TheCurriculum.
Eight modules. Each one a door into a question that serious people have wrestled with for centuries — and that the present moment makes urgent again.
Below: the central question of every module, the thinkers it draws from, the exercise it produces, and the outcome a student walks away with. The first module is shown in full as a sample.
Module ISample · shown in full
The Nature of Work.
What is work, essentially — and what is it doing to the person doing it?
Before efficiency. Before output. Before economics. The first module returns to the unfashionable claim that work is formative: it makes you into someone, or it unmakes you.
What is taught
- 01
The three dimensions of work· John Paul II, Laborem Exercens
The objective (what gets made), the subjective (what gets made of you), and the transcendent (what your work points toward beyond itself).
- 02
Acting vs. behaving· Karol Wojtyła, The Acting Person
The distinction between things that merely happen through you and acts you can call your own. Everything in the course flows from this difference.
- 03
Work as soulcraft· the older tradition
The recovery of an idea that nearly every culture before ours took for granted: that work is one of the central instruments by which a self is forged.
From the reader
- Laborem Exercens — excerpts on the objective and subjective dimensions of work
- Karol Wojtyła, The Acting Person — selections on action and selfhood
- Luke Burgis, Wanting — opening chapters on desire and formation
“The great tradition called it soulcraft: the shaping of a person through what they do and how they do it. Work was never simply economic. It was formative. It made you into someone — or it unmade you.”
The Exercise
The Work Profile
A short, named diagnostic of the motivational pattern that has been shaping your choices — often without your noticing.
See the tool →After this module
Name what your current work is doing to you — not just what it produces. Diagnose the gap between the job you have and the formation it is performing on the person you are becoming.
Module II
The Shape of Desire.
Where does your wanting come from?
Most of what you pursue was learned, not chosen. This module begins the slow work of sorting the mimetic from the genuine — and giving language to what it costs to confuse them.
What is taught
- 01
Mimetic desire· René Girard
The discovery that human desire is rarely autonomous: we learn what to want from models. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it.
- 02
Thick vs. thin desires· after Charles Taylor; developed in Wanting
Thin desires are immediate, contagious, often borrowed. Thick desires are durable, slow to form, and rooted in the kind of person you are becoming.
- 03
Value-response· Dietrich von Hildebrand
The corrective to mimesis: a desire that responds to a real value in the world rather than to the desire of another person.
“To be a human worker is to refuse the reduction of yourself to a function.”
The Exercise
Fulfillment Stories
A named Motivational Pattern report generated from three of your most fulfilling experiences — what you actually return to when no one is watching.
See the tool →After this module
Begin to distinguish desires that are merely catching you from desires that are genuinely yours. Name your Motivational Pattern, and start using the language of thick and thin.
Module III
Family as the First System.
Who first taught you what to want — and what to fear wanting?
Your family was your first school of desire. Long before any career or vocation, you learned a vocabulary of what is admirable, what is dangerous, and what is safely unspoken.
What is taught
- 01
Differentiation of self· Murray Bowen
The capacity to remain yourself while staying in connection — and the absence of that capacity, which Bowen called fusion.
- 02
Multigenerational transmission· Bowen Family Systems Theory
How patterns of desire, anxiety, and avoidance get handed down through families without anyone choosing to hand them down.
- 03
Triangulation· Bowen
The way two-person systems under stress recruit a third — a child, a sibling, a job — to relieve the pressure. The roles you played at home are often the roles you still play at work.
The Exercise
The Family Desire Map
A short diagrammatic map of the desires, prohibitions, and patterns your family system handed you — and which of them are still doing your wanting for you.
See the tool →After this module
Trace at least one pattern you can now identify as inherited — and choose, with your eyes open, whether to keep it.
Module IV
Models: Mediators & Obstacles.
Who are your models, and what are they doing to you?
Every serious person has models. The question is whether yours are opening the world or closing it. This module gives you the language to tell the difference, and the discipline to act on it.
What is taught
- 01
External vs. internal mediation· Girard
When your models are far away — historically, socially, spiritually — they tend to liberate. When they are close enough to rival you, they tend to trap.
- 02
Mediators and obstacles· Girard, developed in Wanting
The same person can be the source of your desire and the obstacle to its fulfillment. Naming this is the beginning of the end of its power.
- 03
Attention and degradation· Simone Weil; commentary on technology
The way modern media shrinks the distance between us and our rivals, and what that distance was for in the first place.
The Exercise
The Model Audit
A working list of three present models in your life, classified as mediators or obstacles, and one concrete change you intend to make to one of those relationships.
