PinnedMember-onlyHow Social Media Has Made Us All RivalsIt’s a Chamber of Desire from which there is no escape — In the isolation of the pandemic, our need for social media has been especially acute. It helps us to make sense of who we are. We didn’t know what to desire. So we turned to other people, on our phones, to tell us: Watch Tiger King, drink negronis, adopt dogs…Social Media8 min readSocial Media8 min read
4 days agoMember-onlyDo You Know Your Motivational Pattern?A Practical Approach Using Narrative Psychology for Discovering What Really Drives You Everyday — Identifying and understanding your core motivational drive — what truly moves you, daily — is one of the most powerful Anti-Mimetic tactics that I have ever discovered. There is no doubt that motivational energy can be siphoned and suctioned off in a million different directions, spent up chasing a thousand…Motivation7 min readMotivation7 min read
Jan 14Member-onlyHow to Avoid Financial NihilismIf you don’t believe in anything, you’ll believe in everything—and begin to feel that nothing you can possibly do will build true wealth. — “It is because you don’t know the end and purpose of things that you think the wicked and the criminal have power and happiness.” — Boethius Nobody has a precise idea how much wealth anyone else has. There is a good chance that you don’t even know your own. …Finance9 min readFinance9 min read
Jan 8Member-onlyMeditation In An Art StudioThings I’m Looking “Along” in 2023 — As I read this meditation in a toolshed this morning, I was transported back to my grandmother’s art studio in Traverse City, MI, the place where my imagination was first formed. Here are some of the things on my mind as we begin 2023: Looking Along Things. It is necessary…Literature5 min readLiterature5 min read
Dec 11, 2022Member-onlyAnti-Mimetic Ideas for 2023Cooking with no recipes, selecting records, anti-memes, and more. — One of the most popular editions in this newsletter’s short history is the article “25 Anti-Mimetic Ideas”, which I published last December — so I figured I’d start a tradition and share a few more. Being anti-mimetic doesn’t mean being a “contrarian”; it means being resistant to the forces of…Writing8 min readWriting8 min read
Nov 28, 2022Member-onlySam Bankman-Fried Has Hijacked Attention from Things That Matter“Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer.” (Simone Weil) — Simone Weil, in her classic book Gravity and Grace, wrote that “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer….If we turn our mind toward the good, it is impossible that little by little the whole soul will not be attracted thereto in spite of itself.” I’ve…Spirituality9 min readSpirituality9 min read
Nov 12, 2022Member-onlyHow Businesses and Consumers Navigate the Four Levels of HappinessA new framework for thinking about markets and the satisfaction (and generation) of desire — This is a previously unpublished excerpt of a lecture that I gave at Notre Dame’s Mendoza School of Business, November 8, 2022. I’d like to present one framework for thinking about desires, both thick and thin, in relation to happiness — and hopefully begin to map René Girard’s ideas about…Business10 min readBusiness10 min read
Nov 1, 2022Member-onlyThe World is Filled with Accusers—But We Can All Become AdvocatesThe difference between Advocates and Accusers has ancient, biblical roots. It has to do with two very different ways of relating to one another. One leads to death; the other to life. — I have great respect for the legal profession. The best of it, anyway. One of my dear friends is a trial attorney who, for as long as I’ve known him, has had a very sacred view of his work. Shortly after we met, during my time living in Vegas, he…Theology3 min readTheology3 min read
Oct 8, 2022Member-onlyYour Personal Occam’s RazorHow to rescue yourself and the people you love from the confusion and indistinction of faceless crowds. — “The true inner self must be drawn up like a jewel from the bottom of the sea, rescued from confusion, from indistinction, from immersion in the common, the nondescript, the trivial, the sordid, the evanescent.” — Thomas Merton One of the best parts about gaining a clearer sense of your…Philosophy4 min readPhilosophy4 min read
Sep 7, 2022Member-onlyImitatio MachinaThe machine cannot be our mirror. — The essay below, Imitatio Machina, is being re-published with permission. It originally appeared at Return.Life. I spent nearly five years seriously discerning a religious vocation, several of them in Italy. One year I went on a retreat at a monastery in Umbria, where I got to know the abbot during…Philosophy8 min readPhilosophy8 min read
