Johnathan at Limbo — Interpreting Girard Lecture II Transcript

0:00:13.2 DP: In many parts of culture, children are led along a path of prestige, where they're told to ace their tests no matter how tedious so they can attend an elite university no matter how incompatible, in order to work a prestigious job no matter how trivial. Prestige sometimes provides the necessary motivational force to achieve our goals, but even when doing so, often pulls us towards the wrong goals -- dating the "right" person who is wrong for us, living in a fancy neighborhood that's beyond our means, befriending influential people who we don't actually like -- and it's no coincidence, I think, that the Latin word for prestige translates to “illusion” or “mirage”. What I found most fascinating about this lecture is that it provides a comprehensive theory to help us distinguish between authentic desire and social validation in order to wean off the drug of prestige. Girard helps us see the extraordinary extent to which society is motivated by prestige. It's like the arrow i

0:00:13.2 DP: In many parts of culture, children are led along a path of prestige, where they're told to ace their tests no matter how tedious so they can attend an elite university no matter how incompatible, in order to work a prestigious job no matter how trivial. Prestige sometimes provides the necessary motivational force to achieve our goals, but even when doing so, often pulls us towards the wrong goals -- dating the "right" person who is wrong for us, living in a fancy neighborhood that's beyond our means, befriending influential people who we don't actually like -- and it's no coincid