting
Speaker 1: into that. And there's nothing wrong with that, but for me,
Speaker 1: that was a desire that I had to starve. Why
Speaker 1: Because in this particular season of my life I had
Speaker 1: emission is very clear, um, you know, taking care of
Speaker 1: my family, um, finishing and writing a book as well
Speaker 1: as I possibly could. I had to pour into that
Speaker 1: particular task. And evaluating my desires based on that sort
Speaker 1: of vocation or mission throughout the various seasons of my
Speaker 1: life and throughout my life taken as a whole, is
Speaker 1: really important to me. And I noticed that that was
Speaker 1: in aligned. Maybe someday it will be, but I had
Speaker 1: to start that. I had to feed and cultivate the
Speaker 1: desire to want to do other things more, you know,
Speaker 1: to to want to be with my family and you know,
Speaker 1: my my now wife, to want it so into my
Speaker 1: creative side and and to write and to get better
Speaker 1: at that. So fundamentally, that parable for me is about desires.
Speaker 1: You know, my own desires are like two wolves fighting
Speaker 1: inside of me. And I know that some of my desires,
Speaker 1: you know, if I feed them, are are going to
Speaker 1: make me miserable or are certainly not going to lead
Speaker 1: to fulfillment, and then others are. And the key for
Speaker 1: me is just discern the difference between the two. And
Speaker 1: that's not always easy. There's so much in what you
Speaker 1: just said there that I could unpack, and I think
Speaker 1: we'll probably spend the rest of this conversation it's sort
Speaker 1: of doing that. But I think you summarize so much
Speaker 1: of what I loved in your book in that answer,
Speaker 1: and instead of responding to it directly, I want to
Speaker 1: back up a second and make sure that we talk
Speaker 1: about this idea of memetic desire, because I think this
Speaker 1: is a really important idea obviously you do too, because
Speaker 1: you wrote an entire book about it. But what do
Speaker 1: we mean by memetic desire? What does that mean? The
Speaker 1: word memetic comes from a Greek word that simply means
Speaker 1: to imitate. So memetic desire is imitative desire. It means
Speaker 1: that humans tend to imitate the desires of other people.
Speaker 1: That we want what other people want because they want it,
Speaker 1: so not coincidentally, we we happen to want the same
Speaker 1: thing that somebody else wants. When somebody else wants it,
Speaker 1: that thing becomes more desirable to us. That's the key
Speaker 1: to understanding memetic desire. So we're social creatures and we
Speaker 1: take our cues about what's valuable about what's desirable from
Speaker 1: other people. And the source of this term memetic desire
Speaker 1: is a French thinker named Rune Jerard who taught at
Speaker 1: Stanford for many years and some other universities, and he
Speaker 1: noticed this key feature of human nature. Now scientists have
Speaker 1: known classic philosophers like Aristotle and Plato knew that imitation
Speaker 1: played a central role in human behavior. Aristotle said that
Speaker 1: humans are the most imitative creatures in the world. It's
Speaker 1: one of the things that separates us from from animals.
Speaker 1: We have incredibly complex and powerful faculties of imitation um
Speaker 1: but imitation was always understood on a external level, so
Speaker 1: the imitation of art, of language, of facial expressions, of
Speaker 1: styles of dress, and Gerard realized that our powers of
Speaker 1: imitation go under the surface of all of the external things.
Speaker 1: Now we have this ability to read the intentions of
Speaker 1: other people, are to read their desires and to desire
Speaker 1: what other people want, and this is part of what
Speaker 1: it means to be human. It's not necessarily a good
Speaker 1: thing or a bad thing, it's just the way that
Speaker 1: we are. We're incredibly mimetic when it comes to more
Speaker 1: abstract things like you know, the kinds of lifestyles we pursue,
Speaker 1: or careers or hobbies or things that were interested in.
Speaker 1: We may not lean on memetic desire as much with
Speaker 1: fulfilling our basic needs, like if I'm thirsty I want
Speaker 1: something to drink, I don't necessarily need anybody to model
Speaker 1: the desire for water to me. But once we move
Speaker 1: into the world of what I would call desires, that
Speaker 1: are things that are less need based and more desire based.
Speaker 1: Humans are of creatures that require models for their desire.
Speaker 1: So according to Girard, we require models for for almost
Speaker 1: everything in this so called universe of desire. And that's
Speaker 1: incredibly important to understand for me, because we typically think
Speaker 1: of desire as a rising just independently and autonomously, and
Speaker 1: we never think very seriously about how or why we've
Speaker 1: come to want something in the first place, and we
Speaker 1: typically don't acknowledge the other people or the other social
Speaker 1: forces that have caused us, you know, to desire something,
Speaker 1: and that could be like, you know, to be a
Speaker 1: political revolutionary, or it could mean to pursue a career path.
Speaker 1: If we don't understand the forces that are acting on
Speaker 1: us and specifically on our desires, will just sort of
Speaker 1: be at the mercy of them. And worse yet, we
Speaker 1: can even be manipulated, whether that's by you know, comes
Speaker 1: or or people that want us to want something that
Speaker 1: is in their best interest but might not necessarily be
Speaker 1: in ours right. What I think is so interesting about
Speaker 1: that is that, as you said, we tend to think
Speaker 1: that our desires they feel like they're part of us,
Speaker 1: They feel so intrinsic to who we are. An example
Speaker 1: I often use, I'm talking about it in a slightly
Speaker 1: different context, but I'm talking about it in the sense
Speaker 1: of sort of the Buddhist idea of everything is conditioned,
Speaker 1: right is, I'll say, you might say something like, and
Speaker 1: you could be a man or woman doing this, right.
