I’m pleased to share with you the full video of the trialogue that I had with Fr. Elias Carr, author of the excellent book on René Girard titled I Came to Cast Fire, and Michael Matheson Miller, a good friend and Girard skeptic. I hope you enjoy it.

Follow Cluny Journal to keep up with everything going on at Cluny. Lastly, a reminder that there are still a handful of tickets left for the Cluny Metanoia Conference in DC on May 7-8. I hope to see you there!

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Not nearly as many people are familiar with the thought of Dietrich von Hildebrand as are now familiar with the thought of René Girard—yet I believe von Hildebrand’s work is extremely under-appreciated and that it is critical to understanding the world and the human person.

(Pope Francis’s new encyclical, Dilexit Nos, on the topic of the heart, fails to reference DvH’s writings on affectivity, which left me somewhat aghast—but it does make reference to John Henry Newman, von Hildebrand’s most important predecessor in rehabilitating the topic of the heart. Still, the encyclical is representative of the kind of overlooking that DvH often gets.)

Last year I asked my friend Michael Matheson Miller, who knows both thinkers well, if he would be willing to do a ‘mash-up’ of them for the 2023 Novitate conference that I hosted in DC, addressing the connections, complementarity, and antagonisms between Girard and von Hildebrand. He graciously accepted.

There is certainly a tension at the heart of their philosophies. That’s a good thing. I believe each thinker sheds light on, and clarifies, the other. For instance, I’m often asked a version of this question: “So is it mimesis all the way down, then?” Von Hildebrand would give a resounding: “No!” And in fact much stronger than that: our desires—and with them our entire personality—are shaped by our response to objective values, not mimesis. Mimesis has a role to play in value response, but it does not determine it.

Michael, true to form, found a fascinating topic through which to examine the intersection of these two thinkers: liturgy.

He and I had first had a long conversation on that theme at Nonna’s Trattoria in Ada, MI. I have not been able to stop thinking about it ever since. I was thrilled to hear, then, that he would pick the topic back up and present a more formal version of it at last year’s conference.

I’m proud to be able to share the video of his talk with you all.

Happy New Year!

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Last November I had the pleasure of welcoming René Girard’s son, Martin, to a conference at the Catholic University of America which was titled NOVITATE, taking its name from a line in scripture, Paul’s letter to the Romans:

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (in the Latin vulgate: “Et nolite conformari huic sæculo, sed reformamini in novitate sensus vestri”).

How might we renew our senses in our time? That is the question I was interested in exploring. I felt that René Girard might provide the foundation, or at least the seed, for answering it. We need new models.

The old models, from crumbling academic institutions to media formats to longstanding political assumptions, seemed to be passing away.

The Czech theologian and survivor of totalitarianism, Josef Zvěřina, wrote about the conversion that leads away from destructive imitation and conformity to the world and towards a kind of continual conversion based on grace that is not reliant on any one particular worldly model:

“Do not conform! Me syschematizesthe! How well this expression reveals the perennial root of the verb: schema. In a nutshell, all schemas, all exterior models are empty. We have to want more, the apostle makes it our duty, ‘change your way of thinking, reshape your minds’—metamorfousthe te anakainosei tou noos. Paul’s Greek is so expressive and concrete! He opposes schema or morphe—permanent form, to metamorphe—change in the creature. One is not to change according to any model that in any case is always out of fashion, but it is a total newness with all its wealth (anakainosei).”

In the full video, available to paying subscribers, you’ll find an opening intro from me and some closing remarks.

Christmas Day, 1923, was the birthday of René Girard. It is fitting, then—and I am extremely excited to share the news—that a new film on the life and legacy of Girard, directed by Sam Sorich, will be released this Christmas Day.

If you are interested in seeing it, I encourage you to visit thingshidden.movie and enter your email to have the film delivered to your inbox on December 25. After you’ve had a chance to watch it, please like, subscribe, and comment on the Youtube page, which will help get the film out to more people.

