Ben Hunt: Surviving the Widening Gyre Through Hope and Community

Today, Chuck is joined by Ben Hunt, the creator of Epsilon Theory. Their conversation revolves around the concept of the Widening Gyre, a “profound social equilibrium where bad people and bad ideas drive out good people and good ideas.” They discuss this concept from a few different angles:

• How it relates to top-down systems like America’s political systems and corporations.

• How it has led to the loss of a national narrative and increased division and conflict.

• How a community-based approach that focuses on doing the right thing today is the best way out.

• Click here for a computer-generated transcript.

  Chuck Marohn 0:00

  Hey everybody. This is Chuck Morone. Welcome back to the strong towns Podcast. I'm not going to do a huge introduction, because I've got Ben hunt with the website epsilon theory and second foundation partners on. He's been on a couple times before. So this is the third conversation. And if you like, want to know who's been, go back and listen to those because we did more intro stuff. Ben, welcome back

  Ben Hunt 0:30

  to the podcast. Great to be here. Chuck, thanks for having me again. I just

  Chuck Marohn 0:34

  have tons of notes, and I feel like I just need a therapy session with you more than anything else, I was trying to figure out how to start this conversation, and I want to start it like this, you're a dad of daughters. I'm a dad of daughters. I feel like there's a special bond there. When I meet another dad, for sure, I kind of absolutely and, you know, I know the humility that you have to go through to be a dad of daughters. Because it's like, I don't, I don't know, I don't understand any of this. I'm learning everything, and everything's a new phase, and everything's new. There's a there's a part of me. And I turned 51 last year. I'm not old, but I can feel like bones are starting to creak and muscles don't work the way they used to, and the recovery time. No,

  Ben Hunt 1:19

  I just turned 60. So let me, let me tell you, it doesn't get better. I

  Chuck Marohn 1:23

  I can sense that there's a part of me that is feeling a little bit old, in the sense that I look around and things don't make sense to me, and not in the way that they didn't make sense to me 15 years ago, which was kind of exciting and interesting, but not making sense to me in a lamentable kind of way. Like, oh, I don't know, as my kids are going to experience this, oh, I'm worried about this thing. Yep, I have a lot of tension around this. And part of it is there's this thing in the back of my mind going, you're just old, you're just this is a phase of life. And like, everybody goes through this, but I'm watching you go through I'm reading your stuff, and I'm watching you kind of struggle with some of these same things. Can we unpack? How much of this is old man Chuck grappling with just mortality and like, age and like, okay, the world changes, and I'm changing, and I'm uncomfortable with it, and how much of it is just, I know we talk about the winding gyre and the great ravine, I'd like to get to that, but yeah, how much of the narratives that you and I grew up with not only are shifting, but are are completely falling apart. This is what I'm struggling with.

  Ben Hunt 2:43

  Well, it's like Hemingway said, you know, it's all true. He was talking about religions, but, but it's, it's applicable, and so much of life, it's all true. Yes, we are getting older, and we feel the tick tock of mortality. And that's, that's one of our oldest stories, right? Is that as we get older, we feel that tick tock louder and louder in our heads. And I think you're right to connect it to our families, because I remember when I first felt tick tock because I, yeah, I didn't feel it for a long time. I first felt Tiktok. I was 32 years old, and my father died. And so there is what you're describing about the relationship with family and that feeling of mortality and the pressure of time. It's, it's all true. It's, it's all true, and it doesn't go away. And again, that's one of the oldest stories of humanity. So let's stipulate that, and it absolutely has a relationship with our role as a son, and actually has a role, has a plays out in our role as a father. I'm not a grandfather, yet. I hope I will be, but I but I suspect that my relationship with tick tock will change again if and when that happens. Right? So, so I'm going to stipulate on that. And there's another aspect of this, Chuck, which I find it's frustrating to me, yeah, is I don't have anyone to talk about, to talk about the this with, right? I mean, I can read, and there are, I think, good novels and books about getting old, right? My father's not around. I think it's difficult to talk with parents about this, because they're they're doing it on their own too. I think the most like, the weirdest part about this to me, Chuck, is it's still me. I mean. 32 year old me had looked at 60 year old man me. He said, Wow. I wonder what it feels like to be old. I wonder what it feels like. And here I am. I'm at 60, and I can tell my 32 year old self, it's still me. I don't feel any different. I mean, it's still me. I feel like I'm more patient now with people. I mean, I I feel like we're all going through our own shit. Yeah, and, and so there's, there's that, and I do feel like I've got more perspective. I think I understand better now why in Dungeons and Dragons, wisdom is a separate category from intelligence, sure, sure, and and I think there is something to getting more perspective and wisdom as you as you get older, so I'm grateful for that, but it's still me now. So that's all true at the same time, Chuck, I don't think it's wrong to say that the world today, and the world is going to be for our children and our grandchildren, is in, I think, very demonstrable ways worse. And what I mean by worse is from a perspective of a autonomy of mind. I hate even using the phrase small l liberal, because nobody ever pays attention to that anymore, but I really believe in that. So it what I so my shorthand now I don't say small l liberal. I say autonomy of mind. Freedom, a freedom of mind. I think we live in a very different world where it's much harder to maintain our autonomy of mind, and it's going to get increasingly more difficult. So that's one. I also think it's more difficult. I used to say small c conservatism. I can't even say that anymore. I'll say community. I'll say community, a community of human beings who treat you as an autonomous human being, not as a means to an end, because that's what corporation does. That's what a government does. They treat you as a means to an end. It's a problem of scale. We live in a world of massive scale today, and I I see as clearly as will, and Ariel Durant saw it as clearly as as I think so many historians have seen it that we are in the cyclical nature of history. There. We're we're on a significant downturn we are. We are now. I'll also say, though there is man being a tool using animal, I am so optimistic and hopeful for the use of generative AI to empower us to maintain our autonomy of mind to help flower the human spirit from the bottom up, I'm very hopeful, as the word is indeed me, I'm full of hope for what that can allow so it's all true, Chuck, we're getting older. That sucks. We feel the Tick Tock more. Yes, our society, I'm convinced, from the top down, is worse in the terms of an autonomy of mind and a community of spirit, and we live in a world of miracles and wonders, where technology, I think, if we can preserve it for ourselves, can help us build from the bottom up. It's all tricky.

