What I prefer over trends is a sense of mission. That you are working on a unique problem that people are not solving elsewhere.”

companies should avoid competition and seek to create value instead of beating rivals.

Everybody imitates. We cannot resist Mimetic contagion, and that will never change. But there are bad ways to copy and good ways to copy. Bad imitators follow the crowd and mirror false idols, while good imitators copy a transcendent goal or figure.

“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides... See more

Each goal led to the next. Rather than focusing their attention on the end goal of developing a legal expertise, transforming the Constitution, or rescuing the powerless from tyrannical injustice, they elbowed their peers so they could score higher than their classmates on standardized tests.

Competition distracts us from things that are more important, meaningful, or valuable. We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like. Trapped in a never-ending rat race, lawyers climbed the corporate ladder by winning favor with partners at the top. Others engaged in small acts of sabotage against their... See more

Before he internalized Girard’s ideas, Thiel was on track to become a lawyer. He worked as an associate for Sullivan & Cromwell in New York City, where the hours were long and the competition was cutthroat. As Thiel recounts, all the lawyers competed for the same shared goals. They ranked themselves not by absolute progress towards a transcendent... See more

The most talented people follow the same narrow tracks. People are afraid to dream big or stand out. Without a positive vision for their future, these young Americans are stuck playing vicious, zero-sum status games. Instead of constructing our own desires, they mirror the goals of people around them. Patrick Collison, the CEO of Stripe, shared a... See more

“Younger Americans today are perhaps the first generation to be certain that they are and will be “worse off” than their parents. The interconnected nature of the world makes nightmare scenarios—pandemics, global economic collapse, climate-change disaster, cyberattacks, terrorism—all seem like genuine possibilities, even probabilities... Today hope

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