How Our Culture Became ‘Cult-Like’

24:11And I think, like, things are too easy to join today. Right? I agree. just way too easy to join and way too easy to leave, right? I just leave the group chat if I don't like what somebody says.

24:20Luke Burgis:What do you think of birth order? Do you feel as though it's important? I think it's probably incredibly important. But because I'm an only child, like I don't know as much as you do about birth order. Only what I've read in Murray Bowen, who also happens to think it's incredibly important in a family system, right? My youngest is only five months old. So she doesn't have any I can't, there's no younger youngest daughter stuff going on with her quite yet. Do you think about as a parent, like, how do I teach them to reject me? Because that's kind of a lot about what the book is, how you reject certain contexts and then come back in a more fulsome way.

24:55Luke Burgis:So how do you as a parent say, like, don't take anything I'm saying seriously? My toddler, toddlers just say like the damnedest things, right? And my my toddler I was doing bedtime with her the other night and she goes I don't like you dad I like mom only and I was like ah my reaction was like wait you can't say that and I was like oh it's okay you like my then she went further and she was like I don't love you dad I love mom only tonight I was like so talk about talk about getting pregnant this is like a comic toddlers do this all the time with parents. And then my wife got the same thing. And it's like, in that moment, I was like, yeah, like that, that, that hurts a little bit.

25:38But I'm just gonna like, sit here and like not react to that, because that is preparing me probably for a lifetime of having my daughters, like, you know, reject me in various ways and depart from what I might like for them or whatever it is. So it's, it's, yeah, being a parent of toddlers tests you in some ways that I nobody prepared me for that exact statement coming out of my daughter's mouth. I don't like you. You know, I don't like you. And then she does that with her nannies too. Like a nanny walks in the door that - I think this is her problem. Yeah, yeah. It's like, I don't like her, dad.

26:10I'm like, you can't say that in front of her. She has a solid sense of self. And it's like, that nanny better have a solid sense of self, right? Right. And not get too wounded by that statement.

26:19Luke Burgis:You write that social contagion has been exacerbated by technology. I'd like to know what you mean by that. Social contagion is, you know, our emotional transfer, idea transfer, and desire transfer sort of against our will without us knowing that it's happening sort of subtly. And technology is exacerbating it. The obvious reason is because algorithms immediately show us what it thinks we want to see, right? But I think, and I really worry that it's actually happening with AI, because AI seems incredibly personalized, you know, but I think that's an illusion, right? It's not really personalized because the AI has received a bunch of inputs.

27:08It's been trained in a certain way and it's not as personalized as it actually seems, right? It's kind of this synthetic thing and it makes all kinds of assumptions, right? Because it doesn't have embodied experience. It's lacking all kinds of context. It only has the context that you give it. We think that we're getting something that's highly personalized, which is, in fact, kind of something that is transferring the ideas and the desires that other people have fed into a machine. And it's giving it back to us in a way that seems personalized. And that's what I worry could cause social contagion to happen at mass scale.

27:50Luke Burgis:Because it's making people flatter, actually. It says it's personalized, but it's actually making you textureless. We had Joanna Stern on the podcast, and there was something that has stuck with me since then, which is when she has this book called My Year of AI. Is that what it's called? I Am Not a Robot. I Am Not a Robot. It's about her using AI for a year. Didn't she intentionally integrate it? Yeah. For everything. Therapist, as a lover, for everything. Is she okay? Yes, great. She survived. But one thing that she was talking about that has stuck with me was when she gave AI music a shot, and she was listening to only music that was written by AI.

28:25And at first she was like, this is awesome. It's actually pretty good. But the more she listened to it, the more she was like, oh, this is like, it's not hitting. Like, it's just like, it just feels like very limp and just didn't really register. And I feel like that is what we're getting with all the advice we're getting from it, from the things that we think are great. I just think about that limp music. Like, it's all that limp music version of what we, what seems like a really awesome tool.

28:54Luke Burgis:What's your favorite social contagion? Favorite social contagion? Mine is the fake Tourette's. Oh, that's a good one. That's a good one. You know that TikTok Tourette's? Yeah, that's a good one. Where they were all having the same tics? I think it's picking up accents from people. I was a Michigan kid who came to the city, came to New York for college, and I was so jealous of the Brooklyn accent, and I was trying my best to pick it up and I just sounded like a complete idiot. I love it. Mine is everyone becoming a Knicks fan. Join the party. Yeah, yeah. Join the social contagion. Is that a social contagion?

29:30I think so. It's a positive one. Knicks in five is a social contagion.

29:34Luke Burgis:You talk about rites of passage in the book. I just was curious if you think being canceled can be a rite of passage and teach someone to, I feel, I should speak for myself, that being canceled allow me to form a more solid sense of self. It was very painful, but I don't have that thing as much as I think other people do of like, I am so terrified of stepping outside the line and being attacked by the mob because it's happened to me. Yeah, you don't have the existential fear of being canceled. Because it did happen. Because it happened to you. And it was as bad as it looked. Was it as bad as it?

30:06For sure, of course. It was.