  Chuck Marohn 8:52

  Let me preview for those who are listening, because I feel like you and I are both optimistic people. I think as we get to the end, I want to bring us to optimism, because I think it will come out naturally. But I do feel like there is this maybe darker thing that we need to talk through. You wrote, The Widening Gyre is a profound social equilibrium where bad people and bad ideas drive up good people and good ideas. I gave a talk here in my hometown yesterday. I I was invited to go as an author, speak at our Public Library. And I got to tell you, I give 50 plus speeches a year. I'm never nervous. I was like nervous out of my mind, because, you know, my mom and dad are there, my in laws are there. My wife is there. A bunch of my neighbors are there. City council members show up. I realized, as I was giving this talk and as I wrapped up, I have pulled back from my not from my city. I feel like I'm very involved. Evolved, but I used to be on the planning commission. I used to be like, officially evolved in things, and I've pulled back and a lot of it. And I even voiced the words yesterday, when I was asked, What do you think about this, they asked me some question about some controversial thing in the community. And I'm like, you know, I don't want to fight with anybody, like, I don't, and I felt embarrassed, because I think the chuck of 15 years ago would have, like, grabbed his, yeah, yeah. Then like, Let's go like, I'm and now, I don't think what we're doing is the right thing. I think it's going in a bad direction. I think it's being run by profoundly stupid people, doing profoundly stupid things, but almost out of like a sense of preservation. I've just said I'm not going, I'm not going to do that. And then I read your writing bad people and bad ideas drive out good people and good ideas. And I ask this question, like, am I? Am I getting old and I just don't want the fight anymore. Or is this just that I'm I'm part of

  Ben Hunt 11:07

  this the same, same, same thing happened in the 20s and 30s, you know? So that that that poem that I'm referencing, the William Butler Yeats poem about the Widening Gyre. And then this happens over and over again in history. So the notion of driving out, you know, is, is a reference to Gresham's Law, right? Going way back to Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth, Elizabeth in England, let's go, because Elizabeth comes in and, oh gosh, you know, our we're having a real economic problem here. And the problem was created by good silver coins had been devalued, devalued by the her government, her predecessor, right? So it wasn't pure silver coins in circulation. And so what, what happens? And Gresham was her, I forget his first name, but he was her ex checker, you know, the Treasury, the Treasury, the mint person said, well, well, here's what happens. You know, if you have a true silver coin, a real silver coin, you're not going to spend it. You're not going to spend it, because what you're getting in return. Let's say, you know, you get something for it, and then you sell something, you're going to be ultimately exchanging that good silver coin for a coin that might be bad. It would have less silver in it. So this is Gresham's Law that when bad money is introduced into a system, it drives out the good money because you don't spend your good money. You don't spend that good silver coin, you you hold on to it, you hold on to it. You don't want to enter it into circulation. And that is exactly the same thing in a society when you've introduced just bad ideas, right? Yeah, bad people with bad ideas, you do not want to spend it. You do not want to engage in that system, with your with your as a good person, your good ideas. You want to just step back and say, I've just this has got to play out, because by engaging in it, I'm going to spend my good currency, my time, my time right? My time, my energy, my passion, my attention on bullshit. This is not something new. This happens over and over again in human history, and we've got to live through it. We've got to live through it, and there's nothing set in the amount of time it takes to get through it. I appreciate the fourth turning and a cyclical view of history, I really do, because there are cycles to history. What I'm opposed to is the deterministic view of, oh, well, this goes for seven and a half years, right? There's no I can give you examples of when it takes a couple of years to get through this, and I can give you examples when it takes 300 years to get some through something like this. It's a crappy, bumpy ride all the way through.