Speaker 1: This is not a one sex or the other thing
Speaker 1: that you might say, I prefer people who look like X,
Speaker 1: I prefer blonds. Let's just take that as an example. Right.
Speaker 1: That may feel so unquestionable. It just arises, and it's
Speaker 1: very obvious and it's very strong. But the reality is,
Speaker 1: there's something that occurred in my life that would have
Speaker 1: caused that to be the way it is. Maybe I
Speaker 1: saw Maryland in row movie at a particularly impressionable age.
Speaker 1: Maybe my mother was blonde or brunette, or as you said,
Speaker 1: I learned this desire from somewhere else. And so I
Speaker 1: just think this is a really interesting idea that everything
Speaker 1: that we desire, again beyond the basic needs, is somehow
Speaker 1: again to use the Buddhist term, conditioned, in that it
Speaker 1: arose as a result of conditions, and the conditions that
Speaker 1: you're saying are imitative. It was modeled for us, right,
Speaker 1: And if we look hard enough and we'd become aware
Speaker 1: of this feature of human desire, we can usually always
Speaker 1: find a hidden model for something that that we desire.
Speaker 1: And to your point, Eric, you know, when I look
Speaker 1: back in my life, I have been attracted to different
Speaker 1: partners for different reasons, and they've changed as I go
Speaker 1: throughout my life. So I mean, it would seem to
Speaker 1: indicate that there's no merely some kind of a physiological
Speaker 1: reason for that, Like why why would it change through
Speaker 1: different years? And not only in a physical level. Has
Speaker 1: my attraction changed, my preferences have changed, but also you know,
Speaker 1: in the kind of person that I'm attracted to. You know,
Speaker 1: like there was a point where you know, some incredibly professional,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of investment banker career. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: woman was was kind of like something that I was,
Speaker 1: you know, really attracted to and not so much anymore.
Speaker 1: Why is that so? Even that you know, it's probably
Speaker 1: conditioned by what the other people in my life desired
Speaker 1: or were attracted to. And I can't really be explained
Speaker 1: through financial means or through through purely biological answers. It's
Speaker 1: a wide and sweeping topic that applies to so many
Speaker 1: different areas of life. My goal really is is just
Speaker 1: to get us thinking as individuals and also as a society.
Speaker 1: How this is affecting our behavior? You say, the desire
Speaker 1: is mimetic. We learn it in essence someone else wants it,
Speaker 1: so we then think it's something that's worth wanting. The
Speaker 1: question that I don't really understand is what causes certain things,
Speaker 1: certain models, to be the thing that we click in on, right,
Speaker 1: Because there's a bunch of different desires. Right. If I
Speaker 1: just think about high school as an example, there were
Speaker 1: some people who were really into sports could have had
Speaker 1: that model, right, and other people were really in academics,
Speaker 1: and I could have seen that modeled. You know, So
Speaker 1: what is it that causes us to choose a particular model?
Speaker 1: Do you have any insight into that? Well, the thinker
Speaker 1: that inspired my book certainly did, and you know, his
Speaker 1: answer is essentially that it's always because of a sense
Speaker 1: of lack that we feel we have, and we perceive
Speaker 1: that the model might have whatever it is we think
Speaker 1: that we lack. So he says that all desire is
Speaker 1: a desire for being. It's a desire to be somebody else,
Speaker 1: or a desire to have maybe more freedom and control
Speaker 1: over our desires. So oftentimes an incredibly confident person that
Speaker 1: seems as if they know exactly what they want or
Speaker 1: what is wantable at all times is an incredibly attractive
Speaker 1: and powerful model to most people, because most of us
Speaker 1: secretly are not really sure what to want. So I
Speaker 1: look back to my high school days. I grew up
Speaker 1: on the west side of Michigan in a town called
Speaker 1: Grand Rapids, and early days of the Internet, you know,
Speaker 1: I was hanging out in a O L chat rooms
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, and I got it in my
Speaker 1: head that the kids my age that lived in New
Speaker 1: York City had something that I didn't have, whatever that was, okay,
Speaker 1: maybe a level of coolness or street smarts or something
Speaker 1: like that. And I quickly adopted them as models. And
Speaker 1: and part of that came from a sense of you know, lack,
Speaker 1: you know, or insecurity that that I had. And I,
Speaker 1: of course, this all happened without me knowing it. And
Speaker 1: you know, I had my heart set I'm going to
Speaker 1: college in New York City, and I did, and I
Speaker 1: got there, and it turns out that all the kids
Speaker 1: my age are exactly just like me. They're all they
Speaker 1: all have their own you know kind of they're all
Speaker 1: looking into their own models. This kind of dynamic is
Speaker 1: extremely powerful and adolescence. You know, everybody's like trying to
Speaker 1: figure out who they are and kind of like latching
Speaker 1: on to the first thing or group or person that
Speaker 1: might give them, you know, a sense of identity. It's like,
Speaker 1: if I could just if I could just be a
Speaker 1: little bit more like them than you know, X, Y
Speaker 1: and Z, would happen. You know. C. S. Lewis calls
Speaker 1: this the desire to always be in the inner ring,
Speaker 1: and he sort of describes it as a process of
Speaker 1: there's always a ring that's more inner that we're never in,
Speaker 1: and we always go through life thinking it might not
Speaker 1: even be true that there's an inner ring in inner
Speaker 1: circle that we're not part of, and we decide that
Speaker 1: certain people are, and you know, that fuels our desire.
