SPEAKER_01 0:06

Welcome to Catholic in America, a podcast in partnership with OSV News. I'm Jason Atkins. People who can act with integrity while being part of a community live freer and more comfortable lives and become models for others. That's the message of a new book by author and scholar in residents at Catholic University of America, Luke Burgess, who writes The One and the 99, How to Find Identity and Cultivate Identity in an Age of Social Contagion. The book is described as about standing up for what you believe and about trimmer how to stand up for what you believe when you're in a crowd that wants you to do the opposite. The book asks the question: is there a healthy way to be both in community as myself while also being connected to others? This topic is particularly relevant because it seems that identity politics drives so much of the political crisis of polarization and the challenges that we're facing today, both at the level of culture, but also at the level of society and politics as well. I think this book is really timely, and I'm excited to talk to its author, Luke Burgess. Luke is the director of the Clooney Institute and a professor at Catholic University of America, where he studies the invisible forces that shape human behavior. Before this book, the one in the 99, he was the author of Wanting, the Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life. He lives in Washington, D.C. and Michigan with his wife Claire and their children. And I'm just really excited to have Luke on for a I think is going to be a fascinating conversation. In answering the question, I'll cut right to the end goal here and get to the point, which is the only community that we can really be a part of where we can be both individuals, but then be part of a true community, is the communion of saints. And that's the message that Luke delivered in an interview that I saw and what compelled me to reach out to him. And I think this is going to be a great conversation. Luke Burgess, welcome to Catholic in America. It's a pleasure to have you on the show.

SPEAKER_02 2:05

Jason, good to be with you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

You are an interesting person and have done a lot of great things. You're an entrepreneur. You've had a number of startups and companies you run. You uh armchair philosopher. You spent some time at the North American College and in Catholic Seminary, and now you're at Catholic University of America as the entrepreneur in residence. Just tell us a little bit about the why behind how you spend your days. You could be doing a lot of things, you're writing books. Give us a just a sense of your why right now.

SPEAKER_02 2:36

Yeah. Um, you know, my my why is trying to, first of all, live an integrated life. And in my effort to do that, um, I'm trying to sort of build something, including an institution. It's one of the hats I wear at the university, is running the Clooney Institute, uh, trying to build something that will help other people to do the same thing. You know, I have a core belief that the world has been very siloed. Um, our universities are very siloed, hyper-specialization, and in my own life uh kind of fit that pattern. I went from finance to Wall Street to the startup world, um, and then in seminary, I even felt that way while while I was studying theology. And, you know, we we used to have more of a whole person kind of approach uh to education. It used to be formation where there was intellectual, spiritual, pastoral, and human formation happening at the same time. And that's what I craved. That's what I've always searched for. So I think my why is is you know, it's first of all, it's what I myself need. And I'm trying to do things and write things and build things that actually help help it other people find that process a little bit easier.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Say a little bit more about the Clooney Institute. Obviously, that um harkens back to the monastery of Clooney in France and the clunaic reforms and the revival of Benedictine life in the Europe in the 10th century. But what why is that named what it is and what does monasticism have to tell us today about living an integrated life?

SPEAKER_02 4:09

Well, the Clooney Institute sprung out of an article that I wrote a few years ago in Wired magazine called The Three City Problem of Modern Life, where I was trying to describe this fragmentation. And I said, you know, if Tertullian, you know, the great theologian were alive today who famously asked the question, what does Athens have to do with Jerusalem? He might have to include Silicon Valley in his question. You know, what does faith have to do with reason? And in what ways is technology now affecting both the search for truth and religious experience? And out of that question, um, that probe really uh came the Clooney Institute because I wanted to build something that would help to answer the question and to convene people from all three cities. Um and uh, you know, as I thought about well, what are some examples in history of places and institutions that seemed to uh be places of um of where where people could search for God wholeheartedly, but they were also places of deep intellectual engagement, of hospitality, um, and of and of you know beautiful and beauty and art and humanities and spiritual renewal. And Clooney came to mind. I'd learned about it in seminary, uh, kind of in passing, right? It was like a footnote to uh uh you know the whole Middle Ages. And I stopped and I said, this is fascinating. How did I go my entire life as a Catholic without hearing the story of a monastery in the 10th century that ended up springing 1,200 networked monasteries all over Europe, became one of the most important institutions in Europe, uh, kind of sat at the intersection of the whole world, right? Connected uh political life and the papacy and common life, and affected even the way that they instituted truces that would stop fighting in the world until the abbot announced it was over. Um and I thought, wow, that that you know, we don't have an institution like that in the world today. Um so I know it sounds incredibly ambitious, but I've just always been inspired by Clooney. And I thought, what if there were a Clooney for the laity? Um, you know, what what if what if we can and one of the things I love about the Benedictine tradition is, you know, work in prayer, aura at labora. And I'm fascinated at with the world of work in general. And one of the publications that Cluny uh uh uh publishes is called The Human Worker. And I think the Benedictine tradition has a lot to offer about the relationship between work and the spiritual life. And in a world of accelerating AI, um, getting very clear about what human work is is going to be incredibly important.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

In that same Wired magazine article that you mentioned, which was really excellent, you said that you wanted to position yourself at the intersection of Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem or faith uh reason and the value system that Silicon Valley is creating in those three cities. So, how personally are you doing that? And what how is that playing out in your work life on a day-to-day basis?

