Robert Greene: Why Nice People Lose Power & How To Fix It

1. 0:00 – 4:09

   Power as a neutral tool: control, influence, and emotional self-mastery

   1. JFJefferson Fisher0:00

      If you haven't heard of the book The 48 Laws of Power, well, you might be living under a rock. Today, I am privileged to talk to the man himself, the author of The 48 Laws of Power, Robert Greene. Robert, thank you so much for coming.

   2. RGRobert Greene0:15

      Thank you for having me, Jefferson. I appreciate it.

   3. JFJefferson Fisher0:19

      This is a conversation I'm very much looking forward to because I... Your book is one that often when I'm, I make content or I'm speaking, there, there will typically be somebody who comes up and says, "Oh, well, you have... Have you read The 48 Laws of Power?" And I say, "Yes, I, I have." And what I want to talk about and what the listeners are gonna get, what you're gonna get in this episode is we're going to talk on can you use power and can you also maintain your own integrity? What... Because a lot of the times people find those to be conflicting in some way, of they, they hear manipulation. They don't hear anything that is pres- descriptive, prescriptive that can improve their life. Robert, how would you define power? What is, what does power mean to you?

   4. RGRobert Greene1:10

      Well, power is a tool. It's totally neutral. Like a hammer, you can use it to build a house or you could clobber someone over the head and kill them with it. So power is simply a tool. It's neutral. It is neither good nor bad. It can be used for evil. It could be used for great good. But power is the sense of having control over the immediate environment, over events that are occurring in your life. So to use this to flip it around to the negative, if you sense in your daily life that you have no ability to influence your children, your spouse, your partner, the colleagues at work, your boss, the people in your company, it's a miserable, miserable feeling. You have no power. You have no control. You have no influence. You can't tell people to do... That you tell people to do something and they don't listen to you, right? Or they do things to you that, that kind of block your path, and you have no way of, of getting them to stop this. That feeling of powerlessness is, is something that human beings cannot endure very well. And if you feel powerless for very long, you're gon- something's gonna warp inside of you psychologically. You're gonna turn inward. You're gonna become resentful. You're gonna become angry. You're gonna have pools of anger, you know, developing inside of you deeper and deeper and deeper, and you're not gonna have control over yourself. So power is the sense... First, the first sense of control is over yourself, over your emotions, so that you're not always reacting and getting angry, so that you have a little bit of detachment. So when it comes to those situations where you need to move or influence people like your children, your spouse, your colleagues, your boss, you're able to step back a half step, a full step, couple steps and think and go, "What is it that will actually move that person in the direction that I want? How can I actually influence them effectively so they don't hate me, so they don't resent me, so that they actually do what g- is in my interest without maybe even realizing it with or that the interests align in some way?" So that is power for me, right? It begins with yourself. It begins with a slen- sense of detachment from the events happening to you, and it's the ability to strategize and think in each situation in life, this is a move that will gain me a little degree of control over events. You can never, ever have complete control. Life happens. Things happen. Pandemics happen. Black swans happen. You can't control everything, right? But that little bit of margin of control is enough to kind of help you glide through life a little bit more smoothly.

2. 4:09 – 8:01

   Communication is power when it’s strategic (and brief)

   1. JFJefferson Fisher4:09

      When I think of power, I think what you said is a perfect definition of it, the ability, one's ability to control or influence another's behavior, maybe including even their own. You have the personal power. You have relational power, like who in the dynamic might have more influence over the other between husband and wife or partner. And maybe there's political power, uh, the ability to construct, influence others, the ability to write laws, implement laws, uh, socially. And what I find, the people that I get to talk to are always looking for power of themselves and how they're going to improve their life, and where I teach is communication and the power of words. And this is why I really like, um... There's a number of the, the laws that you have out that are specific to communication, like using less words, uh, in particular. How do you find that communication and power intersect?