Speaker 1: And he says, you know, obviously that onion can be
Speaker 1: peeled to infinity basically, and you know that, I think
Speaker 1: is a large part of the reason why we adopt
Speaker 1: different models and very importantly, why people's models change as
Speaker 1: they go through life. So why is this important for
Speaker 1: us to try and understand that our desires are driven
Speaker 1: by imitation? Why is this important if we don't see
Speaker 1: the things that are driving our desires at best. It
Speaker 1: can make us pretty miserable because there's always another model
Speaker 1: modeling a different desire for us, and we can just
Speaker 1: kind of float through life like a dilettante, you know,
Speaker 1: or feeling like we have whiplash, and pursuing new desires,
Speaker 1: perhaps getting new things, buying new things, entering into new relationships,
Speaker 1: changing careers, and you know, never understanding why we're so unsatisfied,
Speaker 1: because we're just you know, we just simply have new models. Typically, though,
Speaker 1: it leads to conflict between people and resentment and and
Speaker 1: you know, jealousy or or envy, you know, without us
Speaker 1: really understanding why that happens. I mean, just to give
Speaker 1: you an example, most authors that have published a book
Speaker 1: have all kinds of desires modeled to them to want
Speaker 1: certain things. So, you know, you want to be a
Speaker 1: New York Times bestseller, you want X, Y and Z award,
Speaker 1: you want to be recognized in certain ways, and I
Speaker 1: think few people ask themselves why that thing is wantable.
Speaker 1: I mean, sure, you might sell more books, but like
Speaker 1: the desire ends up taking over everything, and you know,
Speaker 1: you forget why you set out on a certain path
Speaker 1: in the first place. Is it really so that you
Speaker 1: could you know, get a Michelin Star for your restaurant,
Speaker 1: or you know, get on to make a certain list
Speaker 1: for your book. And these desires are the medically given
Speaker 1: to us. And part of the process I think of
Speaker 1: maturing and understanding the way that this works is being
Speaker 1: able to see that and calling it, you know, for
Speaker 1: what it is, and being able to exercise a little
Speaker 1: more freedom in what we desire. So it's not to
Speaker 1: say like we can just do away with this altogether,
Speaker 1: because we're social creatures. But what we can do is
Speaker 1: have the self possession and the agency and the freedom
Speaker 1: to make these things more or less our own, rather
Speaker 1: than just sort of unconsciously accepting these things as the
Speaker 1: things that I'm supposed to want. I grew up in
Speaker 1: a home with two doctors. I'm supposed to want to
Speaker 1: be a doctor or whatever. And you know, this is
Speaker 1: a really important thing. It's maybe I do it opt
Speaker 1: the desire to be recognized in a certain way for
Speaker 1: my book. But if I do, at least I'm doing
Speaker 1: it with intentionality. At least I'm realizing what I'm doing
Speaker 1: rather than just following um. And we have a lot
Speaker 1: of followers in our culture. We have a lot you
Speaker 1: know that people I think uncritically accept both thinking and
Speaker 1: ideas and desires, and then fifteen years later, it might
Speaker 1: be that they're in a career that they're miserable in
Speaker 1: or the relationship that they're miserable in, and they don't
Speaker 1: realize how they got to be in that place in
Speaker 1: the first place. And chances are, if we, if we
Speaker 1: dig deep enough, it may be that there was a
Speaker 1: desire or the desire for some object that they you know,
Speaker 1: they had pursued without really ever having made it their
Speaker 1: own and chosen to pursue that thing. You say that
Speaker 1: being anti mimetic is having the ability the freedom to
Speaker 1: counteract destructive forces of desire. So given that all this
Speaker 1: is modeled, how do we start to find what our
Speaker 1: real desire is, or are deeper desire is? What are
Speaker 1: some of the ways we can start to unravel this unspoken,
Speaker 1: un understood forces that are driving us. Because desire is
Speaker 1: what drives us, It is what drives us, it's what
Speaker 1: moves us. I think of desire like an energy of
Speaker 1: movement that draws us towards certain people, are certain things,
Speaker 1: and we're always moving towards something or a way from something.
Speaker 1: We're never standing still. You know, it's the old saying,
Speaker 1: if you're not going forwards, you're going backwards. And that's desire.
Speaker 1: So when I say being anti memetic, I certainly don't
Speaker 1: mean just be a contrarian and just sort of do
Speaker 1: the opposite of what everybody else is doing or what
Speaker 1: everybody else wants. That in fact is memetic behavior, because
Speaker 1: you're you're just modeling your behavior on what the other
Speaker 1: people want. Um they are positive and negative memetic desires.
Speaker 1: A positive memetic desire the kind that I would want
Speaker 1: to feed, to go back to the fable, would be
Speaker 1: if I see some noble, good, virtuous trait in somebody
Speaker 1: that I admire, and I want to be infected with
Speaker 1: the desire. I want to feed the desire to be
Speaker 1: to be more like that person. And that's good as
Speaker 1: long as I don't end up seeing that person as
Speaker 1: a rival or a threat to me, as long as
Speaker 1: they remain that that relationship remains healthy. There are other
Speaker 1: cases where I want to be anti memetic when I see,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of radical political polarization and rhetoric. I
Speaker 1: want to have the freedom, I want to have the
Speaker 1: ability to not engage the way that other people are engaging.