See the tool →After this module
Name at least one model who is currently an obstacle to you — and see clearly what changing that relationship would require.
Module V
Social Contagion and the Crowd.
When do you lose yourself in what others want?
The crowd has a logic of its own. This module is about what that logic does to a person, and why the recovery of a private interior life is one of the most difficult and serious things a human being can attempt now.
What is taught
- 01
The scapegoat mechanism· Girard
The way groups under mimetic pressure restore peace by sacrificing one person — and how that mechanism still organizes much of public life.
- 02
The one and the ninety-nine· Luke Burgis, forthcoming
A framework drawn from Luke’s next book on what it means to keep your own identity in the age of social contagion.
- 03
Reverence· Paul Woodruff; Max Scheler
The ancient virtue most missing from modern life — and the only durable antidote to the leveling work of the crowd.
“The machines do not know what work is for. We are the ones who must remember.”
The Exercise
The Contagion Lab
A short written account of a moment you wanted something primarily because others wanted it, and a first attempt at the difficult act of reverence.
See the tool →After this module
See at least one of the crowds running through you — the small, daily ones, not the famous ones — and begin to practice the discipline of standing slightly apart from it.
Module VI
Differentiation — Holding a Position.
Can you hold your own position under pressure?
This is the spine of the course. The Belief Paper is the central assignment of Work as Soulcraft. It is where the words stop being words and start belonging to you.
What is taught
- 01
Solid self vs. pseudo-self· Bowen
The part of you that holds under pressure vs. the part that shifts to please. Almost everyone overestimates the size of their solid self until they try to use it.
- 02
The I-statement· developed in the course
Not opinion. Not preference. A first-person declaration of belief that you can trace, defend, and stand by — even when it costs you.
- 03
Conscience and the Letter to the Duke of Norfolk· John Henry Newman
Newman’s defense of the primacy of conscience — the deepest case in the Western tradition for the right and duty to hold your own position.
The Exercise
The Belief Paper
A 1,500–3,000 word first-person paper on one belief you hold, fully traced — its origin, its value-response, what it costs you, and what you would do if it were tested.
See the tool →After this module
Write down something you actually believe, in your own name, and discover whether you can hold it when the room turns.
Module VII
Reverence and Generativity.
What are you building for people who are not here yet?
A vocation is the form your humanity takes when you take it seriously. This module is about the difference between work that consumes the future and work that hands something to it.
What is taught
- 01
Generativity vs. stagnation· Erik Erikson
The midlife task of becoming someone whose life produces something others can inherit — and the cost, often hidden, of evading it.
- 02
The hierarchy of values· Max Scheler
A way of seeing that some goods are higher than others — and that a good life is one ordered toward the higher, not merely toward the more urgent.
- 03
The generative act· developed in the course
What it means to bring something into the world that would not be there without you — and to do it for someone who may never thank you.
“A vocation is the form your humanity takes when you take it seriously.”
The Exercise
The Legacy Letter
A letter from the person you intend to become to the person you currently are. Specific. Particular. The kind of letter you would not want to have to explain.
See the tool →After this module
Identify one generative project that is actually yours to do — and write the letter that holds you to it.
Module VIII
Building the Real — The Synthesis.
What does it look like to build something real — now, in your life?
The final module is a synthesis and a commitment. It pulls together your Work Profile, your Motivational Pattern, and your Belief, and asks: what are the next ninety days going to be about?
What is taught
- 01
The Integrated Worker· developed in the course
A working portrait of the person you have been describing across eight modules — and the disciplines that keep that person intact.
- 02
The 90-day commitment· the course
Not a goal. Not a resolution. A specific, traceable commitment that translates clarity into a thing other people can see.
- 03
Formation is lifelong· the older tradition
A final note on what soulcraft looks like after the course ends — and on the difference between completing eight modules and beginning a life of formation.
“Becoming fully alive in your work means recovering the difference between making something and being made by something.”
The Exercise
The 90-Day Commitment
A signed, written commitment naming one thing you will build, ship, or hold for the next 90 days — and one person who will know if you don’t.
See the tool →After this module
Leave the course with one thing in your hands. Not a feeling. Not an intention. A thing.
If this is yours to do
Eight modules. Three ways in.
Work as Soulcraft can be taken at your own pace, alongside a live cohort, or inside the small intensive cohort that meets with Luke directly. The work is the same; the company is different.
If you are not sure where you would start, the Work Profile diagnostic takes two minutes and is free.