The clothing, the furniture, the library, the vocabulary, the exchange of high-level abstract ideas. This video represents everything that I always wished for. It is such a strange thing that I will never be able to have it because I was born in the wrong geographical area filled with disease, unemployment and a general dismissal of anything cerebral. Moral of the story? Never forget your blessings and be grateful!
Those are all excuses. People have come from far less and achieved far more. You can have what you want if you set a clear, solid vision and work towards it, but most people never set a solid anything.
the whole format of this lecture is another form of status signaling etc - a more refined form of mimesis! the suits the backdrop, the way they speak, the haircuts, etc! honestly, it’s great. when i was in college my problem wasn’t the mimesis itself, but the fact that people werent imitating the right stuff. now here are some actual smart, relatively independent-thinking people imitating the philosophy elites of the past. which is awesome, i mean that, but its not a transcending of mimetic desire, rather we like it because its a preferable type of person to imitate!
@@bi.johnathan Science existed DESPITE Christianity - take Galileo as an example - Girard was just flat out wrong at the idea that Christianity enabled science.
@@ryepooh5052 That's replacing one stereotype with another. They would do better dressing in an authentic way. They're cosplaying in this video on a naive, out-dated stereotype. They're trying to imitate a style that they're not capable of pulling off and it's just distracting. That's the naivety: dressing up for a social role they don't have. Not a damning criticism - the content of the video is fine - it's just the second-hand embarrassment. You just think stop playing dress-up. And change the fucking font at the beginning.
The internet is coming to life. The signal is starting to circumambulate and separate itself from all the noise for those who earnestly seek. It’s an incredible time to be alive.
Digging, digging, digging for answers…. Oh, what’s this? I see a vein….wait, omg! It’s the mother load!!! Thanks for this. Presenting it in such a concise and enjoyable way. Very much looking forward to the rest of the series.
Studying Girard made me see how much the drive for prestige shapes our ambitions. Ever since we finished this lecture, I’ve been asking myself: “What opportunities can’t I see because they’re not prestigious enough?” The very best opportunities are rarely prestigious when there’s big money to be made with them. In my experience, the lust for prestige is the strongest amongst high-status people. When looking for jobs, children from high-status families tend to value prestige the most. In another world, these people would take bets on exciting, but non-prestigious projects with big upside. My friend Justin Murphy writes: "You don't really outperform your peers with quality per se, you outperform your peers by finding underpriced quality that others don’t judge to be valuable.” Everybody wants to be high status. But despite the financial rewards, few people are willing to work on low-status projects, even if they have the potential to become high-status. Most of the people who are jumping into Bitcoin now weren’t willing to commit a few years ago, back when people scoffed at the idea of digital money. Only after reading Rene Girard did I realize the dangers of chasing too much prestige. The worst rivalries, he said, come when people aren’t competing for a physical object. Duels and comment thread wars come to mind. To that end, it’s no coincidence that the Latin word for prestige is praestigiae, which signifies an illusion or mirage. The world is filled with under-priced opportunities that are only available to people who are comfortable with promising, but low-status projects. Beware of chasing prestige.
Nothing to advertise in the background. The lecturer actually knows what he is talking about and the listener is not just listening, he is absorbing. You could tell the originality of the piece when the speaker tells the moderator that though he got all the things right about his career achievements, but he missed his failures. Including them is important as he attributes to where he is today because of them only. An amazing discourse on Rene Girard's school of thought. You guys are doing a great service to the society.
Mimetics: learning about the theory for the first time and finding this lecture which is only a few months old. Thank you for this, it’s possibly the most important podcast I’ve listened to in my life.
That was a fascinating introduction to your lectures about Girard's work. Perfect presentation, looking forward for the next chapter to unravel. I'm hooked.
Honestly the most underrated philosopher ever. Reading him actually changed my life, it convinced me that Christanity was worth actually considering and since then I've converted. But not just that, he also made me aware the origin of my desires, then showed me Christ as the solution to them.
this right here, is the content i want to see in youtube, educational, well made, entertaining, engaging, pls gents keep doing the great work you are doing.
Wow, this is the greatest lecture I've ever had on youtube. Thank you Jonathan for this wonderful content. The buddha who founded Buddhism, once said " The root of suffering is attachment (desire)". We will suffer from desire or attachment when we lose or can not attain it. So the Buddha believed we should get rid of everything of attachment or desire to escape from suffering. Girard pointed out our tendency of metaphysical desire to intimate other people or want what people want. And It's strengthened by other people's desires. I believe this might be a problem that should be solved by Buddhism.
To be notified of future lectures, essays, and book reviews, subscribe to my newsletter: johnathanbi.com/newsletter Full transcript: johnathanbi.com/interpreting-girard-lecture-i-transcript
Just discovered this. Brilliant, brilliant. Before now, I’ve been vaguely familiar with Girard. This conversation has been far more enlightening and profound. On to the next videos. Great production and suits, gentlemen👌🏽.
Took a few days to get through this. Love the continued meddling you two do through Girard on my established beliefs. For those who are having trouble completing this but want to (and it’s worthwhile, as there are so many gems), I would follow David Perell’s newsletter first - it’s only because I’m already hooked that I know there’s a payoff. It’s much more accessible, and a stepping stone to diving deep. Thank you for getting this out, and looking forward to more.
@@bi.johnathan lemme say that I completely agree with Shikhar and also happen to be a filmmaker who specializes in post production and I would very much love to pitch in and help get this off the ground.
Johnathan you've done a brilliant job and I'm glad to see the many positive responses. I've been reading Girard for over 20 years and wrote the book "Compassion Or Apocalypse: A Comprehensible Guide to the Thought of René Girard." I would love to connect with you sometime. Well done.
@@COFFEEWITHBUDDHA I will pass the suggestion for audiobook on to the publisher. Thanks. Hope you find lots of great stuff to keep you occupied in the meantime.
@@Sll8mag3 there are a lot of apps that that can do it automatically now. Before this recent AI wave the last few months they were really robotic sounding. But there is a new one that can listen to your voice for a minute or two, and then it can automatically copy your voice and play the rest of the book with your voice automatically. It is not perfect, but it is close and the longer you speak the better it will fake your voice for the rest of the book.