SPEAKER_02 7:14

I mean, one of the ways that I do it is simply um forming friendships and relationships with uh with people that may or may not be Catholic that are actually building things in Silicon Valley. Uh, we don't agree on everything, but I I think uh I cannot um write books or essays or speak about things at people. I actually have to have relationships with them, relationships built on trust. And I think people don't really care, you know, care what you have to say to them unless they believe that you uh care about them, right? And that that you love them. So I think that that has been a really important work that I've been trying to do in my life is developing those those relationships. I mean, almost everything that I do uh has relationships at at the center. Um and you know, I've spent time in all three of the cities, both uh well metaphorically, I've never lived in in Athens, but um so I think that uh you know I and I'm a heavy user of tech. I mean I I I I'm a heavy user of AI for operational things. So I mean I try to make it to mass every day. Um so I think l living in that tension um and not fleeing it is kind of what I'm trying to do. Of course, it's what my my latest book is about, right? Is is seeing the the the tension as something that's calling or asking something of me, asking me to grow. And this is a pathway, it's my vocation and sort of to be in the middle of the world, to be in in the middle of those three cities.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

Pope Leo the 14th has just come out with his first encyclical on, well, it's Catholic social teaching generally, and there's a large section on artificial intelligence. But both Pope Francis and Pope Leo have said quite a bit um about the new industrial revolution that Silicon Valley is forging. How do you think the church is doing thus far, not just at the level of the papacy, but generally engaging the three-city tension?

SPEAKER_02 9:12

I think that um the church is doing a good job, but I think we could do a lot better. Um uh because um I think that we we need to, it's one thing to convene gatherings and to hold conferences where people get together for one or two days, um, but we actually need sort of a continued way of forming communities of of practice um where people are building together, shoulder to shoulder, side by side uh with other people, informed by faith. And I I think one of the things that I I am trying to do, that the Clooney Institute is trying to do, is to bring these kind of one-off gatherings. And you know you know, they happen in Rome, but um there was one that was happened near Silicon Valley last month. Um I think that the church needs to um actually uh really uh invite um I mean the Silicon Valley people that I know do not always feel sort of welcome, maybe it's because of insecurity or something like that. Um you know, having conversations with people in the church, um especially the institutional church. So I think that forming networks of and communities of practice that go beyond the intellectual kind of engagement is going to be incredibly important. And I I already see that happening. I see I have friends in California that are meeting up and talking about the encyclical. So I think we're certainly moving in the right direction.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

You have written two books uh that are really compelling and quite interesting. And I'm fascinated because they're not specifically faith-based books, but they speak, they can speak to a variety of audiences. They seem to be able to reach, you know, people inside the church, outside the church. Is that your intent? Who are, you know, why why take the time to write book-length uh uh arguments or make a make a whole book? And then who is the audience you're trying to reach with the books that touch on faith, but they're not limited to faith?

SPEAKER_02 11:15

Yeah, I actually wrote a third book that maybe not many people know that I wrote called Unrepeable, um, cultivating the unique calling of every person. So that was writ it published by Emmaus Rhodes, and it was written for Catholics uh very specifically. Um my book's Wanting and the one in the 99. You're right, they they are intended to reach a broad general audience, um, people that are open to um spiritual questions, people that are seeking many are Christians, but many, many people aren't. And you know, I I I I I really feel called to to speak directly to everybody, um, especially people that um you know maybe are kind of on the vestibule or at the threshold of of faith. And you know, a thinker like Rene Girard, um who my first book is about, he was a devout Catholic, French intellectual. Um he he's he's uh such a multidisciplinary thinker whose work touches faith very deeply. But you can also you can enter his thinking and his ideas about human desire and the social nature of desire um without accepting all of the premises of the faith. So I want to give people different sort of entry points and doorways in uh and draw people into a a deeper mystery. Um and and you know, I I've I found a pretty wide audience for my work. Um and I think that if it was uh if I sort of came right out of the gate and and identified myself as a Catholic and um without sort of just draw telling stories, um, I think that there were a lot of people that wouldn't come into contact with the work in the first place. So I I have been very intentional about doing that. And I think earning a reader's trust um through hopefully good writing and good storytelling and engaging work so that they can write me an email after they've read one of these books and said and say, hey, you know, it seems like, you know, maybe there's something more here. What how can I go deeper? And I can point them in the right direction.

SPEAKER_01 13:21

In the lobbying and public policy world, we say you have to have principles, good praxis, and the good pathos, the right heart. Um, and it's built on relationships. So it's very similar to the themes that you've mentioned. And I think part of what I like about your books is that you have you're you are you are in them. It's not like you said talking at someone, it's talking with someone, and then being vulnerable enough to share some very challenging moments in your life as you do in this book, the one in the 99. Say a little bit about engaging people at the level of relationships and building trust by being a little bit vulnerable and why you've done chosen that pathway in your books.

SPEAKER_02 13:59

Yeah, I there's a many books, especially my book has been called The Big Idea Book, um, for instance. And I in some respects it is. It's a big idea in the book, I guess, is social contagion. The big idea in the wanting was mimetic desire. Um, but I I really think that we do we need books that speak to the heart just as much as the head. Uh spiritual reading has always been an important part of my life, and one of the ways that I define spiritual reading from kind of my intellectual inquiries is that it it is it's like a reading that stirs something within me. It stirs me emotionally, usually. Um I'm not it's not it's it is engaging the mind, but it's also engaging my heart and activating other parts of myself, maybe even emotionally. And I I I enjoy writing books that do both that kind of connect the head to the heart. Uh it's really, really important. And I think because the AI will be able to just spit out facts and write full-length books, but what it can't do is tell stories like the story I tell in this book about my relationship with my father, who who now has advanced Alzheimer's disease. And I became his caretaker as an only child, went through an incredibly difficult experience, which I which I tell. Um, I thought it was important for me to tell my own story so that the book helps the reader enter into their own story, you know. Um I don't tell the stories because I want you to know more about my life. I tell the stories to invite people to exploring similar experiences, uh, rites of passage, suffering in their own life and and finding grace in that and making the book existential. Because I think that um I I wouldn't have no interest in writing a book that I didn't think has existential stakes. And I need to help make the reader feel that so they don't read it and say, oh, this is an interesting idea. Here are three insights from this book. Um I know that happens and I'm flattered when it does, but I what I what I really care about is is is changing, um, changing people's lives and helping people to see something deeper in in their daily life.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

