☕ saturday mornings - April 23, 2022

daily walks, spartan belief & imitating others

Apr 23, 2022

Good morning all!

Happy Saturday. I hope you’re having an excellent start to your long weekend.

What I’ve been up to:

Finished up exams for the term!
Flying to Rome tonight for a 4 week trip to Europe. 2 weeks are meticulously planned and 2 weeks are looking more like... improv.

Below is your edition of “saturday mornings”, a weekly recap of the coolest things I’ve been pondering and exploring this week.

Thanks for stopping by. I appreciate your time.

Total read time (all) = 5 minutes

✍️ Quote I’m pondering:

“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.”
— Søren Kierkegaard

Friedrich put it more bluntly:

“Never trust a thought that didn’t come by walking.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche

📕 Book passage I loved:

“The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work. The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like.
The ancient Spartans schooled themselves to regard the enemy, any enemy, as nameless and faceless. In other words, they believed that if they did their work, no force on earth could stand against them.”
— The War of Art, Steven Pressfield

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💡 Idea I’m exploring: Imitation of Desire

Our desires are not uniquely our own. Rather, many of them are unconsciously copied from other people.

It's shocking. Our desires - the things we want - feel intimate and personal to us. They exist in our heads and we've internalized them as "ours".

So let me explain.

How We Think

Broadly, there are two ways we think: "reasoning from first principles" and "reasoning by analogy".

First Principles

Reasoning from first principles is thinking from the ground up. You take core facts and observations and try to piece them together to arrive at your own unique conclusion. Like putting together the pieces of a puzzle.

Using first principles is not easy. It takes a lot of time and mental effort. It's completely independent. You're taking the untrodden path. Often, it involves a lot of trial and error to determine what is true and what isn't.

Analogy

On the other hand, reasoning by analogy is when you look at the way things are done and essentially copy them. Like using someone else's finished puzzle to put yours together.

Through reasoning by analogy, we don't have to think entirely for ourselves. It's quicker and easier. Less trial and error, as someone's already done it.

We reason by analogy to avoid re-inventing the wheel. Whereas reasoning from first principles is inventing the wheel for the first time.

The key is to learn it’s smart to reason by analogy and when it’s worth the time and effort to use first principles.

French Mimes

René Girard, a French historian and literary critic, was fascinated with how people "reason by analogy".

He developed the concept of Mimetic Theory to outline his belief that human behavior is heavily influenced by the behavior of others. We learn how to behave by observing and copying others.

In the words of David Perell, our Mimetic nature is simultaneously our biggest strength and biggest weakness.

Reasoning from first principles, in many cases, can be a huge waste of time whereas imitating others is far easier and straightforward.

I'm very conformist in my clothing. Right now I'm wearing a Patagonia sweater and Lululemon pants. I tend to observe what other people wear, that looks good, and buy similar clothing. Clothes aren't important to me, and creating "my own style" isn't worth the effort.

Imitating others can also be an extremely effective way to accelerate learning. Especially if you copy the best.

I spent years obsessing over the game tape of Carey Price, trying to replicate his style of play as a goaltender in hockey. Similarly, you'd probably be better off copying Warren Buffett's investment style, which he built over +70 years, rather than creating your own from the ground up.

In certain parts of your life, it makes sense to imitate others.

Imitation of Desire

René Girard extended his idea of Mimetic Theory. He hypothesized that human desire is mimetic.

In other words, we only learn how and what to desire by observing other people.

In Naval Ravikant's words, most of our desires are picked up through society based on what other people are doing. We copy others’ desires and then we make them part of ourselves. We internalize them. Then we drive forward.

Most people want the same thing as everyone else.

There's no way that 50% of business students’ authentic desire is to become an "investment banker". If everyone was unique in creating their own desires, that statistic would be impossible.

Before you blow this idea off, think for a second. How many of your desires are uniquely your own? How many have you created internally? Or, how many were unconsciously picked up based on what "successful" people are doing?

For a long time, I was extremely mimetic in my desire. I spent three years trying to follow in the footsteps of "successful" peers. It was such a weirdly unfamiliar question when I finally looked inward and asked myself "what am I actually interested in?"

I had no answers. But at least I was asking the right questions.

The Dangers of Imitation

Where imitating the behavior of others can be a shortcut for success, imitating the desires of others is a sure path to failure.

Imitation of desire becomes especially dangerous when it bleeds into parts of our life that are deeply important. Things that require independent thought. Things that have a large impact on the quality of our life. Such as choosing your career path or picking your life partner.

When our happiness depends on our alignment between our authentic self and our desire, we can't afford to imitate the desires of others.

Through this act, we become deeply misaligned. The desires we pick up aren't our own and don't fit with who we are as people.

We're left chasing someone else's definition of success, rather than creating our own. We try to morph our skills and interests to compete with others, ignoring our authentic selves.

If you aim for the wrong thing, you limit your ability to succeed, as what you're aiming for isn't aligned with what you're uniquely talented at or interested in.

You're not only running the wrong race. You're running the wrong race blindfolded with your hands tied behind your back.

I've felt the recoil of unconsciously copying others’ desires and taking them as my own. It doesn't end well.

Happy Endings

The moral of the story: Don't imitate others in areas that need to be authentic to you.

If you have the courage to be "first principled" in selecting your desires, you will not only be more successful but happier as well.

Successful because your work aligns with your unique strengths (to the point it may feel like play). Happy because you're working on something you're intensely curious about.

If I could scream something from the top of a mountain, this would be it.

The most common regret of dying palliative care patients was wishing they had the courage to live a life true to themselves, not the life others expected of them. In other words, imitating, and acting on, the desires of others instead of creating their own.

"I think the key to life, "Tim Urban writes, "is to figure out when it makes sense to save mental energy and when in life it really matters to reason independently. We'd all be happier and more successful if we could learn to be original more often – which just takes some self-awareness and an epiphany that it's not actually as scary as it seems to reason independently and act on it."

That’s all for this week’s edition of “saturday mornings”.

If you have any feedback, I’d love to hear from you.

I may be wrong. I frequently am. If you see something differently, I’d be interested to read your thoughts.

Reply to this email, leave a comment, or find me on Twitter @tommy_dixon_

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Have a fantastic weekend.

Much love to you and yours,

Tommy