  Chuck Marohn 14:19

  Can I? Can I give you something I'm conflicted about, sure. So you you wrote, I quote you exactly. Men and women of honor recede into the background and ridiculous, profoundly flawed leaders come to the fore, and you've got leaders in quotation marks. I know you are not a Trump voter supporter. I think that your personal politics, which I don't I find this to be less materially relevant as we move on, but it's probably like further left than mine are. I also did not vote for Trump, either in 2016 or 2020 or 2024 I've never voted for Donald Trump, and I I've been profoundly disturbed by the. Many of the kind of personal things about him. Here's what I want your help with. There are many times when I look at the things that either the current administration or the people around you know Trump himself do from a policy standpoint, and I'm like, thank goodness someone's finally like this is profoundly broken like, I wish someone would deal with this, but then what's done is like, but not that, you know, and I feel this. I look around at other people in society who seem to have such confidence or determinism on, like, on one side or the other, and I find myself in this place where I look at them all and I'm like, I yes, if you're critical of this administration I'm representing with you. Like I think, I think a lot of what's being done is horrible. What you want is just as crazy, but in a different way. I'm beyond the point of saying I'm politically homeless. I think that is something I might have said 20 years ago. I'm, like, profoundly conflicted, because there's a part of me, and I know you're not, you know, burn it all down guy, but there's a part of me where, like, if someone lit a torch to something and it started to smolder, and I'd be like, Well, I'm kind of anxious to see I'm kind of excited to see what comes after, because I feel like this thing is broken. How do I how should I be thinking about this as someone who actually cares and has this conflict? Let

  Ben Hunt 16:36

  me say first of all, very clearly, I will, I will never vote for Donald Trump, I think he's a profoundly and I don't care about him as a person so much. I think he's an even worse leader. I think he's profoundly anti American, and I feel the same way about Joe freaking Biden, too. Oh my God, look. I mean, we live in this world where you're so Auto Tune where, oh, well, what about so and so? Well, what about him? I mean, what a profoundly pathetic president he was, too. I try to step back. I try to see the system. I think you're important, you're you're absolutely right not to, I'll say, personalize this. And it is beyond being politically homeless. It's that I don't know what the shared meaning of America is anymore. It's funny when we're talking about our daughters earlier. For my daughters, I don't think they ever thought of it. I've been so profoundly disappointed in the office of the presidency. And yes, I've been being increasingly disappointed for 20 years, right to the point where now I don't think there is any meaning to the office of the presidency. And I'm having a conversation with my daughters, and they said, Well, we never thought there was, and so am I a sucker that's even sad in a certain restaurant that's that's even I feel even more saddened about that, that, yes, I'm experiencing this loss. I don't think they ever experienced a hope or a faith to be lost, right? But your question is, okay, what do we do? Right? So first I'm going to read you this point. This was published in 1919, William Butler, Yeats turning and turning in the Widening Gyre. The Falcon cannot hear the falconer. Things Fall Apart. The center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. I love that phrase, Mere anarchy. There's nothing special. It's near anarchy, right? The blood dimmed, tide is loosed and everywhere, everywhere, the ceremony of innocence is drowned. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity, that's 100 years ago, right? And that, that is, that is the world we're in where the best have lost their intensity, like, I'm not going to get involved in national freaking party politics. Are you kidding me? You're you're describing your your reaction, even to you know, local, town or city politics, and yet the worst among us are just full of this passionate intensity. So what do we do? I used to say, and I can tell you, when I started saying this, Epstein died in federal custody, I started saying, burn it the fuck down, B, I, T, F, D, because, and I meant that figuratively, not literally, because I was so freaking angry. I was really angry about that, really angry. I stopped saying. At, well, you know, about the same time, about the same time that we had, you know, Black Lives Matter, and actual people stuff started burning stuff down, right, right? Yeah, okay, more because you can't, you can't say something figuratively. It can't just you are associated with literal things that you have no no truck with, right? Yeah, so I, so I've for some years now, I've disavowed that, and I'm not going to say it any, any anymore, but I can't take away the realization that I I was really angry around Epstein dying in federal custody. I was really angry about the LARPing at Uvalde. I'm never, I'm never going to get over that, right? Yep,