You said the big idea of the book is the idea of social contagion, and that's the subtitle of the book, Forging Identity in an Age of Social Contagion. I do want to get to the one in the 99, the parable in that reference, but that seemed the social contagion seems to be the urgency. I mean, you use a very bracing example to highlight um the power of crowds and the need for courage. And that's the August, I think his name's August Landmesser, the fellow in that photo in the Nazi rally in the 1930s who wouldn't do the Hitler salute. Um so to me, it's like what gives you the energy, it seemed, to write a book like this is this really deep concern about social contagion and the need to be able to step out of that and do heroic things in our time. But what's what's the tell us a little bit more about that undercurrent, that urgency you felt in writing this book? Because I think it does take a lot of energy to put pen to paper and and churn something out like this and big ideas. But what's tell tell us about that urgency that you felt in writing this to help us combat social contagion today?

SPEAKER_02 17:06

Yeah. Um, I I I've felt sort of groups and communities becoming more homogeneous with less tolerance for dissent of any kind, to the point where, you know, we've we've sort of talked about individualism a lot, and especially, you know, Catholics, Christians, um, you know, we we we can rail against individualism. I think the opposite of individualism, though, is not community. I think the opposite of individualism is fusion or collectivism. And um both things lose sight of the human person. Um and I'm I'm and I'm de and it's sort of I I I'm concerned about fusion, uh like intellectual fusion, emotional fusion, uh, the fusion of desire, which is what Girard's work was all about. Um and I'm I'm deeply interested in the question, which is comes from the gospels, right? How to be in the world but not of the world. And I started to apply that question to different groups. How can I be in a part of something without becoming completely of it, right? Because there is no perfect community in this world. Um and if we feel too comfortable in one, in fact, um, that might be a bad sign. It's probably good that we sense some tension between our own unique, uh unrepeatable vocation and the kind of communities that we're a part of, which may not always understand uh, you know, our conscience, for instance, right? Conscience is a word that's not specifically mentioned a lot in the book, but it's a thread that kind of runs through the the individual conscience, right? August Landmaster had a duty to follow his conscience and he did. And perhaps the other 99 men, there's probably more than 99 in that picture, um, what was happening in their conscience. So I I felt I felt the urgency because I see this happening in the world, and it struck me in the Pope's encyclical. Um, the the most interesting line in the whole thing for me was he's talking about the Tower of Babel. And he said they chose homogenization over communion. Um, and and that is basically what this book is is all about. You know, how can we be part of something without losing ourselves in it? And you know, John Paul II talked about this constantly, right? He is it was a Christian humanism that has deeply affected my life. And he wrote a letter to in 1968 to Henri de Lubac, and he said, I'm concerned about the modern world pulverizing the human person and all of their sort of uniqueness, and that must be recovered. And the Pope certainly wasn't talking about individualism, he was talking about, you know, a personalism.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

We see when when you one thinks of social contagion, one thinks of mobs, the cultural revolution, totalitarian politics, but where do you see the more subtle ways in which social contagion is crushing the human spirit and limiting people from really becoming the self, the type of solid self that you call for in the book?

SPEAKER_02 20:03

Well, one of the ways is is through online forms of community, which um, you know, have low barriers to entry, no barriers to leave. Um, they can make us feel like we're part of something. Um we identify with people. Um and I think it's a kind of a false form of community. It doesn't require any sacrifice, um, you know, the way that you know being part of a parish does, right? And and you you continue to go back even when you know you don't like the hom you might not like the homily one week, and you and you've got you know you invest in it, you contribute, you give, you give of yourself. So I think that there are many substitutes for real community. And people, it seems like people are lonelier than ever. People are isolated. The studies show this over and over again, where there's probably more quote communities than ever before. You know, there's there seems to be a community for everything. You write a Substack newsletter, and there's a community that you can join. It's there's so many communities. I almost wonder if there's an overabundance of communities and you know, a lack of of deep communion. You know, it's like we're an inch deep and a mile wide, and and and I'm I'm I'm looking at where where are the kinds of communities where people can really be known and know other people, the kinds of communities that will actually notice if you don't show up one day.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

So your book addresses the classic problem of the one and the many, which is uh you one could say it's a metaphysical problem, it's a political problem, it's a sociological problem. But it seems that in the title the one and the many or the one in the 99, the the concern that you're most concerned about is not an over uh an overemphasis on individualism, even though we have a culture that says be yourself, you know, find your identity and things like that. Um, that you seem to be more concerned about homogenization and the Flattening of the person into different social groups and things like that. So say a little bit about the problem of the one and the many and how your book speaks to that.

