Cargo Cult Startups

Imitating the Wrong Things—A Conversation with Peter Thiel

In November 2019, I sat down with Peter Thiel to talk about his philosophical mentor, the great French polymath René Girard. I was about halfway through writing my book about mimetic theory.

We spoke about the consequences of Girard’s ideas in business, investing, culture, education, and many other domains. At one point, Peter told me a story about his father that took me by surprise.

“My dad worked these large engineering projects,” he said. “One of them was at Lihir Island, off the coast of Papua New Guinea. I remember that on the way to the airstrip there was this concession stand with people standing around. They were all “businessmen” — or at least playing the role of businessmen. But they would just stand around and chat. Nobody was buying or selling anything.”

What were they doing, then? The locals were engaged in a ritual. They were imitating the behavior of the wealthy businessmen who had recently come to the island. (Lihir is well-known for its open-pit gold mine, though Thiel didn’t tell me what kind of engineering project his dad had been there for.)

By imitating these external behaviors, there was a sense — at least a hope — that they might come to share in the prosperity of their visitors.