   2. RGRobert Greene5:21

      They're, they're obviously completely intertwined. So, um, but communication has to be strategic, okay? And that's the problem that a lot of people have in this world. They think if they just talk, if they just say, "This is what I want. This is what I need. Please come and help me," that that's communicating. All you're communicating is your insecurity and your needs. True communication is effective. It's strategic. It hit... Other people are naturally resistant to helping you or to aligning themselves with your interests. Everybody has their own problems in the world today. We're all stressed. We're all working too hard. We never have enough time, right? So I'd... You talk to me about what you want- Okay, I'm kind of half listening, but you're kind of irritating me because you're just spewing things from your side, right? True communication is what I was saying before. You take that step back and you put yourself in the other person's shoes, right? You get out of your own head because you're so self-involved that you don't realize that your words are just landing nowhere. You get out of your head and you go, "I'm dealing with another person. They are not me. They have their own problems, their own wishes, their own issues right now in the present," right? What is that? What is it that is going on in their head, in their world? Sometimes you have to do some research. Sometimes you maybe you know them well enough. Maybe you don't know them at all, but you have to figure that out. It's a puzzle. Once you figure out their side, not your side, what they want, what they need, now you have some power to craft what you say to actually influence them, to appeal to their self-interest, which is one of the laws of power, a very pow- one of the most powerful laws of all, right? So if I say something and I'm trying to influence, I'm trying to move them like on a chessboard in my direction, right? If I say something that appeals to their self-interest while it's also helping me, their eyes will light up. All those defenses that they have will start to go down. So communication is absolutely worthless unless it's strategic. And say, always say less than necessary is important because the natural tendency for a human being without self-control is just to spew words, you know, just like verbal diarrhea. "This is, you know, my problems, my life. This is what's going on with me. This is what I need," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Just shut up, talk less, and think more about what the other person needs, and craft your communication strategically.

3. 8:01 – 11:46

   Why Greene wrote The 48 Laws: pain, politics, and workplace ego

   1. JFJefferson Fisher8:01

      You know, I, I wrote a book, uh, recently, and it's hard not to-- I can't imagine writing a book and not having pieces of yourself in it. When you were writing this book, was-- What was coming up for you in your own life? Are you just studying, you know, the, these elements of influence and control and power? Is it something that you were writing, you know, to yourself or to, for other people? Where, where did that, where did that come up for you?

   2. RGRobert Greene8:31

      Well, it came from two things. First of all, a very deep, um, desire to help people in this world. Um, I don't f- my books, I think very, very deeply. This-- I'm working on my eighth book now, so power isn't my only book. But I think very, very deeply of my audience, right? It's a form of communication to get back to that, right? And I wanna help people. I wanna help people deal with their problems in a real way, not just to h- satisfy my own ego. So I have to think about how my words can actually be absorbed into your daily life. So that's one side. The other side is the book came from a lot of pain, right? So I started into life like most people, kind of naive, kind of innocent. I wasn't a good player naturally, necessarily at power, right? I made mistakes. I talked too much probably. I outshone the master, right? On and on and on. I could go through the a, a laundry list of the things that I violated. And I didn't realize that the world is political. I thought when you enter the work world, what matters is having results, is getting things done, is doing things well. But no. I had many, many, many painful experiences, particularly working in the film world. But as I've said in many interviews, I've had 50 different jobs in my life, more than 50, in all different aspects. In every little possible, um, avenue of life, I've had a job. And I suffered deeply, and I suffered deeply from the sense of people are so political. Their egos are involved in everything. You can see their egos as they walk past you, right? I would notice in the office that there was these hierarchies. I worked, remember, I worked for a while at the magazine Rolling Stone, and there were these hierarchies. There was the boss, and you could just see this massive ego walking back and forth. Then there were all of the, of the smaller little people working right under him and their egos. And there was little me in the corner as a copy editor, little, tiny, tiny little ego. But that's what mattered. That's what w- made things run, was how well you impressed him, how you talked to the boss, in this case, Jan- Jann Wenner. And I thought, "This, this is silly, but this is the real world, and you have to take the real world seriously. You have to succeed in the real world." So the book came from deep pools of pain from my own mistakes and from a deep desire to help other people because I feel it's the source of a lot of depression and misery in life. You know, you say something or you do something thinking that you're on the right track, it's gonna help you, and the next thing you know, you're fired or you're demoted. You don't know why. I felt... You know, I, I see people around me having these problems. So those are the two strands of the book, a deep desire to help people and a realization that the world is political, full of egos, and that mistakes are very costly and painful, and I made plenty of them.