Well done David and Jonathan-you’ve produced a cracking lecture on Girard! It’s a great act of compassion and generosity to raise general awareness to the urgent need for all of us to begin “untangling from the mimetic web.” This awesome introductory lecture is a fitting culmination to David’s outstanding and insightful essay on the theology of Peter Thiel-which I found startling at the time, since his excellent book “Zero to One” gives no hint of his Girardian conceptual foundation. Although Jonathan’s lecture and David’s comments are rigorous and scholarly, it felt authentic and poignant to listen to you both offer personal testimony to the difficulties, even anguish, which brought you to Girard’s work-those personal comments resonate as such a profound critique of the elite world in which we now live: “We had to lie to ourselves . . . (about) this path of prestige . . . What was so existentially depressing was not the presence of wrong . . . but the absence of right. Even the victories felt so hollow and meaningless . . . because they were not the result of our own genuine desire . . . They were fundamentally plagued with the same type of existential problems: “make money you don’t need to buy things you don’t want to impress people you don’t like.’ The same despair and hollowness . . . but even worse.” The courage you both showed in your own life journeys in order to reject the delusion of mimetic desire and to be honest-and to begin to live differently-and now to share what you know with the world, affirms the truth of Leonard Cohen’s insight “There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.” Leonard of course is himself a singer of mimetic desire. That’s not my insight, but that of my mentor Geoffrey Green, who studied with Girard at Buffalo. Girard was one of the readers of Geoffrey’s PhD thesis, and they stayed in contact for the rest of Girard’s life. Geoffrey points out that Leonard’s songs are full of the triangle of mimetic desire--I could offer many examples but this comment is too short. Your lecture is an outstanding, in-depth introduction to ideas that are urgently important for our world-and for what’s coming next, which we all feel, with uneasiness and growing alarm-but without being able to identify what, exactly, is coming. You both are providing the Girardian tools to discern the general form of what’s coming--even though we can't predict it's exact manifestation and specific expression: mimetic envy and desire gaining momentum through digital-enabled media into a vast contagion before violently manifesting in (a perhaps global) scapegoat event. The last fifteen minutes of your lecture in which you discuss the four takeaways of truth, love, innovation and violence is absolutely brilliant. I so look forward to Jonathan's full discussion of these insights in subsequent lectures. Jonathan talks about Girard’s thought being “cheap” in a good sense, and compares the power of Girard’s idea of mimetic desire to Freud’s notion of the Oedipus Complex and shows how much more profound and powerful mimetic desire is. I came to Nietzsche long before Girard and had a similar realization in relation to Nietzsche’s idea of ressentiment, which is such a feature of our world-and I too realized that Girard’s idea of mimetic desire and mimetic contagion is a much deeper and more profound explanation than Nietzsche's insight. Jonathan may already be preparing to go there in the next lectures in the series, but may I suggest that Girard’s idea of mimetic desire is just as fundamental an explanation for human psychological, social and political development as natural selection is for evolutionary biology? I realize there are many lectures to come, and I hope that you both explore the Girardian implications of mimetic desire as it’s now manifesting in NGOs, philanthropic foundations, the widows and ex-wives of billionaires deceitfully mimicking the appearance of capitalist structures while pouring huge resources into pursuing their own personal mimetic status-seeking instead of actually improving general wellbeing. Their mimetic behaviour is actually enflaming the conflagration of popular mimetic resentment in our society already becoming incandescent (literally-as in the summer of 2020-and figuratively) through identity politics and its many metasizations. The transfer of wealth from John Heinz to John Kerry, which required the creation of a multi-generation family dynasty, Heinz’s second marriage to a beautiful expatriate Leftie wife, a tragic plane crash, and her subsequent status-seeking marriage to the politician John Kerry, is now a routine paradigm that can happen in one or two steps, facilitated by the magic of Donor Advised Trusts and other modern instruments of civilizational self-destruction as the oligarchs in our master class hurry us all towards apocalypse. I hope in future lectures Jonathan discusses how neuroscience also strongly affirms the Girardian focus on human sociality in ways to complex and wonderful to mention in this comment, but I hope Jonathan delves into the neuroscience and the latest developments in evolutionary biology emphasizing mothering and socialization generally as the key to human evolution. Another deep topic for Girardian analysis is economics of course-the science of allocating a society’s resources in the context of limitless human desire-a fundamental field for Girardian analysis, and I hope Jonathan and David follow this up based on your own knowledge and experiences in FinTech and Silicon Valley. Certainly David’s insight that many entrepreneurs he knows were criminals in high school is very true and, as Jonathan says, a testament to the miracle of how capitalism channels aggressive, competitive mimetic desire into activity that has improved general wellbeing so such an extraordinary degree. Your lecture series is an urgently necessary antidote to the increasingly frightening consequences of the over-production of pseudo-elites in our time, who are anointed only by mimetic consensus. Our Master Class, oblivious to the Girardian dynamics you have revealed so clearly in this first lecture, are mimicking the original capitalist and Constitutional processes of the American State-which in their period of great flourishing both created unprecedented virtue and unimaginable benefits to humanity through the Girardian ratchet mechanisms of channeling mimetic desire and competition. Only now, unconsciously in the grip of white-hot mimetic contagion, our Master Class is performing these functions in destructive ways that are intensifying mimetic desires and resentment and generating increasing violence and escalating an emerging popular longing to identify and murder-and then, yes, perhaps deify-a scapegoat or class of scapegoats, along with the millions of others who will be inexorably sucked into what may be the coming Great Terror of the 21st Century.
Thanks for the incredibly detailed comment here Christopher and my apologies for being too busy to muster an equally thoughtful response in reply. We've filmed all 7 lectures already but you managed to anticipate a lot of what is to come: the neuroscience of mimesis (mirror neurons), an elaboration on the forces of innovation, truth, love, and violence, etc. I look forward to hearing your comments on the rest of this series.
A simpler explanation of the modern instability would be that the concentration of power into fewer hands while the planet is dying within a couple decades might be causing common people to be just a little afraid that our ruling class doesn’t care much for reality.
"What makes us unique to Girard, is not our ability to determine truth, but our capacity to believe in lies, in so far as others around us do as well." Love it, keep it up guys.
