On Passion
“Passion drives you to where you want to win so badly that you’re foaming at the mouth like a junkyard dog . . . Passion, intensity, and vivida vis animi took me everywhere I wanted to go—‘you just seemed like you really, really wanted it.’”
In the grips of passion, a man is no better than a beast.
Passion is one subject I have done a complete 180 on. For most of my life, it was the only thing I had going for me. I knew I wasn’t going to be the smartest guy in the room or the one with the best resume and that my edge was to be the guy that would run through brick walls. It didn’t work until it did, and then it worked until it didn’t. I learned the hard way that unrestrained passion will lead you through a brick wall and then right off a cliff, like something out of a Wile E. Coyote cartoon.
A lot of this ties back to On Duality, the whole notion of a harmless man is not a good man; a good man is a very, very dangerous man who has that under voluntary control. Just based on my life experience and reflecting back on all the men I’ve met, most of them don’t have overflowing tanks of passion, drive and intensity. The average is mediocrity, the average is just sort of sleep-walking through life, faceless cogs at some corporation, existing rather than living, making enough money to support a family and raise kids who will eventually live the same life they did before they die and the cycle repeats itself. The continued existence of mankind relies mostly on these types of people, so I don’t want it to seem like I’m talking shit — at their core, the white-collar proletariat are good people, diligent workers nobly suffering in silence and law-abiding citizens who don’t ask questions. Better citizens than I am, that’s for sure. Too much passion from the masses would disturb the delicate balance that one of our generation’s great philosopher-kings, George Carlin, laid out decades ago:
“They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. That’s right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table to figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that. You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it.”
Now, this post is aimed at those of you who have borderline-dangerous levels of passion, and have accumulated enough life experience (i.e. you’ve fucked up enough times) to recognize that this uncontrolled passion can make you your own worst enemy.
The good news is that this is not a new problem for man.
The way that the greatest thinkers of all-time have framed it is that we operate on a see-saw: on one side you have passion, and on the other side is reason.
If you are someone who has ran into problems as a result of being swept away by passion, you are probably thinking I want to be 100% controlled by reason.
There are many advocates of this approach - Spinoza’s Ethics lays out all the different passions one by one, hatred, envy, love, fear, pride, anger, avarice, lust, all terms or feelings or emotions you are familiar with and can say yes, I distinctively remember when that one knocked me off my square. Hobbes’ Leviathan does this as well, as have most of the famed Stoics, with the general approach being that if you can stop and at least recognize “I am currently under the sway of passion xyz,” you have won half the battle. You can’t control whether you are affected by the passion, because the wiring runs way deeper than our conscious, but you can recognize the influence of the passion and then take steps to mitigate or counteract it. Below, from Baltasar Gracian:
“The Art of getting into a Passion: If possible, oppose vulgar importunity with prudent reflection; it will not be difficult for a really prudent man. The first step towards getting into a passion is to announce that you are in a passion. By this means you begin the conflict with command over your temper, for one has to regulate one’s passion to the exact point that is necessary and no further. This is the art of arts in falling into and getting out of a rage. You should know how and when best to come to a stop: it is most difficult to halt while running at the double. It is a great proof of wisdom to remain clearsighted during paroxysms of rage. Every excess of passion is a digression from rational conduct. But by this masterly policy reason will never be transgressed, nor pass the bounds of its own synteresis. To keep control of passion one must hold firm the reins of attention: he who can do so will be the first man ‘wise on horseback,’ and probably the last.”
It sounds so stupid, but that paragraph has stayed with me—the first step towards getting into a passion is to announce that you are in a passion. I will literally pull myself off to the side at times now and say out loud: “I am in a passion.” Sometimes I don’t know what the passion is, I have to stop and run through all the choices in my head, but I at least have the wherewithal to recognize that on the passion versus reason see-saw, I am farther from reason than I want to be.
Also, “wise on horseback” is an incredible metaphor.
