Identity, Desire and Social Contagion with Luke Burgis

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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The issues that matter most, right here. The Drew Mariani Show. On Relevant Radio.

**Luke Burgis** (0:17)
And that thinker was a guy by the name of René Girard. And his key insight into human behavior was not just that human beings are the most imitative creatures in the world, but Girard's key insight is that humans imitate the desires of other people. So Girard's insight was that this imitative behavior continues in adulthood.
Girard called this mimesis, which comes from the Greek word to imitate. And he called the imitation of desire mimetic desire.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:52)
It's The Drew Mariani Show on Relevant Radio.

**Drew Mariani** (0:56)
As the voice of my next guest, and you are going to love this conversation, Luke Burgis is going to be joining me. He's the author of a book too. We just spoke to Maculay Labagiz, a best-selling author of the book Left to Tell, who she survived the Rwanda genocide. Luke just came out with a book called The One and the Ninety-Nine, Forging Identity in an Era of Social Contagion.
We'll break all that down for you, but you got to ask yourself, have you ever stopped and asked whether the opinions you're holding are really your own? I was thinking about it a little bit earlier. I was knowing he was going to stop by the studio here. And why do ideas spread so quickly today? Why is that? Why do entire groups suddenly seem to... And you'll see this social media scene on television. They seem to think and talk and react the same way. It's almost like somebody handed them a script. We live in an age right now of social media, online outrage, constant pressure to belong. So how do you remain true to God and how God created you? And that's what I want to explore today. If you want to join us at any time, phones are always open, 888-914-9149, 888-914-9149.
I've been noticing a lot of this lately, because you get one viral video or one trending topic and suddenly millions of people are talking about it. It's a very different world in the past decade or so. And it raises questions about you and your children and maybe even your children's children.
Are you making your own decisions or are you simply being carried along by the crowd? Maybe you never thought about that, how you're being influenced. We are all created by God. We belong to God. God created us for community. He didn't create you to lose yourself in it. Your identity is not supposed to be shaped by social media or politics. That's the other thing we see. It's almost a religion today, right? Or the loudest voice in the room. That's another influence, but St. Paul tells us don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind in Romans 12 Right? So I love the term social contagion. In the studio with me today is, as I said, Luke Burgis. He's an author and the Catholic University of America faculty member. And it's great to have him with us. You might have seen him online. He's just gave a great talk in the Chicago area. And Luke, I have your good to have you in studio with us today.

**Luke Burgis** (3:09)
Good to be here, Drew.

**John** (3:10)
Thanks for having me.

**Drew Mariani** (3:12)
I know you're with the other day. I gave it a talk last night. One of my colleagues went, loved it. And I heard he said, you're going to love this guy in studio today. I'm looking forward to this conversation. I deal with a lot of cultural stuff.
I talk about the influence on our families and our culture and our individuals and things that influence us.
Let's talk a little bit about your story. My producer, Nick, was in seminary for seven years, and God called him out of that. You were in it for five. You write a little bit about your story in here. Very successful businessman, too. I can't wait to hear that aspect of it, too, because I know you were involved in the vending machine business. Bring us back. Introduce us, if you could, a little bit to your background, and then we could talk a little bit about the book.

**Luke Burgis** (3:52)
Yeah, well, I opened my talk last night by saying that some reviewer called me a very successful businessman, and I had to set the record straight, because I think by far the most successful thing that I've ever done in my life is go to Confession Weekly for the last 17 years. So that is the success that I'm the most proud of, because it hasn't always been easy to get up off the mat and do that. But let me take you back about 18 years, you know, before that process happened. And I was living in Vegas, and it's unbelievable to me that right before I walked in the studio, I ran into a friend of mine who still lives in Vegas, right here in Illinois, in the studio, who was an instrumental part of my conversion story. Just ran into him five minutes ago for the first time in years. It's a small world, isn't it? It's amazing, it's amazing. So let me take you back to, you know, I graduated from NYU, from the business school, got a job on Wall Street, and forgot why I even wanted to work on Wall Street in the first place. It turns out I was good with numbers, and people told me, you know, this job pays very well, you would be good on Wall Street. And it's probably where I learned the lesson that just because you're good at something, or just because you have a gift for something, doesn't necessarily mean that God is calling you to do something, right? These are two slightly different things. It's a very worldly way of looking at vocation. I was miserable. I moved to California and started a series of companies in my twenties. One was very successful. A couple of them were moderately successful, and one was an utter total failure. It blew up in my face when I was in my late twenties. So throughout my twenties, I was an entrepreneur. And I'd moved that last company from California to Las Vegas, Nevada. And I did it for primarily business reasons.