SPEAKER_02 22:11

It is one of the classical philosophical problems, one of the first things that you learn in a metaphysics introductory class, or the problem of the one and the many. But I in this book I treat it more as a sociological problem, right? An anthropological problem, sort of a political problem in a way. And it was inspired by the parable of the lost sheep. And as I have listened to that parable uh hundreds of times in my life, I certainly understand its theological meaning. Um, you know, Christ goes in search of the one who is lost and brings it back into the fold and rejoices and it repents, and there would be more joy in heaven over this and the the one sinner than the righteous. Um but I I I was I tried to get in the in inside the head of the sheep a little bit. And I thought to myself, well, how did it come back to the fold? What happened to it while it was lost? Could the could good have come out of the period of separation? Um, did it come back changed? Did it come back uh appreciating the community? Um, did it come back converted, um able to sort of be part of the flock. And I I just I applied this to people and I started thinking about it, and I realized that actually what happened in the parable of the lost sheep is a form uh of a of a rite of passage, right? And which by definition means that you are separated and you you go through a liminal state where you are lost or wandering, uh, don't maybe know completely who you are. And all of us, I think, uh need to go through a kinds of rites of various rites of passage in our life. We live in a world where there don't seem to be as many as we used to have, with the goal not of um isolating or becoming an individual that is set apart from the crowd or better than the crowd, but in order to be able to form what I call a solid self in the book. And a solid self is the kind of self that is able to be with others without becoming fused to them um emotionally, intellectually. Um, and that in order to form the solid self, we we need to go through those periods of of testing, quite frankly.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

I love what you do with the parable and how you address the what problem of the one and the many, you know, reconciling diverse things and bringing them together in a whole in the one, and use that parable to do so. I'm always humbled by the references in the gospels to shepherds and sheep, because if you spend any time around sheep, you know they are the dumbest animals. So I love how you try to get inside the mind of the sheep, and you're giving the sheep more credit than I would usually do. Um that's so that's quite uh engaging. But I I love that because the point in the book that you bring out so well is that the sheep, although it it strays and has its own identity and has strayed possibly for many different reasons, it's meant to be brought back into community and in true communion. And you use that analogy of communion. What is what's the difference between communion and a group? Or, you know, what makes communion any different than any other body or gathering of different types of people?

SPEAKER_02 25:43

It's interesting. I I mean communion, I think, is something primordial that we don't necessarily um engineer or manufacture or build. I mean, we often talk about building community, building community. But theologically speaking, you know, we you know, Adam and Eve were in communion with God, um, and this was ruptured by sin. And sin is this is the is the cause and the the source of division. And in a way, we are, you know, the the the Eucharist, for instance. I mean, we're re we're receiving communion, right? It's literally what we say. We are receiving communion, um, and it is a gift to be received and right and through the sacrament of reconciliation. So I think that that is just fundamentally different than building community. And I'm not certainly not saying that that building community is a bad thing, but I think that communion, and and you know, Pope Benedict XVI had beautiful writing on this, especially his book on ecclesiology, where you know he finds you know the the Eucharist as being the sort of the deepest source of communion in our world today. And this is a very different way than the world thinks about building community. You know, Mark Zuckerberg and Meta in Facebook area they used to talk about building community, building community. And we have heard that for such a long time, including we Catholics have heard that for such a long time. One of the things I wanted to do in the book is try to um think deeper about what is communion. And if I could sum up what the book is about, I would say in one word, you force me to give one word, I would say it is about communion.

SPEAKER_01 27:25

I love it because you know, if you get, you know, why communion is such a deeper word than community, for example, but both have that word, that great Latin word in this throughout Catholic social teaching of monus or modera. You know, so community really is a sharing of gifts. And so if we go back to, like you were saying, Pope Benedict's book called The Communion, or that great line from the Second Vatican Council, allegedly inspired by Pope John Paul II, man finds himself by making a civic, you know, a gift of himself. And we see that ultimate gift of himself in our Lord, who then gives us in each mass a gift makes a gift of himself in the Eucharist. And that's the true foundation of community. So as the church, and I think John Paul Benedict, all the popes recently have talked about, you know, whether you want to call it a symphony, a polyhedron, but understanding that communion is many-sided, but requiring the individual gifts of each person. I mean, each of us has monus or has moonus and monorail, and that's why it's so important that we participate in community life. So when you bring this parable together of the of the lost sheep and the one in the 99, bringing that sheep bowl in back into the community to share its gifts and be a part of that is such a rich image and a beautiful analogy. And I think you've hit it right on the head with this idea of communion.

SPEAKER_02 28:45

Yeah, and thanks for reminding me of the name of that book called The Communion by by Pope Benedict XVI. I always remember it as the book with the red shoes on the cover. At least the hardcover that I have, there's like these red slippers on the cover. But it is a fantastic book, and I would encourage encourage anybody listening. You know, don't read my book, read, read that book. Um, it's and it is a profound reflection on communion from the Holy Father.

SPEAKER_01 29:08

But you but you note that I mean to for us, though, to live that communion, they this is what it gets to the importance of the solid self, and that people who have understand their gifts, discern their gifts, are well formed, cultivating their gifts and then bringing that into community. So what what is let's talk a little bit about the solid self? I'm just gonna quote you with you know mine. You say we come to know ourselves by meeting resistance and encountering something or someone that does not bend to our wishes. I think that's just fantastic. And it shows the way in which that community both you could argue both community and individuals are formed in conflict, struggle, challenges, suffering, etc. Yet our whole culture is meant to mitigate those things and keep people away from the very things that help us grow. So talk about this process of differentiation, how how we can become the solid self that we need to be to be a part of that communion.

