Peter Thiel's Mental Framework

Girard observed that even when you put a group of kids together in a room full of toys, they’ll inevitably desire the same toy instead of finding their own toy to play with. A rivalry will emerge. Human see, human want.

Our capacity for imitation leads to envy. Babies’ inte...

When humans engage in a Mimetic conflict, violence can only be fixed by murdering the scapegoat. This process of killing the victim, again & again, is the main peace pill in an archaic society. People perform ritual sacrifices together, and when a priest is appoi...

Everybody imitates. We cannot resist Mimetic contagion, and that will never change. But there are bad & good ways to imitate. 

• Bad imitators follow the crowd and mirror false idols. This leads us to follow status-seeking games, rather than being selfishly focused on ou...

When a scapegoat is sacrificed, peace is restored in the community. Then, the culture lives peacefully for a short time. But eventually, tensions flare and violence returns to the community. To restore the peace, a new scapegoat must be named and sacrificed, which re-starts the sacrificial loop.

Michael Porter, the Godfather of modern business strategy, believes that strong businesses should aim to be unique, not the best. Something Peter Thiel also believes: Trying to outcompete rivals leads to mediocre performance, so companies should avoid competition and seek to crea...

According to Peter Thiel, monopoly is the end state of every successful business. If you want to create and capture lasting economic value, don’t compete. The more unique companies are, the more the business world can flourish.

Consider the airline industry...

In most religious traditions time is like a circle: it closes where it opened. In Hinduism, for example, the world spins along an endless cycle: creation, rise, decline, destruction, and rebirth. This conception is very much fatalistic in nature.

Christians, however, see time as linear. It ...