Speaker 1: It's possible. You know, when when somebody hates me, when
Speaker 1: somebody you know, wrongs me, the memetic response is to
Speaker 1: do the same thing back, right, is treat people the
Speaker 1: way that they treat me. I think there's a there's
Speaker 1: a higher way, and I think that that's to step
Speaker 1: back and respond in freedom anti me medically and to
Speaker 1: treat them the way that I would have liked to
Speaker 1: have been treated. Um. I mean it is old ancient wisdom,
Speaker 1: but you know, this is just a new way to
Speaker 1: kind of think about this. One of the ways I
Speaker 1: think to uncover and reveal the difference between what I
Speaker 1: would call thin desires and what I would call thick
Speaker 1: desires is to kind of you have to step back
Speaker 1: and kind of look look at life with a little
Speaker 1: more perspective. A thin desire is highly memetic. You know,
Speaker 1: here today, gone tomorrow. It's like my desire. It's sort
Speaker 1: of like go head first into crypto. That summer definitely
Speaker 1: a memetic desire. There was no kind of solid foundation
Speaker 1: that that rested on. Um. You know, if the market
Speaker 1: had crashed, if all none of my friends cared about
Speaker 1: it the next week, then it would have been gone.
Speaker 1: For me too. You know, it was completely dependent on
Speaker 1: what everybody else was doing. You know, there was nothing
Speaker 1: intrinsic about it. There was nothing that I had made
Speaker 1: my own. It was just following fomo, you know, the
Speaker 1: fear of being left out. All my friends are getting rich, right,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, I I noticed that. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not that old, but I'm old enough to have learned,
Speaker 1: you know, when I'm feeling that and I pursue something,
Speaker 1: and how it can leave me empty because I've made
Speaker 1: a lot of money, and you know, it just didn't
Speaker 1: do for me what I thought it was going to do.
Speaker 1: And I sacrificed a lot to make that money. It
Speaker 1: doesn't bring me any fulfillment today. And that's one of
Speaker 1: the signs that it was kind of a fleeting sort
Speaker 1: of memetic desires that it was. There was nothing enduring
Speaker 1: about the satisfaction that it brought me. What I would
Speaker 1: call a thick desire is the kind of desire that's cultivated,
Speaker 1: the kind of desire that you feed over a very
Speaker 1: long period of time. So you could begin to put
Speaker 1: your finger on what some of those thicker desires are,
Speaker 1: you know, by looking back at your life and what
Speaker 1: you desired as a child, what you desired as as
Speaker 1: an adolescent or at an earlier time in your life,
Speaker 1: good and bad, but specifically trying to identify the kinds
Speaker 1: of wants that that we had that did bring us
Speaker 1: a tremendous sense of satisfaction and joy and sense of self,
Speaker 1: the kinds of experiences where we were in flow, where
Speaker 1: we really just felt like our like most like ourselves.
Speaker 1: And you know, for me, I have that experience in
Speaker 1: sports a little bit. I have it experienced in certain
Speaker 1: subjects in school, and certain relationships that I was in,
Speaker 1: certain projects that I undertook after college. And I think
Speaker 1: it's possible to begin to see a pattern in those
Speaker 1: kinds of desires, and you begin to see the kinds
Speaker 1: of desires that you want to feed and with perspective,
Speaker 1: and I look back on my life and I I
Speaker 1: see which ones ended up leaving me empty. And when
Speaker 1: I see those arising in me again today, I know
Speaker 1: that those are the kinds of desires that I want
Speaker 1: to starve. So in a way, doing that, let's call
Speaker 1: it a history of our desires, sort of a narrative
Speaker 1: psychological narrative psychology gives us a hermoneutic an interpretive key
Speaker 1: to understand a little bit better what's going on inside
Speaker 1: of us, to be able to kind of spot it
Speaker 1: before it metastasizes and grows into this overwhelming desire, because
Speaker 1: there are some that we need to just pivot from
Speaker 1: and and realize, you know, what I do want this,
Speaker 1: but not everything I want is necessarily going to make
Speaker 1: me happy. And this is just a fun amount of realization.
Speaker 1: I think there's a typical attitude that people want what
Speaker 1: they want, and whatever they want is fine, what's true,
Speaker 1: but not everything we want, not everything we desire, is
Speaker 1: going to be good for us. And you know, we
Speaker 1: have to have the self reflection to to to recognize
Speaker 1: that and to not convince ourselves in the rightness, you know,
Speaker 1: of our own desires, where we did we justify everything
Speaker 1: that we want that you know, we're really good at
Speaker 1: justifying what we want and pursuing it right. Strength of
Speaker 1: desire does not equate to the value of that desire.
Speaker 1: As a former heroin addict, I obviously took that to
Speaker 1: a far extreme, but I mean, boy, did I want it.
Speaker 1: You know, I wanted it to the extent that I
Speaker 1: was willing to burn everything in my life down. Obviously,
Speaker 1: it's easy to see how destructive that was, but so
Speaker 1: many things in life. I think strength of desire is
Speaker 1: really confused for the right thing to want, or that
Speaker 1: it's sort of as we said earlier, that it's who
Speaker 1: I am. You know, it's intrinsic to me. I feel
Speaker 1: it so strongly it must be who I am, and
Speaker 1: that's just not the case. A question for you is
Speaker 1: how does this idea of thick desire correlate to the
Speaker 1: idea of having values? Are they aligned? Are they similar?
Speaker 1: Are they the same? You know, because one of the
Speaker 1: things that say something like acceptance and commitment therapy talks about,
Speaker 1: which is is a type of therapy I think is
Speaker 1: as a brilliant type is you find out what you
Speaker 1: value and then you commit your life to it. You know,
Speaker 1: So this sounds similar. Are those saying the same thing?