30:07Luke Burgis:I mean, I'm happy it happened, but it is, I see why people avoid it scrupulously. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah. Should I just try my best to get canceled? Like, would it be, maybe that would be a good thing. Well, trying to get canceled, it might be a different thing. But I'm wondering, like, is that like a modern rite of passage? Or what are healthy modern rites of passage? I definitely think that that's a rite of passage, right? I think you sort of like die to some kind of existential fear, and then you realize that you survived, right? I mean, early in my life, my greatest fear was going bankrupt, and one of my companies went bankrupt, right?

30:41And it's like after that, it seemed like nothing could really— Was it as bad as you thought? that one actually wasn't as bad as I thought right I got on my feet audited I thought that was gonna be the worst thing ever and it was fine it was like teetering outside a window you just change your name yeah exactly find you I think people do intentionally try to get canceled right because it drives incredible engagement right so I I won't name any names but I do think that now people actually do go for that which makes it even more of a rite of passage because I don't think something's a rite of passage if you can't initiate it, if that makes sense, right?

31:16Luke Burgis:Wait, say that again? I don't think that something can be a true rite of passage unless you can initiate it, right? Because getting canceled, we think of it as something that just happens to you without you, like, seeking it out. But maybe if people can actually seek it out now, maybe that makes it more of a rite of passage. Oh, that's interesting. I feel like it's more of a rite of passage if you genuinely step in it and you're just like, whoa, like, didn't know there was a hornet's nest under there. because it's like kind of you're more pure. If you were like, I was just being myself. I wasn't trying to elicit this reaction from you, but now I have to deal with it.

31:49Yeah. What's the last time you felt the crowd contagion coming for you and you felt like it was hard to not be a part of the crowd? Yeah, I mean, I organize a lot of events and host things and I like to have like a surprising mix of people. It's like a job that I take very, very seriously is the art of convening. And that means that there are controversial people, right? And I hate purity tests. And even something that I'm doing next month, right? When I organize a conference, I definitely get phone calls and emails from people that are like, that person shouldn't be there. And I will never disinvite.

32:31I won't back down from that. But sometimes the pressure is really, really strong.

32:36Luke Burgis:But there are people you won't invite. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Right. But it's like once I'm being told what the makeup of this gathering should be, right, and you're trying to force me to make the party a certain way, it's no longer really a party at that point. I have an example. I have your answer to Dan's question, which is that I would like you to tell the story of being approached by Anthropik to make it more moral. Tell us what happened there. You got an email from Anthropic. What does it say? Yeah, I was introduced to some people at Anthropic, and they were looking for leaders of wisdom traditions, I think is the term that they used for it.

33:19And they were looking specifically for Christian thought leaders, pastors, people like that. And I was one of the people that they approached. And I ended up declining the invitation for, there's a few different reasons I declined it. First, I thought it was going to be a waste of my time. I thought that it was sort of, they were sort of like using me in a way that might be a controversial thing to say in a way I think they were like using the Pope. I mean, it gives them a certain kind of moral authority. I think they got a lot more out of that deal.

33:47Luke Burgis:The moral authority. I mean, like the last one left in a lot of ways. And I think it was a terrible idea. Like, I would have been fine if we're talking now about the encyclical announcement. It would have been better if there were like five AI leaders there, like Sam Altman. There was only one, right? So that kind of implies a certain kind of selection and anointing. You're the ones doing it the right way, so you can actually be. I think it was a bad idea. On the part of the Vatican. On the part of the Vatican. There's somebody in the Vatican. I know there's a lot of backstory here. Anthropic has been working very hard for many years to have that seat at the table, and they got it.

34:22So first of all, I thought it was going to be a waste of my time. I thought it was performative.

34:26Luke Burgis:And this was specifically to make the AI more moral. Yeah, and I started asking to make it good, by the way, like make the AI good. And I literally asked in one of my, so I had a long email exchange. I was asking questions. I wasn't getting satisfactory answers to any of my questions. I was like, well, what is that? How do you make Claude good? What does that even mean? But then the kind of second layer to all of this is the reaction of like fellow Christians and fellow religious people that were like, well, you have a responsibility to be there. And I was like, I've got a lot of responsibilities.

34:58that's not one of them. Doing free work for Anthropic isn't at the top of the list. That's not one of my responsibilities. But there was incredible pressure. I mean, I received kind of angry emails from people that were like, you're usurping, you're basically neglecting a thing that you should do. Wow. Did you not want to hear them out? I did. Wait, hear out who? The people that were sending me the emails? No, Anthropic. I would love to hear them out. I invite anybody from Anthropic to have a conversation with me. But in that particular context, right? it felt like it would lead to some kind of like moral entanglements and I wanted to sort of maintain my intellectual freedom and I have noticed that many of the people that were there and I know a decent amount of the people that were there are only kind of issuing sort of defending everything that Anthropic does I'm in kind of this weird way and I'm like well to what extent are you saying these things because presumably Anthropic flew you out and put you

36:02Luke Burgis:up in a nice hotel you don't want to say indulgence and you don't want to say anything maybe yeah you don't and you wouldn't want to offend the the company that clearly thinks that your work is valuable right so zooming out because I think the kind of like there's a false dichotomy between like the good AI and the bad AI I kind of think there's just this technology you wrote that a A society governed by curiositas produces individuals who are hyper-informed but poorly formed. A, what is curiositas? Great word. Beautiful word. And what does that mean, that you can be hyper-informed but poorly formed?