SPEAKER_02 30:03

Yeah, I think that you said it, you know, it is by making that gift of ourselves, and that is how we find ourselves, or how you know we meet our Lord, and that is how communion is formed. Um, and that certainly, without giving too much away, um you know, I tell the story in the book about my struggles, the suffering that my family went through that was um calling to me to make a gift of myself that I resisted. It was very difficult for me to do that. It wasn't what I expected. Um, you know, I wasn't the the way that I imagined my life would go. I was in seminary, my parents were not doing well, um, and it was put me in a very weird, difficult position in my discernment. And I realized that I was spending a lot of time pacing around my room, a lot of time in prayer, a lot of time discerning my vocation in a relatively abstract way. And I think this is one of the traps of discernment, um, is is sort of uh we can be too much in our heads. And I had this um very clear reality calling to me. Um, and I knew that by um you know sacrificing certain ideals that I had, certain things to care for my dad, which is the part of the book, it's a strange book because it's a book about ideas that has memoir interspersed throughout it. Um I I had to I had to do that, and in the process of doing that, um I was able to form a more solid self by making a gift of myself in some sense. Um so it's certainly not the way what the world tells us, you know, that it's it tries to make us as comfortable as possible. Technology seems to me to be removing all friction um from human life. And it's precisely in those moments when we have to carry the cross and we accept the cross. Um now I'm speaking in more theological terms than the than the book, than than is in the book, but this is I think that any um anybody who reads it closely as a Catholic will see that this is basically the the core message of the book.

SPEAKER_01 32:09

I don't I I reget I see this quote so often, but I feel like you quote it in the book, and you can tell me if you do or not, but the Dostoevsky quote that love in action is a harsher reality than love in dreams. And so we can talk about it in the abstract, but then going out and living it and encountering that friction and that tension and that challenge of those difficult moments. Like you talk about Bishop Eric Varden, one of my I love Bishop Varden, and hit you tell his story about encountering a homeless man um in Paris and how that set him on a course. He did the difficult thing. He tried to live love in reality and and walk with and accompany that homeless man, and that set him on a path. So now he's preaching the papal Lenten retreats, and he's the bishop of Trondheim, and he's a great gift to the church today.

SPEAKER_02 32:54

He is, and um, and Benedictine, you know, tradition. And there's a chapter in this book on uh basically um the rule of Saint Benedict, um, which is, I think, a strange thing for many people to find in a trade book when they're maybe not expecting it. Um, but I convinced my editor to let me put it in there. And uh as I read The Rule of Benedict several times and researching this book, one of the things that struck me in Bishop Varden's story, but it just in the rule itself uh and what it has to teach anybody today, institutions, the church, uh, family life, is that um well, there are many parts of the rule, and I talk about a handful of them in that chapter. But they also, you know, they they have a vow of stability, uh, and and that's a very interesting thing, right? It's not like they can't shop around to different abbeys, they enter one abbey, and stabilitas is part of the commitment there. And Benedict actually opens the rule by talking about um, as I hopefully I'm pronouncing it right, gyrovags is what he talks about. And he says, These are monks that basically go shopping around for a better environment the moment that things get difficult. And part of living in community, living in a seminary, living in a monastery, um, but even I think this can be easily applied to family life, is you you have a commitment to to be where you are, to be with the people that God has placed in your life and not to run from that. And you know, that that is so much wisdom in the rule of Benedict that I don't think it is appreciated among the laity the way that it should be.

SPEAKER_01 34:28

We are planted in certain corners of the vineyard and we are also placed in families. We get to choose our friends, but we don't get to choose our families. But our families can be schools of virtue, they can be the domestic church. Um, they can help us form that solid differentiated self. Um, and you talk about that in the book. I mean, your own personal story is an example of that. But also, families can be uh flattening, and especially when the culture takes on some of the coping mechanisms within families, um, things can become toxic. So say a little bit about um the way in which family is of benefit to the differentiated self, but also can oftentimes cause problems.

SPEAKER_02 35:08

Yeah, I I was um I draw on the work of Murray Bowen, and he was a Georgetown psychologist, psychiatrist um who studied the family, and he applied systems thinking to the family unit. And he sort of, he he actually used the term, he said every every young family is kind of like an undifferentiated ego mass. It sounds pretty harsh. And, you know, the goal of maturing, the goal of family life is to differentiate, you know, your emotions, for instance, from the emotions in the family. Because emotions are really, really contagious. Um, you know, if both of my have two very young daughters and if they're both screaming and crying, it raises the anxiety in our four-person family unit. Like my wife and I catch the anxiety of our toddlers like just by contagion, it just happens, you know. Um we're probably more more likely to not be kind to one another in in that very in the moment, right? So Bowen talks about the way that uh a family where there's a low level of differentiation, people don't realize it. You know, we we're we're in an environment, it's there's always the hardest place to see things because we're in it. We live it every day. We're so close to it. Um we can just sort of assume and take on the uh the emotional character of our family. And part of maturing is being able to differentiate our ideas, our emotions, um, not for the sake of differentiation, but for the sake of forming the kind of person that can think with intentionality that can say, oh, you know, my dad's mad, but I'm not mad, and I don't have to be mad about this thing that my dad is mad about. This is just part of maturing and becoming what I call in the book a solid self.

