How Does a Person Become Real? — Angela Duckworth and Luke Burgis

Luke Burgis and Angela Duckworth are watching the same traffic move in opposite directions, and this hour is the first time they’ve worked it out in the same room. Burgis, founder of the Cluny Institute, author of Wanting, and a teacher at Catholic University’s Ciocca Center, has spent years tracing how mimetic desire pulls us into borrowed identities. How much of what we take to be our own wanting was simply handed to us by someone we were watching. Duckworth, the University of Pennsylvania psychologist who wrote the bestselling book Grit, comes at it from the other side: how the people, places, and situations around us draw out capacities we didn’t know were there, or quietly bury them. Between them they take up the difference between a solid self and a pseudo self; what the parable of the lost sheep understands about individuation that our therapeutic vocabulary does not; the “hard thing rule” for raising children who can grit and quit well; and whether any of our institutions still think in terms of formation at all … or have simply outsourced it and hoped for the best. Recorded live at Comment’s inaugural Understory festival, with introductory reflections from editor in chief Anne Snyder. Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) The Understory is a production of Comment (comment.org (http://comment.org) ), published by Cardus (cardus.ca (http://cardus.ca) ). Hosted by Anne Snyder. Edited by Allie Crummy. Produced by Tiffany Thompson and Evan Rosa. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Comment episode page: https://comment.org/podcasts/how-does... Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4pqX... Episode Highlights: "How do you become real? You commune with what is real." "That search for communion is the most important thing I think we're lacking in the world today." "We're not addicted to our phones—we're addicted to the people inside of the phones." "Nobody gets to choose your hard thing but you." "It's a thousand little moments that happen in the sacred private space between a soul and God." About Luke Burgis: Luke Burgis is a serial entrepreneur turned author and scholar whose work sits at the intersection of philosophy, psychology, and practical wisdom. He is founder and director of the Cluny Institute and an Assistant Clinical Professor of Business and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Catholic University of America's Ciocca Center, where he studies the invisible forces that shape human behavior. His first book, "Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life," introduced René Girard's thought to a public audience; his latest book, "The One and the Ninety-Nine: Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion," is a Next Big Idea Club Must-Read. About Angela Duckworth: Angela Duckworth is the Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, faculty co-director of the Penn-Wharton Behavior Change for Good Initiative, and a 2013 MacArthur Fellow. Before her research career she taught math and science in public schools in New York City, San Francisco, and Philadelphia, and co-founded Character Lab, a nonprofit advancing the science of character development. Her 2016 book "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance" was a number-one New York Times bestseller; her forthcoming book is "Situated: Find the People and Places That Bring Out Your Best." Mentioned: René Girard on mimetic desire; Martin Seligman and positive psychology; The One and the Ninety-Nine: Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion, by Luke Burgis; Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, by Angela Duckworth; Situated: Find the People and Places That Bring Out Your Best, by Angela Duckworth; Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life, by Luke Burgis; Unrepeatable: Cultivating the Unique Calling of Every Person, by Luke Burgis and Joshua Miller; The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams; Babette's Feast, by Isak Dinesen; Scottish poet and writer Charles Mackay. #UnderstoryFestival #CommentMagazine #LukeBurgis #AngelaDuckworth #CharacterFormation #MimeticDesire #Identity #Belonging #Grit #Self #ChristianHumanism