36:42Yeah, so curiositas is a Latin word that was used by Augustine of Hippo. And he said that it's the vice of like wanting to know things without any real kind of without being able to connect it to something good. Like you don't something that you don't need to know. It's distracting knowledge. So the example that Augustine uses is you're driving in a car and you see an accident or God forbid, like a body and an ambulance on the side of the road. Right. and you rubberneck and you stop and you get on your phone and you try to learn everything that you can about this thing it doesn't act first of all it's dangerous like to do that and second of all like it's it's it's you're you you want knowledge for like titillation right you want it to i think it's why people get into true crime and you need to know every little like detail about every little scandal at a certain point like it's not better just to know a bunch of things like it's like just to gather knowledge like it's a possession right what is census communis

37:50Luke Burgis:and how does ai erode it it's like another term that i was interested by yeah so since the census communis is trend you could translate that into english as common sense right um but it doesn't mean common sense in the sense of like it's the thing that everybody knows everybody should know This was also, I'm sort of drawing on classical philosophy and theology here, but the way that it was used traditionally is that humans have more than just the physical senses. We have intellectual senses. Examples of that would be the imagination and the memory and intuition. These are intellectual senses that we have.

38:29You could speak of spiritual senses. Faith would be an example of a spiritual sense, hope, love. and they're all they're all important and like one of the things that technology does is i think dulls dulls all of these senses right the more time that we spend on screens the less time that we're spending in the real world observing things and noticing things and developing like intuition social skills would be an example of this a perfect example so like a lot of times the way you can read a room and you just kind of you can't even describe why you can read the room or why you know certain things about other people and if social skills of like gen z are being degraded or regressing like maybe it's because their senses are being fragmented or they're not exercising them in real embodied environments where you know you you learn things that you don't even know that you're learning interesting yeah i feel like it's taken away the need for courage to go through that fear.

39:32Because you can meet everyone on a dating app and not have to approach someone. It makes it so much easier. And then that muscle atrophies. And then you just -

39:41Luke Burgis:And you're looking for the wrong signals. You're like, oh, this is an eligible partner, but you're going by things like height or clothes as opposed to the quality of their person. Or those extra senses that you're talking about. Exactly. So we need context-rich environments, right? So I never hire a person in my organization without getting a meal with them, like inviting them to lunch, because I can just learn all kinds of things. There's so much context there, like what they order, like are they polite, all kinds of things, like how do they eat, right? Can they sustain a conversation with me for two hours, all of those things.

40:16So there's all kinds of the senses come into play in ways there, where if I was evaluating the person on a piece of paper, there's all kinds of things that I don't know. So I insist on in-person. I insist on high-context environments. I invite people to the party because we all know you can just pick up on little things. Something's a little bit off there. Was there a time that you wanted to hire someone and then you took them out for lunch and you were like, I can't hire this person? Oh, yeah. Many times. Really? Many times. What happens? What do they do? I invited somebody that I was contemplating hiring.

40:45They didn't know that I was contemplating hiring. I was like, why don't we get lunch? We went to Via Carota, which is, do you know? Taylor's favorite place. Is it? Oh, no. Are you serious?

40:55Luke Burgis:It's independently good. It is independently good. You should feel no shame. I've been going there for a very long time. It's awesome. And I invited somebody that I was thinking about working with there. And the server brought out a beautiful salad to us. And I don't know if he's trying to impress me or what, but he basically said, come back here. Can you cut this salad up for us? And the guy was taken aback. by the it was like perfectly like nothing needed to be done to it um this was like a very this this was like a very aristocratic person that came from a lot of money okay so that's additional context so he basically like spoke to the server as if he was like i don't know like a servant or or something like in his household this for me and he was like preach you this for me and the server literally said no and he was he was like offended and walked away and i was like that that right there like if he did that then like what else do i not know oh that's so interesting that's It was crazy.

41:53It was just like you'd have to understand the dish itself, but it was like such an insane request. I was like, there's just no way, man. This is not going to work.

42:01Luke Burgis:Dan mentioned courage. And I think courage is sort of shot through this book. You give the example of a few people, Alexei Navalny, a man named August Landmesser, who exhibited courage. They were the one out of the 99. Talk to me about those people. What qualities do they have? Maybe you can just tell the story of August Landmesser. August Landmesser is the guy in the very famous photo that many people listening have probably seen. It's a black and white photo. He's at a Nazi rally in Hamburg, Germany in 1936. And he's the only guy who's not saluting Hitler at the rally. So I saw that. And the first thing that struck me was, you know, there was no social media at the time.

42:44The guy didn't even know that he was being photographed. So he certainly didn't do that for any kind of recognition. He couldn't go post it on Twitter and say, look at me, look how courageous I am. So there was something deep inside of him. He realized, you know, he was doing that and it probably come with enormous costs. And I was like, he had like a rotator cuff.