SPEAKER_01 36:52

I think families of young adults, and I'm in that stage, uh, sense that tension of straw forging strong family life and wanting community, true community and connection. At the same time, though, we want our kids to move on and we want them to become differentiated selves who can then uh expand and grow in their powers and bring those into the broader culture. But families, like you said, they there's coping mechanisms, there's conflict avoidance, there's the need to avoid toxic personalities. And then you make the point that this is bleeding, we have a family dynamic bleeding out into the culture, into our political sphere, where people don't want to be involved in politics because it's encounter. So they get into they they take on the strategy of avoidance because they don't want to encounter the toxicity that's in the broader culture. So, how has has the culture in politics taken on some of these um contagious attitudes and mentalities that sometimes emerge within families?

SPEAKER_02 37:46

Yeah, well, the one of the premises is that people emerge from their family um with various degrees or levels of differentiation. And Bowen believed, and I believe, that the there seems to be a relatively low level of differentiation in our society today. Um, you know, there's all kinds of reasons for that, I think. Um that's the way that our education system, opportunities, rights of passage, lack of rights of passage. So in a world where you're uh emerging from family life and going out into the world with a relatively undifferentiated sense of self, uh, you are which Bowen calls the pseudo-self, which is the kind of self that just adapts in situations that we are more likely to lose ourselves in various uh things and movements. So I I would say, for instance, an undifferentiated person would be much more likely to find their identity in some strong political movement, for instance, right? Eric Hofer wrote a book back in the 50s and he said, you know, people join toxic mass movements, for instance, because they are fleeing an unwanted self. I would add to that and say, also maybe they have a low differentiation of self and they need to find themselves uh in uh something that that, you know, that that that invites them, right? The the first people that extend an invitation. Um and that is a danger. And and you know, we can sort of see as as the level of undifferentiation in society uh is high, um, we can expect sort of more sorting into tribal groups um where uh we you know we don't have to deal with anxiety and conflict because we we're surrounded by people that think exactly like we do, that get upset by the same things, that are outrage. And I think that's incredibly unhealthy. And I think we we would stand to benefit from I don't think we know how to deal with anxiety very well as a culture. And the first place that we learn to deal with anxiety well is within the family. And if we're not learning that well in the family, we take our our uh reactive responses into the culture with us, into the workplace, into our political life. And I don't think that uh we think enough about why this is happening. And I think that it starts with the formation.

SPEAKER_01 40:07

I I agree completely. And I think you have focused on the social contagion piece, but I go back to the identity piece without that sense of confidence in who we are, our received identity as children of God, and then the formation to continue to cultivate a sense of ourselves, our gifts, how we're created, what gifts we're meant to share, we're more likely to fall into places that give us identity, cults, um, some mass social movements. People are searching for identity so much that they insert themselves into these things just to give themselves identity. Again, the one the problem of the one and the many, it's got so many permutations and and dynamics. But we don't, we don't, you said education. I think this is also a crucial piece of this. We've got limited time, so I don't think we need to dwell on the problems of the modern education system, but maybe just say that we adopted a German factory model of education that prized homogeneity and community. Uh, that's the best way to look at it. But we've lost uh a lot of that individuality and that differentiation. So, what do we do about that just from an educational standpoint? And I ask because the church is a huge, is the biggest non-governmental provider of educational uh ministry and educational services locally, nationally, and internationally. How do we, how does the church in its education model push back on this?

SPEAKER_02 41:26

Yeah. And I think John Dewey is also a little bit to blame for this. He's one of the villains in my sector in education, right? Where it's just all about, you know, practical things like forming people to get certain jobs. And we don't even know what jobs are going to be around in 10 years right now. So it's a very bad model to operate on. Um but you were very charitable then to him.

SPEAKER_01 41:47

And I still I I I commend you for that.

SPEAKER_02 41:49

I I I appreciate it. Um, yeah, I I could have written, I, you know, I a lot of was removed. I think my editor had removed about two pages for my treatment of Dewey. But um I do propose a couple of things in the book. I I I love uh apprenticeship models. I think that apprenticeship um is one way forward. Um it's been important in my life, it's been important in my my grandmother's life, who uh uh became a very well-known artist and wasn't until her late 30s when she apprenticed under another artist. So I've just seen that time and time again just become an incredibly important source of formation, which is what education should be. It should be the formation of the whole person. And also, you know, smaller cohort-based models of you know, five, six, seven people are I think are also incredibly important, right? So it's a a way from kind of the the the one uh lecturer and the 99 students um to kind of really engaged learning in in in in small groups. And I think that learning is lifelong. Um, you know, the Clooney Institute, for instance, has launched a workshop called The Foundations of Agency, which is basically what draws in the all of the themes in the book, and it's taking five professionals drawn from different uh domains of life. We very intentionally put them into the small groups and they wrestle through readings and questions together over the course of six weeks. It's very, very intense. And I think that's the future of education, right? I think that's uh it's it's you know, education is just not some boot camp that we should put kids through so they can learn certain facts. Um, should be something where we learn to love learning. Um, and we learn to love learning partly by um engaging with other people um uh deeply on questions that actually matter.

SPEAKER_01 43:36

Getting back to this important point about the way in which our culture prizes the avoidance of pain, suffering, avoidance of conflict, which are all good things in and of themselves and understood rightly. But we've lost a sense of the way in which friction, as we can we'll use that as the catch all term, forges the identity of the person, and it can even forge community. What let's uh can you unpack a little bit more about the way in which this I this need to avoid friction at all costs and limit the friction in our lives is uh forging undifferentiated individuals?