Here is a synopsis:

A timely new documentary about René Girard, the thinker who coined “mimetic desire.” Offering a deeply personal portrait of Girard the man and a sweeping narrative of his unfolding thought, Things Hidden: The Life and Legacy of René Girard explores the French polymath’s passion for intellectual discovery, his midlife religious conversion, and his quest to uncover the violent origins of human culture. The film includes exclusive interviews with Girard, previously unknown archival material, and revelations from his family, friends, and colleagues, taking the viewer deep into the life and career of one of the most inspiring and provocative thinkers of our era.

I know that Sam and his team were hard at work on this film before I had even conceived the idea for a book on Girard…so this project has been a very long-time in the making. The care, diligence, and effort that went into it is apparent when you watch it. It will be exciting to see how this film brings Girard’s ideas to even more people.

I hope you enjoy it!

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In this video from one of the breakout session at last year’s NOVITATE conference, host of the popular Martyr Made podcast, Darryl Cooper, explores the lives and ideas of Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, two 19th century thinkers who grappled with questions of morality, religion, psychology and the human condition. Though separated by geography and years, their lives followed a strikingly similar trajectory marked by early promise and recognition, followed by obscurity and intense personal struggles.

After reading Girard for nearly ten years, I found myself continually surprised to see how little his theory came into play in conversations about race and race relations—even though it seemed like Girard’s ideas would add critical insights to those conversations. I was never sure why.

Is it because Girard is a white French academic? Because his theory is too obscure? Or because mimetic theory really isn’t helpful in explaining the concrete realities faced by black Americans because it’s too abstract, for example?

It’s a question I wasn’t willing to leave unsettled, or at least not willing to begin exploring. But I knew I couldn’t do it alone.

My friend Dr. Hollis Robbins and I had a conversation back in early 2021 in which she planted the seed in my head that it would be a good idea to try to bring the right people together to kick off this conversation. After months of hard work, it all came together at NOVITATE—a conference which I hosted in DC last month.

The full video from that plenary session on race and cultural desire can be viewed here, as well as a Substack produced, AI-generated transcript (I have no idea how good it is—please do let me know if it’s terrible, though.)

I’ll be sharing more of the videos from the conference in this newsletter for paying subscribers in the weeks and months ahead.

Tomorrow I head to Michigan for a week where I’m going to pull out a pen and paper and begin writing the first words of my next book, which I look forward to sharing much more about.

I am also going to find a way to share the journey of writing this new book—as well as some of its content—with paid subscribers. I think it’ll be a mutually enriching process. I hope you’ll come along on the journey with me. It’s a more ambitious book than Wanting, which pains me even to write. But it’s one that must be written. You will soon know why.

I have to keep this one short because I’m writing it after having woken up early and sneaking away from family time on this Second day of Christmas, and now I find myself in a Starbucks in Pennington, NJ while kids at still back at the house learning how to set-up their new toys. I need to get back into the game.

It’s been a hell of a year. I’m going to write some year-end reflections which I plan to share on either Dec. 31st or Jan. 1st. In the meantime, wishing you all a wonderful nightcap to 2023. Thank you again for being here.

Best,

Luke

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This is the first full piece of video content released from last month’s NOVITĀTE conference, which I hosted on November 3, 2023, in Washington, DC

This conversation, titled “EVEN BETTER THAN THE REAL THING: The New Media Landscape”, featured author , Substack Co-Founder , and Renée DiResta of the Stanford Internet Observatory. It was moderated by New York Times columnist Ross Douthat.

This was a conversation that needed to happen. A key issue of contention was whether or not media companies can “manage” mimesis effectively—and whether they should be in the business of trying to do so at all.

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It sometimes comes upon a man a stroke of insight, the full realization that he must fulfill a noble task which others may regard as silly or insignificant, such as braving a trip alone to a Washington, DC, Whole Foods at 5pm (if hell exists…) to buy sour cream for the chili he has just made, which he refuses to serve to his family without.

You, dear reader, surely have those small things which you refuse to compromise or concede. Don’t you?