I would point out here that men have an unusually difficult time with emotions and feelings in general. A woman can tell you instantly how and what she is feeling at any given time. Ask a man how he’s feeling and he will mull it over for a bit before telling you he feels like he needs a drink, or he feels like he has to go take a shit. Like, those aren’t feelings, you smooth-brained neanderthal fuck. And so while it sounds hilariously juvenile to be a grown-ass man who sits here, pausing throughout the day and asking himself — “what am I feeling right now?” — once you put your pride to the side and start practicing humility, you will realize that the precise pinning of one’s passions is not as easy as you would think.
In Plutarch’s Life of Numa Pompilius, there is a great quote: True bravery is the subjugation of our passions by reason. That sums up the framework one has to abide by: basically, I am aware at this moment that there is some influence of passion in my thought process, and as a result, I must practice caution in my actions and speech because the presence of passion indicates that I am not fully rational right now. Once I have subjugated my passions to reason — easier said than done — I can be confident that I am making decisions from the clearest possible state of mind.
“Young people are very apt to overrate both men and things, from not being enough acquainted with them. In proportion as you come to know them better, you will value them less. You will find that reason, which always ought to direct mankind, seldom does; but that passions and weaknesses commonly usurp its seat, and rule in its stead. You will find that the ablest have their weak sides too, and are only comparatively able, with regard to the still weaker herd: having fewer weaknesses themselves, they are able to avail themselves of the innumerable ones of the generality of mankind: being more masters of themselves, they become more easily masters of others. They address themselves to their weaknesses, their senses, their passions; never to their reason; and consequently seldom fail of success. But then analyze those great, those governing, and, as the vulgar imagine, those perfect characters, and you will find the great Brutus a thief in Macedonia, the great Cardinal Richelieu a jealous poetaster, and the great Duke of Marlborough a miser.”
Theory and philosophy aside, let’s talk about the realities of your day-to-day. This feels like an opportune spot to address all you long/short equity dorks who keep messaging me to stop writing about this stuff and write more about markets and investing. Listen to me, you capitalist swine: everything written here is far more important and far more influential to your future success than whatever rote business/finance material you are consuming. When you’re an analyst at a single-manager or pod shop, does controlling your emotions matter, not so much. When you are off on your own trying to build a business and manage OPM from people you know personally, I cannot overemphasize how important it is to have an iron grip on your mental stability and emotional state. Picking the right stocks is maybe 5% of the battle in terms of building and scaling a fund from scratch, especially if you are running traditional long/short; any strategy that is high-touch, high-turnover, and involves actively trading your book on a day-to-day basis means that you are effectively multiplying the amount of high-quality decisions you must make in a given day. If the roots of the tree are infected, every incremental decision you make is only increasing your odds of failure.
Any portfolio manager or trader worth a shit will tell you straight up: the hardest part of trading is knowing when not to trade. If you just got into a massive blow-out fight with your woman, you should not sit at your desk and go about your process as if everything is normal. You lack the requisite humility, you lack knowledge of self, you lack emotional self-control, and you aren’t conscious of how any of the background noise in your life is influencing your decision-making. It is only a matter of time before your ignorance and arrogance on this subject will derail you and cause you to fail. Cue two more maxims: one, the market is a mirror, two, if you don’t know who you are, the market is an expensive place to find out. This isn’t just me spouting off; some of the best portfolio managers I’ve either worked for or worked with had no problem putting all of this into practice, saying “I’m off right now, I’m out of sync with the market, I’ve got personal shit going on in my life, let’s take a few days off.” For further reading on this topic, I really liked Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas; for now, all I will say to those with aspirations of hanging their own shingle is to spend less time studying financial statements and more time studying the man in the mirror, because it is not his intellect but his passions that will be to blame for your downfall.