SPEAKER_02 44:18

I'm trying to think of a of a concrete example of this. Um because I see it in the I see it in even in the church, you know, there's kind of an expectation that um uh you know all Catholics should um think the same things about various issues, right? A whether it's AI or different things that are happening, um, which does violence, I think, to the formation of the conscience and the duty that we all have to um you know uh adhere to reality and to think with the mind of the church, certainly. But um uh but but but but not not to, you know, we we should we should we should be able to say I believe something. Um and that's part of what the book is about, um, is is is about this formation of conscience. And the conscience is uh formed in various ways. Uh Paul Benedict also wrote a great book on this called On Conscience. Um but one of one of the ways is through friction. I'm just giving one specific way in which I think friction is good. There are many ways. Um but actually using it to awaken our conscience, right? Using friction to awaken our conscience um and uh and to to invite us to probe more deeply why we're experiencing that friction, let's say between ourselves and other people in our parish or other people in our whatever system that we're a part of. Um and then uh seeing that as an invitation to sort of for dialogue, for for engagement. But uh if we avoid the friction at all cost, um we will not be able to form a conscience or we can confidently say, like um Sir Thomas More, you know, and this beautiful speech that we hear at the end of A Man for All Seasons, I think is the greatest film of all time, um, where he stands there and and and he manifests his conscience for the first time. He'd been withholding it the whole time. Um that came about as the result of friction, not just with um, you know, the king, um, but also within his own church. And, you know, he's a saint today and he's uh the great hero of mine, um, partly because of what he has to teach us about the the tension between the one and the 99.

SPEAKER_01 46:31

I love that you pointed out that this is a problem within the church, because you see the way in which we've made prudential matters matters of dogma. Exactly. And dogmas are not objective moral norms are now malleable.

SPEAKER_02 46:45

Exactly. Yeah. And and and also, even you know, one is expected to have certain aesthetic judgments about a film because it's Christian. So I I see this sort of bleeding over um into things that are prudential judgments um are becoming matters of dogma. I can't say it any better than that.

SPEAKER_01 47:03

But it it takes a tremendous amount of courage, and then you you point this out of the book, to be able to stand against and have a you have such a sense of your own self, your own identity, what is required of you in your particular circumstances. I mean, if you the the world of Catholic moms and prudential judgment is uh it's a dog eat dog world out there, to compare is to despair, as we like to say, um, but it takes a lot of courage to world, we can't do that, you know, and just be having a sense of what's right for you and your family on prudential matters. Um, even in the church, this can be a problem of differentiating yourself and having the courage to be able to do that. You talk about um some things that are antidotes to this homogenization, but I think they're important. Art, religion, and work. We've talked about religion, particularly the monastic life. Uh, there's certainly a context in which individuality and community uh go hand in hand, but say a little bit about art. I I love this uh chapter about jazz um and the way in which art can help us cultivate that solid self.

SPEAKER_02 48:06

I we could maybe just call it creating um any any work that we put out into the world in general. Yeah. Um, you know, the the chapter in the book is about audience capture sort of um, and I'm a writer uh and I, you know, I earn a part of my living through writing. And so that I'm strongly incentivized to just write the thing that people want me to write, um, that people that my publisher expects me to write. Um and uh and and in so doing that, um, if I'm if I am just sort of like if I'm following the money, if I'm following the expectations, uh then I will definitely not write the thing that's most important for me to write. Um and so I I face this pressure all of the time. And I think anybody sort of could can apply this to their own lives because we experience tension as creators. I mean, this is a classic kind of problem for anybody that creates, writes anything, makes any kind of art, and it's where we experience the tension between you know the crowd and ourselves, the market and ourselves, the one and the 99. Business is the space where this plays out. And I teach in a business school, and I I'm uh a bit of a contrarian uh in in in in business and even in my own school. And you know, it's typically thought that your goal as a person in business or as an artist is to meet the demand, is to meet the demand of the market. You find out the demand and you meet it. And I view the role of the entrepreneur, the role of any creator, of any artist, is not to meet the demand, it is to actually create something and you know generate new desires, right? Uh do something, do something new, um, do something that you feel called in your conscience to do. And that might involve trade-offs and sacrifices. You might make less money, you might have to accept a job that pays less. So there's this constant tension that I think we can see very clearly in the world of art. You know, and I grew up in the 80s and 90s, it used to be called selling out. I don't think there's much of a as much of a stigma today about selling out as there was when I was growing up. That was the worst thing that you could possibly do. Um, but I'm sort of using this as a lens through which we can see the pressure, the expectations that other people have of us, making our work conform to those expectations is a relatively soul-killing thing to do if you do it repeatedly.

SPEAKER_01 50:26

What your reflections on art and creativity call to mind for me is the sense that we've lost that art, and this is why I use that term, is an intellectual virtue, making the right thing in the right way. And so you go back to craft and you go back to work and you go back to creativity, but but being intentional about how we make things, how we do things as cultivating that better sense of uh a differentiated self and growing um through the challenges that arise when uh it might not be the most lucrative, profitable, it might not be the thing that everybody wants, but it might be the thing that everybody needs. So just I I love that reflection because we've lost this idea that art is an intellectual virtue. And it's I think it's the key to understanding work. I think it's the key to understanding creativity and well. That that was the first thing that came to my mind as I as I work through that in that story of the jazz musician that you presented to us in the book.