43:04It's true. It's true that that could be. But you know, when I researched him, he joined the Nazi party to looking for work. And then he fell in love with a Jewish woman. And he was obviously told to leave her, and he refused to do that. And being in love with her is the thing that gave him perspective on the evil of the party. So I write in the book that he was the only guy in that crowd that had an object of love, but it's something that transcended the crowd that he was responding to. Everybody else was in kind of a self-referential loop, just doing what was expected of them. He's the only guy that was responding to something beyond the group that he was in, right?

43:51So it was like an anchor for him, his love. They would eventually both be killed, right, in their own ways. So it's a tragic story. But, you know, he exercised courage in that moment. And then I asked myself, like, was that spontaneous or did he had he decided that he was going to do something like that before that day? Right. We'll we'll never know. But I think that it is it is important to understand before we go into environments where where we're going to be at risk of like falling into the pseudo self and the easy way out and going in, knowing where we need to exercise courage or where we might need to.

44:34So I like to think that he probably went there or he probably knew. To call it spontaneous, I think, is to not acknowledge the kind of moral formation that had happened to him over the five years from the time he joined until that period and the way that that love had shaped him and given him a kind of inner character.

44:56Luke Burgis:I want to just not push back against this, but by that logic, wouldn't the guy who threw a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman's house to arrest the coming AI regime, is that exhibiting the same type of courage? Well, let's call, obviously not. Okay. No, I mean, I think it's very different. But the guy probably thought he was being courageous. Like if I'm that guy and I'm like, these are the sheep and I am going to rise up and do something to counter on behalf of my moral code. Well, so the book is one of the through lines is the difference between the pseudo self and the solid self. And one thing I want to be super clear on is that one can be a solid self and one can exercise courage in evil ways.

45:42Right. You can you can have a solid sense of self and not be a good. So it's not, being a solid self is not a moral thing. It just means that you have a solid sense of self and that you can be in a crowd without losing yourself in it. So obviously I believe in the true, the good, and the beautiful, right? But one can exercise courage or perhaps even be a solid self towards evil ends.

46:08Luke Burgis:Okay, that's fair. Yeah. what if there's moments where joining the group or doing what the what the group is doing is actually the right thing to do and for you to stand to the side and like be like I have this how are you supposed to know if you're if if you're doing what's right or what's wrong by by sticking to your solid self I mean I think it's a question of following your conscience right I think we're we're we're bound to follow our conscience I think one has to actually do the hard work of developing their conscience so that they can make a prudential judgment about what they, if they are, do they need to stand apart or do they not need to stand apart?

46:49And that's something that they need to, that can only be formed in the individual, right? So interesting, though, because the ethics, everyone's ethics are going to be different. A jihadist has a really strong sense of conscience. Yeah, I mean, Pope Benedict XVI wrote a wonderful little book called On Conscience, and he opens the entire book with saying, like, could there be, like, Nazis in heaven, right? This is the Pope writing this book. And he's saying, because, like, what if they were just following their conscience? You know, he ultimately says, like, the conscience is more complicated than that because we have to take into account the way that the conscience is formed and truth, right?

47:29And sort of these objective values about the conscience. So, you know, his answer is definitively no, but I don't mean conscience in a relative, in sort of a relativistic sense, right? Where something that's completely subjective. I mean, conscience that is formed in relationship to objective truth, and we have a responsibility to form it well.

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48:25Luke Burgis:And when he brings in guests like the philosopher Mika Goodman or the journalist Haviv Reddiger, they only add to that depth. It's deeply researched storytelling for people who want to understand Israel rather than confirm what they already think. And in today's climate, that's rare. Find Unpacking Israeli History on your favorite podcast app or YouTube and subscribe today. I think an example of that happening for you is when you decided to quit your job and then go into a different sort of 99. So you were working on Wall Street. You called it a Sisyphean journey with no escape, not dramatic at all or anything, chasing money instead of understanding the human condition.

49:03Luke Burgis:And you joined seminary in Italy, which is its own group mentality, which is really interesting. Do you see it as going from one group to another or more like something that was drone like into something more individualistic and honorable? Tell us about that journey or that arc. Yeah, I walked away from a company to enter seminary. And I found myself at the age of 30 living with 250 other men who were all on their way to be priests, right? With a shared bathroom in a big building in Rome, right? I mean, talk about like a memetic cauldron. There was so much alike about all of us, right? And that's when things got really difficult for me.

49:44And there's a lot of pressure in that kind of environment, right? There's pressure to see it through, to not leave, like an enormous amount of pressure. Like people think that what I did to enter was courageous, right? You broke up with your girlfriend. You walked away from a lot of money. You walked away from a company in your cush house in Las Vegas. And all of that's true. And I thought I was going to be celibate, you know, for the rest of my life. Like it was a lot harder to leave. I sold my house. I made legal changes to my company structure so that I didn't have control anymore. Wow. I did all kinds of maneuvers, basically.