Speaker 1: There's a paradox here. And the fundamental question is do
Speaker 1: we desire what we value or do we value what
Speaker 1: we desire? And I think that it's an iterative process
Speaker 1: because I think it's very important to step back and
Speaker 1: establish values, and not just values, but a hierarchy of values.
Speaker 1: And I talked about that in the book, and some
Speaker 1: of those values should be objective if you believe in
Speaker 1: objective values, right, things like beauty and truth that are
Speaker 1: not merely determined through you know, sort of cultural circumstances.
Speaker 1: You know, step back because that's solid ground. But if
Speaker 1: I would have done that when I is eighteen, the
Speaker 1: values that I would have chosen would have been different
Speaker 1: than the values that I that I have today. There's
Speaker 1: an iterative process where if we just value what we desire,
Speaker 1: then we get ourselves into big trouble. That's like the
Speaker 1: default mode, right, Like we we we desire things, therefore
Speaker 1: we value them if we're able to step back a
Speaker 1: little bit and establish like concrete values that are not
Speaker 1: merely the product of our mimetic desire of the culture
Speaker 1: of what other people are are showing us as valuable. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: a lot of my values are simply not aligned with
Speaker 1: what I see in the world, and it's taken me
Speaker 1: a long time to arrive at those values. And that
Speaker 1: is a way of being a little bit more anti memetic.
Speaker 1: Like I I have these values, my understanding of them
Speaker 1: might change over the next decade A will, for sure,
Speaker 1: but at least I have like some solid ground I
Speaker 1: have a true north, and my desires begin to form
Speaker 1: around my values. Right, I've decided that your respective of
Speaker 1: how I feel right now, I know that one of
Speaker 1: my values is to love and serve my wife and
Speaker 1: my family and take care of my mother and father. Okay,
Speaker 1: who are you who are older right now? And that's
Speaker 1: that's a responsibility and duty that I feel like I have.
Speaker 1: I might not wake up every morning and feel like
Speaker 1: I want to do that, but I know that that's
Speaker 1: a desire that I want to feed. So this is
Speaker 1: an example of my values that i've I feel pretty
Speaker 1: confident in and my desires then are formed around those values.
Speaker 1: And if there's a misalignment there that you know, we
Speaker 1: all have our days, but you know, if if I
Speaker 1: find myself with a real misalignment, that I need to
Speaker 1: figure out what the heck is going on. And I
Speaker 1: think the corollary to that is to sometimes remember the desire.
Speaker 1: So as you talk about taking care of parents, right,
Speaker 1: I'm in that stage of life too. Um. My partner
Speaker 1: and I both have mothers who are not well. Father
Speaker 1: is not well, and so a lot of our time
Speaker 1: goes into that. And you know, when I find myself
Speaker 1: and listeners of the show. I've heard me talk about
Speaker 1: this before. When I find myself in the mode of
Speaker 1: I have to do this, I kind of get, well,
Speaker 1: I don't like it when I stop and I go,
Speaker 1: oh wait a second, I have a value of doing this,
Speaker 1: and thus I want to do it because it's important
Speaker 1: to me. Then it reorients me towards the whole experience,
Speaker 1: you know, So sort of going back and reflecting on
Speaker 1: the fact that I do want to do this. It
Speaker 1: is a want, it is a desire of mine. And
Speaker 1: I love what you said about sort of this hierarchy
Speaker 1: of values or desires, because I think that's another piece
Speaker 1: that is so challenging to work through, is what do
Speaker 1: I want when the number of things I can actually
Speaker 1: have or devote time too is very limited? Right? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, the hierarchy is important because our values sometimes
Speaker 1: come into conflict with one another, and if there's no hierarchy,
Speaker 1: then how do you choose And the most me medic
Speaker 1: value at the time typically wins out, you know, So,
Speaker 1: like to give you an example, the thing that provokes
Speaker 1: the strongest desire is that what you mean by that
Speaker 1: exactly exactly the thing that provokes the strongest desire, and
Speaker 1: that could be determined by like just what I saw
Speaker 1: on the news that morning, you know, and that desire
Speaker 1: could change tomorrow. So we have to have a bit
Speaker 1: more grounding than that. I mean, just to give you
Speaker 1: an example, you know this, this really happened to me.
Speaker 1: You know, my my father is Alzheimer's and you know,
Speaker 1: neither one of my parents are doing that well. And
Speaker 1: you know, something came up. One of my parents was
Speaker 1: in the hospital. I'm an only child, and one of
Speaker 1: my good good friends at a bachelor party in Vegas.
Speaker 1: You know, so both values, right, take care of my parents,
Speaker 1: like love my friends, want to be there for my friends.
Speaker 1: But it is pretty clear which one went out for
Speaker 1: me in the hierarchy of values. Right, It wasn't that
Speaker 1: hard of a decision to make. But if I hadn't
Speaker 1: established that in my mind, that could have really been
Speaker 1: a difficult situation. Right, how do I make it to
Speaker 1: Michigan and out to Vegas and back to Michigan and
Speaker 1: forty eight hours? And you know I I decided to
Speaker 1: go to Michigan and take care of my parents. But
Speaker 1: things like that happen all the time. That happen in
Speaker 1: companies where people have different ideas of which of the
Speaker 1: company values are more important than others, and everybody could
Speaker 1: have a different idea of which ones are more important,
Speaker 1: and then this is where problems happen. Ye I feel
Speaker 1: you on the parents thing. My father has Alzheimer's and
Speaker 1: my partner's mother has Alzheimer's, and so we're deep in
Speaker 1: that world. I feel you. It's a brutal disease, you know.
