Johnathan Bi — Girard, Desire, and Modernity (EP.116)

Johnathan Bi started out getting trained in Mathematics, and then eventually went on to study Philosophy and Computer Science at Columbia. He hosts a lecture series on René Girard’s Mimetic Theory and is also a founding member of Lonsdale Investment Technology.

Important Links:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/JohnathanBi
  
• Lecture series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qu6vBebwwg
  
• Website: https://johnathanbi.com/
  
• Lonsdale Investment Technology: https://www.longterm.com/
  

Show Notes:

• Becoming pessimistic with age
  
• Humiliation always comes back to bite you
  
• How Jonathan got introduced to Buddhism and Girard
  
• Why Jonathan left academia
  
• The driving human emotion
  
• Has modernity ignored the “spirit”?
  
• Girard’s apocalyptic predictions
  
• Wild, wild west of capitalism
  
• The mystery with the discovery of the skull
  
• What does eugenics say about science?
  
• Science becoming dictatorial
  
• Buddhism figuring out the inner telescope
  
• Physical vs. metaphysical desires
  
• Mimesis in asset valuation
  
• Price to magic ratio
  
• Nietzsche's will of power
  
• Is delusion bad?
  
• Can internet lead to greater violence?
  
• “The Buddhist Solution”
  
• Girard—A rescuer of spirit
  
• And MUCH more!
  

Books Mentioned:

• The Status Game; by Will Storr
  
• The Struggle for Recognition; by Axel Honneth
  
• Sapiens; by Yuval Noah Harari
  
• The Science of Storytelling; by Will Storr
  
• The Origin of Species; Charles Darwin
  
• Untimely Meditations; by Friedrich Nietzsche