When humans started to talk, lies were inherent in language as language has no limits. Religion was the way to control language by deciding which lies to adhere to (that's what believing means).
Kudos! This is an awesome digested Girard intro. I must admit that I had some cognitive dissonance between the wisdom of the content and the boyish demeanor of the speakers. So I just listened. Awesome work guys!!
This was a very good lecture, Thank you! I have watched and summarized on paper the first lecture and already ordered the books from Girard quoted in this lecture,....looking forward to the next lectures...
Only been exposed to Girard through Luke Burgis’ Wanting (which I loved). Found your introduction thoroughly fascinating and engrossing, and looking forward to the next session. Also, thanks for the transcript link. Rgds Shridhar
“The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.” I think this quote from Peter Thiel captured your point on the Negative Mimesis
Last night, I came across some high-value content about higher men; Master v Slave. I'm now totally captivated by Jonathan's philosophy and ideas as he delves into different theories of philosophy.
David you are doing great service. I am just 5 mins into it and hooked on to your comforting voice , the scholarly background. Can't wait to complete it in full. Btw any plans to have similiar series on other philosophers , say Schopanhauer ?
Johnathan, you remind me so much of Professor Michael Sugrue. This is a great compliment. Girard has been difficult to digest. I’ve read Rousseau, Ellul, Debord, Baudrillard, and others, with success, I look forward to adding Girard to that list.
@@DavidPerellChannel It absolutely comes through. I first listened to Bi on Modern Wisdom and at times he was channeling Sugrue convincingly. The diction, annunciation, and flow are unmistakable. Looking forward to the rest of the series!
Hey Johnathan. Great job to you and David on this series. I did a Masters thesis years ago comparing the works of Martin Heidegger and Franz Rosenzweig, and eventually made my way out academia and existential philosophy with only mild case of depression. I mention Rosenzweig's work because I think at some time in the future you might find him illuminating for your ongoing work with Girard. Again, thanks for this series. Echoing another person here, it is a real gem.
Thank you, Johnathan and David. I especially appreciated having a transcript made available. I wonder if mirror neurons represent the neuroanatomical correlate of Girard's idea of mimesis. Hmmm...
This was great. I like you two. I've just started getting into menswear and have started noticing how others dress. I like how you were dressed, even your socks I noticed. Anyway, this was a fascinating lecture; I've never heard of René Girard before, and I intent to listen to the other lectures and read more about Girard's thought.
@@clementinebedsheets3210I'm not preaching against social signaling. In fact, now that I'm dressing nicer, I want people to notice and be encouraged to dress nicer too. Certainly to be an example for my son and to look more like a man pushing 40 than 20. I've already gotten compliments from my wife and from my daughter's day-care worker.
The content is very interesting and I am very happy you spent so much time preparing this. Thank you. I didn't know René Girard but will definitely read more about him now, and I also subscribed to your newsletters. The setup is a bit overdone, I guess it's a style. My biggest complaint would be that the content is mostly read, and it's obvious the interactions are prepared, and polished. When a conversation is faked, it's less compelling, just like a show. It would have worked just as well, and appeared more genuine, if Johnathan was facing the camera and gave a normal lecture as he would do in front of a classroom (us). But I hope you will do more lectures and will certainly read your essays and website.
This is great save one distraction - the apparently un-self-aware irony of presenting this in a highly polished format, screen filled with status symbols, projecting the social queues of erudition. One might suggest that this format is designed to make the content appealing and increase the reach (or even specifically target those who need the message most), however, if this irony is left unaddressed, it becomes hypocrisy. After writing the above, I have to wonder if I've committed the same offense. Perhaps this disclaimer helps?
This is the first thing that struck me. Mimetic theory fundamentally is that our desires stem from social cues and this presentation is so very mimetic in itself It would be a pleasant Easter egg but it’s worrisome that it seems to be genuinely lost upon our “experts”
Thank you, what a great lecture. I appreciate the time you took to make this happen. You did not have to be that well dressed but you were, you did not have to be in such a nice environment, this could have been two guys talking on a couch while smoking, but you made it nice. A needed break from the attention-seeking paranoia and the quick 5 min. videos in the rest of youtube.
Nice settings and selection of material! Rene Girard may be the most important philosopher of all time because he discovered the antidote to post-modern nihilism using their own methods. We must distribute the antidote.
It’s all just apologetics for quietism and a rationalization of the wealthy oligarchy and the status quo. Rene Girard is a bourgeois class traitor so frightened by conflict he saw as a boy by the Nazi-fascist-capitalist coalition and its violent opposition to the working class communists he chose instead to adopt a philosophy that just gave in to the fascist-capitalist threats from “above” and decry any opposition to them as as “envious” behavior” that could be solved with “proper” spiritual behavior and guidance. It’s traitorous surrender to the worst fascist tendencies that capitalism and the wealthy elite oligarchs hand out in exchange for a quiet job as a spineless “spiritual” guide. Girard came from a terrible time and place. It doesn’t mean we should adopt his “philosophy” today! Class consciousness isn’t “envy”! It’s just sensible; ultimately class consciousness is the source of all justice, both social and economic.
Gosh, love everything you said. I had a boyfriend who study Philosophy and I felt that philosophy is killing him. I agreed what gerard said that there is nothing we can change except withdrawl to preserve ourselves. I think my ex actually done that.
The gestalt here is spot on. Good to see contemporary young people in the US addressing these ideas and not dressed in jeans and hoodies. Thank you. It sets the right tone. I'm afraid our culture is floundering in a pose of perpetual casualness and "whatups," while any serious discussion is shunted to the forgotten back rooms of what once was.
Exceptional way of delivering the information as well as fascinating content. Thank you Jonathan. When are the rest of the lectures are going to be uploaded?
This is great! Only tips I have is have some more short breaks when telling (makes people more attentive to listen) and people prefer lectures who look at them and engages with them instead of looking at each other, feels like we have to listen to a regular conversation.
Thanks, this is very good. Jonathan I read your pdf book from your website, and thought it very interesting. Was wondering if you plan on finishing it, since the end where more of your thoughts come in it seemed not fully fleshed out.
