The Self, the Crowd, and Social Contagion (with Luke Burgis)
6/8/20261 hr 11 min
Finding community can be difficult. But author Luke Burgis thinks the real challenge begins once we've found it and we're subject to social pressures to conform. Listen as Burgis and EconTalk's Russ Roberts trace the tension between individuals and their tribes through the foundational frameworks, such as family and school, that help forge our identities. Burgis argues that the disappearance of traditional rites of passage bodes ill for major life commitments such as marriage, and recounts his personal journey from Wall Street through the Great Books in search of a strong, differentiated self. He also draws lessons for today's communities from Saint Benedict's 1,500-year-old guide for monastic life and describes the moving ritual he practiced with his father before he died.
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First 90 secondsRuss Roberts· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Welcome to EconTalk conversations for the curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Go to EconTalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this episode and find links to other information related to today's conversation. You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done going back to two thousand and six. Our email address is mail@EconTalk.org. We'd love to hear from you. [upbeat music] Today is April twenty-eight, twenty twenty-six and my guest is author Luke Burgess. His latest book is The One and the Ninety-Nine: Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion and that is our subject for today. Luke, welcome to EconTalk.
Luke Burgess· Guest0:51
Good to be with you. Thanks, Russ.
Russ Roberts· Host0:53
Let's talk about the title. What is The One and the Ninety-Nine?
Luke Burgess· Guest0:57
Uh, the one is, uh, the self, the I, the subject, uh, you and I, um, as we exist as individuals and the ninety-nine you could think of as the crowd, the many, everybody else, you know, the group that we're, we're a part of. Um, so this dichotomy between self and crowd has been something I've been thinking about for well over a decade. The title comes most explicitly from the parable of the lost sheep in the Bible where Jesus tells a story