The 5 things I’m seeing, reading, doing, contemplating, and wanting right now. I have read an audio version of this Digest below.

👀 What I’m Seeing

Claire and I are in the middle of an intra-DC house move right now, so things are chaotic. I’ve been working 12-14 hour days—a nice combination of physical and intellectual labor, which is satisfying (moving/unpacking boxes or landscaping the backyard and thinking as I go, which sometimes gets me into trouble…). Normally my end-of-night relaxation is a good book…but this past week it has been trying out a couple of streaming shows—one of them old, the other new. (I just haven’t had the energy to read, at least with an active mind. I could probably read Twilight or Fifty Shades of Grey or something, but that’s about it.)

I’m watching Friday Night Lights for the first time (oddly, Claire is the one who convinced me, not the other way around!). It’s truly extraordinary to watch a show about high school kids and never see a single smartphone.

But the show that really has my attention is the strange Mrs. Davis. It’s a profoundly theological show (though don’t take the theology in it very seriously…) with a profound message at its core—and it couldn’t be more relevant to our time. It is the specificity of its relevance that amazes me, partly because this show’s production began long before the full emergence of generative AI (like ChatGPT) late last year.

The show is centered around a faithful nun who engages in a battle to destroy a powerful AI. Bishop Robert Barron has a nice, short primer on the show if you don’t know anything about it. Note what he says about desire here (his short video synopsis is below, but I pulled out this quote):

“The algorithms are…in myriad ways…and in a manner largely unbeknownst to ourselves…manipulating us, getting us to think and desire in such a way as to foster the economic and political interests of others. In a word: we’re not using them, they’re using us.”

Maybe I need to find out how to have an Anti-Mimetic “Watch Party”… Anyone in?

📖 What I’m Reading

Jessica Hooten Wilson’s doctoral dissertation examined demonic possession through the lens of Girard’s mimetic theory. Her dissertation was turned into this book: Giving the Devil His Due: Demonic Authority in the Fiction of Flannery O’Connor and Fyodor Dostoevsky, which I am just now getting around to reading it. So far I’m finding it fascinating.

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The 5 things I’m seeing, reading, doing, contemplating, and wanting right now.

👀 What I’m Seeing: My wife Claire and her closest girlfriends from college (who have a 12-year running group text thread, btw) recently created a shared iPhone Note called “Desires”. They put all the things they want to buy or eat or do in it—links to clothes or concerts or restaurants or vacation destinations etc.—but which they know they shouldn’t necessarily pursue at the moment. I think it started when one of them decided to go on a shopping fast for a month. It has become a way for them to externalize their wants and sit on them for a while before making any decisions to take action, and it introduces some accountability into the equation. They created this little activity as something spontaneous and fun, but it has stuck (so far). Maybe there is something to this when it comes to vetting thin desires…

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A new addition to Anti-Mimetic for paying subscribers: Every two weeks—twice monthly—I will share a short-form post (like the one below) about what I’m seeing, reading, doing, contemplating, or wanting. It’s called “The Digest.” I write many longer-form things—my goal is that Digests can always be read in three minutes or less.

Things I’m seeing, reading, doing, contemplating, or wanting this week.

👀 I’m Seeing: N.I.A. (“Not Investment Advice”) became a meme during the crypto bubble. It’s also the name of a funny podcast which breaks the mold of serious-sounding podcasts, primarily because of the rapport between the three hosts (one of which is SatPost by Trung Phan). The experimentation of form is the only way that the podcast industry will be able to evolve—because we’re all Contented Out.

📖 I’m Reading: I began a class I’m teaching last week by inputting some questions that I had given to my students into ChatGPT. We analyzed the difference between the answers. It raised interesting questions about context and the limitations of A.I. On that note, I recommend the book The Myth of Artificial Intelligence by Erik J. Larson. He presents a contrarian case, supported by sound philosophy, that (for example) most commentators who use trendy A.I.-adjacent words like “sentient” have no idea what they mean.

🤔 I’m Contemplating: I’ve been reading everything that Marshall McLuhan (and his son, Eric) have ever written. The major idea from his work that I can’t stop thinking about is this: we do not truly understand the importance of Formal Cause in the landscape of modern media (formal cause is what McLuhan is really talking about when he says “the medium is the message”). We treat new tech and media as neutral (“it matters how we use it”) when it is not.

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Below is the first edition of “Mimetic Monday” going out to all subscribers of the Anti-Mimetic Newsletter. I’ve been sending this out as a short-form email (almost) weekly for the past 6 months, but I’ve been doing it using a separate list/platform—not Substack—so you may have never seen it. I’m trying to figure out if and how to consolidate them while keeping everyone relatively happy. Right now, it’s a “sub-section” of Anti-Mimetic.

Normally, these Mimetic Mimetic emails consist of 3 short points, and they are meant to be read in 3 minutes or less. This one is a bit longer—I’ll chalk that up to my unexpected absence. I’ll tighten them up, I promise, but I hope you enjoy this extended one.

Let’s see how this goes. If there is a positive response, I’ll include Mimetic Monday as a part of the regularly scheduled programming here.

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Mimetic Monday: The good, the bad, the mimetic.

Negative (?!) Mimesis 

Famous-for-being-famous Celebristan model Kourtney Kardashian has been in a relationship with rocker Travis Barker, the drummer of Blink-182, for a while now—and fans can't help but notice that her fashion style has suddenly become quite goth since she started appearing with the gothic-styled Barker. (Yes, I know this information. Please don't think anything less of me.) 