   3. JFJefferson Fisher11:46

      [chuckles]

4. 11:46 – 14:47

   How learning the ‘rules of the game’ can be healing

   1. JFJefferson Fisher11:46

      Yeah, well, you're not alone. We've all, we've all made a lot of mistakes. Looking back at it now and knowing the, the impact of the book, and I wanna, I wanna talk about the book specifically that you're, you're writing and gonna be, uh, releasing soon, is for those who haven't read it or those who might go, "You know what? Now that I've listened to this episode, I wanna pick it up again," maybe they have it on their shelf and haven't looked at it in a while. How do you

   2. JFJefferson Fisher12:15

      find, and es- especially being the one that wrote it, that this topic can also be very healing

   3. RGRobert Greene12:23

      I get a lot of emails from people that, um, you know, it's helped them, it's turned their life around, or they've started a business because of the book. Of course, they're g- you know, it's anecdotal, so I'm sure there's a lot of stories out there of people who've been hurt, who've been on the other side of the manipulation. I understand that. But what's healing and liberating is to finally have that little light turned on inside of your brain that this is how the world works. I didn't realize that. I thought what mattered was just being myself. I thought that I, I could just do my job, say the things that I like, dress the way that I like to dress, just be myself, and it was enough. And no, I'm suffering from it. And just seeing-

   4. JFJefferson Fisher13:14

      Hmm

   5. RGRobert Greene13:14

      ... that little switch go on in your brain that, no, the game is different. It's played differently. There are rules to this game. You can't just come in and play poker and just do whatever you want. There are rules for poker. There are rules for chess. You don't know the rules. You're just playing terribly, and you're suffering. And just that little bit of switch inside going, "Maybe I'm entering this game, maybe I'm from the wrong angle. Maybe I'm being too selfish, egotistical. I'm too self-absorbed, and I'm not thinking enough about the players in this game." That little switch of your perspective of how you look at it can be deeply healing and enlightening because it's not natural to us. As I said, it wasn't natural to me. So I think in that sense, that's what has helped a lot of people, a lot of people who, like myself, enter the work world a little bit innocent and a little bit on the naive side.

   6. JFJefferson Fisher14:17

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5. 14:47 – 19:06

   Spotting manipulators: reading character behind the mask

   1. JFJefferson Fisher14:47

      their stuff all the time. Go to cozyearth.com/jefferson, use the code Jefferson, and get 40% off. Cozyearth.com/jefferson, get the code Jefferson for up to 40% off. If you're looking for anything in the holidays, you need to go check out Cozy Earth. You will not be disappointed, and you will find something that you go, "Oh, I need this, and I need to get it for somebody else, but I definitely need it for myself." And now, back to the episode. How can you tell if somebody is trying to manipulate you?