Well, the introduction gave me a strong case of what I learned is negative mimesis from these two rich and fancy men haha. It was initially hard to relate to because I never went to an Ivy League school and haven’t sought prestige in the same way. Somehow we end up asking the same questions though. All that aside this was very interesting and I’m going to watch the series and probably read some Girard. Thank you! Also, I’m from Vancouver too, well, actually, Surrey 😂.
Is the setting and attire for this interview itself evidence of mimesis? Do David and Jonathan really desire to be talking about Girard in a library studio ? That’s where we are trained to think philosophy belongs. The hosts’ suits are reflective of their needs to imitate the archetypes of serious philosophers. Or are we to understand that Johnathan and David have broken free of mimetic desires? That is society would push them to cut this content into 30sec - 3 minute CZcams reels or TikToks. Society would have them engage with the viewer directly and casually. Which are we to believe?
Performativity and Profilicity perfected by pecuniary privilege. Their scripted choreography is a saccharin simulacrum of intellectual conversation. Is it metamodern ironic genius or is it crass cargo cultism? Given their youth I suspect their sincerity is authentic and the hypocrisy is unconscious. They may well be "Don Juans" or they may "authentically" be keen to exist 'in great measure'. Can they (let alone we) even know their 'true' metaphysical desire? The day they grow dreadlocks and talk without an audience is the day they will know how self conscious their profilicity and authenticity runs but we can never know.
The clothing, the furniture, the library, the vocabulary, the exchange of high-level abstract ideas. This video represents everything that I always wished for. It is such a strange thing that I will never be able to have it because I was born in the wrong geographical area filled with disease, unemployment and a general dismissal of anything cerebral. Moral of the story? Never forget your blessings and be grateful!
My deepest sympathy and condolences for being born in California.
Everything you always wished for? Sounds like mimetic desire
@@mcosu1
If I was the only person in the world, would I have desires?
to be honest everything about this video is so gay
Those are all excuses. People have come from far less and achieved far more. You can have what you want if you set a clear, solid vision and work towards it, but most people never set a solid anything.
the whole format of this lecture is another form of status signaling etc - a more refined form of mimesis! the suits the backdrop, the way they speak, the haircuts, etc! honestly, it’s great. when i was in college my problem wasn’t the mimesis itself, but the fact that people werent imitating the right stuff. now here are some actual smart, relatively independent-thinking people imitating the philosophy elites of the past. which is awesome, i mean that, but its not a transcending of mimetic desire, rather we like it because its a preferable type of person to imitate!
This comment is gold. Everyone here should read it.
True it would be much better if they did the interview naked and didn't do their hair.
@@thepotatoistseconded.
@@krishnashukla9154 😮😂😂
what about the analog watches
It's literally absurd that this level of content and production is completely free. Thank you very much, Johnathan! Incredible work!
My pleasure!
@@bi.johnathan Science existed DESPITE Christianity - take Galileo as an example - Girard was just flat out wrong at the idea that Christianity enabled science.
Legit was thinking this exact same thing haha. I'm 25min in and all I'm thinking is what a time to be alive haha
this is start of another scientology. 🤣🤣🤣
Huh
There's an irony that the backdrop and presentation of the speakers is completely focused on signalling status.
Yeah. Out of 2000 students all want to go into the same 4 fields. Finance, tech, law and medicin. And then he created a fin-trch company. 😂
yeah and he actually recognizes this
did you want them to wear michael jordan jerseys and "frick vape" shirts only in small white socks in the back corner alley?
@@ryepooh5052 That's replacing one stereotype with another. They would do better dressing in an authentic way. They're cosplaying in this video on a naive, out-dated stereotype. They're trying to imitate a style that they're not capable of pulling off and it's just distracting. That's the naivety: dressing up for a social role they don't have. Not a damning criticism - the content of the video is fine - it's just the second-hand embarrassment. You just think stop playing dress-up. And change the fucking font at the beginning.
Even having a blank room would be signalling, there is no neutral space or action that can avoid it if I understand this correctly.
I will never understand how fantastic content like this gets less exposure than the unimaginative, from-a-kit, novocaine of mainstream media.
Most adult humans are unfortunately morons.
Mimesis. Mimesis is literally the answer to your question 😂
Because they are both tools. With Shithead socks.
Real eyes realize real lies… calibrate your goggles and you’ll understand there’s only empty suits in this room.
The internet is coming to life. The signal is starting to circumambulate and separate itself from all the noise for those who earnestly seek. It’s an incredible time to be alive.
I’m u II u
I’m II II u II u u I II II u II u I II u u I u u u i
Ughuuhuh
Vvvvvv
Hug II II
Digging, digging, digging for answers…. Oh, what’s this? I see a vein….wait, omg! It’s the mother load!!! Thanks for this. Presenting it in such a concise and enjoyable way. Very much looking forward to the rest of the series.
Well done guys. So much work went into producing this so we can digest the content in a format that's actually entertaining. Kudos to you both
Thanks Eric, we tried!
@@bi.johnathan you got yourself a new subscriber 😊. Keep them coming
Brilliant! So well done! Waiting for lecture 2. You two could fire up any sluggish mind. Thank you so much!!
The wait is over KD :) Lec 2 and 3 are up with more coming in the next two weeks
Studying Girard made me see how much the drive for prestige shapes our ambitions. Ever since we finished this lecture, I’ve been asking myself: “What opportunities can’t I see because they’re not prestigious enough?”
The very best opportunities are rarely prestigious when there’s big money to be made with them. In my experience, the lust for prestige is the strongest amongst high-status people. When looking for jobs, children from high-status families tend to value prestige the most. In another world, these people would take bets on exciting, but non-prestigious projects with big upside.
My friend Justin Murphy writes: "You don't really outperform your peers with quality per se, you outperform your peers by finding underpriced quality that others don’t judge to be valuable.”
Everybody wants to be high status. But despite the financial rewards, few people are willing to work on low-status projects, even if they have the potential to become high-status. Most of the people who are jumping into Bitcoin now weren’t willing to commit a few years ago, back when people scoffed at the idea of digital money.
Only after reading Rene Girard did I realize the dangers of chasing too much prestige. The worst rivalries, he said, come when people aren’t competing for a physical object. Duels and comment thread wars come to mind. To that end, it’s no coincidence that the Latin word for prestige is praestigiae, which signifies an illusion or mirage.
