Speaking With Luke Burgis: Understanding Mimetic Desire In Business and Life

About Luke Burgis

Luke Burgis is an entrepreneur, writer, and professor of business. He is the author of the book Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life, and writes the popular Anti-Mimetic Newsletter on Substack with readers in more than 140 countries.

After a career on Wall Street and as founder of multiple companies in Silicon Valley, Luke now views his position as being at the intersection of Athens, Jerusalem, and Silicon Valley, or one which integrates the intellect, the soul, and the human capacity for innovation and transcendence. He is currently Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Ciocca Center for Principled Entrepreneurship in Washington, DC. You can follow Luke on Twitter @lukeburgis

1) Your ground-breaking book "Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire In Everyday Life" explores why we want what we want and how we can "want better". What was the journey that led you to writing that book?

In 2008 I was working around the clock to build and sell the third startup I had founded. I had a verbal agreement with another company that was interested in acquiring mine. The deal fell through at the last minute due to the financial crisis. The loss of that deal meant financial armageddon for me. Oddly, I felt relieved. The blown up deal awakened something deep inside of me—something I would later identify as spiritual. It forced me to grapple with important questions about the source and nature of my motivation—and it turned out that my ambition and motivation was not as “pure” as I thought. I had bought into many startup culture myths and hustle-culture dogmas that I realized were empty in the end. I needed to find something meaningful and enduring. This is when I started exploring the difference between what I call “thin desires” and “thick desires”, and I realized that most of my desires were thin. If I wanted to build a good life, I would have to build it on the foundation of thick desires—the kind of desires that never disappoint, and which lead to the kind of happiness which can never be taken away. 

2) In your experience, how does Mimetic Desire show itself in the worlds of business and finance?

So many ways that I cannot recount them all here, but I try to focus on the most fundamental layers of business that people often overlook in favor of “tactics” and strategy and decision-making—in other words, they focus on doing. I’m more concerned with being in business. This is layer zero to me. 

Mimetic desire comes into play because you start to understand that almost everything we do in business has to do with our wanting to be a certain person and not with the products or services themselves, as we are often tempted to think. Much of what I thought I was doing as an entrepreneur was “solving problems in the world,” and that was true—but I was just as much trying to solve problems within my self, and I didn’t even know it. This latter part if a person-centered, human view of what it is we are really doing when we engage in business. 

"Mimetic desire comes into play because you start to understand that almost everything we do in business has to do with our wanting to be a certain person and not with the products or services themselves, as we are often tempted to think."

Think about it with wealth: we envision that having a certain number of zeros in our bank account will allow us to be a certain kind of person, different than they are today. We project ourselves into the future and use other people as models of desire and of being. If we’re not careful, this can cause us to miss out on the joy of everyday life and relationships that are at the heart of things. When I talked recently to a lifelong trader who spent 20 years on a prestigious desk at an investment bank, he told me that as he looked back on his career, the things he remembers as most meaningful at his work were not any particular trades but the conversations that he had with his fellow traders as they navigated life and learned to see one another’s humanity.

3) You're also an educator - teaching business to university students. What are the fundamental lessons you hope students take away from their time spent with you?

Right now I’m teaching a course that is technically named ENT491 (Entrepreneurship 491: Special Topics in Business—Freedom, Markets, and Human Desire). But my nickname for it is “The Layer Zero Project.” 

I am trying to teach the students that every major issue in our world, from political issues to business cases, has multiple ‘layers’ of analysis and meaning and they need to be able to identify and name them, and then hopefully understand them. Most importantly, they should be able to rank them or put them in a hierarchy—or at least understand how they relate to one another. 

Each week, we examine a separate phenomenon and work together to explore each layer with the aim of ultimately being able to find and name the “Layer Zero”—the most fundamental layer of reality that is driving behavior. So far it has been a fascinating project. And I hope to make an adult, peer-to-peer learning course of Layer Zero available to the general public soon. 

So much of the learning comes down to anthropology, or discovering basic truths of the human person that are immutable and which therefore shed light on so many otherwise confusing things in a world that has forgotten about nature. In this time of  lightning fast change that we live in, those who are most grounded in reality, real relationships, and stable truths (big T truths) are going to be in the best position to craft lives full of deep meaning and love. 

Yes, I care about love. I’m a business person and professor who talks about it often. Because if we’re not here to learn how to love, then what exactly are we doing? Perhaps that was the frightening realization that I had about myself when the business deal that I mentioned above fell apart: it was in the falling apart that some of my vain illusions about the purpose of my work also fell apart along with my finances, and gave me the opportunity to refocus on things that truly mattered. Thick desires.  

4) Is it possible for individuals to truly live an "anti-mimetic" lifestyle? How so?

Yes. Obviously, not everything can or should be intentionally anti-mimetic. There are areas where it’s good to lean into positive mimesis—for instance, strong communities of faith often have this, good schools incorporate positive mimesis, and strong friendships and relationships have mimesis as a bond and an inspiration. But it’s important to develop anti-mimetic muscles, too, because a large part of our world today and the models it presents to us as worthy of imitating are absolutely not—and one has to resist the pull of these people and things which only serve the self-interests of others. 

Despite some of its flaws, Shoshana Zuboff’s idea of Surveillance Capitalism (and her book of the same name) is a warning about this. The people and companies that claim to be looking out for us are not usually looking out for us. Those today who say “follow me” most loudly are almost certainly not worthy of following. 

Those who are worthy of following simply lead by example. Their desires speak for themselves. The key to living an anti-mimetic lifestyle is simply discernment: learning to know the difference between when it is good imitate, and when you should not. This requires wisdom. 

5) You spend a lot of time writing via your blog ("Anti-Mimetic") and even on social media. What are some ideas you're currently thinking about/exploring?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about rites of passage and how they are at play in our world. It seems to me that many old rites (not all of them were good, but not all of them were bad) are passing away, and it’s unclear what new rites of passages will replace them. People need rites of passage to grow and mature, and to become full personalities who do not get lost in the crowd. 

A key part of any rite of passage is the “Rite of Separation”, where one separates from their tribe or their group and goes out into the wilderness (actual, or metamorphical) on one’s own, which can be a lonely and harrowing experience. 

Now in a world where everyone is terrified to be alone, how will anyone complete these rites? I don’t know. As I see people striving to live a more fulfilling life in the age of social media, for example, I see the most successful ones embarking on intentional journeys of separation that lead to transformation. It’s not enough to simply think or say what you believe (almost all of social media consists of merely this); rather, you must undergo a journey of the will, and it happens in time and space. I fear the digital world is destroying this basic human experience. We must recover it.

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