The Intentional Investor #24: Ben Hunt

this conversation is extra focused on sharing with this group here. My notes I’ll be sharing tomorrow on it:

I get scared when my most-optimistic friends come across as pessimistic. Not because I can’t handle bad news, but because it feels like finding the canary in the coal mine at the bottom of its cage. It’s doomer-ish. I’m hardwired, perhaps stubbornly, to not only not like that feeling, but to really hate it. I want to try. I loathe not trying.

But that’s what I felt when Ben Hunt returned for our long-awaited second conversation on The Intentional Investor. Ben – game theorist, market philosopher, and one of the sharpest minds I know – has shifted his approach to public discourse in ways some might misread as retreat, via his recent essay, “It Was Never Going To Be Me.”

“You tighten your circle. You watch your mouth in public. You help your circle. You don’t rat,” he told me with clarity that felt both ancient and urgent. This isn’t Ben throwing in the towel. It’s strategic recalibration.

We meandered through intellectual wilderness together, sharing stories about our oddly opposite religious upbringings. My family: church on Sunday mornings followed by Monty Python’s Life of Brian in the afternoon, laughing at “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” Ben’s childhood: his dad’s copy of “Why I Am Not a Christian” on the shelf while young Ben secretly watched religious TV programs on a black-and-white set his father built from a Heathkit – trying, in his own way, to protect his family from whatever divine consequences might befall non-churchgoers like them in Alabama.

These inverse experiences somehow led us both to value the same core thing: seek out the stories that connect scattered amongst the team-based narratives that divide. It’s why when Ben says, “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose,” and I respond with “Don’t sell yourself to fall in love” and “You know what love is,” we’re speaking variants of the same truth.

It’s important you have your refrains. It’s also important you have your friends.

The conversation took a turn I wasn’t expecting when Ben spoke about the “Great Ravine” - his metaphor for our current societal moment. What struck me wasn’t pessimism but his fierce commitment to preservation. He brought up the father in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, who (is it a spoiler? just take the sentiment) who we witness carrying his fire on to the next encampment, which Ben connects back to his role as protecting what matters while making passage across difficult terrain, determined to teach others something, via his actions, about what to do next.

“The act of writing changes your views,” Ben told me. “Every note I write, I end up in a very different place than where I started.” This creative journey has brought him to embrace subversion in its truest form – not speaking truth to power, but being “wise as serpents and harmless as doves.”

I’ve felt the same tension. I’ve received excited texts from friends at Mar-a-Lago events and from others protesting in New York City streets in the past month alone. My priority doesn’t change. I know some people think it’s weird, but… I don’t? My priority is never going to be scoring political points, it’s always going to be preserving these human connections, with people I know to be good humans. I know who my friends are, at their core, and they know who I am. I’m not going to let the baseball hat someone wears to erase what they mean to me as a person.

As Ben put it with philosophical-yet-academic elegance: “There is an economy of good” where different people contribute different elements too. Knowing thyself (Socrates) and loving thy neighbor (Jesus) become twin pillars of wisdom in an age that rewards neither. Those are pretty good indicators of what I look for in a friend too: people who know who they are, and people who love their neighbors.

Like I said, reasons for optimism, and they’re rooted in the search for love, and the necessity of curious reflection.

You find that mix, of people who know who they are and know how to love their neighbors, and you’re going to be OK. Maybe the rest of the world won’t be. But my optimism stems from knowing I have people like this in my life.

We know the real revolutionary act isn’t speaking the loudest, but finding those who’ll walk alongside you, holding light steady when paths grow dark. Not because they share your politics (or even your favorite “team”), but because they share your humanity. Don’t retreat, take a page from Ben, and reclaim your values. And, hug your friends. Tell them you love them too.

It’s never been more important to find your pack.

(You know what love is)

Out now - it’s Ben Hunt’s return to The Intentional Investor on Epsilon Theory YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts:

ps. I’m guessing I’ll get some “but but but what about…” replies on this one. I’ll point out that I’m choosing to focus on who is in your pack and why, and not focusing on who is not in your pack, of which the "why” should be self-evident. Wherever you come down on calling out non-pack/team/group members who do not meet your criteria, is ultimately up to you. I have seen very little personal and professional upside to public criticism of “outside” people in my life, and found focusing on personal actions and activism to be much more rewarding. Maybe the world changes that, but for now, the act serves me well. Seeing Ben publicly describe his own withdrawal to a more private and still action-oriented approach really moved me, which is why I wanted to highlight it in this way here.

pss. you can follow Ben and I, and see how our personal actions reflect this stance, in the real world too (yes, there is life beyond social media, don’t forget that detail either!)

@Benajah

It struck me that your admissions in this video embodied a main theme of my favourite philosopher.

The act of becoming who you are is the act of carving your ideal self out of the hard stone of your psyche – of bringing greater and greater refinement to the crude shapes of character that exist in you now. Simultaneously an act of discovery and creation, to become who you are is to bring your virtues to life and synthesise them into a unified whole. Nietzsche proclaims:

It is a myth to believe that we will find our authentic self after we have left behind or forgotten one thing or another … To make ourselves, to shape a form from various elements – that is the task! The task of a sculptor! Of a productive human being!

Ben I’m not sure I took away what you wanted me to take away, but let me say that what you have done and what you have created and what you have illuminated is enough already. If your goal was to focus on storytelling of “a man with a torch leading the younger generation.” Paraphrasing in some ways you have done that with me. I spend a lot of time praising you only because I only have gratitude for what you have done. So I just want to encourage you into the next phase of your life.

Nietzsche thought one of the best ways of identifying these deep impulses of admiration was to seek role models and educators. The people who fill you with reverence and awe serve as the beacons toward the most meaningful path for your development.

You are him.