The world is filled with under-priced opportunities that are only available to people who are comfortable with promising, but low-status projects.
Beware of chasing prestige.
Omg everyone should Google David his essays are incredible
Thanks David. Your essays and ideas have always been inspiring. And Justin is a great guy too. The way he links up scriptures with Bitcoin, Ah amazing
"vanity of vanities, all is vanity" - ecclesiastes 1:2
1:26:02
🤌🏼
Thank you for this depth of art you have curated for the general public.
Thank you for this Johnathan and David. I am so happy this exists. I'll watch all the lecture series. Cheers to both of you.
Thanks for engaging with our work Cristine!
This lecture was so compelling that it overshadows the personal quibbles by others on here.
Nothing to advertise in the background. The lecturer actually knows what he is talking about and the listener is not just listening, he is absorbing. You could tell the originality of the piece when the speaker tells the moderator that though he got all the things right about his career achievements, but he missed his failures. Including them is important as he attributes to where he is today because of them only. An amazing discourse on Rene Girard's school of thought. You guys are doing a great service to the society.
Mimetics: learning about the theory for the first time and finding this lecture which is only a few months old.
Thank you for this, it’s possibly the most important podcast I’ve listened to in my life.
Thanks JoJo, the rest of the series is live, hope it doesn't disappoint.
That was a fascinating introduction to your lectures about Girard's work. Perfect presentation, looking forward for the next chapter to unravel. I'm hooked.
Honestly the most underrated philosopher ever. Reading him actually changed my life, it convinced me that Christanity was worth actually considering and since then I've converted. But not just that, he also made me aware the origin of my desires, then showed me Christ as the solution to them.
Stay tuned for Lecture 5, focused on Christianity.
Bravo 👏
He always struck me as only a Christianized version of Sir James George Frazer.
this right here, is the content i want to see in youtube, educational, well made, entertaining, engaging, pls gents keep doing the great work you are doing.
Wow, this is the greatest lecture I've ever had on youtube. Thank you Jonathan for this wonderful content.
The buddha who founded Buddhism, once said " The root of suffering is attachment (desire)".
We will suffer from desire or attachment when we lose or can not attain it. So the Buddha believed we should get rid of everything of attachment or desire to escape from suffering.
Girard pointed out our tendency of metaphysical desire to intimate other people or want what people want. And It's strengthened by other people's desires. I believe this might be a problem that should be solved by Buddhism.
To be notified of future lectures, essays, and book reviews, subscribe to my newsletter: johnathanbi.com/newsletter
Full transcript: johnathanbi.com/interpreting-girard-lecture-i-transcript
Thank you. Enjoyed it very much... Off to lecture two, my hopelessness be the least of my problems
Sounds like a classic Enneagram 3 trajectory, at least as far as I listened. I don't relate.
What are the names of the songs used in these videos?
Just discovered this. Brilliant, brilliant. Before now, I’ve been vaguely familiar with Girard. This conversation has been far more enlightening and profound. On to the next videos. Great production and suits, gentlemen👌🏽.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Took a few days to get through this. Love the continued meddling you two do through Girard on my established beliefs. For those who are having trouble completing this but want to (and it’s worthwhile, as there are so many gems), I would follow David Perell’s newsletter first - it’s only because I’m already hooked that I know there’s a payoff. It’s much more accessible, and a stepping stone to diving deep. Thank you for getting this out, and looking forward to more.
Thanks Nicholas, we are looking forward to releasing the rest of the lectures as well.
@@bi.johnathan Hi when are new lectures coming?
@@dorukdemirtas6074 this month!
I have never seen something like this, brilliantly done. Eagerly waiting for the next set of lectures!
Thanks Shikhar, post production is taking its time but they are coming!
@@bi.johnathan lemme say that I completely agree with Shikhar and also happen to be a filmmaker who specializes in post production and I would very much love to pitch in and help get this off the ground.
*Beauty always carries a cost*
This is one of the best hidden gems of CZcams.
well produced and well scripted. thanks for surfacing an underrated thinker david !
Excellent intro to Girard's thought. Very helpful to my own ongoing integration and practice of his ideas.
Johnathan you've done a brilliant job and I'm glad to see the many positive responses. I've been reading Girard for over 20 years and wrote the book "Compassion Or Apocalypse: A Comprehensible Guide to the Thought of René Girard." I would love to connect with you sometime. Well done.
Thanks for the kind words James!
James, please read or your book to us on video. I’m stuck in the car 2 hours a day commuting to work!
@@COFFEEWITHBUDDHA I will pass the suggestion for audiobook on to the publisher. Thanks. Hope you find lots of great stuff to keep you occupied in the meantime.
@@Sll8mag3 there are a lot of apps that that can do it automatically now. Before this recent AI wave the last few months they were really robotic sounding. But there is a new one that can listen to your voice for a minute or two, and then it can automatically copy your voice and play the rest of the book with your voice automatically. It is not perfect, but it is close and the longer you speak the better it will fake your voice for the rest of the book.
Well done David and Jonathan-you’ve produced a cracking lecture on Girard! It’s a great act of compassion and generosity to raise general awareness to the urgent need for all of us to begin “untangling from the mimetic web.”
This awesome introductory lecture is a fitting culmination to David’s outstanding and insightful essay on the theology of Peter Thiel-which I found startling at the time, since his excellent book “Zero to One” gives no hint of his Girardian conceptual foundation.
Although Jonathan’s lecture and David’s comments are rigorous and scholarly, it felt authentic and poignant to listen to you both offer personal testimony to the difficulties, even anguish, which brought you to Girard’s work-those personal comments resonate as such a profound critique of the elite world in which we now live: “We had to lie to ourselves . . . (about) this path of prestige . . . What was so existentially depressing was not the presence of wrong . . . but the absence of right. Even the victories felt so hollow and meaningless . . . because they were not the result of our own genuine desire .
. . They were fundamentally plagued with the same type of existential problems: “make money you don’t need to buy things you don’t want to impress people you don’t like.’ The same despair and hollowness . . . but even worse.”
The courage you both showed in your own life journeys in order to reject the delusion of mimetic desire and to be honest-and to begin to live differently-and now to share what you know with the world, affirms the truth of Leonard Cohen’s insight “There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.”
