Zero to One for the Soul
I read Zero to One the lazy way. A few pages. If I want to sound fancy, I call it the McLuhan method: let your own mind fill the rest.
So I have to warn you. I don’t know anything about Peter Thiel. But I saw a ghost leaning over his shoulder: René Girard.
Thiel doesn’t have to write the word mimesis. It’s already in the paper. Girard said people don’t really want things. They copy each other’s wanting. They borrow desire the way drunks borrow lighters. Half-conscious. A little sad. Not very original. Desire spreads like flu. Thiel turned that insight into business advice: stop copying, stop competing, build something no one else can imitate.
As a government-sponsored social worker and hobby philosopher I thought: that’s solid advice. Start with your own self.
And let’s be honest: Thiel speaks to the masses, but his real audience is five people. Maybe ten. The handful who actually understand him already knew the message before opening the book. Everyone else reads it like a self-help manual. Thiel casts a wide net to reach those who don’t need a net.
Most people don’t live their lives. They follow scripts written long before they were born. Family scripts. School scripts. Cultural scripts. Thanks to Madison Avenue they chase what others chase and then wonder why they feel hollow. Addiction. Bad marriages. Lost years. They try on different masks and find the same emptiness beneath each one.
If you want to go deeper, somewhere where it gets uncomfortable, there is a layer beneath even that. You chase things you never asked for. You move to rhythms you never chose. You repeat patterns that belong to people long dead. You think it’s you wanting sex. You think it’s you choosing your partner. Look over your shoulder. Something else is writing your lines. Call it default life, blind will, first mover, cosmic order.
Name it however you want. It has been here far longer than you. Thiel doesn’t talk about it. Girard pointed at it. Werner Erhard felt it like an earthquake while driving across the Golden Gate Bridge.
But you don’t need the metaphysical tour. Take the short cut: This is ground zero. And here you stand.
Zero to one isn’t about business. It’s the moment a person stops echoing the world and starts speaking from inside. The moment the borrowed costumes fall off.
Thiel and Girard both saw the same wound. Modern people have no internal spine. Nothing steady. Nothing unborrowed. So they mirror each other until they forget who wanted what first. In business it becomes the hundredth copy of an app, maybe with a new coat like Tinder to Bumble. In life it becomes people chasing approval. Buy this. Wear that. Impress strangers you don’t even like. Go bankrupt for them.
Thiel calls it vertical progress. Psychologists call it developing an authentic self.
Here is the part Thiel skips too quickly: you cannot build something original if you are a copy yourself. Copycat people don’t create zero-to-one breakthroughs. They recreate the aesthetic of originality without the substance. They try to reverse-engineer uniqueness by watching unique people. It never works.
And haven’t you noticed? Thiel plays a little trick. He tells you to be original. You nod. You admire him. And in that moment you’re already imitating him. You cannot be Thiel. If you try, you’re back in the imitation business. The irony is almost funny.
And not everyone can be a successful entrepreneur. Sociologically, ecologically, economically — impossible. A world full of founders would collapse before lunch. And for most people, discovering who they are will never turn into a business model. It won’t make them rich financially. But losing themselves will make them poor in a way no money can repair. There is another kind of wealth that comes from not lying to yourself.
So take the insight the right way. Do something worthwhile with your life that has nothing to do with chasing Thiel’s shadow. Obviously I don’t mean start a business. Life is not a pitch deck. Life is not shareholder value. At least not to me.
If you want to build a one-of-a-kind business, perhaps you should be one of a kind. But you don’t need a company. You only need a life that isn’t borrowed.
A monopoly of meaning is rare. Most people walk around patched together from diplomas, perfume, and whatever they scrolled at two in the morning. The trance ends when the audition ends.
Try this: What truth about myself would I hold if nobody was watching?
For me it is simple. I refuse to sleepwalk through life, and I don’t pretend to be anything but myself. This truth doesn’t make me popular or rich. It doesn’t put me on any corporate ladder. But I won’t give it up. Who would I be if I talk to my daughter?
Thiel’s last-mover idea fits here. The soul isn’t found on a Bali retreat. Every relapse, every failed love, every false start is research and development. Authenticity burns through versions. It leaves scorch marks you can read like tree rings. Every bad decision, every night you swore you’d never drink again and did — those are the growth rings. If you want it in TikTok lingo: startups burn cash, souls burn selves. And what I mean by that is simple: you burn off the borrowed layers, the selves you were only performing. What remains is the part that doesn’t burn. That is the place where something original can grow.
Build a life without a reference group, no tribe to applaud, no enemy to blame, no trend to ride, no narrative to slot into. That is my version of definite optimism: not that technology will save us, but that a human being, against all the gravity of mimesis, might still choose to become the first instance of themselves.
Monopolies get attacked. Original selves do too. The moment you drop the mask someone asks if you think you’re above the rules. I’ve heard it more than once. It means you stopped being predictable.
Who do you think you are?
Same line, different coat. The social immune system tries to pull you back into the herd. In business terms: market forces trying to erode your monopoly of self.
Thiel says monopolies last because they shape the future instead of reacting to it. Same rule here. Guard what you discovered before your past wakes up and tries to reclaim you.
Stop sleepwalking through other people’s wants. Write your own script.
Thiel wants founders to build original companies. I want people to have original selves. Not smooth. Not optimized. Original.
For me, his book was never about becoming a founder. It was about becoming the foundation of a life that is yours alone.
When someone speaks one true sentence without flinching, the noise drops. The world shifts. And in that brief pause, a real human being finally steps out of line.
Zero to one for your soul.