  Chuck Marohn 20:54

  I feel like talking about this. I feel almost like conspiratorial, because I've been put in this box. But like when people would talk about, did this come from a lab, or did this come from a market? And I'm like, the vector is not like definable in the way you're trying to define it, but because it was attached to a political narrative, it had such I mean, I'm an engineer, I'm not a scientist, but I've had enough science, and I know, like the the people who were scientists were flat out lying to us, flat out lying all over because it was a political there was a political narrative. But I'm like, if I can't trust you to just say, like, we will never know, because the vector here is unknowable. If you had a disease bat in a lab and it got out and got in the wet market. You would never know if it started in the wet market. You would, you would never know, like, no one's ever gonna know that. Even

  Ben Hunt 21:47

  that, even saying that, I mean, I got so much shit. I'm unbelievable shit. Yes, we're saying that, you know, look, if, if you know fort de tricks, where you know, you know, outside to DC in Maryland's where we used to do a lot of our experimentation. And you know, if you know, feral cats were the, you know, the vector for some outbreak here, and it was right around outside of Fort Dietrich, I don't think it's wrong to say, hey, you know what you might have been. We might, we might want to take a look at that. I got so much

  Chuck Marohn 22:22

  shit for that, so much and so, but Chuck,

  Ben Hunt 22:25

  I get it right. So, so we're all we have legitimate reasons to be furious, yes, so angry at what, at what's happening. I feel it. Get it, what I'm also convinced of, and will shout from the rooftops, is that the corporations and the political parties who try to channel that anger are doing it for their ends, not ours. So what do we do? Right? How do we channel that anger, right? I'll tell you what we don't first, I'll tell you what we don't do. We don't give our hearts to a corporation or a political party or a political movement who is using us for their ends, because that is absolutely what is happening with with every player in the corporate and the political world, they are using us and using our anger for their own ends. I'm not I'm not going to give them my allegiance. But so what do I do? And I think what you've done, Chuck with strong towns, what I'm trying to do with my work is, well, we gotta, we gotta find our own community, our own people, and we got to ride out this storm. It can last for a long time. We got to keep the the flame alive, the flame of an autonomy of mind, flame of a community of spirit, and we gotta be smart about it. If we ally ourselves, was one of these top down entities, they are going to swallow us up, chew us up, and shut us out. That's what they're going to do. That's what I think we have to do, this

  Chuck Marohn 24:19

  loss of narrative, because so much of your work is about narratives and uncovering narratives and narrative over time. You know, epsilon theory is a financial website, and the thing that was crazy about me is like this recognition that finance is not about PE ratios and earnings per share and dividend yield. It's about narrative and the story. It's a story. It's a story. I've struggled with the idea that, okay, the story for my parents was Walter Cronkite because there were, you know, one news anchor that was respected and like we had his national narrative. And now. Now, and I'm kind of repeating a narrative in itself, but now everybody has their own individual news feed and their own individual social media feed and, and we're so fragmented and and we don't have a national narrative, I feel like that is an easy way of saying something. When Jimmy Carter passed away, I had the impression that a decent man left us, who I made probably would not have voted for and would not have, like politically aligned with, but like a decent man left us. And I don't think anyone will say that when Bill Clinton passes away, and I don't know if many people will say that when George W Bush passes away, maybe Barack Obama. But even there is the loss of narrative, a national narrative, a national sense of meaning. Is that, is that something that is real, or is that something that was not real? And now truth has been revealed, right? It was Thomas Sedlacek is the one I heard say this. And I don't know if he was quoting someone or not, but he said a myth is something that is not true, but has always been true, right? It's like something that maybe George Washington maybe wasn't, you know, honest and cut down the cherry tree and all that, but he stands for that for our country, what has changed? What have we lost? Something?