   2. RGRobert Greene15:18

      Well, um, sometimes if people are clever, you're not gonna realize it. Like if people are really good at the manipulation game, if they know the 48 laws of power, if they know how to seduce you, how to wrap their w- their words and, and make you seem like they're, they're just wonderful and that they're out, out for your best interest, if they're really good at it, you won't realize it until it's too late. And so in my book, one of my... I think my last book, The Laws of Human Nature, what I, what I tell people is you need to identify these people before they enter your life or before you start listening to them. You need to be i- able to identify the manipulative types before they start charming you, before they start enchanting you, before they start wrapping you up in their dramas. Because if, if you don't, if you fall into that trap, it's going to probably be too late. Most people aren't such good manipulators, and you, you can sense it, right? They're very passive-aggressive. They say things that, that they want to get from you, but there's anot- there's a subtext involved, right? And a lot of the bad manipulators, you can feel it. You have an intuitive sense. You can understand it. You... There... Something in their body language, something in how they speak, it doesn't seem sincere. But the main thing is to under-- to, is to be able to sense people's character, to be able to identify the types of people out there. So as I said, there's some people out there who are brilliant at the manipulation game, whatev- for whatever reason, not because maybe necessarily they read my book, but because it's in their DNA. They're just naturally good at it, right? People who are very political, okay? So your task is to be able to see through these people because the problem that a lot of people have... You see, um, I have to kind of circle around here a little bit. The thing that I'm, I try to say in The 48 Laws of Power is that it's a game of appearances. Appearances matter so much in this power game, how you present yourself, how people see you. You know, act like a king to be treated like a king, right? Recreate yourself. Your appearances is what people are judging you by, right? So at the same time, you have to control your appearances so people see you as powerful, but you have to see like a laser through other people's masks, through other people's games that they're playing, through the appearances they're trying to create. So the great manipulators out there, right, they g- have signs. They're not perfect. They give little clues, little crumbs that reveal that they're trying to play this kind of game on you, and that's why I wrote The Laws of Human Nature, where I give you tools for identifying The great narcissists out there, because most of the master manipulators are toxic narcissists, and you have to be able to identify them before they enter your life. How to identify people who are full of envy. They are a very dangerous type. They'll become your best friend in order to hurt you, to sabotage you because they feel envious. You have to identify them before they get into your life, on and on and on down the line. So that's sort of my advice. There's no simple answer how to identify a manipulator. It's in their character, it's in their body language, it's the little signs that they give out, and you have to be able to see through people's masks and not always take appearances for reality.

6. 19:06 – 24:50

   Do readers use the laws for evil? Greene’s view on intent and audience

   1. JFJefferson Fisher19:06

      The people who would read this book and let's say they've, they've read it, they really understand it, they're putting it into practice, and they're somebody who wants to have, as we've defined, more power in their life, whether it's for good or whether it's for bad. And through that, they're gonna be able to, as a verb, manipulate people for good or for bad to their purpose. Do you find that the people who read this book are doing it with ill intent or for good intent? Like y- you-- I know you've heard... You have to have had a, a lot of feedback from this book over the last many years.

   2. RGRobert Greene19:52

      Yeah.

   3. JFJefferson Fisher19:53

      And I'm curious what you'd speak to that.

   4. RGRobert Greene19:55

      Well, uh, let me clear up one thing, though, that not all of the laws are about manipulation, right?

   5. JFJefferson Fisher20:01

      Right.