50:23And I broke up with my girlfriend in a way where there was no chance that that was ever happening again. I tell this, I mean, it was an incredibly difficult thing, but it was a lot harder to leave because in my conscience, I started to realize that I was there for a reason. I spent five years, the most formative five years of my life. It was just an incredible experience. In seminary. In seminary, right? Like I was getting this wonderful humanities education that I didn't really take seriously when I was in high school. Like all these philosophy, theology, in a way it was like very comfortable.

50:56It was like the most comfortable. I didn't have to deal with any real world issues. You know what I mean? I didn't have to worry about paying bills.

51:02Luke Burgis:You were reading a lot of books, which is the thing you were interested in. Reading a lot of books, right? So I started to realize that I – Having Cacio e Pepe. There's probably great Cacio e Pepe, which is why you like Via Corotta so much. Exactly. I drank a lot of good wine. I had long pranzos and lunches in Rome. But at the same time, I was realizing that in my conscience, like, no, this is not the long-term path for me. I'm not going to be ordained a priest. But it was so comfortable. There was a ton of pressure not to leave because that would mean I quit or something like that, right? And there was a lot of language pushing me very, very strong.

51:36Expectations of my mom and all of the people that wanted to see me become a priest. But I knew that it was not my calling. And once I became convicted, I didn't have the freedom to walk out the front door, right? It was comfortable. It was scary. I was like, I have to go back in the world and kind of like reinvent myself again.

51:54Luke Burgis:Once you became convicted that this was actually not the path for you. Between the time that I became convicted and the time that I actually left, it was probably 18 months. And it should have been two weeks. Okay. I mean, it's like breaking up with someone when you're like, I know I should not be in this relationship. Exactly. But I'm going to be in here for another year and a half. Exactly. Because there's all kinds of, I mean, in my case, it was emotional, psychological, financial. All of these things were converging. Spiritual. And spiritual converging on me and making it incredibly difficult to do the one thing that I knew that I needed to do.

52:27And I waited until almost the last minute to do it.

52:29Luke Burgis:The last minute before you were like, I solemnly swear I'm going to be a priest forever. Exactly. Are you still in touch with anyone from seminary? All kinds of, yeah. I'm in touch with a lot of them. Yeah. Some of my best friends. Did it feel like a fraternity? Yeah, it did. There is something so fun about hanging out with your male friends for like a weekend. I mean, where I could see that being like, I just want this forever. But imagine if you were hanging out with your male friends for a weekend and it was what God wanted. Like, that's the real high. You know what I mean? It's not just like, oh, my God, we had so much fun.

53:01Luke Burgis:It's like, oh, my God, we're having so much fun. And this is like a calling from like the supreme master of the universe. It must have been so intoxicating. It was. I mean, think about it. You show up at seminary, and there's 249 other men that are there, ranging in age from probably 23 to 50. Okay? And they're all in the same class. Well, there's four years. But you're basically all in school or formation together, right? And you're like, where in the hell did all these guys come from? We're incredibly different from all, I don't know, it's like 48 states represented in Rome, different backgrounds.

53:42You had like Ivy League guys. There was one guy who was a bidet salesman. I'm not making that up. Like we went around and I was like, where did you guys come from? Yeah. I was like, we're all kind of like, how cool is this? We're all like called here. Right. And we're all just show up and we got to learn to live together for a while. You know? Oh, my God. I wish I could see the Harvard guy meeting the bidet salesman. The Harvard guy was the bidet salesman. Yeah. Joke's on you. You know, we're talking a lot about how technology can be an impediment to human flourishing. But what about the opposite?

54:14What about when technology and religion meet up? And there's all these apps that are bringing people closer to religion or closer to God. Is that a...

54:26Luke Burgis:Halo app where there's a lot of influencers and there's a religious revival going on right now. When Justin Bieber became like an out and out, like very loud and proud Christian, I feel like I was living in L.A. at the moment. I felt that having ripple effects. What do you make of like the coolness of religion and religion kind of riding the wave of all these technological waves? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think technology is soul craft, and it is being sort of married to spirituality in ways that I think could be very positive. But it also makes me a little bit nervous, right? I'm like pretty ambivalent on most things, right?

55:10And we don't know. Like, we don't know. It's kind of like a smartphone thing. Like, I don't know, like, will the Hallow app lead to more, you know, people praying? Or 10 years from now, will people like not actually be praying in churches because it's sort of migrated completely to the phones? I don't think we, it's been around long enough for us to know if this will end well or not, right? I'm a little bit more, I've kind of fall more on the skeptic side of that particular question, right? Like, let's just make an app for everything. and I think when religious traditions start to kind of imitate or mimic the world too much they out of a sense of like insecurity or like you know we need to make use of this technology to do these things they start to lose their kind of other otherness or alterity you don't think the apostles were the original influencers I mean they were trying to influence yeah I mean but they did what they weren't using they weren't using apps to do it right they were they were They're doing it under penalty of death.

56:10Like, you know, personal encounters. Yeah.