  Ben Hunt 26:25

  Oh, yeah, yeah, no, look at so, so it's it again. It's the Hemingway quote, quote. It's, it's, it's all true. So these things are over, over, determined. So what I mean by narrative, it's an idea, it's just an idea that's all a narrative is it's, it's, it's an idea that we give our attention, our allegiance to, that we give our heart to. And couple of things have debased those ideas and that trust and it's all related to that, that idea that we started off the conversation with, that bad money. Bad Ideas drive out good money, good ideas from circulation. So you've got real structural changes in the way in which we human beings receive our information. First of all was the move towards 24/7 news. And I'm using finger quotes here because there is not enough information, news information to fill 24 hour seven day a week. So what replaces that is opinion presented as news. So this is true for the financial networks. This is true for the quote, unquote, you know, political news networks. There's very little actual news. There is an enormous amount of opinion presented as news. So that's one, right? So the supply of this, of our information, changed dramatically over the last 15 years or so, our demand for this information similarly changed dramatically and structurally, because we all carry around our little dopamine machines, you know, and here people just listening, I'm holding up my smartphone, and you're addicted. I'm addicted. We're all addicted to this we are. I mean, it's a clinical dopamine neurotransmitter thing, right? Where? Where I get nervous if I don't know where my phone is, I do? I get agitated and nervous if I, if, if I don't know where my phone is, I pat my pockets. Oh, where's my phone? Where's my phone. Oh, I left it at home. Oh, my God, I've got to go back home and get my phone. It's, it's biological, it's neuro, chemical, it's, it's all of that. So the demand for this has changed dramatically, that we have to be immersed in this. And then the third thing that's changed is the, I'll call it the centralization, or the intermediation of this. So we're now our filters on the world are not through as you're describing, Walter Cronkite. Let's all gather around the nightly news at 530 or six o'clock or whenever, which

  Chuck Marohn 29:21

  I'm not arguing for, by the way,

  Ben Hunt 29:24

  no, I know we're just describing what is so, so, so social media and social networks are enormously different in the way they impact our brain, because a social network is is not one speaking to many, it is many speaking to many, and that changes the way we think, because we when we're participating in social media, whether we're commenting, whether we're posting, whatever it is. We're doing. We are speaking to a crowd. We are not speaking like you and I are Chuck one to one. We are speaking to a crowd, and we speak differently. We think differently when we are speaking to a crowd. That is human biology. So you put all these things together, the the flooding of the market with not fake money, not counterfeit money, but I call it Fiat news. It's opinion presented as news. Flood the market with that. Take our demand for that up, you know, 100 fold, because we're addicted to devices that deliver it to us. We accept it. We want it. It's not that someone is forcing this on us, it's that we don't turn it off. We require it, and we have it presented to us in a different format of many, speaking to many, rather than one to many. You put all that together, Chuck, because that's your question, what changed? These are the things that changed. And you can't unring this bell. We don't go back from this. We only go forward with this. And that's why it's so important to create our a defense against this, because these three things, supply of Fiat information, opinion masquerading as news, demand for it, our addiction to the devices that bring it into our lives and the form of it through many, speaking to many, rather than one to many, none of that goes away. We have to build new defenses around that so that we can maintain our autonomy of mind and the defense for it is you and me talking right here. Chuck the defense to it is to find a community of people who you're not talking to a crowd, but you have these connections and these conversations. That's the defense.

  Chuck Marohn 32:10

  Can I? Can I give you an analogy that I've I've struggled, I've struggled with for like, a decade or more, as I've watched this, what you just described play out. We're all taught that Gutenberg came up with the printing press. And, you know, we're taught in like, junior high school that this was a great innovation that led to the enlightenment, and, you know, created this, like, flourishing of thought across the European continent that flowered out throughout the world, as I've come to understand what I'll just say, like the Gutenberg moment, the first thing they did is they started translating the Bible into different languages. And you took a society, and I'm not defending this society, but you took a society, basically run by the Catholic Church, where everyone who lived it was their solemn obligation to go to church listen to a sermon in a language you didn't understand. You know, have someone of a priestly figure tell you what God wanted from you, require you to regularly go to that priestly figure and confess not just the deeds you did, but the bad thoughts you had. You know, this was a stable social mechanism to, in a sense, like run a society. I'm Catholic. I'm not, you know, I'm not defending this. I don't want to go back to it, but the Gutenberg moment was, hey, this this dude, Jesus as more like you than like this priest. I mean, it is kind of saying some radical things that are not maybe getting through that now you're seeing and you had a century or more of abject chaos as Europe, like, melted down over this new, basically, this new, this new technology, setting off this new set of ideas and understandings and relationships, you know, throw in a plague here and there, and like, some other things. And like, you know, put it through the wash and and you emerge from this. Not with like, hey, yay, the enlightenment. But you emerge from this and like, thank God. We're through this ravine to the other side, and now we can start to build a society around a different set of principles. There's this apprehension I have in the back of my mind that we are at this, like Gutenberg moment, where we actually have to become organized in a different way, a different society, with different people and different kind of and I don't know what that looks like, but it feels like it can't it's not going to be Walter Cronkite again, it's not going to be Jimmy Carter, a decent man as president. Again, it's not going to be. Uh, you know the things that, and this is why I started with, like, I feel old because I subtly remember. I mean, I remember Peter Jennings. I don't remember Walter Cronkite. I was six years old when, when, you know Jimmy Carter lost. I remember election night. So these are distant memories. Yeah, I don't know. Is this analogous? Is Gutenberg moment analogous to what we're going through?