Leonard of course is himself a singer of mimetic desire. That’s not my insight, but that of my mentor Geoffrey Green, who studied with Girard at Buffalo. Girard was one of the readers of Geoffrey’s PhD thesis, and they stayed in contact for the rest of Girard’s life. Geoffrey points out that Leonard’s songs are full of the triangle of mimetic desire--I could offer many examples but this comment is too short.
Your lecture is an outstanding, in-depth introduction to ideas that are urgently important for our world-and for what’s coming next, which we all feel, with uneasiness and growing alarm-but without being able to identify what, exactly, is coming.
You both are providing the Girardian tools to discern the general form of what’s coming--even though we can't predict it's exact manifestation and specific expression: mimetic envy and desire gaining momentum through digital-enabled media into a vast contagion before violently manifesting in (a perhaps global) scapegoat event.
The last fifteen minutes of your lecture in which you discuss the four takeaways of truth, love, innovation and violence is absolutely brilliant. I so look forward to Jonathan's full discussion of these insights in subsequent lectures.
Jonathan talks about Girard’s thought being “cheap” in a good sense, and compares the power of Girard’s idea of mimetic desire to Freud’s notion of the Oedipus Complex and shows how much more profound and powerful mimetic desire is. I came to Nietzsche long before Girard and had a similar realization in relation to Nietzsche’s idea of ressentiment, which is such a feature of our world-and I too realized that Girard’s idea of mimetic desire and mimetic contagion is a much deeper and more profound explanation than Nietzsche's insight.
Jonathan may already be preparing to go there in the next lectures in the series, but may I suggest that Girard’s idea of mimetic desire is just as fundamental an explanation for human psychological, social and political development as natural selection is for evolutionary biology?
I realize there are many lectures to come, and I hope that you both explore the Girardian implications of mimetic desire as it’s now manifesting in NGOs, philanthropic foundations, the widows and ex-wives of billionaires deceitfully mimicking the appearance of capitalist structures while pouring huge resources into pursuing their own personal mimetic status-seeking instead of actually improving general wellbeing. Their mimetic behaviour is actually enflaming the conflagration of popular mimetic resentment in our society already becoming incandescent (literally-as in the summer of 2020-and figuratively) through identity politics and its many metasizations. The transfer of wealth from John Heinz to John Kerry, which required the creation of a multi-generation family dynasty, Heinz’s second marriage to a beautiful expatriate Leftie wife, a tragic plane crash, and her subsequent status-seeking marriage to the politician John Kerry, is now a routine paradigm that can happen in one or two steps, facilitated by the magic of Donor Advised Trusts and other modern instruments of civilizational self-destruction as the oligarchs in our master class hurry us all towards apocalypse.
I hope in future lectures Jonathan discusses how neuroscience also strongly affirms the Girardian focus on human sociality in ways to complex and wonderful to mention in this comment, but I hope Jonathan delves into the neuroscience and the latest developments in evolutionary biology emphasizing mothering and socialization generally as the key to human evolution.
Another deep topic for Girardian analysis is economics of course-the science of allocating a society’s resources in the context of limitless human desire-a fundamental field for Girardian analysis, and I hope Jonathan and David follow this up based on your own knowledge and experiences in FinTech and Silicon Valley. Certainly David’s insight that many entrepreneurs he knows were criminals in high school is very true and, as Jonathan says, a testament to the miracle of how capitalism channels aggressive, competitive mimetic desire into activity that has improved general wellbeing so such an extraordinary degree.
Your lecture series is an urgently necessary antidote to the increasingly frightening consequences of the over-production of pseudo-elites in our time, who are anointed only by mimetic consensus. Our Master Class, oblivious to the Girardian dynamics you have revealed so clearly in this first lecture, are mimicking the original capitalist and Constitutional processes of the American State-which in their period of great flourishing both created unprecedented virtue and unimaginable benefits to humanity through the Girardian ratchet mechanisms of channeling mimetic desire and competition. Only now, unconsciously in the grip of white-hot mimetic contagion, our Master Class is performing these functions in destructive ways that are intensifying mimetic desires and resentment and generating increasing violence and escalating an emerging popular longing to identify and murder-and then, yes, perhaps deify-a scapegoat or class of scapegoats, along with the millions of others who will be inexorably sucked into what may be the coming Great Terror of the 21st Century.
Thanks for the incredibly detailed comment here Christopher and my apologies for being too busy to muster an equally thoughtful response in reply. We've filmed all 7 lectures already but you managed to anticipate a lot of what is to come: the neuroscience of mimesis (mirror neurons), an elaboration on the forces of innovation, truth, love, and violence, etc. I look forward to hearing your comments on the rest of this series.
@@bi.johnathan Thanks for your reply Jonathan-you must be exhausted after such an epic feat! Congratulations again to you and David.
@@bi.johnathan looking forward to watching the subsequent lectures! Well done, sir
A simpler explanation of the modern instability would be that the concentration of power into fewer hands while the planet is dying within a couple decades might be causing common people to be just a little afraid that our ruling class doesn’t care much for reality.
"What makes us unique to Girard, is not our ability to determine truth, but our capacity to believe in lies, in so far as others around us do as well."
Love it, keep it up guys.
Thanks for engaging with our work Victor!
When humans started to talk, lies were inherent in language as language has no limits. Religion was the way to control language by deciding which lies to adhere to (that's what believing means).
Kudos! This is an awesome digested Girard intro.
I must admit that I had some cognitive dissonance between the wisdom of the content and the boyish demeanor of the speakers. So I just listened. Awesome work guys!!
Super excited for this series :) I've been driving people crazy with my newfound Girardian enlightenment :)
Glad to hear we can feed your unhealthy Girard addiction :)
This was a very good lecture, Thank you! I have watched and summarized on paper the first lecture and already ordered the books from Girard quoted in this lecture,....looking forward to the next lectures...
Only been exposed to Girard through Luke Burgis’ Wanting (which I loved). Found your introduction thoroughly fascinating and engrossing, and looking forward to the next session. Also, thanks for the transcript link. Rgds Shridhar
Thanks for engaging Shridhar! The next one will be out in 4-5 weeks. We are done filming everything, in post production now.
@@bi.johnathan 5 weeks? What will I do with my life?!?