   6. RGRobert Greene20:01

      I mean, I guess it's how you define manipulation. But creating compelling spectacles, one of the, uh, one of the laws, is, you know, creating something that draws a lot of attention, right? Which is what a lot of life and social media involves. Now, you can say in some ways it's manipulation, but it's also just trying to please people, just trying to bring pleasure into the world, just trying to create a spectacle that attracts attention. I don't necessarily see every law in there about manipulation. But to get to your point, um, you know, I've said this before, the people who are really, really nasty and evil at the game of power, and they're out there, out there. I, I would, I would say maybe three to five percent of the population would be like that. Maybe I'm overestimating the number. They don't really need a book like The 48 Laws of Power, right? They've been learning this s- from a very early age. They probably had troubled childhoods. I don't want to get too deep into the psychology of that. But they've been wounded in their childhood, right? And they learn from the age of six or seven or eight, "This is how you get people. This is how you string people along. This is how you get attention. This is how you be dramatic. This is what you say. This is how you get mommy and daddy to pay attention to me. This is how, you know, you get the teacher to like me." They've learned this step by step at an early age. By the time they enter the work world in 22, they've been dealing, doing this in high school, they've been doing it at college or wherever. They're getting better and better at it. Then this book comes along, The 48 Laws of Power. Well, they don't need to read that. If they read it, it's just gonna confirm the things that they've kind of intuitively understood. Now, I don't deny that there's gonna be a percentage of people who read that book and go, "Wow, I can really be nasty in the world. I can really use this now and get a lot of power," and they are using it for bad purposes. I understand that, and I have to own up to that and not... I'm not completely naive about how the book is used. But the vast percentage of people, and I know this from the emails I get, I get hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of them in the last 20-some years, probably hundreds of thousands in the end, are people who are like mys- were like myself, who were naive, who didn't understand how the game is played, who entered the work world with all kinds of illusions that were bred into them because your parents don't tell you, your teachers, your parents in your schools don't tell you that there are people out there who are manipulative, that the world can be political, that everyone out there has egos. Nobody teaches you this. All of the books are so sweet and sugary, telling you self-help books, you know, just cooperate. This is how to be a good human being. And you enter the work world and, and nobody prepared you for the slap that you have from people being so nasty and political and ego-ridden. Nobody taught me this. They glom onto the book like it's, you know, water in the desert. "Wow, he's teaching me something real." That's the majority of readers, I believe. I could be wrong. There's no science behind it. I don't have s- data. Anecdotal data, though, s- is sort of how I believe it, it... These are the readers that are attracted to the-

   7. JFJefferson Fisher23:41

      What I have found in my own life is so, so much of what I have seen and ran into with, especially in, uh, whether with early childhood trauma, like what you just talked about, people who have... People who are proficient at lying or manipulating or exercising, as we can define power, is because at that point in time in their life, there was an actual utility to it. They were able to get mom and dad to stop arguing. They were able to keep the family together. They were able to not get in trouble, to keep themselves from getting abused or whatever it is, th- that so much of it they've already learned

   8. JFJefferson Fisher24:27

      And whereas some people might be like you said, they think everything's roses and they just get hit with a tidal wave as soon as they enter the real world of, "Wow, this is... It doesn't matter how nice I am, they're gonna be rude to me. It doesn't matter how clean I play, I'm never gonna get anywhere if I don't do X, Y, and Z. Nobody taught me the true ru- the, the hard-knock rules."

   9. RGRobert Greene24:49

      Yeah.

   10. JFJefferson Fisher24:49

       Is that fair?

7. 24:50 – 29:30

   Asymmetric ethics: defending yourself when others play dirty

   1. RGRobert Greene24:50

      Yeah. I mean, uh, I wrote a book about warfare, and one of the concepts... called the 33 Strategies of War, and one of the concepts in there is what we call asymmetric warfare, and that's what is also called dirty warfare, right? People who... Like terrorism, okay? Or like guerrilla warfare, where the rules are thrown out, where you're willing to do anything. But usually it's comes from armies that have, that are much smaller and weaker, and that's certainly the origin of terrorism, right? You're gonna leverage your smallness, your small size, your small army by being as nasty and amoral, and you'll do anything to get power to hurt the enemy, okay? And what happens is oftentimes the enemy doesn't... plays by rules, is good. And so in asymmetric warfare, right, it's an ethical... there's also an ethical asymmetry. So I think of things like Putin in Russia, for instance, okay? He's somebody who's willing to play, do anything for power. As nasty and as dark, whatever works for him and his country is what he will do. When you have these European countries with their democracies and their rules and their o- and their organization and their bureaucracies, and they're continually at a disadvantage facing somebody who's willing to do anything, much more than they're willing to do. We find this as well in American politics, okay? So in life, the same thing happens. When there are people out there in your office who t- have, who their ethics and their morals are thinner than yours, they're willing to do mu- things that you would never consider doing, you're at a continual disadvantage. You're not willing to do the dirty things that they're doing, right? How do you defend yourself in a world where some people are willing to do things that you would never consider doing, right? Well, you have to become strategic, and you have to understand that you don't have to do... You don't have to be evil. You don't have to, to lower yourself to their level. You don't have to play fire to hit fire with fire. You could do different things to upset them, to be strategic, to deter them from hurting you, et cetera. But there's the fact that there are as- asymmetries out there. There are people who are willing to do things that you're not willing to do is the source of a lot of problems and pain in your life and suffering, and you're gonna suffer throughout your life because of that. You know, those toxic narcissists, their, their gamut of what they're willing to do is like this, and yours is like this. And so, you know, you're, you're constantly being hit by things, and you're not necessarily understanding because you're a good person. You don't necessarily register all the dark things that they're doing until it's too late.

