Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Wolfgang Hammer
[00:00:00] S0: What is an iconic character to you? And I ask that because I feel like most people, maybe selfishly, want themselves to be like an iconic character in their own story, their company to be an iconic thing in the world that it operates. When you think about iconic characters, what things come to mind? [00:00:00] S1: My view today, and it might change, but has probably to do with an ability to be a Greek hero, which means to live and espouse a worldview that is universally disliked. That's iconic. I'm really interested on this pure narrative level in what Elon Musk is doing, because it's so unconcerned with the traditional hero trajectory. It's almost Greek. And this idea of breaking societal rules, if you will, that you get to some Platonic ideal that is worth more than acceptance. And I think all stories have in common the idea of resilience, that the character will overcome these obstacles and things are not working and there isn't enough knowledge and enough power to go where one must go, or one has been impelled to go, and keep going anyways. So this idea of resilience and to keep going anyways, even though the obstacles are getting enormous, I think inspires that begrudging admiration. None of this is a moral evaluation. No one cares what I think was good or bad on a personal moral level. But on a narrative level, I think it's absolutely fascinating that you have someone willing to step out on such limbs all the time. [00:00:00] S0: Is that just fighting death?
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Wolfgang Hammer
[00:00:00] S0: Is that just fighting death? [00:00:00] S1: Yes, everything is in some ways a death project. Absolutely. Creativity, the art of creating, negates death and therefore is the purest expression of a battle against the inevitable. And Tolkien has this famous clip on YouTube. All stories are about death. And I think he's absolutely right because it's the ultimate stakes, and it's the stakes everyone lives with every day. And we get up and do things anyways. [00:00:00] S0: To go deeper on that: so we all have to die, and therefore a certain kind of story is appealing? [00:00:00] S1: I think it has to do with a perceived power differential, that we're completely powerless in the face of death, at least for now. And that is a fantasy to acquire more power. And then because we have this capacity to imagine the future and we can imagine really much anything, we have an ability to create our own cherished outcome, overcoming this weakness with the power fantasy. Robert Towne, who was a great screenwriter and wrote Chinatown, and he recently died, wonderful life and a wonderful career, he said this to me at lunch years ago when I was a young executive. He said, stories are either desires fulfilled or anxieties purged. And I think he's right. These are great minds who've made great films, and it's never left me. I think it has to do with overcoming basic human condition. [00:00:00] S0: I want you to expand on each of those two: anxiety purged or fantasy fulfilled, that these are the two fundamental kinds of stories. Is it important that people know which one they're in?
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Wolfgang Hammer
[00:00:00] S0: I want you to expand on each of those two: anxiety purged or fantasy fulfilled, that these are the two fundamental kinds of stories. Is it important that people know which one they're in? [00:00:00] S1: I think you do have to know which part of it you're in. We experience both desire and fear. It's not just one or the other. The hero's journey is very often a desire to rise in the world. That's a desire to fulfill one's potential in the world. An anxiety or a fear purged is an idea of an inherent fear of something that might happen to you that you really don't wish to happen. And it feels good to see a version of the world play out where that which you're afraid of actually doesn't happen because you have had agency in defeating it. This is always really important. So story is character and action. Things don't happen to you. You act against obstacles and as you do, you acquire knowledge. With knowledge comes power to then affect the outcome. It's also interesting to see that this is never done alone. There are always surrogates, people who give you knowledge and people who aid you in the quest, whatever the quest may be. [00:00:00] S0: As you began to process what makes a great story, making them, enjoying them, what elements started to fall out?
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Wolfgang Hammer
[00:00:00] S0: As you began to process what makes a great story, making them, enjoying them, what elements started to fall out? [00:00:00] S1: I have an unusual, maybe, view of this because I don't think it needs to be enjoyable. I think that's a recent, in the last 30, 40 years phenomenon where storytelling became entertainment almost exclusively. I don't think that's really the genealogy of that space at all. But I also think story has a religious aspect. Not in the organized way necessarily, but perhaps in a way of ultimate concern. Stories are very good vehicles for delivering experience of ultimate concern. [00:00:00] S0: Maybe the most common ultimate concern, probably by revealed preference in the US in the group of people listening to this, is money. What do you think about that? [00:00:00] S1: It's an unbelievably powerful symbol because it stores potentiality, so the mind can imagine anything. So it's the ultimate story in some sense, where both all your desires and fantasies can be fulfilled and all your anxieties can be purged to such a degree, maybe, that the money project is a denial of death project. The more you accrue of that, it allows itself to be imprinted with any vision that you want. The more you accrue of it, the more it gives the illusion that you're not going to have to leave your consciousness. [00:00:00] S0: What is a great story to you? What does that mean?
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Wolfgang Hammer
[00:00:00] S0: What is a great story to you? What does that mean? [00:00:00] S1: I think it's a character starting at an extreme point, going to an extreme point that they cannot consciously imagine at the beginning, but somehow, deep down, know that this is where they need to go. And then situations arranged in such a way that the original intent faces bigger and bigger versions of a barrier that is then resolved at the very end. To some degree, most characters that you meet are either underdogs trying to rise, or kings or queens who are falling. The biggest people in the world believe they're the underdog because we are again locked into this subjective experience of the world and we are wanting beings. [00:00:00] S0: Why is that such an appealing story? Why is the underdog that succeeds so universally enjoyable? Is it because everyone views themselves as one? [00:00:00] S1: You get access to people when they recognize themselves in what it is you're saying it's the human desire to overcome our wretched state, which is this kick in the gut phrase I always love. And it's, humans are gods who shit. And I think it has to do with this capable being on this planet that has to die, and that sends all these things are questions of death.
· Wolfgang Hammer, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S1: You get access to people when they recognize themselves in what it is you're saying it's the human desire to overcome our wretched state, which is this kick in the gut phrase I always love. And it's, humans are gods who shit. And I think it has to do with this capable being on this planet that has to die, and that sends all these things are questions of death. [00:00:00] S0: I'd love you to evaluate my distillation of great story, ask you what's missing in the elements that, as I've thought, I know you were coming to see me. So I was thinking about this a lot, and I was trying to give myself only three common traits or something just to keep it simple. And the things I came up with were originality, which we talked a little bit about in terms of dominant worldview versus how you think the world should be, hardship, and ultimately transformation. As I think about my favorite stories, or if I think about the own best versions of my story that I've lived because I know it intimately, those three elements have been present and or dominant in what I view as great stories. Where do you agree and disagree with those elements? I'm curious.