  Ben Hunt 35:28

  I think it is. I think that what, what happened with the 100 Years War, the Reformation, all of that is that a system that was based on the intermediation of a cast, in this case, a priestly, ecclesiastic cast, a group of people who and by intermediation, I mean they stood between you, the people and the word with A capital W, right? So, so that the Bible, the word, was interpreted for you through this priestly cast. You know, we have similar intermediation today through an academic cast, certainly a governmental cast, but also a corporate, managerial cast. I I do think that those intermediations are breaking down. But what it doesn't does not mean is what Elon Musk tells you it means when he says you are the media now, bullshit. Yeah, that's bullshit. Yeah, right, it's bullshit. You're not the media now, it's still we are still human beings, right? We are still governed by our neurotransmitters and our attention, what we pay attention to, and our need for story, for narrative, for ideas, to give our allegiance to. So I think it's, I think it's a very sensible cop that you're describing, Chuck, let me describe to you two recapitulations of society that could happen out of this one, and it's the direction I think we're clearly going towards, and it's the one that my life goal is to prevent, is that we are moving towards the hive, a human hive, that is, That's a, I'll call it an evolutionary point of view. I've given a lot of talks about this. It's it's the the low energy state for a social animal, such as as human beings or ants or termites or bees, the hive is a very stable equilibrium state for society. It's a very stable way to organize your society, the hive, meaning everything you want to that that entails or humans that I think that's the direction we're going. I think that is a very likely scenario to come out of this. Can I? Can I? Can I ask a question? I'll do anything to stop that. Yeah, sure.

  Chuck Marohn 38:27

  Let me make sure I understand. Because I feel like for conservatives, that would be the phrase that they keep throwing around, which is, you won't own anything, and you'll be happy. And then for progressives, it's this idea of the oligarchy, you know, delivering to you and everyone sitting in front of the phone and the computer just mindlessly pressing buttons all day. Is that a fair? That's the hive? Yes,

  Ben Hunt 38:52

  it's all true, both that conservative vision of how that plays out with, you know, the unit state and telling you directing what happens, and the vision from the left of the oligarchs being the director the queen in this hive, it's all true. And the way we get there is from both political parties saying, Oh, the other guys take you there when they're just taking you there on their own vision, on it, we end up there. That's exactly where we end up with the story being. Oh no, this isn't a hive. This is our Wonderland where dear leader tells us, you know, the Great America, the you know, I'm with, you know, it's never been better. It's never been better, right, right? Never been better. Or, you know, dear leader on the other side, you know, a daughtering old man's, uh, you know, and they say, Oh no, he's, he's totally fine. He's with it. He's, well, yeah, yeah, that Joe Biden man, he's on, he's on top of things, right? You. It's, it's all the same, Chuck and and this, I'm getting agitated again. This is where I think we're going, and we have to find an alternative to that. An alternative has to be finding our $10 phrase, alert epistemic community, our community of human beings who share our commitment to an autonomy of mind and a community of spirit. And it doesn't scale. We have to find you know you've got your community, your epistemic community. I've got mine. We need to be allies. We need to be confederated. Confederated, not federated. We need to support each other. But it doesn't work if we try to merge together and create this, you know, a new political party, you know, the chuck and Ben party. Yes, that ain't going to work, right? The alternative is to defend ourselves by finding our epistemic communities. And it may. This may go on for a decade. This may go on for a century. This may go on for multiple centuries. It's why we named our company second foundation partners. It's the Asimov trilogy. Look, we're going into the ravine. We're going into a dark period. Our goal is to make it only last for 100 years instead of 1000 years. Sorry, but that's the best we can do, right? We can't change it. We have to the times we're built, we're born into like William Butler Yeats. I mean, he can't help it. He's born and he's writing in the aftermath of World War One. Here we are. So