Admirable and compelling lecture, great voice! I like how the side-view of the camera references the eye to the bookcase, the chesterfield...
Thanks Daragh, excited to share the rest of the lectures.
“The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.”
I think this quote from Peter Thiel captured your point on the Negative Mimesis
Oh My God. I think this is the best thing I’ve ever seen on CZcams. Amazing
Thanks for engaging with our work!
This is my first to hearing about Girard and memetic theory. What an introduction!
Thanks! Hope the rest of the series don't dissapoint
@@bi.johnathan I surely will!
This was unbelievably engrossing. Well done Jonathan.
Thanks Matt! Hope the rest of the series don’t disappoint
Last night, I came across some high-value content about higher men; Master v Slave. I'm now totally captivated by Jonathan's philosophy and ideas as he delves into different theories of philosophy.
same here🙌
First time here (thank you CZcams algorithm ), and immediately subscribed !
Keep up the good work! 🍀
David you are doing great service. I am just 5 mins into it and hooked on to your comforting voice , the scholarly background. Can't wait to complete it in full.
Btw any plans to have similiar series on other philosophers , say Schopanhauer ?
Potentially ... stay tuned!
Johnathan, you remind me so much of Professor Michael Sugrue. This is a great compliment. Girard has been difficult to digest. I’ve read Rousseau, Ellul, Debord, Baudrillard, and others, with success, I look forward to adding Girard to that list.
Thanks! Professor Sugrue was a big inspiration for us, in terms of the style and cadence of the delivery.
@@DavidPerellChannel It absolutely comes through. I first listened to Bi on Modern Wisdom and at times he was channeling Sugrue convincingly. The diction, annunciation, and flow are unmistakable. Looking forward to the rest of the series!
@@HeroesFail Sugrue is where we got the idea for producing this in lecture format. Flattered you drew the connection!
@@DavidPerellChannel ‘inspiration’ is mimesis in disguise 🎉 like being a smart dresser.
Hey Johnathan. Great job to you and David on this series.
I did a Masters thesis years ago comparing the works of Martin Heidegger and Franz Rosenzweig, and eventually made my way out academia and existential philosophy with only mild case of depression. I mention Rosenzweig's work because I think at some time in the future you might find him illuminating for your ongoing work with Girard.
Again, thanks for this series. Echoing another person here, it is a real gem.
Only a mild case, consider yourself lucky! Thanks for the kind words.
This was really good. Thank you for the lecture. Looking forward to lecture two :)
Thanks Nasar, looking forward to releasing it as well.
Phenomenal production Johnathan - thank you!
Thanks Anurag!
Thank you, Johnathan and David. I especially appreciated having a transcript made available. I wonder if mirror neurons represent the neuroanatomical correlate of Girard's idea of mimesis. Hmmm...
Stay tuned! We talk about this in lecture 2.
This was great. I like you two. I've just started getting into menswear and have started noticing how others dress. I like how you were dressed, even your socks I noticed. Anyway, this was a fascinating lecture; I've never heard of René Girard before, and I intent to listen to the other lectures and read more about Girard's thought.
Noticing how others dress and wanting to imitate them? Might be the type of social signaling they're preaching against
@@clementinebedsheets3210I'm not preaching against social signaling. In fact, now that I'm dressing nicer, I want people to notice and be encouraged to dress nicer too. Certainly to be an example for my son and to look more like a man pushing 40 than 20. I've already gotten compliments from my wife and from my daughter's day-care worker.
This is so well delivered and inspiring!
Incredible lecture, thank you, and I'm really astonished by Girard idea's.
Our pleasure!
Such an amazing lecture! Keep it up, guys!
Thanks murilo!
I am speechless. Phenomenal.
The content is very interesting and I am very happy you spent so much time preparing this. Thank you. I didn't know René Girard but will definitely read more about him now, and I also subscribed to your newsletters.
The setup is a bit overdone, I guess it's a style. My biggest complaint would be that the content is mostly read, and it's obvious the interactions are prepared, and polished. When a conversation is faked, it's less compelling, just like a show. It would have worked just as well, and appeared more genuine, if Johnathan was facing the camera and gave a normal lecture as he would do in front of a classroom (us).
But I hope you will do more lectures and will certainly read your essays and website.
Thanks for the feedback Keilnoth, will keep that in mind if we end up doing more of these!
Pretty good. This video is definitely way underrated should have 100x more views at least
So pumped for this series.
Excited for you to see the rest of these Manny.
This is great save one distraction - the apparently un-self-aware irony of presenting this in a highly polished format, screen filled with status symbols, projecting the social queues of erudition. One might suggest that this format is designed to make the content appealing and increase the reach (or even specifically target those who need the message most), however, if this irony is left unaddressed, it becomes hypocrisy.
After writing the above, I have to wonder if I've committed the same offense. Perhaps this disclaimer helps?
This was the first thing I noticed. Love that you mentioned this
Nerds. The both of you.
For me it was Jonathan's socks.
But agree, the suits and located in a "manor's study" seemed a bit ironic
Spot on
This is the first thing that struck me. Mimetic theory fundamentally is that our desires stem from social cues and this presentation is so very mimetic in itself
It would be a pleasant Easter egg but it’s worrisome that it seems to be genuinely lost upon our “experts”
"Who's this guy?" Absolutely brilliant! Great work Jonathan and David!
Thank you Srikkanth for engaging with our work
This is great, chaps. Thoroughly impressed!
Thanks Gabriel!
Love it thanks for putting this together!
I’m so excited for this!
Can't stop thinking about Plato, mimetics, and the Apology. Hence Girard is another annotation on Plato. More dialectics, Mr. Bi. Thank you
One day Plato will be compulsory in grade school... One day.
amazing lecture and its very easy to digest. thanks guys!
Thank you! Great production!
Thank you, what a great lecture. I appreciate the time you took to make this happen. You did not have to be that well dressed but you were, you did not have to be in such a nice environment, this could have been two guys talking on a couch while smoking, but you made it nice. A needed break from the attention-seeking paranoia and the quick 5 min. videos in the rest of youtube.
Thanks Alexandros. We wanted to create something that lasted and, thus, a classic aesthetic to match. Hope the rest of the series don't disappoint.