   2. JFJefferson Fisher27:59

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8. 29:30 – 32:32

   Handling attacks on self-worth: self-love vs narcissism

   1. JFJefferson Fisher29:30

      in you doubts about yourself, your worth, your abilities, your potential." That's in Transform Self-Love Into Empathy. My question is, how do we build communication habits that handle these attacks on ourselves that instill doubts in us without internalizing them? Or how do you handle people trying to instill doubts in you?

   2. RGRobert Greene30:00

      You talked about self-love. This is from my book, The Laws of Human Nature. Um, so to the degree that you are insecure, to the degree that you don't really love yourself... So we have to clear up a, a m- a, a, um, a, a misconception that people have. There's a difference between narcissism and true self-love, right? So if you learned at an a- early age, three, four, or five years old, that you're actually a good person, that you're worthy of love and affection from other people, you know, that you have skills and abilities as you get older that are actually worthwhile, that will contribute- Right? Then you have an anchor in your life. You have a degree of love of yourself, a confidence. So every time later in life where you have blows, where people hit you with doubts, or they try and sabotage you, or they try and insinuate that maybe you're not so good, or they play these games that we're talking about, you're gonna hit- get this blow, and it's gonna depress you, and it's gonna lower you down, and it's gonna affect you. We're all like that. Nobody can, can, y- you can't suffer from that, myself included. But what happens is if you have that level of self-love that you developed at an early age, you will rise back up. You'll start going, "No, it's not true that I'm this way. It's not true what they're trying to tell me. You know, I'm actually worthy, and I know it because I've done things in my life. I've accomplished this. I've helped this other person." It raises you back up. It's like a thermostat that you have inside of yourself, okay? So the degree that you have that, that love will bounce you back up, and you'll be able to tell yourself, at first their doubts kind of hit you 'cause we're, we're all human, but then you go, "No, it's crap. They're playing a game. I'm not gonna fall for that." But if you were wounded very early on and you never developed that self-love, and you have a lot of doubts about yourself already, and you're insecure, and you're riddled with, like, bullet holes and wounds inside of yourself where things can leak through, and people tell you those things, it's gonna bring you down, and you're gonna not rise back up. You'll rise back up a little bit, then another person will hit you. You'll keep going down and down and down. You'll get depressed, and

9. 32:32 – 35:58

   Victimhood vs growth: the pivotal choice after being manipulated

   1. RGRobert Greene32:32

      you'll find it very difficult to rise back up. So the way you have to handle it in life, if you're in your 20s or 30s or 40s or even in your 50s... Whoa, I just saw a coyote walk right by. Um, [laughs] uh, you know, you have to develop it. You have to go back and go, "I'm beating up on myself. I have all these insecurities. They're effective. These people are effectively manipulating them because I'm allowing them to manipulate me." So when bad things happen to you in life, you have two choices you can do, right? This is probably the most important thing I can tell everybody out there. You have two thing, ways you can go. You can blame other people. You can say, "Oh, that evil person out there, he's manipula- she's manipulating me. They're doing this, that, and the other. Oh, woe is me. I'm being the victim," blah, blah, blah. "They're evil. They're bad." Okay? You do that in life, you're never gonna get anywhere, right? You're gonna always be looking for things to blame, looking at external things. You're never gonna grow. You're never gonna develop. The other thing is every time something bad happens, you look inside of yourself and you go, "That person manipulated me. That narcissist got into my life and did all kinds of damage. What is it about me that allowed them into my life? What is it about me that was so innocent, that was so stupid that, that believed the things that we're saying?" Okay? So if you're able to learn and grow from these events and look at yourself and go, "Why was I, why was I allowing them to hit me and hurt me and instill these doubts in, why did they affect me? What's wrong with me? Well, maybe I don't love myself enough. Maybe I don't have enough confidence in myself. How do I build that up? Well, I have to go back to my childhood. I have to think about the things that I've actually accomplished. I have to build it up slowly, slowly, slowly." And that's how you handle things. But if you can't look inside of yourself and go, "The bad thing happened, and I have to learn from it, and I had to grow, and maybe some of it's my own fault," you're sunk in life for the rest of your life. You'll never, ever develop.

