I started my advertising career at Berry Bush BBDO, in Cape Town, a couple of weeks after Rory. Rory was in account management with me, and we serviced the same client. Thing is, Rory didn’t like me, and I can’t blame him as I wasn’t all the fond of myself at the time either.
Rory and I worked around one another, exchanged greetings, and spoke, when necessary, but we didn’t really find common interests on which to build a connection. And, thinking back on it now, I liked him. He was extroverted, slightly camp with a hilariously droll view of the people who managed the agency.
And then, on some random day, Rory comes to my desk and hands me a book. “It’s for you. I thought you’d enjoy it.” I was stunned. It wasn’t my birthday and there wasn’t an imminent event in my life that justified the gift. I suspect I may have overdone the gushiness of my thanks, but I wanted him to know how touched I was by the gesture. From that day onward Rory and I got on far better than we had. I haven’t spoken to Rory in more than a decade, but I still call him a friend, in great part because he gave me a book titled The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami.
The book and something Haruki Murakami said
I went home and read the book in one sitting. And it was spectacular. Thanks to the life-stage I was in the book resonated with me in the same way The Catcher in the Rye did when I started high school. It was strange, filled with magical realism and it all spoke to a crisis of identity. But, most of all, I loved how the main character, Toru Okada, spent a lot of his time cooking, drinking beer at his kitchen table and listening to jazz or opera.
And I couldn’t believe that I’d never heard of Haruki Murakami. How could a man of such incredible insight be overlooked? Where had he been? I started recommending him to anyone who’d listen. I still do, but with slightly less enthusiasm. I’ve found, similar to Catcher in the Rye, that I have outgrown Murakami’s writing. And, while this truth saddens me, I’m grateful to have read most of his work during a period in my life when it meant a lot to me. And I can still see the brilliance in his writing even if it is from a distance.
The reason I’m telling you this story because I had to find a way to get you to this quote by Murakami which makes up the backbone of this post. And because I wanted to share three things I learnt by receiving that gift from Rory.
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
Haruki Murakami
The first thing I learnt is that giving people a meaningful gift for no reason other than you thought of them and believed they would enjoy receiving it is awesome.
The second thing I learnt was that not all amazing books are known or are awarded the Booker or the Pulitzer, or any prizes for that matter. In fact, I have read so many brilliant books that have been overlooked for recognition that I’m considering starting an Instagram account of obscure books that everyone should read.
At this point I’ll also call out that Murakami has subsequently become more mainstream. In fact, his name has come up several times over the last few years as a contender for the Nobel Prize. Maybe my recommendations helped.
And the third thing I learnt is that by not reading what everyone else is reading you’re able to think about things that few other people are considering. And that this can help you see the world from a unique perspective.
Peter Thiel and Mimetics
Peter Thiel is one of the most successful tech investors in the United States. He’s also an entrepreneur who started companies such as PayPal and Palantir Technologies. And he has a unique way of looking at the world that many believe helped underpin his success.
Peter studied philosophy at Stanford where he met the philosopher and polymath, René Girard. Over the course of his career, Girard developed a theory that explained how our desires, those that go beyond meeting our simple needs, are acts of mimicry. Girard called this mimetic desire. He believed that how we decided what to desire isn’t an autonomous process, but a process of appropriation. In other words, when we see an object that others want, we learn to want that object also. And the more people want a specific object, the more valuable that object appears to be and the more desirable it becomes.
There is a lot more to Girard’s theory, and I’ll warn you now; reading Girard is a little like trying to catch a cloud in plastic bag. However, the idea that we adopt our desires from others drives a lot of Thiel’s world view. And the theory’s implications are worth exploring.
Peter Thiel’s interview question
“What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”
Apparently, this is a common interview question Peter Thiel asks his prospective employees. When you consider that Thiel is heavily influenced by mimetic theory you unearth that Thiel is trying to identify people who can hold contrarian positions. People who can separate themselves from the herd and see the world from a unique perspective. People who don’t just want what everyone else wants, but who can think for themselves.
Mimetic theory, to my mind, doesn’t explain all human desires or behaviours, there are other factors that dictate our wants and preferences. But I do believe mimetic desire forms a large part of how we learn to want. Which leads me to my point; there is true power in being able to break away from the herd and not wanting what everyone else wants. Because, by liberating yourself from everyone else’s desires you’re able to break free from what is keeping everyone else preoccupied. Which, in turn, allows you to see opportunities and inspiration in places where nobody else is looking.
That doesn’t sound so difficult
It doesn’t, but it is. Distinguishing your true desires from the desires you’ve adopted from others is almost impossible. Consider the last item of clothing you bought, and ask yourself, did you buy it because you are who you are, or did you buy it because you saw someone else wearing it and thought it would look good on you? Even the act of seeing it on someone else and appropriating that look for yourself is mimetic.
Here’s another example of how difficult it is to break out of the mimetic cycle. In 2004 the book, Blue Ocean Strategy was published. Written by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, the book explores how one goes about opening new markets and creating demand for products that didn’t previously exist. The title of the book refers to the strategy of avoiding markets where sharks (existing companies in a defined market) compete against one another, i.e. the red ocean, and finding blue oceans – spaces in the market landscape that haven’t been considered and are therefore devoid of competition. Areas in which you can develop a completely new product, create demand for it and define the rules for that market.
And yet, since 2004, we haven’t been introduced to all that many new markets. In fact, I’m still of the opinion that true innovation is in decline. And the reason for this is that imitating what exists, with small, incremental improvements, is still easier than coming up with something completely different and original. In fact, I would wager that coming up with an original product is almost as difficult as identifying which of the items you own are yours because you truly wanted them as opposed to someone else influencing your purchase decision. Or as difficult as finding a good answer to Peter Thiel’s interview question.
And, to that point, if you have a brilliant answer to Thiel’s interview question, please share it in the comments. I would love to gather a few answers and write about them in future.
Why breaking free from the herd is important
It’s important because it is by breaking free that we get to know ourselves. In breaking free we learn who we are, and we understand the world for ourselves. It is in breaking free that we are finally able to think for ourselves. Shrugging off the shackles of the herd is the way to insight. It is only by not thinking like everyone else that we are able to change the world.
It’s the people who see past the obvious, that rebel against consensus who come to know what is possible. And who see the secrets in the world that everyone misses. And the most effective way to become that rebel is to stop thinking like everyone else.
Think for yourself by not listening to, reading, and watching what everyone else is listening to, reading, and watching
As Murakami said, read what everyone else is reading, think what everyone else is thinking. What we think about comes down to the information we feed our minds. If our inputs are popular movies, trending TV shows, and award-winning books, then it makes sense that the content of all our thoughts will converge over time. To escape the tyranny of groupthink, we must look further afield for inputs.
We need to consume information that very few have made the time to discover. We must find the rare gems that everyone else overlooked. The books the judges missed. And the foreign language films that take us out of our comfort zones. We need to search for and disentangle the thoughts of the obscure philosophers. And listen to the compositions of the musicians who chose their art before fame. We must find art that challenges us and talk to people who are different to us. We should learn more from the many great people that time’s forgotten, and find the truths that others learnt and we’ve forgotten.
And, if we do all these things, we’ll see the world as it really is. And, I believe, uncover opportunities we never thought possible.