mimetic theory

On this episode of Natural Born Leaders, I discuss with Matt Shields about our approach to success, fulfillment, and purpose.

This episode is a must:

• The truth about growing an agency business
• Steps to take to grow any business
• Matt shares his experience talking to Alex Hormozi
• Serge Gatari discusses mimetic desires and the importance of creating our own path in life
• How material possessions can impact personal fulfillment and happiness

Growing your business and the pursuit of success and fulfillment is a personal journey that looks different for everyone. I hope you find our insights and guidance on how to find your own path and achieve your goals meaningful and fulfilling.

Find Serge Gatari Here:

Natural Born Leader Community | Instagram | YouTube | Twitter | ClientAcquisition.io

Dr. Oord discusses Jonathan Foster's new book, "A Theology of Consent: Mimetic Theory in an Open & Relational Universe."

Peter Thiel went from zero to one when he heard the lectures of Stanford anthropologist and philosopher Rene Girard.

What were Girard's insights, and how did Peter Thiel interpret them?

Join your simblified hosts as they scratch the surface of this fascinating topic and talk about their own views of it.

Add one part news, one part bad jokes, one part Wikipedia research, one part cult references from spending too much time on the internet, one part Wodehouse quotes, and one part quality puns, and you get Simblified.

A weekly podcast to help you appear smarter, to an audience that knows no less! Your four hosts - Chuck, Naren, Srikeit, and Tony attempt to deconstruct topics with humor (conditions apply). Fans of the show have described it as "fun conversations with relatable folks", "irreverent humor", "the funniest thing to come out of Malad West" and "if I give you a good review will you please let me go".

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Mimetic desire—the idea people want what others want—holds the key to understanding the 21st century, suggests entrepreneur Peter Thiel. It’s an idea first developed by philosopher René Girard that is helping a growing audience today understand everything from personal relationships and rivalries to politics, war and human identity. In this episode of A COV&R CONVO, Matthew Packer interviews author Luke Burgis about Luke's new book Wanting: the Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life, which applies mimetic theory to everyday contexts including those of vocation, faith, and the business world. Burgis discusses a wide range of phenomena explained by mimesis (imitation), especially the dark side of human copying. He also explores the crucial difference between imitating role models outside our social circles and copying those on the same field as us—with funny, surprising examples like the tale of Ferrari and Lamborghini. Mimetic theory accounts for the unbridled competition of today’s world but also the escalation of politics to extremes (Girard), along with the false ‘solution' of collective mimetic violence that we know too well as scapegoating. In the second half of the podcast Burgis points to the way out of this violent social condition, tracing a counter-narrative through the Judeo-Christian scriptures, and suggests ways of coming to terms with our mimetic predisposition. We all copy someone, he explains, just as we all influence others. Where do your desires come from? Who are your models? Burgis embraces these and other great questions to eventually show that desire’s highest expression, ultimately, may be wanting the other’s good—acting in love

In the second episode of the Book Schmooze podcast we babble about the book "Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life" by Luke Burgis. The book is based on the so called "Mimetic Theory" by René Girard which we also discuss.

Part of MSU Press’s “Breakthroughs in Mimetic Theory” series, Per Bjørnar Grande’s Desire draws on both modern masterpieces and iconic works of contemporary pop culture to shed new light on the frustrating and repetitive nature of human relations in a world of vanishing taboos. In novels and plays by Gustave Flaubert, Marcel Proust, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Arthur Miller and music by Lana Del Rey, Grande sees desire operating in a complex, slippery way that eludes philosophical and psychoanalytical attempts to pin it down. For Grande, these and other great works of literature corroborate René Girard’s understanding of desire as taking shape “according to the other’s desire.” This mimetic approach frees desire from certain preconceptions of psychology and puts literary criticism in touch with the concrete substance of fictional narratives.

Per Bjørnar Grande is a professor in the Department of Pedagogy, Religion, and Social Studies at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences.

Desire: Flaubert, Proust, Fitzgerald, Miller, Lana Del Rey, is available at msupress.org and other fine booksellers. You can connect with the press on Facebook and @msupress on Twitter, where you can also find me @kurtmilb.

The MSU Press podcast is a joint production of MSU Press and the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University. Thanks to the team at MSU Press for helping to produce this podcast. Our theme music is “Coffee” by Cambo. 

Michigan State University occupies the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary Lands of the Anishinaabeg – Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi people. The University resides on Land ceded in the 1819 Treaty of Saginaw.

Thank you all so much for listening, and never give up books.

You can still purchase an All-Access Pass for the content, plus exclusive invites to upcoming quarterly workshops! Click here for more information on passes.

Have a question you'd like to see answered on the podcast? Submit it via email to aericksen@ravenfoundation.org.

Also, be sure to download our FREE resource "Am I Scapegoating? A Practical Guide": https://bit.ly/Free-Scapegoating-Ebook

Have a question you'd like to see answered on the podcast? Submit it via email to aericksen@ravenfoundation.org.

