Intro – Social Gravity

• Rely on others to see what’s worth wanting
• After basic needs – go to desires
  • Mimesis – Learn desire externally from “models”
  • Humans fight not because of different but because of sameness – enemy twins
• Religious sacrifice
• Company where people measure on perf objectives instead of relative performance – minimize mimetic rivalry
• Model of desire – everyone’s a potential model with Facebook
  • FB models are “inside our world”

Chap1 Hidden Models – Romantic Lies, Infant Truth

• We learn our desire from models
• Torches of freedom – Edward Bernays
  • Female smoking a taboo at the time, Frame women smoking as a way for women to challenge male power “torches of freedom”
  • Hire women to smoke conspicuously
  • Give illusion of autonomy, models are powerful when hidden, if want someone passionate about something, want them to believe the desire is their own
• Romance:
  • Backoff in relationship when women push too hard
  • The more the women deny, the more Girard wants the women – other man needs this women – “modeling the desirability of women”
  • Guy wants his girlfriend back when the women posted on insta with a new boyfriend who’s “high status”
• Advertising Irony
  • When being sold something too hard – not good
  • Illusion of Choice
• Financial Market – herding of investors

Chap2 Distorted Reality – Freshmen

• Steve Jobs and computer buyer Friedland – quirky behavior
  • Later becomes reality distortion field <- author says its because Steve Jobs “want” differently
• “Imitate – but not too much” behavior
• People who’re far away from us (celebristan) vs. those who are close (Freshmanistan)
  • Celebristan – different universe, different “wants” 
  • Rivalry from Proximity
  • Freshmanistan – close in contact and unspoken rivalry
• Celebristan – external mediator of desire (outside our world)
  • Time/Space/Social Status between celebristan vs. Imitators
  • Imitated openly & freely
  • Add distance by Secrecy (i.e. Satoshi Nakamoto in Celebristan)
  • Hierarchy in company faciliate Celebristan (i.e. CEO vs. entry-level employee)
• Freshmanistan – internal mediator of desire (inside our world)
  • High Rivalry
  • High school freshman – unspoken battle of differentiation
  • “I want what you want”
• Distortion of Reality
  • Distortion 1 : Misappropriation of Wonder
    • Openly applaud wonders for models in Celebristan, secretly applaud wonders for models in Freshmanistan (because of rivalry)
  • Distortion 2 : Cult of Experts
    • Example: Tim Ferris’s Five Bullet Friday: experts tell you what you should want
    • “Guru” – deconstruct layer’s behind someone’s authority
  • Distortion 3: Reflexivity
    • Self-fulfilling : our perception of reality changes reality
    • Example: people’s willingness to speak freely depends on their unconscious perception of how popular their opinions are
    • Example: Elizabeth Holmes – Walgreen contract brings more action
• Social Mediation – social media & mimetic desire

Chap3 Social Contagion – cycles of desire

• Mimetic Desire spreads like energy
• Lamborghini vs. Ferrari 
  • Innovation from imitation 
  • Mimetic Rivalry, where one person is Matador the other the bull
• Memes
• Flywheel effect
  • Cycle-1: Negative cycle, rivalry
  • Cycle-2: Positive cycle, mutual good, mindset of abundance; 
  • Example of business flywheel: great product -> elite athelete -> amateur -> public
• Zappos Negative Flywheel example:
  • Downtown proj
  • Community that has lost the difference (no model vs. imitator) – will have worse mimetic rivalry (freshmanistan type)
    • Tony want to create “college env” to accelerate Serendipity but seems he got freshmanistan
  • Non-hierarchical Company
• Mimetic Rivalry (pair-wise) vs. Mimetic Crisis (Zappos example)
• Have a clear hierarchy of values – antidote to mimetic conformity

Chap4 The Invention of Blame

• Scapegoat mechanism
• Celebristan vs. Freshmanstan – in mimetic contagion
  • Ppl in pool analogy
  • Mob/Crowd Psychology
• Scapegoat mechanism also “kill tyrants” 
• Scapegoat – demigod ability before death – unifying & healing the community
• Online Study (Weibo) – anger spreads faster than other emotion, because anger spreads across weak ties between people
• Sacrificial Thinking
  • I.e. Jesus

Chap5 Anti-Mimetic

• Goal & Systems
• Mimetic Systems
  • More Mimetic Force, more people want to use it
  • Systems of Desires
• Example: Restaurant / Michelin Star
  • Michelin Guide – mediator of desire
  • Mimetic Marketing
  • Also sell tools & Services to restaurants (if they don’t agree, then …)

Chap6 Disruptive Empathy – break through thin desires

• Disruptive Empathy
  • Detail Negative Mimesis
  • Know People at their Core: Stories of deeply fulfilling action
• Sympathy vs. Empathy
  • Sympathy: feeling together, empathy: feeling inside
  • Sympathy can be hijacked by mimesis
• Thick Desires
  • Against mimetic desire
  • i.e. desire to retire is thin vs. desire to invest more time with family is thick
  • Envy: Engine of destructive mimetic desire
  • Thin desire fluctuate up & down
  • Thick desire always goes up
• Deeply fulfilling experiences
  • Identify core motivational drive
  • Fulfillment story: action -> meaning to the person
  • Kick off positive memisis
  • Fulfillment story as window 

Chap7 Transcendent leadership – great leader inspire & shape desire

• Mimetic Desire & Leadership
  • Immanent vs. Transcendent Desire
    • Inside vs. Outside the System
    • Transcendent desire is extending space & time, via vision 
    • 增量 vs. 存量
• Five skills of transcendent leadership
  • 1. Shift Gravity – cultivate desire in students and let them stufy
  • 2. Speed of truth – important for org
    • Pursuit of truth is anti-mimetic
  • 3. Discern desire
  • 4. Sit quietly in a room – silent retreat
  • 5. Filter feedback
    • Lean Startup Methodology is immanent desire (based on data feedback), which is “follow instead of lead”
    • Elon Musk’s “reckless” opinion of market data

Chap8 Mimetic Future

• Facebook marks world’s entry into Freshmanistan
• Big Tech
  • Google – deity
  • Facebook – love & belonging
  • Amazon – Security
  • Apple – Sex/Status
• Two dimension
  • Celebristan vs. Freshmanistan
  • Mimetic vs. Anti-mimetic
• Instruments vs. Relationships
  • Engineering desire vs. transformation of desire
  • Engineering desire
    • Tech comp stand as mediator of desire between ppl & things
    • Centrally planned wanting
  • Transformation of desire
    • Calculating vs. Meditating thought
    • Meditative thought as anti-dote to mimesis
• Pivotal space: family / imagination / work
• Three social inventions: Scapegoat / Marketing Economy / the third one forming
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