25 Anti-Mimetic Ideas

A respected hedge fund describes part of their investment philosophy like this: “Enterprises work best when they have access to capital priced to reflect the value they can create. Index funds, by the way, do not price capital; they only mimic the actions of those who do.”

Being an autididact is anti-mimetic in itself because the force driving the learning path is one’s interest and desire generated by the material itself, not a pre-determined path constructed by people who want to produce a certain kind of ‘product’ (in the American education system, for example, that used to be good industrial workers; now it’s shi... See more

Escaping the throes of some of our most unhealthy mimetic desires happens when we’re rooted and grounded in the Real. Maybe this is why people like moving to farms lately (yes, I know that’s partly mimetic, too). But when you’re forced to clean up cow shit every morning, you have a lot less time to pay attention to the latest social media influence... See more

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone," wrote the French philosopher Blaise Pascal.

But it’s simple: some feedback is good, some feedback is bad. And too much feedback is detrimental—especially to a Creative. At a certain point, you have to choose. If you try to take into account every person’s opinion, you’ll end up with something ‘nice’—not great.