56:12Luke Burgis:You've talked about how, like, you know, Russell Brandt has a book, How to Become a Christian in Seven Days. Yes. Which sort of mimics, you know, how to get rich quick, how to get a skinny body and, you know, a month or whatever it is in time for bikini season. And I think you chafe against that sort of framing of spirituality. Is that right? Yeah, I mean, I think that if a religion begins to seem superficial, then it's in real trouble, right? That's what people are not going, are not seeking, they're seeking something deeper. And all of this stuff is fine if it leads to kind of deeper engagement with the real, if it doesn't end there.

56:54I feel like the other extreme, which is I think how I grew up, is, you know, went to like a very, you know, like Persian Orthodox temple. They would just read the prayers in Hebrew. Nothing was said in English. No translations in the book for English. Had no idea what the fuck I was saying. It was all just gibberish, basically. It gave me zero connection to God and then ended up becoming an atheist for most of my adult life. And now I call myself aspirationally God-fearing.

57:28Luke Burgis:I think Dan makes a good point of, you know, do you risk making something inaccessible by not massaging it to the culture that it exists in? Yeah, I mean, content about God is different than God, right? And like, so there's a whole part of this book called the contentification of religion where it's content. and religion has form and content. So I'm not saying that all content is bad, but it's one thing. I read a book called Prayer for Beginners by a guy named Peter Kreeft, like very sort of early in my faith journey. And I read this book and I was like, well, this is great. Seven steps to prayer.

58:02Now I know how to pray. And then I spent the next 15 years actually trying to learn how to pray, right? So I think there is a danger of consuming content and thinking that that's actually like the real thing. Because that's different than the practice. It's very different.

58:15Luke Burgis:And would reading the Bible count as consuming content? Not in the same way as it is on the Hallow Prayer app. Okay. It's just different. And, you know, there's kind of an influencer culture cropping up within at least my religious tradition. And, you know, the Bible is, I believe the Bible is the Word of God. So it's like very different than consuming something on one's phone, which, by the way, you know, you could be getting alerts on your phone. It's just a completely different kind of medium and experience. I always get creeped out when I see, and you'll see like religious people doing this, like they'll be praying, but they'll be reading it off their iPhone.

58:50And they're like bowing to their iPhone.

58:53Luke Burgis:Right. And if the medium is the message, then the Bible is the word of God and the iPhone is like the purview of Steve Jobs or something. I entered seminary right a couple of years after the iPhone came out. And then there was a big debate in the seminary about like, do you pray the liturgy of the hours with a real hardcover bravery or do you use your phone? because there was an app for the prayers, like morning prayer and evening prayer. There was an app. And I had one guy, and a lot of guys use their phones, and one guy said, I will never use my phone. And I said, why wouldn't you use your phone?

59:24And he was like, because this screen could show me. I could use this phone to view porn five seconds after I play. And he was like, that can't be good. The book is like a sacred thing, and the phone can be used for anything you want. right it's like a portal to everything you know i started to uh to put on tefillin uh like in the last couple years phylacteries the leather things um in my fake it till you make it uh judaism quest and uh i would i there was a moment when i was reading the shema this prayer off my iphone and then i was done with it and then i kissed my phone and i was because that's normally you just like I kissed the...

1:00:06Luke Burgis:That's bizarre. The cedure and put it... And I was like, oh my God, that was so weird. Yeah. What is the Luke Burgess house view on faking it till you make it? Because that's... Do you think it's a real thing? Can it be done? With religion. I mean, my wife would probably... My wife became Catholic. And I think that she has described herself as like faking it until she make. Like, I'm going to show up with Luke and, like, look around and kind of do what everybody else is doing right now and feel really out of place until it starts to feel a little bit natural. And, you know, that's worked out for her.

1:00:43So, I mean, I think that faking it until you make it is definitely a path for sure. Okay. That's going to be my book.

1:00:50Luke Burgis:Faking it until you make it? Faking it until you make it with God. I'm, like, tempted to ask you what's the difference between, like, faking it and mimetic desire. like isn't faking it a form of memetic desire because it's not authentic me wanting to believe in god is that because i want to i want to what that what you have which is you believe in god and i want to live like you or do i actually want the belief in god i think everybody wants belief in god um not sam harris not sam harris i think i think that even sam harris does he just doesn't know it i'm very augustinian right um like the pope um yeah i mean i think that there's a lot of there's there's positive mimetic desire right and it's like the way that i think aristotle would say that the way that you acquire a virtue is by like imitating people that have the virtue until you yourself acquire it like when i became a caretaker for my dad like i i felt like i was going through the motions and doing the things that i thought a good caretaker should do even while I was like bitching and moaning about like how terrible it was and all those things.

1:01:58And I felt bad that I, you know, didn't enjoy doing it or something like that. And then after I did it, I felt like a fraud. I felt like I was faking being a caretaker and doing something that I wasn't very good at and didn't know a lot about until it became more natural for me. And I think, you know, I had to just kind of slog through for a long time. And I think I've probably developed some real, you know, caretaker traits at this point.