Speaker 1: And there are times, I mean speaking about desires, you know,
Speaker 1: there are times somebody who has Alzheimer's, you know, it's heartbreaking,
Speaker 1: and you know it's I don't necessarily always want to
Speaker 1: hang out with my dad for a couple of hours,
Speaker 1: you know, because he asked me the same question, you know,
Speaker 1: D and twenty times right, and uh, you know, it
Speaker 1: can get exasperating and exhausting, you know. And you know
Speaker 1: it's in a few years now and I've learned to
Speaker 1: want to spend time with him more than I did
Speaker 1: in the beginning in a certain sense. I've learned new
Speaker 1: ways of loving him, new ways of spending time. It's
Speaker 1: been a process, you know. All I want to say
Speaker 1: is like it's tough. Thank god. It sounds like we
Speaker 1: both have help. I have this little will pivot I
Speaker 1: do with myself and with coaching clients, and for some
Speaker 1: people it really makes a difference. In other people, it's
Speaker 1: just semantics, but it really is like what you were
Speaker 1: just saying, you know, about going to be with your dad,
Speaker 1: and we'll find ourselves saying like I don't want to.
Speaker 1: I don't want to, you know, And for me, I
Speaker 1: just sort of will do a quick connection back to
Speaker 1: what matters, and I'll go, oh, I do want to,
Speaker 1: I just don't feel like it. And for me, that
Speaker 1: pivot all of a sudden sort of separates for me
Speaker 1: my values, what I want most from my mood. Once
Speaker 1: I make that separation, it's easier for me. I go oh,
Speaker 1: I don't feel like it in two hours, I might
Speaker 1: feel like it in two hours after that, I might
Speaker 1: not feel like it. Like that's constantly changing my moods.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm hungry, so I feel like it. I
Speaker 1: recognize the changing nous that I don't want to build
Speaker 1: my life on my mood. I've done that before. I
Speaker 1: know it's a disaster. So that pivot from you know,
Speaker 1: sort of I don't want to to, I do want to,
Speaker 1: but I don't feel like it is often a powerful Yeah,
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree more so, sort of along this idea
Speaker 1: of hierarchy of wants or hierarchy of values. You have
Speaker 1: a section in the book where you talk about stalking
Speaker 1: your greatest desire. When you find it, let all of
Speaker 1: your lesser desires be transformed so they serve the greatest one.
Speaker 1: Say a little bit more about that. So this is
Speaker 1: directly related to the hierarchy of values. And you know,
Speaker 1: I believe I have a purpose and and that everybody
Speaker 1: has a has a mission, something unique to them because
Speaker 1: of the circumstances that you know, you're you're born into
Speaker 1: and and your family and the unique situation that each
Speaker 1: one of us is in in life. We have a
Speaker 1: perspective that nobody else has, which gives us the ability
Speaker 1: to to do something you know, truly unique, or communicate something.
Speaker 1: And I think that you know part one of the
Speaker 1: purpose of life, you know, part of it is trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what that unique thing is. And one
Speaker 1: of the ways to build a hierarchy of value, use
Speaker 1: and desires is to understand your mission or your purpose
Speaker 1: or your or your vocation. So knowing what it is
Speaker 1: and This goes back to that layer that I spoke
Speaker 1: about in the very beginning with the fable. If I
Speaker 1: know what that is, I'm able to evaluate the various
Speaker 1: desires that I have and see whether they take me
Speaker 1: closer or further away from whatever that mission is, that
Speaker 1: thing that I feel that I'm supposed to do, that
Speaker 1: I'm called to do and without sort of an ultimate purpose,
Speaker 1: that is a value first of all, you know, and
Speaker 1: and and it's it's the most important one in my opinion,
Speaker 1: you know, what is it that I'm meant to be
Speaker 1: doing here? What am I put here to do? And
Speaker 1: all of the other desires kind of are are scene
Speaker 1: in the light of that one, and and and sort
Speaker 1: of serve that one in some way. So thinking about
Speaker 1: you know, just a basic way to just evaluate them,
Speaker 1: you know, like, is this desire that I have to
Speaker 1: you know, travel around the world over the next year
Speaker 1: because I'm so anty I've been locked up in my house?
Speaker 1: Is that desire in any way like furthering sort of
Speaker 1: what I feel to be like my mission and my
Speaker 1: vocation in life. And it makes it a lot easier
Speaker 1: to evaluate in that in that light, right, So I
Speaker 1: think that when you find your mission, your purpose. I
Speaker 1: call that in the book your single greatest desire. All
Speaker 1: of the other desires begin to take shape around it
Speaker 1: and hopefully sort of fit into an ecology of desire
Speaker 1: in some respect. One of the ways that you talk
Speaker 1: about getting clearer on these thicker desires. You sort of
Speaker 1: reference this a little bit earlier, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: put a slightly finer point on it, which is what
Speaker 1: you call a fulfillment story. Say a little bit more
Speaker 1: about what a fulfillment story is and what are the
Speaker 1: key pieces to have in one. A fulfillment story is
Speaker 1: simply you recounting a story, preferably to somebody else, because
Speaker 1: there's the element of this that's diological and are personal,
Speaker 1: and there's no substitute for communicating to another human being
Speaker 1: and having that person deeply listened to you and then
Speaker 1: be in dialogue with you. It's more powerful if if
Speaker 1: you do this exercise that I'm describing with another person
Speaker 1: and then they can do it back to you. So
Speaker 1: it's you communicating a story about a time in your
Speaker 1: life when you feel like you took some action and
Speaker 1: you accomplished something. You did it well, you did it
Speaker 1: with excellence, and most importantly, it brought you a deep
Speaker 1: sense of satisfaction and fulfillment that lasted. Okay, that that endured,
Speaker 1: and this, that final point is the most important point.
