Ep.116 — Johnathan Bi — Girard, Desire, and Modernity

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:

- Lecture series: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qu6vBebwwg)
- Twitter: (https://twitter.com/JohnathanBi)
- 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