Has anyone else noticed a trend where people who tend to have an affinity for Peter Thiel tend to also profess having their mind blown by the ideas of Girard, specifically mimetic theory? It seemed like shortly after it became well known that Thiel liked Girard, many people who find his form of contrarianism as gospel suddenly migrated to viewing nearly everything through the prism of Girard. When Zero to One came out, it was certainly refreshing, but much of what Thiel does/states publicly aside from that comes across as if he's a rather dimwitted political hack. Not to mention that Girard's views on mimetic theory aren't that new to anyone who has kids and wants them to learn from others.
>Has anyone else noticed a trend where people who tend to have an affinity for Peter Thiel tend to also profess having their mind blown by the ideas of Girard, specifically mimetic theory?
Haven't noticed it, but then again I don't closely follow Thiel.
I do however have read Girard's work for 15 years now, and consider it important. Especially the "Things hidden since the foundations of the world" discussion (the title does not allude to some literal conspiracy theory - it's a quote from the New Testament, Matthew 13:35) made several things about the development of human societies, customs, political systems, and the role of religion and violence, click. (It's however a hefty tome 500+ pages iirc, in the form of a long disccusion/interview with 2 other academics).
>Not to mention that Girard's views on mimetic theory aren't that new to anyone who has kids and wants them to learn from others.
That doesn't dismiss Girard (or any thinker for that matter). When it comes to a thinker, what's important is not whether the surface idea or observation is new, but about how deep is is thought, and how much of its subtleties and variances they have covered.
Girard himself repeatedly gives tons of examples of his mimetic theory expressed in 3 millennia of texts, often not as a mere case of people expressing it without knowing it, but knowingly too.
I think the people who get their mind blown by Girard never read any other literary theory. Yes, my 10x Rockstar Ninja friend, Girard is from the literature department! Horror! But wait, what other mind blowing insights on life might those English majors know that you don't? Uh oh!
Who else is there to read? They didn't do to much literary theory in my engineering courses :-). I am finding lately the humanities do have something to offer after all.
I suppose it's highly personal, but I'd say Carl Jung is pretty good. Also Schopenhauer, Tillich, Niebuhr, Emerson, Thoreau, Kierkegaard, St. Augustine, Will Durant, Bertrand Russell, Nietzsche.. Plato and Socrates are usually good starting points in the 'Western tradition'.
I dunno, Aristotle seems kind of important. Or if you must have someone more recent, Alasdair MacIntyre.
I confess I didn't get much out of my forays into Girard. It seems to mostly be amateur primatology. It's entirely possible I didn't try hard enough, or whatever Thiel got out of it, he got out of it in person rather than from the books. It's also possible Girard is overrated by Thiel fanboy types.
I had the reverse happen, where, once I knew of Thiel’s affinity and support for his work, I became far more disinterested.
I’ve read most of Girard’s books and while I think they’re a good critique of both desire and the formation of religions, it has a great deal of shortcomings because of Girard’s retreat into theology. Instead of really tackling the problems his work raises, he simply sets it aside with something to the affect of “be a Christian,” (while nowhere acknowledging how modern Christianity has been weaponized to spread the kind of contagion and scapegoating his work sought to expose.)
I do think an understanding of Girard’s philosophy is necessary to understand Thiel’s political project. But I think he’s actually taken a quite dark lesson from Girard, allying himself with a new, scapegoating sacrificial order to attain further economic and political power.
I'm actually not clear on Thiel's intent with his 'political project' or how it relates to Girard. Is it that Thiel believes Trump is an ideal scapegoat to break the cycle of violence in US politics? Or does he see Trump as the false scapegoat and is supporting him since he thinks it's a good long run bet comparable to Jesus? It's hard to cut through and in my view makes Thiel look wholly unserious given that he obtained New Zealand citizenship after the election and stated that there's a 50% chance Trump could be a disaster.
If you like Rilke, you'd also really like James Hollis' The Middle Passage (1993).
As for as books from the past decade go David Brooks' The Road to Character was pretty good. His follow-up The Second Mountain would have been better if he didn't recycle so much from the previous work. Sam Harris' Waking Up was pretty eye opening as Harris is a very lucid thinker.
One piece of information the article doesn't acknowledge is that property rights in Vietnam aren't the same as they are in the US. So if a foreigner "buys" an apartment in Vietnam, they can only have it for up to 50 years. In other words, it's an asset that is steadily decreasing in value, and not one that the "owner" can necessarily hand down to the next generation at a higher or the same value unless changes are made to those laws.
The same is true for China and its 99 year apartment leases. Everyone is assuming the government will roll over the leases for minimal fees, or eventually repulsed the leases with a proper property tax, but nothing is guaranteed yet.
Huh. In Canada you can’t buy land on First Nation reserves. They do 99 year leases, but you buy and sell the home the same way as if you were buying the land as well, since the expectation is that the lease would be renewable for the foreseeable future.
Can they sell it at the end of those 50 years and buy something else? If so, I can't see why purchasing one would necessarily be steadily decreasing in value, except for the requirement of a rushed sale if you waited until the very last minute to sell.
Because you wouldn't get your money back at the end of that 50 years. If you sold it after 35 years, you would essentially be selling a 15 year contract to own the apartment, which would likely be factored into the resale price.
With that said, 50 year property rights are likely a stepping stone to something "better" since no one has hit that point yet, so the laws could change before then. However a lot of other things could change before then that might work against you (e.g.increase in corruption, attitudes towards foreigners could sour, property rights policies could revert back to less rights, etc).
Vietnam still is a communist country in that respect.
The government still owns all the land and is legally leasing it to its citizens and foreigners. In reality, now that Vietnam is increasingly open to the world economy the government has to treat property rights better or else it'll scare foreign investment away.
The lack of private property rights and the Vietnam's Communist Party stranglehold on the economy with their state owned enterprises is a huge drag on productivity and innovation.
Nothing to do with communism. Capitalist Thailand has thirty year limits on property ownership with the exemption of condo buildings that are majority owned by Thai citizens.
Hell even Singapore limits property ownership of foreigners.
I hate using the terms capitalist and communist since they are both pretty loaded, but I think in the case of Vietnam and China it does have something to do with their recent Communist or Socialist histories. Property rights are usually seen as the bedrock of a capitalist society for better or worse. Vietnam and China's land is technically still owned "by the people" (aka government) and since both countries have opened they have gradually loosened those rights. Singapore is often seen as an anomaly to people who see things on the capitalist/communist spectrum, but you're right they have rights similar to those seen in China and Vietnam and often cited as a model for those countries to provide more property rights without allowing for a 'Western' model.
I've heard many times before that under Giuliani, NY gave homeless people a one-way bus ticket and a sandwich to get rid of their homeless population but have never been able to find information online confirming it.
I think this makes sense. Why do homeless people need to live in expensive cities where housing is scarce? It's better for NYC housing to be occupied by people working in NYC and their families.
I worked with a company that worked with Away, Steph in particular, and her abrasive style bled through to our entire company. Without diving into specifics, she wasn't able to manage her own expectations on an important issue and threatened to write a bad review of us. She was known by our whole company as being someone who messed up on her end and rather than take blame internally she blamed it on us. I get that founders are under a lot of pressure, but she was hard up to repeat the success she saw at Warby Parker and it was evident she was willing to be a crummy person to work with if it looked like things were not headed in that direction regardless of who was at fault.