Speaker 1: So it gave you some enduring satisfaction and joy to
Speaker 1: the point where if you think about whatever that thing
Speaker 1: is that you did today, even if it was twenty
Speaker 1: years ago, you rekindle that sense of satisfaction and enjoy
Speaker 1: just telling the story. Many of us have forgotten some
Speaker 1: of those times, and part of the beauty of the
Speaker 1: exercise is drumming them up right, like these forgotten memories,
Speaker 1: these forgotten experiences, and sharing them with another person. You know,
Speaker 1: until I was thirty years old, nobody had ever asked
Speaker 1: me to share one of these kind of stories. So
Speaker 1: I had worked in a few different companies, nobody had
Speaker 1: ever asked me, Hey, Luke, tell me about a time
Speaker 1: in your life when you undertook some action and it
Speaker 1: was incredibly fulfilling to you. It seems to be something
Speaker 1: that's very important for people to know. I mean, because
Speaker 1: it it expresses something that's like essential to understanding who
Speaker 1: I am. You can understand that I'm from Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Speaker 1: That my favorite pasta is what my favorite sports teams are.
Speaker 1: All of those things do not communicate to you anything
Speaker 1: essential about and unique to me. You know, a lot
Speaker 1: of people are you know, fans of the same football
Speaker 1: team and like the same pasta. But the fulfillment story
Speaker 1: communicates something personal and something essential that none of those
Speaker 1: attributes can never communicate. And I think that's incredibly important
Speaker 1: for us to understand about ourselves, in terms of understanding
Speaker 1: our essence, our thick desires, and who we are. And
Speaker 1: it's important for other people to understand that about us too.
Speaker 1: You know, how beautiful would it be to like work
Speaker 1: in a company um where people knew this kind of
Speaker 1: thing about the people that they work with. UM. So
Speaker 1: there's a level of intimacy involved in that which I've
Speaker 1: found incredibly powerful. And these fulfillment stories, what I call
Speaker 1: fulfillment stories, they don't have to be a story about
Speaker 1: you doing anything particularly impressive to anybody else but you.
Speaker 1: That's part of why this is such a personal exercise.
Speaker 1: You don't have to have, you know, knock some work
Speaker 1: presentation out of the park. It could just be, you know,
Speaker 1: I learned how to make a fantastic homemade you know, pizza,
Speaker 1: The key is understand what it is about these fulfillment stories.
Speaker 1: And if you find five, six, seven of these kinds
Speaker 1: of stories from from our lives, a pattern tends to
Speaker 1: emerge and you begin to see, well, so what is
Speaker 1: it specifically about these kinds of things that are so
Speaker 1: satisfying to me? Three different people could have the same
Speaker 1: experience from the outside looking in one a state championship
Speaker 1: in their high school sport or something like that. But
Speaker 1: those three people could find the satisfaction from that accomplishment
Speaker 1: could come from three totally separate things, right, so you know,
Speaker 1: for one of them it could be their individual performance,
Speaker 1: the other one it could be the camaraderie that was
Speaker 1: formed in the locker room. And you know that the
Speaker 1: third one could have found so much satisfaction in the
Speaker 1: little sort of nudge that you know they gave a
Speaker 1: teammate at a critical moment in the game. So three
Speaker 1: different things. Now, so it's not the win that was important,
Speaker 1: it's why. And understanding the why is for me key
Speaker 1: to opening up a world of understanding ourselves and the
Speaker 1: people that we are with better. And it's a clue
Speaker 1: to what some of those stick desires might be. I
Speaker 1: found two parts of that section really interesting. One was,
Speaker 1: as you said, doing this in dialogue with somebody else,
Speaker 1: how important that is, because most of the time when
Speaker 1: we take on activities of this sort, we're off doing
Speaker 1: it on our own, writing in a journal, filling out
Speaker 1: a form. You know, there's a lot of values and
Speaker 1: desire exercises, but they tend to be done by ourselves.
Speaker 1: So that was the first thing I thought was really
Speaker 1: interesting about this idea of a fulfillment story is as
Speaker 1: you said, how important the dialogue element is. The second
Speaker 1: thing I found interesting was you said, once you started
Speaker 1: telling them, you started remembering a whole bunch of other ones.
Speaker 1: And my initial thought when I was reading that was like,
Speaker 1: I think I can think of like one, which I'm
Speaker 1: sure it's not true. And so I found it really
Speaker 1: interesting to think that if I embarked on this process,
Speaker 1: more would start to come up. You said, as you
Speaker 1: did it, it was just like boom boom. They just
Speaker 1: kept showing up to you, you know, once you sort
Speaker 1: of understood the pattern, sure, and and it's true. And
Speaker 1: you know, that's why the challenge I kind of issue
Speaker 1: two readers is try because the sort of the nature
Speaker 1: of the memory is that you know, one thing can
Speaker 1: kind of lead to another. And it's also why the
Speaker 1: partner is really important, why being able to communicate this
Speaker 1: to somebody who's truly listening is really important, and that's
Speaker 1: a key is just as much an exercise and listening
Speaker 1: as it is in telling the stories, because if you
Speaker 1: find somebody who's a good partner to be having this
Speaker 1: conversation with, they will hear and see things in the
Speaker 1: stories that you might not even realize. You know, they
Speaker 1: might notice that you continue to use certain kinds of
Speaker 1: verbs as you're telling the story. You know, the verb
Speaker 1: might be I organized or I took control of this thing,
Speaker 1: ing um, and it's like, well, that's interesting. It seems
Speaker 1: like the kinds of action that you're describing that seems
Speaker 1: to be so satisfying to you is bringing order to chaos.