1:02:22Luke Burgis:Like you actually take joy in the sacrifice at a certain point. I do take joy in the sacrifice. Like when I showed up and had to sit there at the table in his nursing home with three or four other guys that couldn't speak. And I was just sitting there having lunch. I just wanted to be like any other place but there. I was like, I know that I just need to be here. And now, like I actually do enjoy it because I view it as, first of all, it's deeply forming me, right? It helps me just like turn off my brain for a little while and be present with him. But I really felt like a fraud. And I thought something was wrong with me because of how much I didn't like spending that long hours at the facility.

1:03:04Right. I was like, shouldn't I be, this is my dad. Shouldn't I be more caring? I'm just going to fake it until this is something that I can actually do with joy, like you said.

1:03:12Luke Burgis:It's like surrendering yourself to the fact that you hate it. It's like, I'm not even going to like fight against this. Yeah, because sometimes you're doing things and you're supposed to like, we use these unreal words. Like we have to pretend like we like everything that we're doing. You know what I mean? Yeah. Right. Sometimes we just have to be honest. Like, man, this sucks. You know what I mean? Yeah. Right. But I hope that there is a delayed gratification here. Yes. And that's just what I'm doing it for. Yeah. Wow. That's so interesting. I feel like your philosophy, to me, it feels like a grown up version of the movie Fight Club.

1:03:43In what way? Say more. Yeah. In that it's this, hey, listen, And you're all being lulled into this fake sense of safety. You think that this is what life is, but it's actually not. And you need to be shaken out of it. And that these things that you feel are...

1:04:01Luke Burgis:Like be productively punched in the face. Yeah. Yeah. Is that what you're saying? Like there's a way for there to be like healthy tension and good conflict like there was in the fight club. Well, and that's like sort of jarring you back into reality rather than getting lulled into your sense of comfort from your devices. Leaving aside the fact that it was all in Edward Norton's head and he was actually like a schizophrenic with multiple personalities. We'll stick with the fact that he felt a good sense of community in the Fight Club. Well, the writer of the book, he was like a philosopher as well.

1:04:36So it's not just like a Hollywood mumbo jumbo. But yeah, I mean, do you remember that movie? I do remember that movie. Did it have an effect on you? What did it have? Did it have an effect on me? I mean, yeah, like everybody wanted to be Charter. Tyler Durden, yeah. Everybody wanted to be Tyler Durden.

1:04:53Luke Burgis:Men and women also relate to community so differently. I want you to finish your point, but I'm just thinking about like, women don't need to punch each other like that. I'm sure you have your - No, there's the equivalent of that. Equally toxic version. I think that men need to be doing a thing together. Right. You know what I mean? like we need we can't like call each other on the phone to talk for a long time um actually i have one male friend that does that with his friends and i think it's super weird right like with my friends i actually need to be like doing a thing right we need to be like making a thing together watching a game right um we can't just like have a conversation so i think that might be one way that men and women are are different you know i'm looking something up real quick because on my on my guys group chat someone wrote like rules of if you're gonna have a phone call with a guy like what are the rules within our group of having a male on male phone call what do you mean a male on male phone call a male on male like there has to be a point just to talk like what are the rules the rules of dude on dude phone calls okay number one calls can be made anytime prior to 9 p.m.

1:06:02two caller need not worry about crying kids in the background only time it becomes an issue is if callee makes it an issue three callee yeah three ending ending the call no extended goodbyes gotta go or call you later is all it takes the dude ending the call isn't required to wait for an acknowledgement of the impending hanging up four call waiting you can switch over and take another call but your fellow dude is only required to stay on the line for 12.5 seconds before disconnecting five if a dude promises to call back and doesn't that is okay Six, must inform fellow dude if a wife can hear the convo.

1:06:39As a general rule, dude on dude convos should not be conducted in the presence of a woman or employees. Seven, convos can be initiated and held on a toilet. This is actually recommended. It is considered gay to have a convo while both dudes are in bed, separate or together. Eight, do not leave voicemails.

1:06:59Luke Burgis:I just need to know what had to happen in order to get to this place of all of these rules I need to get that from you so I can circulate that in my in my neighborhood and we all need to know the rules of engagement my favorite is you can say I'll call you back and not call the person back the idea that it's like the only thing you need to do to sign off is say gotta go it's like were you having calls where it's like no you hang up like old like 40 year old men talking like that Was FaceTime included in there? Oh, no. We're only talking voice phones. If the toilet FaceTime stops. No, we can start that, and then it'll be like the Talmud.

1:07:31We'll just have a bunch of different chapters. I hate FaceTime. I don't like video calls at all. Oh, I like FaceTime. Not a fan of getting phones thrust in my face when I'm not expecting it.

1:07:40Luke Burgis:Well, it's great. People are taking FaceTime calls in public like you would not believe. They think there is a bubble around them where no one can see or hear them. It's really wild. Yeah. Those are really interesting rules. Yeah, there you go. I'm old school with the phone and a text message that I send more than any other text message is JFCM. You guess what it is? Just fucking call me, man. Just fucking call me. Just fucking call me. Everybody who gets texts from me, they know that I send that. You know what's crazy? Voice notes. Oh. Voice notes. I'm wrestling headphones out of my bag and I'm listening to this one-way podcast.