I have many. Yes, you might chalk it up to my neuroticism or perfectionism. But I wouldn’t do these things if I didn’t believe that I was, at some level, saving the world.

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“It is because you don't know the end and purpose of things that you think the wicked and the criminal have power and happiness.” — Boethius, On the Consolation of Philosophy

Nobody has a precise idea how much wealth anyone else has. There is a good chance that you don’t even know your own. We are all engaged in an elaborate game of assumptions, even about our own future.

The fact that men are posting gain and loss porn on Reddit is not a sign of transparency, but opacity. The narratives only go skin deep.

Beneath the narratives, people are silently crying out for order—a link between cause and effect, or some indication that hard work still matters, or the assurance that they will be rewarded for good decisions and not for reckless ones.

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Hi everyone,

In this short edition of the newsletter, I have two important announcements:

Audio Essay on “The Conscience”

Upon request, I recorded an audio version of my last newsletter (Don’t Feed Your Conscience to the Dogs), which you can find here. I don’t have a general grasp on how many of you would prefer to listen to my work rather than read it, but I figured I would offer a podcast version of the last newsletter and see what happens.

If I receive enough positive feedback, I’ll find a way to attach an audio version to the written works on a more regular basis. (An AI company has approached me and offered to convert this newsletter to audio on the fly, but I’m not sure if the quality is good enough; this time, I read it for you myself...)

Please express your interest in the comments or drop me a line via email.

Group Learning Opportunity—Next Steps

If you’re interested in the small group learning track that I have mentioned a couple of times now, please fill out this short questionnaire as soon as possible.

In this newsletter and on the Core Motivation Webinar that I hosted last month with Dr. Joshua Miller, I floated the possibility of leading a 30-90 day small group learning course (virtual) for anyone interested.

I had in mind a relatively intensive and interactive program in which you’d have the chance to work through questions and projects related to mimetic desire, models, thick and thin desires, leadership, mimetic influences (on both undesired and desired behaviors), professional transitions, technology relationships, mimetic relationship management (setting boundaries and generating positive flywheels), and a greater clarity of one’s purpose. It would be a highly personal exploration of many of the topics you are used to seeing here.

I would bring in guest speakers and facilitators, but the program design and leadership I would do myself.

The experience that I have in mine would be less about lectures or heady book-club discussion and more about small-group interaction and project-based learning with real-world and real-life application. For instance, every week you would have a fundamental question to explore or a project to work through with the support of your small group—as well as guidance from me and the other facilitators.

One thing I am sure about: you all an extremely talented, generous, thoughtful, and dedicated group, and we all have much to learn from one another. The quality of the people here became readily apparent on the MCODE zoom with Dr. Miller, which was attended by over 50 of you.

I am confident, then, the small-group format is the ideal way to work your way through the learning course. But first, I need your help.

If you’re interested in participating, would you please complete this Questionnaire?

Your feedback will help me with questions ranging from what kind of help I need to bring in to when we should start to what most people are really looking for from this kind of experience. Your feedback will be read carefully by me as I begin to think about the best way to make this experience a reality.

So far, I have received an overwhelmingly positive response. 42 of you have already personally emailed me to express interest in participating. Thank you for that. The next phrase of this process for me is gathering more information so I can tailor this experience to your needs (and desires…).

There will be a cap on enrollment for this first group. I can’t imagine being able to run it well with more than 50 participants on the first go-around. In a sense, we’ll all be learning together. If it goes well, though (and if there is sufficient interest), I will continue to offer it throughout the year on a rolling basis. So if you miss out this time, there should be more opportunities down the road.

I have to ask for skin-in-the-game (in the form of $USD/ETH/BTC) from everyone who participates, especially if I am going to bring in the necessary resources to do this right. The opportunity will be open to all subscribers, but Premium Members will receive a very sizable discount on tuition.

Thanks everyone—especially those of you who have already reached out. I hope to see you at the starting line soon.

P.S. If anyone would like to volunteer their time/talent as a facilitator—and possibly be part of the planning team for this first cohort, please reach out to me separately. Professional facilitator/teaching experience strongly desired.

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