Speaker 1: Or you know, a good listener will this pick up
Speaker 1: on little things like that, you know, and then ask
Speaker 1: the right questions to draw out more. I find, as
Speaker 1: human beings, certain people can close us up and other
Speaker 1: people can open us up. You know, when you're sort
Speaker 1: of in front of somebody that you don't trust or
Speaker 1: that doesn't make you feel like you want to speak
Speaker 1: to them, you just shut down and you don't reveal
Speaker 1: a lot about yourself. On the flip side, there are
Speaker 1: some people that you know that because they they seem
Speaker 1: to be you know, approaching us within love and compassion
Speaker 1: and understanding makes us want to communicate even more. And
Speaker 1: the right interlocutor in this exercise is I think critical
Speaker 1: for bringing out the second and third and fourth and
Speaker 1: fifth stories. We have that effect on one another in
Speaker 1: the right context, So choose your conversation partner carefully. Having
Speaker 1: this sort of conversation with another person. Points to another
Speaker 1: thing you say late in the book, which is try
Speaker 1: and live as if you have a responsibility for what
Speaker 1: other people want. Say more about that just speaks to
Speaker 1: the social nature of our desires and what it means
Speaker 1: to be human. I think we live in a very
Speaker 1: individualistic age where you know, if somebody has chosen a
Speaker 1: path that you know we never would have chosen, or
Speaker 1: you know, has voted for a candidate that we wouldn't
Speaker 1: vote for, or has ideas or is hostile to something
Speaker 1: that's important to us, we often don't realize the very
Speaker 1: role that we ourselves had to play in them arriving
Speaker 1: at that point and especially people that are close to
Speaker 1: us in our lives, right, I don't I don't mean
Speaker 1: to say that we're responsible for what everybody else wants.
Speaker 1: I mean to say that we're social. We are in
Speaker 1: some sense our brothers keeper and our sister's keeper, and
Speaker 1: we have a responsibility to other people rather than just
Speaker 1: seeing them as different or other or threats, as if
Speaker 1: they are walking their path on their own, because nobody is.
Speaker 1: And you know, the idea is derivative from C. S. Lewis,
Speaker 1: who wrote about this in an essay of his called
Speaker 1: The Weight of Glory, and he just says, you know,
Speaker 1: think of everybody that you encounters, you know, as having
Speaker 1: this responsibility. There's no neutral encounter with another human being.
Speaker 1: There's no such thing as a neutral encounter, even the
Speaker 1: small ones like you know, the people that are in
Speaker 1: the self checkout section of the grocery store that I
Speaker 1: go to practically every day. They've been there since the
Speaker 1: start of the pandemic. One particular guys always there, you know,
Speaker 1: seeing myself as having a responsibility to you know, affect
Speaker 1: him in a positive way. You try to make him
Speaker 1: laugh when I go there, because I know, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of people are not in the best mood
Speaker 1: when they're trying to get through the line at the
Speaker 1: self checkout place right, trying to just it's kind of
Speaker 1: a habit of mind, a habit of spirit of just
Speaker 1: realizing that I could make in that very encounter make
Speaker 1: him sort of completely effect his mood for sure, but
Speaker 1: even his desire to serve other people in a way. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is incredibly important when it comes to
Speaker 1: our families and our friends, and I just think thinking
Speaker 1: of ourselves is not wholly cut off or independent from
Speaker 1: the way that other people are or think, and thinking
Speaker 1: of ourselves as having some degree of responsibility for that
Speaker 1: based on the way that we relate to them has
Speaker 1: been important for me in my life. And sort of
Speaker 1: stepping back and before I label anybody anything, thinking about, well,
Speaker 1: what role do I have to play? How can I
Speaker 1: positively enter into this relationship so that both of us
Speaker 1: come away a little bit better than we started. I
Speaker 1: love that idea of no neutral interaction with another person.
Speaker 1: That's a really beautiful idea. You thank you well, Luke.
Speaker 1: You and I are at the end of our time here.
Speaker 1: We're going to continue in the post show conversation where
Speaker 1: we are going to talk about the difference between calculating
Speaker 1: thought and meditative thought. And by meditative in this case,
Speaker 1: we don't mean what we normally think of as meditating.
Speaker 1: But I found this a really great part of the book,
Speaker 1: Calculating Thought meditative thought. We'll talk about that in the
Speaker 1: post show conversation listeners. You can get access to that
Speaker 1: as well as ad free episodes, other post show conversations,
Speaker 1: a special episode I do every week called Teaching Song
Speaker 1: and a Poem and the joy of supporting something that
Speaker 1: matters to you by going to One you Feed dot
Speaker 1: net slash join Luke, Thanks again so much for coming on.
Speaker 1: I have really enjoyed this conversation and I really enjoyed
Speaker 1: the book. Thanks so much for having me on. Eric,
Speaker 1: I feel the same. Thank you, yea. If what you
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