  Chuck Marohn 41:52

  at the end of, I think it was your last column, I'm not sure you, you mentioned the book of Exodus, and you, you actually asked this question, how do we maintain hope, even there's no apparent plot to advance, yep. And I feel like that, how do we maintain hope? If you just stop the question there to me that I would not have felt bad. I would have been like, oh yeah. How do we maintain hope? Like, I'm hopeful, I'm optimistic. How do we do this? And then you said, when there's no apparent plot to advance? And that sucker punched me, because I a lot of what we talk about at strong downs, a lot of what we do is trying to get people together. Go out and pick up trash in the park, go out and sweep up a sidewalk, go out and plant some trees. These are often things that are ridiculed, yep, in comparison to the 10 million interchange we're building so that Costco can have a quicker on ramp into its parking lot, out on the edge, and you're like, Chuck, this is really cute, but like, what are you doing? And my best response always is, if we do these things, they will build on themselves. They will build on each other. We will actually establish something that can grow and build and become better. And I look around at the groups that are doing this really well, and they are making a difference, like it does matter

  Ben Hunt 43:28

  chocolate, but is there a plot to create? You have to keep doing those things, even when it doesn't build on itself? Yeah, even when the world continues to ridicule, deny, overrun everything you've done. You get up the next morning and you keep on doing that. And that is the message in Exodus. It is the message in a lot of aspects of, I'll call it the old stories, not just from the Bible, but from a lot of the old stories, is that what makes us human, of a humanity that I believe in, this is the idea that I still believe in. Chuck this idea of human beings, individual human beings, like you and like me, maintaining our autonomy of mind to do what's right and to find a community of similarly minded people where we support each other and they support me, not as a means to an end, but as a human being worthy of that sort of love, because that's what it is. It is love, it is empathy. That is the message. That's it, and we must. Continue to act that way. Still, Friday Night Lights, which I you know, is a great book and an okay movie and a great TV series, but that's the catch phrase. Clear eyes. We have to see it for what it is, right? We have to see it for what it is. Full hearts. We have to act with full hearts. Do those two things. Can't Lose, clear eyes, full hearts can't lose. That's That's why I still believe in Chuck, and I know you do too. So you have to keep doing that, even when, even when you're not advancing the plot.

  Chuck Marohn 45:41

  I think that is the that is the hard thing. And I, I, I struggle with the idea that I also don't want to be the thing that I often, you know, not, not necessarily criticize, but this idea of clear eyes, like I don't want to hide the fact that sometimes these things don't advance the plots, like I don't. I'm not a robbery person where I'm going to stand up and say, hey, you know, plant those trees. Do this like we talk about a bottom up revolution, strong downs. We're a bottom up revolution. We're changing the way cities are built. And I believe that in my heart. I know it might take longer than I have?

  Ben Hunt 46:21

  Yep, it will. It will take longer than you have. And that's why it's important not for you to think of what you do as a means to an end, but think of it as an end unto itself. What you're doing is important not in some consequentialist way. What you're doing is important for the here, the now, and for being human this, this is what we all have to figure out. How can we be human beings? Right? That word human being, so it's, it's, I want to reverse that, right? Being Human? Yeah, being human, that's what we have to do, and it's not as a means to an end, because we're out in the freaking desert, man, maybe it's 40 years of wandering. Maybe it's 400 years, I don't know. It doesn't matter, because I'm not going to stop being human just because I'm wandering in the desert.

  Chuck Marohn 47:27

  The last time you were on, you had been working, working through some things around crypto, and really, I'm going to say, like, the democratization of it. And it was, it was, it was frustrating to me, because we had a few people who, we had a couple people who canceled their membership to strong towns. They're like, I don't want to be part of your organization anymore if you're going to have a crypto bro on and I'm like, crypto

  Ben Hunt 47:55

  bro. My God, I

  Chuck Marohn 47:56

  know you are. I am hilarious. That's a risk. Sorry, I'm doing No, no, it wasn't you. I'm like, You're You're clearly missing the plot line here. I want to have, in the last just couple minutes here, the same conversation about AI, because I know you've been delving deep. And it's funny because I run into people who have a very Luddite view of AI, and they say this is like, this is the this is the tech bros taking over. This is the oligarchy. We're pretty soon, we're going to be giving them, you know, they're going to follow us 24/7 and know everything we're doing and be able to psychoanalyze it. Maybe both stories can be true, but I'm watching you, and let me give you an interpretation of what I think you said. I read a lot about like Roman history. Everything that I read about Roman history is an interpretation by a historian who has interpreted a bunch of other historians who are telling me a narrative tied into modern society of what ancient Rome was, and what I remind you telling me is that we have gazillions amount of source material that we can just now query ourselves about what was ancient Rome like. Am I grasping what you're talking about when you talk about an AI revolution and