   2. JFJefferson Fisher34:57

      [upbeat music] I want to take a quick second to tell you about Momentous. Momentous is a sponsor of this podcast I am so excited to be talking about because I use this stuff every single day. When I tell you I ingest it and I feel like I am making myself a better person every time I do, it's because that is the absolute truth. Momentous, they make the science of better performance simple. And you might be thinking, "Look, Jefferson, I am not huge on exercise. I'm not some athlete. I'm not running everywhere." I get it. I do. I get it. Momentous is giving me the nutrition that I know I'm not getting in my very busy day. So here's how I think about it. I know I want to show up my best. That means I need to start with what I'm putting in my body. That's to do with all of my nutrition. So what am I taking? I take a lot of Momentous stuff. I do their whey protein, which is grass-fed. I use their creatine. I use their magnesium L-threonate. Uh, they have a whole sleep stack that I take, which helps me sleep at night. It's restful. I take all their omega-3s a- and it's in my fridge. I love this stuff, and I used it before they were ever a sponsor. So

10. 35:58 – 38:00

    The Law of the Sublime: a new book born from a stroke and survival

    1. JFJefferson Fisher35:58

       when I'm pressing record to talk to you or I'm stepping on a stage to speak to people, it matters what I put in my body. You can go to livemomentous.com, use the code Jefferson, and get up to 35% off your first subscription. That's livemomentous.com/jefferson. Momentous, when your moment matters, make it count. And now, back to the episode. I want to make sure and touch on the project you've been working on. I, I believe it's called The Sublime, I believe?

    2. RGRobert Greene36:27

       The Law of the Sublime, yes.

    3. JFJefferson Fisher36:29

       Yeah, tell, tell us about it. I- is it... Do you have a release date for it?

    4. RGRobert Greene36:34

       Well, I'm very finally happy to, to announce that, yes, it should be out in October of, of 2026. And I think-

    5. JFJefferson Fisher36:44

       That's fantastic.

    6. RGRobert Greene36:45

       Well, yeah. I mean, I've been working on it for Five and a half years now, you know? And so, um, every day constantly, uh, it's been, it's been a roller coaster. So to see the end is almost-

    7. JFJefferson Fisher37:02

       [laughs]

    8. RGRobert Greene37:02

       ... brings tears to my eyes. I almost can't even, I can't even, uh-

    9. JFJefferson Fisher37:06

       That's wonderful

    10. RGRobert Greene37:06

        ... handle it. Um-

    11. JFJefferson Fisher37:08

        This will be your ninth book?

    12. RGRobert Greene37:10

        It'll be my eighth book. Eighth book.

    13. JFJefferson Fisher37:12

        Eighth book, okay. Eighth book. Wow, [laughs] that's incredible. Can you give us a, a little preview of-

    14. RGRobert Greene37:18

        Yeah, well, um

    15. JFJefferson Fisher37:19

        ... The Law of the Sublime?