1:08:19Luke Burgis:This is just a voice note, So I shouldn't be talking. A podcast is just a long voice note. Sometimes you got to do it when you have a really good story to tell your friend. Yes, and you need the intonation and an accent maybe. You need the voice note. You need to do the accents of all the ethnicities of the people you are interacting with. That's where it gets really important. Just to round third and bring us home, you write in the book that the deeper skill today is not finding a tribe, but knowing when and how to leave one and gaining the ability to belong without disappearing. How does one gain the ability to belong without disappearing?

1:08:57That is the deeper thing that the book is getting at, right? It's not like leaving your tribe, but knowing how to belong in it as a solid self, because we can't give what we don't have. and, you know, the best thing, like, I need to take care of myself for my wife and my children. And I think that when we're in a community, we have to be willing to risk being misunderstood. We have to have the courage to show up as we are because that makes the community healthier when we do that. I think there's a lot of pseudo communities in the world, right? Like I noticed the word community being thrown around all the time.

1:09:50Everybody is starting a community, right? Name names. Run clubs. Run clubs. Running clubs, yeah.

1:09:55Luke Burgis:What else? Sororities? There's a community for everything. Like podcast hosts have like communities on circle, like join the community. It's not enough to listen. Everybody's just forming communities. Yes, join the Patreon. It's basically like if you don't have a community, you're doing something wrong. Like everybody's like a community formator or something like that. And I wonder if they're so easy to form, they're so easy to join. Have we substituted like real forms of embodied community for online forms of community, right? Technological communities. And I'm already sort of seeing a return to kind of local communities, which I think are important.

1:10:37because the community has to, you can't run from it when there's conflict, right? And it's just, there are very few communities that force us to stay and grow. And that's why I think families are really important, right? Because you can't run from the family. You have to be in it.

1:10:53Luke Burgis:And the family, unlike a Discord chat or a Reddit community, does not reward more and more extreme versions of the thing. Like, I think you're saying not only are not all tribes or communities created equal, but there's a right and a wrong way to be within even the most sustainable and healthy of tribes. Yes. Yeah. I mean, there's definitely like a, there's very peaceful communities where everything is fake, if that makes sense. Yeah. Right. And it's like, it's peaceful because nobody is actually. Like the suburbs? Able to say anything. Exactly. Like the suburbs or like, you know, the companies where like everything kind of seems fake and there's never any problem at all.

1:11:39And when there is a problem, people just invent narratives about why nothing's actually wrong, you know. Do you think Michigan is a solid state or a pseudo state? Michigan's a solid state in part because it's a it's a it's a battleground state. Right. And I. Oh, yeah.

1:11:55Luke Burgis:Purple states are. It's a purple state. I think I've always lived in one. Well, D.C. is certainly not. I grew up in Grand Rapids, and the city has changed a lot since I moved there. But it is, I don't know, what do I like the most about Michigan other than the fact that I'm from there? Meijer. Meijer's a great supermarket. It's just a weird place. There's like a lot of different laws that don't exist in other places. There's a lot of, like there's a deep history of people declaring themselves kings of different islands. James Strang declared himself king of Beaver Island in Michigan. There was like a Mormon kingdom.

1:12:36You guys also have a weird part of your state that is connected to Canada.

1:12:41Luke Burgis:And you claim it as the upper peninsula. It's a portal. Yeah. I mean, obviously the Great Lakes are the distinctive thing about Michigan. And I've got a friend that lives in Michigan. And he's like, you know, there are two kinds of people. There are lake people and there are mountain people. And we Michiganders are lake people. We cannot be mountain people. So I'm definitely a lake person. I would say that I am a, I'm like a vineyard person. Oh, hello. And Michigan is now like the next hotspot for vineyards. Absolutely it is. On the Lillanau Peninsula. Is that true? They make really good gamay in Michigan now.

1:13:14And a lot of it is because of global warming has changed where all the wine regions are. And Michigan's in the hotspot now. I'm telling you, people count Michigan out. My wife is from New Jersey, and then she married me and started hanging out in Michigan a lot. And she was like, it's really hard for me to find a comp to the city where I grew up in in Grand Rapids. There's really nothing like it. You can usually find comps for a lot of cities, but it's hard to find comps for places in Michigan. What's really like Detroit? What's really like Grand Rapids? What's really like Traverse City?

1:13:47Luke Burgis:Well, Pittsburgh's sort of like Detroit, but we were kind of able to turn it around in a more. lasting way so far. I mean, Michigan's going to, or Detroit's going to come back. I think so. Detroit's coming back. It's forever. It's coming back. Slow burn. Slow burn. Slow burn. Luke, what is your book called and where can people find it? And where can people find you? The book's called The One in the 99, Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion. I think you can find it anywhere books are sold and you can find me at lukeburgess.com. Luke Burgess, thank you for coming on Second Thought. Thanks for having me.

1:14:22Luke Burgis:Thanks for listening to this episode of Second Thought. If you're listening on Apple or Spotify, please give the show a follow. And if you have a second, consider leaving us a five-star rating or write us a nice review. It really helps us out. You can also get my weekly culture column by subscribing to the free press at thefp.com.

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