“In the first place, it is easier to banish dangerous passions than to rule them; it is easier not to admit them than to keep them in order when admitted; for when they have established themselves in possession of the mind they are more powerful than the lawful ruler, and will in no wise permit themselves to be weakened or abridged. In the next place, Reason herself, who holds the reins, is only strong while she remains apart from the passions; if she mixes and befouls herself with them she becomes no longer able to restrain those whom she might once have cleared out of her path; for the mind, when once excited and shaken up, goes whither the passions drive it. There are certain things whose beginnings lie in our own power, but which, when developed, drag us along by their own force and leave us no retreat. Those who have flung themselves over a precipice have no control over their movements, nor can they stop or slacken their pace when once started, for their own headlong and irremediable rashness has left no room for either reflection or remorse, and they cannot help going to lengths which they might have avoided. So, also, the mind, when it has abandoned itself to anger, love, or any other passion, is unable to check itself: its own weight and the downward tendency of vices must needs carry the man off and hurl him into the lowest depth.”
Where the passion versus reason see-saw gets really interesting is that there are brilliant minds on the other side of the argument. The one that I think about the most is a debate from Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations where he is going back and forth with the Peripatetics on how the passions aren’t bad, they’re good. They aren’t something to be avoided at all. In fact, they are the only reason man has ever accomplished anything, and a man bereft of passion is nothing but a worthless and impotent blob (my phrase and not Cicero’s).
Some excerpts below on anger, grief and sorrow from Book IV: On other perturbations of the mind.
“Why should I add that the Peripatetics say that these perturbations, which we insist upon it should be extirpated, are not only natural, but were given to men by nature for a good purpose? They usually talk in this manner. In the first place, they say much in praise of anger; they call it the whetstone of courage, and they say that angry men exert themselves most against an enemy or against a bad citizen: that those reasons are of little weight which are the motives of men who think thus, as—it is a just war; it becomes us to fight for our laws, our liberties, our country: they will allow no force to these arguments unless our courage is warmed by anger. Nor do they confine their argument to warriors; but their opinion is that no one can issue any rigid commands without some bitterness and anger. In short, they have no notion of an orator either accusing or even defending a client without he is spurred on by anger. And though this anger should not be real, still they think his words and gestures ought to wear the appearance of it, so that the action of the orator may excite the anger of his hearer. And they deny that any man has ever been seen who does not know what it is to be angry; and they name what we call lenity by the bad appellation of indolence. Nor do they commend only this lust (for anger is, as I defined it above, the lust of revenge), but they maintain that kind of lust or desire to be given us by nature for very good purposes, saying that no one can execute anything well but what he is in earnest about. Themistocles used to walk in the public places in the night because he could not sleep; and when asked the reason, his answer was, that Miltiades’s trophies kept him awake.”
“…They say that even grief, which we have already said ought to be avoided as a monstrous and fierce beast, was appointed by nature, not without some good purpose, in order that men should lament when they had committed a fault, well knowing they had exposed themselves to correction, rebuke, and ignominy; for they think that those who can bear ignominy and infamy without pain have acquired a complete impunity for all sorts of crimes; for with them reproach is a stronger check than conscience.”
“…And they say the other divisions of sorrow have their use; that pity incites us to hasten to the assistance of others, and to alleviate the calamities of men who have undeservedly fallen into them; that even envy and detraction are not without their use, as when a man sees that another person has attained what he cannot, or observes another to be equally successful with himself; that he who should take away fear would take away all industry in life, which those men exert in the greatest degree who are afraid of the laws and of the magistrates, who dread poverty, ignominy, death, and pain.”
And so, it becomes apparent that this is not as one-sided of a debate as it originally seems; the see-saw of passion versus reason is not one where you want to definitively be 100% reason. Sometimes that extra effort can only come from the trophies of Miltiades. And once again, as with almost every post on this site, you are probably coming to the realization that you shall be departing with more questions than answers. The dizzying complexity of life remains undefeated.
My best answer for you at the moment is the one that brings us full circle: a harmless man is not a good man; a good man is a very, very dangerous man who has his passions under control.
I wish you luck in remaining wise on horseback.
GB
