Violent Rivalries

The Hidden Origin of Institutions and Cultures

In the introductory edition of this newsletter, I promised that subscribers would get unpublished material from my upcoming book, Wanting, plus a deeper dive into the material that wouldn’t necessarily be suitable for a general-interest reader.

So today I’m sharing a draft Preface to Wanting that was ultimately cut from the final edition. My hope was that by laying out the founding myth of Rome (a city where I lived for three years), we could begin to see how the fight for political power is playing out in the modern world. The story includes nearly every step in the mimetic process.

You may be familiar with it. But here it is, in my own words.