Over the weekend I drove to a farm that sold raw unpasteurized unhomogenized milk. It was the most delicious milk and cream I’ve ever had! The milk was creamy and the cream was almost as thick as butter. You can’t get this kind of milk from the store. When you homogenize and pasteurize, you lose something. Of course, you gain something as well, but when we standardize and homogenize too much, we lose something important.
The woman who sold the milk takes great care of her animals. The milk goes directly from the udder into a chilled tank. When I showed up, she dispensed the milk into containers for me to take home. It was a beautiful thing. There are many benefits to raw milk including a reduction of allergies and asthma in children!
In his book, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future, entrepreneur Peter Thiel writes about how there is too much homogenization of ideas in the world. In his talk below with Eric Metaxas, he shares his thoughts about the corruption of institutions through the conformity of ideas.
Theil is a big fan of René Girard. Theil was a student of Girard’s at Stanford. Girard says that humans are mimetic. We get caught up in mimicry and the monoculture of ideas. We imitate rather than think. I recently did a podcast about the ideas of René Girard with David Gornoski.
I learned more about Theil and his ideas in this excellent interview. I was pleasantly surprised to find out he was a fan of Girard. I also discover that Thiel is a Christian. There is a lot in this interview. Definitely worth checking out.
Aaron Olson 