I have watched and rewatched this series multiple times
It was a pleasure
Nice settings and selection of material! Rene Girard may be the most important philosopher of all time because he discovered the antidote to post-modern nihilism using their own methods. We must distribute the antidote.
It’s all just apologetics for quietism and a rationalization of the wealthy oligarchy and the status quo. Rene Girard is a bourgeois class traitor so frightened by conflict he saw as a boy by the Nazi-fascist-capitalist coalition and its violent opposition to the working class communists he chose instead to adopt a philosophy that just gave in to the fascist-capitalist threats from “above” and decry any opposition to them as as “envious” behavior” that could be solved with “proper” spiritual behavior and guidance.
It’s traitorous surrender to the worst fascist tendencies that capitalism and the wealthy elite oligarchs hand out in exchange for a quiet job as a spineless “spiritual” guide. Girard came from a terrible time and place. It doesn’t mean we should adopt his “philosophy” today!
Class consciousness isn’t “envy”! It’s just sensible; ultimately class consciousness is the source of all justice, both social and economic.
This. This itched my brain in a most particular way
Gosh, love everything you said. I had a boyfriend who study Philosophy and I felt that philosophy is killing him. I agreed what gerard said that there is nothing we can change except withdrawl to preserve ourselves. I think my ex actually done that.
Outstanding. Thank you for the generosity of intelect.
Don’t listen to the haters. This is absolutely riveting. Absolutely well done.
Thank you Sam! Hope you enjoy the rest of the series as well.
This lecture is 🔥, thank you!
Thanks!
The gestalt here is spot on. Good to see contemporary young people in the US addressing these ideas and not dressed in jeans and hoodies. Thank you. It sets the right tone. I'm afraid our culture is floundering in a pose of perpetual casualness and "whatups," while any serious discussion is shunted to the forgotten back rooms of what once was.
Thanks Sasha! Glad you like the aesthetic.
Our thoughts exactly. Thanks for the kind words.
@@DavidPerellChannel 100%. Your efforts are commendable.
Because wearing Jeans and Hoodies cause a 10point drop in IQ 😂
Is the fact of being inspired by this video a more subtle kind of mimesis??
Exceptional way of delivering the information as well as fascinating content. Thank you Jonathan.
When are the rest of the lectures are going to be uploaded?
They’ve already been filmed. In post now. We hope one every month for the rest of the year!
Excellent exposition of Girard´s mimetic theory.
Looking forward to this Johnathan.
This is great! Only tips I have is have some more short breaks when telling (makes people more attentive to listen) and people prefer lectures who look at them and engages with them instead of looking at each other, feels like we have to listen to a regular conversation.
Thank you yes. We are keeping the pauses/breaks in mind during editing going forward, especially when changing topics.
@@bi.johnathan when will there be released more content?
@@Danny-qt5vt Q4 2022! Our post production team is hard at work. More updates to come soon.
@@bi.johnathan thank you for quick response! This is really great content! I can't wait for more ❤️
@@Danny-qt5vt thanks for taking the time. Hope the rest don't disappoint.
Waiting for the second lecture!
Thanks, this is very good. Jonathan I read your pdf book from your website, and thought it very interesting. Was wondering if you plan on finishing it, since the end where more of your thoughts come in it seemed not fully fleshed out.
Thanks for engaging with my work. And yes it’s still incomplete. I’m too busy with company building now to dedicate time to it but I hope to one day!
Awesome work guys!
Thanks for taking the time to engage with our work!
This is what CZcams was made for. Thanks, gents.
Excellent. Thank you. On to the next lecture.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you for this guys!!! What a gem.
Thank you for engaging our content. The rest of the lectures will be released soon in december!
@@bi.johnathan I cant wait! Thank you
This is so well spoken and presented that I wouldn't be surprised if you told me this was ai
Great lecture! Waiting for the next one! Do you have plans to upload it as a podcast? More accessible when I want to listen to some parts again
Yes! See my pinned comment^
Great work, thank you.
Thank you!
This just blew my mind…..
Well, the introduction gave me a strong case of what I learned is negative mimesis from these two rich and fancy men haha. It was initially hard to relate to because I never went to an Ivy League school and haven’t sought prestige in the same way. Somehow we end up asking the same questions though. All that aside this was very interesting and I’m going to watch the series and probably read some Girard. Thank you! Also, I’m from Vancouver too, well, actually, Surrey 😂.
Thats quite the library of knowledge behind them!
Bro should give a lesson on oration. What a silky delivery. What a pleasure to learn from you
I think I am in love with this content
🥱 Live another 25 years, then come back and lecture on these topics.
Found a member of the hivemind
@@kshitijshekhar1144 😂 oooh! Zinger!
Even Plato said philosophy ain’t for those under 30. ie you must bring hard experience to your reflection.
Super impressive.
this is real digital gold
Is the setting and attire for this interview itself evidence of mimesis? Do David and Jonathan really desire to be talking about Girard in a library studio ? That’s where we are trained to think philosophy belongs. The hosts’ suits are reflective of their needs to imitate the archetypes of serious philosophers.
Or are we to understand that Johnathan and David have broken free of mimetic desires? That is society would push them to cut this content into 30sec - 3 minute CZcams reels or TikToks. Society would have them engage with the viewer directly and casually.
Which are we to believe?
Performativity and Profilicity perfected by pecuniary privilege. Their scripted choreography is a saccharin simulacrum of intellectual conversation.
Is it metamodern ironic genius or is it crass cargo cultism? Given their youth I suspect their sincerity is authentic and the hypocrisy is unconscious. They may well be "Don Juans" or they may "authentically" be keen to exist 'in great measure'. Can they (let alone we) even know their 'true' metaphysical desire?
The day they grow dreadlocks and talk without an audience is the day they will know how self conscious their profilicity and authenticity runs but we can never know.
You can't escape mimesis, you can reorient to the highest thing: Logos.
@@nickbtggl4396 That would just be them imitating the anti-status quo. Just because they're self-aware doesn't mean they're free from mimesis.
Great content.. i would love to work for girardian.. cant imagine a company culture bring upon these believes..
Excellent video
This is dope, waiting on lecture II
thanks for engaging with our content Chysen, the rest of the lectures are coming in December
Phenomenal.
Great great stuff! Thanks.