Luke Burgis

Humans don't desire anything independently. Human desire is mimetic - we imitate what other people want. This affects the way we choose partners, friends, careers, clothes, and travel destinations. Mimetic desire is responsible for the formation of our very identities. It explains the enduring relevancy of Shakespeare's plays, why Peter Thiel decided to be the first investor in Facebook, and...

Gravity affects every aspect of our physical being, but there's a psychological force just as powerful—yet almost nobody has heard of it. It's responsible for bringing groups of people together and pulling them apart, making certain goals attractive to some and not to others, and fueling cycles of anxiety and conflict. According to French polymath René Girard, humans don't desire...

How do you become your true self without losing everyone else? We are living in an era of crisis where becoming a whole person means navigating constant external pressure. Some of us dissolve into group identities, while others withdraw into temporary and sometimes dangerous online collectives. Both are symptoms of the same problem: a fragmented sense of self in an...