SPEAKER_02 51:24

Thank you. And it's certainly related to truth, you know, the relationship between art and truth. And, you know, John Paul II and the beautiful letter to artist, you know, talks about this too. And I tell the story in the book of Ornette Coleman, who's a jazz musician that I didn't learn about until later in my life. I don't I don't know why, but I was incredibly inspired by his story because he he he wanted to make a certain kind of jazz that felt true to his calling, his very specific calling. He ended up inventing a genre of jazz called free jazz. But for over a decade, he was rejected, he was kicked out of clubs, he was booed, people did not understand the kind of music that he was trying to make. Um, and and and he and he stuck with it. And um, you know, I think that uh more people should learn his story because as an artist, as a musician, uh he embodied everything that I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_01 52:14

As we wrap up this conversation, I thought it'd be useful and and helpful to return to a Girardian theme, mimetic desire. So if one is reading this book and says, aha, I want to become the solid self. Um, I want to be like those people that uh Luke profiles in the book. Where does one begin? How does one start uh that journey of differentiation such that when one might be alienated or whatever, one can be brought into the community to share one's gifts, to make that difference that all these people who you profile in the book had they have made in their communities?

SPEAKER_02 52:54

Well, I'll make it short and simple. Um I offer many different ways in the book, but um, let me sum it up by just saying that somebody that uh is interested in starting on this journey, um maybe you you'll read the book, maybe you won't, but you probably already know just based on this conversation that you've heard, you might have an idea of somebody in your life, one person who seems to be a solid self. Now, this exists on a spectrum, you know. Um there's nobody that's uh 100% of a solid self, but there are probably people, there's at least one person in your life who is self-possessed, um, who you can be around, and and they uh you you are accepted, you are understood. Um uh and I think uh find that person, find, find one person, spend more time around them. I mean, I think this is there's a a beautiful sort of positive form of mimetic contagion, right? Where solid selves form other solid selves. And I would just encourage anybody, you certainly know one, um, maybe pray about it, think about it, right? Um, who is that kind of person, right? The the you know, the the the the the father or the mother who can, you know, re remain calm in the presence of her children when everything's going crazy. Um you know that I think that we this is the way that we we I think acquire virtues is by looking for it um around us and and and uh and and becoming proximate to it. So I would say that would be a great first step because this it's not an intellectual exercise becoming the solid self. It is it is one that is lived through through habit and it it involves the development of virtue. And there's no better way to learn it than by being with somebody that can help you on that journey.

SPEAKER_01 54:41

There is a beauty in holiness, and it's attractive. And not only can we cultivate it in ourselves, but we can identify those models like the saints, but also the unknown saints that are around us all the time and follow them as examples. Luke, what didn't I ask that you'd like to share with our listeners about your book or your work? Uh I'm just grateful for the time we've had in this conversation and so grateful for the work you do. What what didn't I ask, or what what do you want to just leave our listeners with?

SPEAKER_02 55:10

Oh, let's see. You know, I I I don't know. I would say that if you are um if you are in if you are in a part of your life right now where you are um, you know, I think we're all in transition in this world, right? So we're we're always sort of in a in a state of discernment. Um you first of all, I would I would like anybody listening to know you can reach out to me, um, lukebergis.com. You can you can find I there's nothing I like more than actually engaging with my readers. It's literally why I write the books. I I I really it leads to a beautiful relationship. So I would I would offer that. Um and you know, it I would encourage anybody to look into Renee Girard. I wrote my first book, wanting about Renee Girard, who wrote about memetic desire. And in a way, you know, this the book, The One in the 99, is challenges my first book in some way because it sort of uh offers a framework to to to push back on memetic desire and to understand um that um there's actually something deeper than memetic desire here and and it has to do with the way that we're in relationship um with other with other people. So I hope that um some of you um will stand in the the tension that I'm trying to create um through these books. Um they're they're they're meant to be probes, they're not meant to give easy answers. So you know if that's what you're looking for, you you you won't find it um in either one of them. But I I I I think that what you'll find is um is uh is is tension and healthy tension that will help ask some of the right questions.

SPEAKER_01 56:51

Well you Luke, you point out in the book that there's no neutral ground in the work of becoming the solid self. Either we're becoming more solid um and growing, and one could say growing in virtue, growing in holiness, or we're becoming less solid and one might say flabby if we're not engaging these questions and engaging these frictions and engaging these tensions. I'd like to just commend our your book to our readers as one uh path on this journey. I know it was a blessing to read it myself. Luke, thank you for what you do. Thanks for taking the time to join us on Catholic in America and God bless you.

SPEAKER_02 57:23

Thank you very much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 57:24

Thanks, Jason. I'm really grateful to Luke for coming on the show, and I hope you enjoyed that fascinating conversation. He's really one of the most important and emerging public intellectual figures in the church in the United States today. Again, glad that he took some time to join us and have a conversation about his important book. And I think it's important, not just from the standpoint of something to help us navigate our identity and our growth in virtue just at an everyday level in our professions, in our homes, but really speaking about this reality of social contagion and how we stand up against the social contagion when it's necessary. Mass movements, problematic mass movements, or different other things of group think, which can stifle not only just creativity, but can be genuinely harmful as well. How do we have solid selves who can stand against the current, not simply to be contrarian, but as he highlights with his reinterpretation or retelling of the parable of the lost sheep, that we can go and be back integrated into the community and build it up and enrich it for the common good. And I think that's really an important point. It's not just a matter of being individuals or contrarians, but being people who are differentiated, solid selves who can go back and promote the well-being of the community as a whole, speak truth when it's necessary, live virtuously, provide an alternative example. And that's really the guidance that Luke is giving us in this important book, The One in the 99. So again, I hope you enjoyed that conversation. I encourage you to check out the book. And again, thanks for listening. God bless you and your family. We'll see you again on the next episode of Catholic in America. I'm Jason Atkins wishing you and your family God's blessings. Thanks so much and take care.