Also, be sure to download our FREE resource "Am I Scapegoating? A Practical Guide": https://bit.ly/Free-Scapegoating-Ebook

In this episode, Adam and Lindsey discuss Matthew 22: 1 - 14. A king threw a banquet and no one came. So, the king burned the city to the ground, and then invited new guests. No one dared refuse! But one got kicked out for wearing the wrong outfit.

What are we to make of this terrifying story? Do we tie ourselves in knots trying to justify the king’s actions because we think the parable wants us to identify the king with God? Is there a Christ figure in this parable, and if so, who? What does this mean for us in tim

You can still purchase an All-Access Pass for the content, plus exclusive invites to upcoming quarterly workshops! Click here for more information on passes.

You can still purchase an All-Access Pass for the content, plus exclusive invites to upcoming quarterly workshops! Click here for more information on passes.

Did you miss the 2020 Collaborators Conference? No worries! 

You can still purchase an All-Access Pass for the content, plus exclusive invites to upcoming quarterly workshops! Click here for more information on passes.

Did you miss the 2020 Collaborators Conference? No worries! 

You can still purchase an All-Access Pass for the content, plus exclusive invites to upcoming quarterly workshops! Click here for more information on passes.

Did you miss the 2020 Collaborators Conference? No worries! 

You can still purchase an All-Access Pass for the content, plus exclusive invites to upcoming quarterly workshops! Click here for more information on passes.

Let’s get some Holy Spirit up in here! For the 6th Sunday in Easter, Lindsey and Adam read John 14:15-21. “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.”

Another Advocate.

Jesus himself is the first Advocate, the defender of victims and the accused. He has shown the disciples that advocacy is solidarity; that is, the way to show concern for the poor and marginalized is to become marginalized and live among the poor. He has fed, healed, and comforted those against whom society had turned their backs. He has eaten with “sinners and tax collectors.” He has redefined “sin” as exclusion itself (rather than a valid reason to exclude), and he has redefined “righteousness” as mercy.

Now he will model the ultimate solidarity with the “least” according to the world’s standards, being executed as a criminal and a blasphemer, in order expose the upside-down order of a world that operates on violence and sacrifice. God is not the author of sacrifice. God is the victim of sacrifice, the Advocate for all sacrificial victims, and the Love that unravels sacrifice and brings life out of death.

The world will see him as another crucified criminal. But the disciples will see through the lens of mercy, which will shine ever brighter after God reveals the limitlessness of God’s mercy on the cross. They will see through this lens that Jesus lives. And because he lives, hope and love and mercy will spread through those who follow in Jesus’s footsteps and “keep [his] commandments.”

These verses may appear exclusive, as if only a select few can truly know “the Spirit of Truth” while the rest of the world remains clueless and condemned. But the only condemnation the world receives is the condemnation it generates. God does not condemn but forgives the world.  At first, those who know this, those called to be Christ’s body and do his work of forgiveness, will be few.  But the Spirit of Truth cannot be contained; she blows where she will and sets hearts aflame with compassion, and her holy fire will burn through the lie of sacrificial violence until only Love remains.

The Gospel lesson for the fifth Sunday in Easter is a doozy. Adam and Lindsey explore John 14: 1-14, wherein there is nestled one of the most misused quotes of Jesus in all of scripture. Interpreted through the lens of mercy, the words he speaks are life-giving, but too often they are twisted through the lens of sacrifice. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

These words have been quite a source of confusion. Through a lens of sacrifice, “No one comes to the Father except through me” seems pretty cut and dry… and unyielding. It leaves little room for people of other faiths or our own doubts. Many have tried to wrap their understanding of love around an exclusivism that has so long been the primary interpretation of this verse.

This is backwards.

Jesus is the embodiment of solidarity with the marginalized and the outcast. He is compassion, mercy, and love incarnate. To reduce the way to God to a narrow belief or creed or dogma is to go completely against Jesus. He is not “the way, the truth, and the life” because he demands absolute adherence to a religious formula, but because he lives into the fullness of his humanity as the incarnation of God’s love.

“No one comes to the Father except through me” means that the way to Love is the way of solidarity, compassion, and mercy that embraces, not excludes. Not only is this path always open to all, it is the path of openness itself. God leads all of us through it. We just have to recognize God in the one we might look down upon, exclude, or condemn. This path is universal, but still difficult, because it tells us that the way to God is not what we thought it was. The Good News is that it’s infinitely better!

In the midst of Ramadan, when Muslims so beautifully embody the very solidarity with the hungry and poor that Jesus models and prescribes, it’s urgent to understand the true meaning of Jesus’s words not as exclusion, but as the ultimate call to including all within the embrace of love and solidarity. Adam and Lindsey and the whole Raven flock wish all our Muslim friends a blessed Ramadan!