  Ben Hunt 49:21

  you're getting there. You're getting there so and I'm going to talk about AI in connection with what I was talking about Bitcoin specifically before, because the my I admire what I admire about the OG the original gangster Bitcoin was this notion of individualism, autonomy, elegance of a technology solution and a long time horizon. And what makes me so sad is. The way that all of that got thrown out the door in favor of what I call Bitcoin. TM, right? Says the security the it's

  Chuck Marohn 50:11

  the Bitcoin jazz hands. I think you said Bitcoin jazz

  Ben Hunt 50:15

  hands, right? Because it's the it becomes just another game on the Wall Street Casino. Same thing with gold, right? Becomes an ETF. It becomes an investment instrument. It loses its meaning, its original meaning. So this is what, well, I'd call the nudging state, the nudging oligarchy. This is what they do. Of course, they're going to do this, and they're doing they're going to do the same thing with AI, which is mean that it's going to be under our control. The meaning of it is going to be presented to you, and it's going to be used for instruments of control, that panopticon state, where there's cameras everywhere, and because we think there are cameras everywhere, we change our own behavior, because we think there are cameras everywhere, and it's all being recorded and looked at this kind of Black Mirror view of humanity. Let me give you an alternative vision of this. It is generative. Ai used in an open source way is generative. Ai used to understand the meaning of what people in our epistemic communities are talking about. It is open source. AI used to discover chuck in the strong towns movement is AI used to discover me and epsilon theory and what we talk about, we can absolutely use generative AI to de algorithmize Our news, we can absolutely use it as a shield for our communities of clear eyed, full hearted people. That is, there is a generative AI is like a steam engine. Now, I promise you, big ass steam engines are going to be built by the government and by the big corporations to try to push their story, to make us believe in an idea that's conducive to them. That's going to happen, and we can build our own little freaking steam engines to build our own tools ourselves. It, it ain't easy, but we've got a freaking steam engine here. Let's use it. Let's go. Let's go. LFG. LFG.

  Chuck Marohn 53:01

  Man, this has been therapeutic for me. Thank you for taking the time.

  Ben Hunt 53:05

  Me too, Chuck, thanks for having me on wonderful as always. I

  Chuck Marohn 53:08

  hope that you keep writing and sharing thoughts and ideas if people want to follow your work, epsilon theory.com, I know you have a podcast. I I know you're still on Twitter, even though I've, as the bros want us to call it now. Yeah, I have, I have decamped, not to other places, but just, just to camp. You

  Ben Hunt 53:32

  know, I get it. No, I that's where we're all going. That's where we're all going. And

  Chuck Marohn 53:37

  when I went to receipt into the background, I've receded from, you've

  Ben Hunt 53:42

  receded

  Chuck Marohn 53:43

  from, from that space,

  Ben Hunt 53:46

  which is why it's so important for us to keep linked, and so that people who know you can discover my community, and vice versa. So I'm really glad we had this chat.

  Chuck Marohn 53:59

  Is there any other place where people should get a hold of you? We'll

  Ben Hunt 54:03

  be, we'll be going to be launching a new site called storyboard, where we're really going to try to help a broader audience see the some you know. Again, another $10 phrase, semantic structures. We call them semantic signatures, that are underneath everything. But no, it's epsilon. I'm psyched about that. Yeah, exactly right. So that that'll be coming about the middle of this year. So epsilon theory is the place to look, though, I

  Chuck Marohn 54:31

  don't want to put you on the spot, but are you having another gathering at a bad time that I can't attend this year?

  Ben Hunt 54:38

  Well, do you want better Chuck? So we're going, we're, I don't think we're going to do one big central gathering like we've done in the past couple of years. We're going to have five or six smaller gatherings, ah, all around the country. So so the odds are

  Chuck Marohn 54:52

  I will be able to, because I think to your first one was when my daughter was graduating, and then the second one, I was like, out of the. And free or something. So

  Ben Hunt 55:00

  it was been bad luck for the first two so, so, but no, we're going to be doing multiple events. We'll do four or five events around the country. So I am confident we're going to be able to to have a conversation in person.

  Chuck Marohn 55:13

  Fantastic. Ben hunt, thank you, and thanks everybody for listening. Keep doing what you can to build a strong town,

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

• Hear more from Ben Hunt:

  • “Ben Hunt: We're Not Going to Fix This from the Top Down” (podcast).

  • “Ben Hunt: In Praise of Bitcoin” (podcast).

• Ben Hunt (Twitter/X).

• Epsilon Theory (site).

• Chuck Marohn (Substack).

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