This has got me thinking about the idea that people in a romantic relationship often start resembling one another in various ways. They pick up habits, adopt one another's style, preferences, religion, maybe even political beliefs. In short, many couples end up becoming pretty mimetic with one another. Or do they just self-select for those traits in the first place? It's an important question.

I do often see serious mimesis happening, though, in the form of rapid and consequential trans…

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The good, the bad, the mimetic.

Positive Mimesis 

Roller suitcases—which are nearly ubiquitous today—did not become popular until the 1990's when a Northwest Airlines pilot named Robert Plath invented the version with a collapsible handle and two wheels. A wheeled trunk had been invented as early as 1887, and a wheeled suitcase had already been invented in 1972—but it had to be pulled along with a leather strap, and it wasn't a good look. In his book Narrative Economics, Robert J. Schiller explains how the "narrative" shaped widespread market adoption. He writes (emphasis mine to highlight the mimetic language):

"I never understood why the wheeled suitcase idea wasn't absolutely contagious. My best guess is that, with Plath's invention, glamour overcame the sense that wheels on a suitcase looked ridiculous... The epidemic was fueled when flight crews adopted the Rollaboards, and passengers saw these glamorous-looking people walking through airports, pulling their Rollaboards effortlessly…

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The picture above is of a tarantati, the ritual spider dance described in Chapter 4 of Wanting. Several hundred years ago in Italy, people (usually women) began dancing uncontrollably in the streets. They were said to be bitten by a spider, and the ritual dances they had to engage in were meant to rid them of the disease.

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People and things worthy or unworthy of imitation.

Positive Mimesis 

I've been enjoying the show The Food That Built America—especially Season 2 (The White Castle/Nathan's hot dog episode is a personal favorite, as are all the ones about McDonald's vs. Burger King). It is produced by the amazing Lucky 8 out of New York City. Each episode is a case study in mimetic rivalry. You not only learn a fascinating part of our nation's history and get a striking depiction of the risks that entrepreneurs take to bring their vision to reality; you also see at least some of the "generative" powers of mimetic rivalry when it is applied to the economic domain. In other words, the positive side of competition: spurring important innovations out of necessity.

Negative Mimesis

My friend Jimmy Soni has a book coming out in February called The Founders, about Peter Thiel and the other PayPal co-founders—the so-called PayPal mafia. I recommend it because I know the extent of Jimmy’s serious research over the …

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People and things worthy or unworthy of imitation.

Positive Mimesis 

Last week I featured Chloé Valdary in this email. She is someone who I believe is taking an Anti-Mimetic approach to the issue of racism. It's grounded in rich personalism.

I was lucky enough to get Chloé to do a Q&A with me. Here's the full interview. And here's one highlight:

our theory of change is that once you’re able to perceive your own complexity, you will be able to perceive the complexity of others and will be less likely to stereotype or caricature or reduce others to one single thing

Negative Mimesis

The Elizabeth Holmes trial started last week, with opening arguments slated to begin this coming Wednesday. Holmes is being charged with multiple counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud after the medical technology company that she founded, Theranos, was exposed as having made bogus claimed about the efficacy of its product—but not before Holmes was able to raise over $700 million from investors, g…

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People and things worthy or unworthy of imitation.

Positive Mimesis 

I lived in Rome for three years where I learned the fine art of what the French call flâneuring—strolling or wandering around cities. In Italy, it has a very specific counterpart. There's a tradition of the evening

passegiata:

you take a leisurely stroll around the neighborhood before or after dinner (my favorite one being on the Bay of Naples). More important than the passeggiata, though, is another thing I learned how to do: meriggiare. 

Meriggiare is a word coined by the poet Eugenio Montale in his poem of books Ossi di Seppia (Cuttlefish Bones), published in 1925. It comes from the Italian word pomeriggio, which simply means “afternoon.” Montale transformed it into a verb. It means something like “to lazily pass the afternoon,” which I often did by taking 2-hour lunches with friends new and old—complete with intermissions to smoke half of a Garibaldi-brand cigar outside—discussing life’s important questions and enjo…

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People and things worthy and unworthy of imitation.

Positive Mimesis 

Play is one of the most important things we can do as humans. Play is an end in itself. The purpose of play is play. It's not a trampoline to a better result, to anything else. And that's a rarity in today's world.

We play because play is good and desirable on its own.

I'm including it in this Mimetic Monday because play is strongly mimetic in nature. Have you ever seen two dogs playing in the dog park? One dog initiates the play (typically, with a play bow—she stretches her front legs out and brings her chest low to the ground as if she's about to lie down, rear sticking up in the air, ready to move in any direction), and the other dog can hardly contain himself. He imitates the play bow, and then they engage in a dance of playful desire.

I had a special experience of mimetic play while I was getting ready for a silent retreat in the hills outside of Italy with a bunch of my friends back in 2015. The silent part of the …

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The good, the bad, and the mimetically quotable.

Positive Mimesis 

Ted Lasso. If you haven't seen the Apple TV show yet, I strongly encourage you to take it for a spin. Ted Lasso, an American football coach who has been hired to coach a European soccer team, is a positively anti-mimetic character who changes everyone around him —but what really amazes me is that anyone in Hollywood would think to make this show at all in the present climate. The making of this show is an example of what I call someone who had a "transcendent desire"—you don't write for the market that exists, you write for the market you want. You have a desire that transcends the existing demand...or at least the demand that has been signaled in the marketplace. Someone at Apple TV did that. They created, or maybe simply exposed, demand from people who want to have their hearts warmed rather than wrenched in the darkness that has become Netflix.

Here's some more easy positive mimesis: tag a friend you think would enjoy …

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