    16. RGRobert Greene37:21

        So, um, it's a little bit influenced by the near-death experience I had eight years ago when I suffered a s- or seven and a half years ago when I suffered a stroke, and I came this close to dying myself, and my, my wife basically saved my life. I was driving my car here in Los Angeles. She saw my face just falling apart, something weird going on. I was driving. I wasn't aware of any of it. She got me... She forced me off the road. She called 911. They came quickly. If any of those little things hadn't happened, if they had been a minute later or she hadn't recognized it-

    17. JFJefferson Fisher38:00

        Mm-hmm

11. 38:00 – 41:06

    What ‘the sublime’ includes: childhood intensity, consciousness, love, and history

    1. RGRobert Greene38:00

       ... I'd be, I wouldn't be talking to you right now. I'd either be dead or I'd be in a vegetative state. So life is this very thin thread, right? Where things can, you know, you can definitely slip off the edge, and you're not aware it can happen at any moment. And the sublime is this understanding that to be alive, to simply be alive, to fully see the world, to see things as they are, to see birds, to see nature, to see human beings, to see that you and I are talking on this instrument right now, which 50 years ago would seem like something from some science fiction story, is utterly mind-blowing. But people don't realize that they walk through their lives with their phones stuck in their face. They're thinking about, you know, reading about what people had for breakfast. Their minds are getting smaller and smaller. They're shrinking down. They're not opening up to the infinite, to the vastness of this world, to the amazing fact that we're on a planet with life in a cosmos there's probably very little, hardly maybe no life at all, that it evolved to where we are today, that we're human beings, that we have what we have, is utterly unbelievable, and I'm trying to open your eyes to each of the different aspects of what I call the sublime. Then I talk about childhood and how our childhood was so int- all of our childhoods were so intense, were naturally sublime, and what that means. How the brain and consciousness itself is utterly weird and sublime. How other animals and their consciousness, and how we can kind of study and empathize with other species is utterly sublime. Love, which is a chapter, is a, is a sublime quality. History and the past and our ancestors is an, is an incredible thing. I talk about ancient civilizations. I describe to you what the ancient city of Babylonia looked like. The ancient world, the cities back then were unbelievably beautiful in a way we, we can't even imagine, right? So I have 12 different chapters, each kind of going into some of those different aspects, and it's been a journey because this li- this hand here that I'm holding up is kinda dead because this is my stroke. I can't type. So I've had to hand write everything and then dig-

    2. JFJefferson Fisher40:35

       Mm.

    3. RGRobert Greene40:35

       ... get it into the computer.

    4. JFJefferson Fisher40:36

       Wow.

    5. RGRobert Greene40:38

       I- if you saw-

    6. JFJefferson Fisher40:39

       Wow

    7. RGRobert Greene40:39

       ... my process, you'd go, "My God, I can't believe he even got one paragraph of this book out." Um, so, uh-

    8. JFJefferson Fisher40:48

       Well, that is, that is incredibly impressive, and I look forward to everybody taking a, uh, making sure they can go take a look at it when it comes out there in October. Um, that's very, um, that's something to very much admire. So I appreciate you sharing that with us.

    9. RGRobert Greene41:05

       Oh, you're very welcome. Very welcome.

12. 41:06 – 44:12

    Closing: no ‘49th law,’ keep moving forward, and final takeaways

    1. JFJefferson Fisher41:06

       I wanted to wrap up with this question, one that you've probably gotten before. Now that you've had 20-plus years to, you know, look backwards and you said, "Well, you know what? I stopped at 48," if there ever could be now looking at it another law, maybe one or two, that you thought, "Well, I'd add this one," do you have one?

    2. RGRobert Greene41:31

       The 49th law is there is no 49th law, right?

    3. JFJefferson Fisher41:36

       [laughs]

    4. RGRobert Greene41:37

       [laughs] You know?

    5. JFJefferson Fisher41:38

       Yeah.

    6. RGRobert Greene41:38

       Jefferson, to be honest with you, when I finish a book, I kind of move on. I'm onto the next project.

    7. JFJefferson Fisher41:45

       Yeah.

    8. RGRobert Greene41:45

       I'm onto seduction, I'm onto war, I'm onto mastery. I'm working with 50 Cent. I'm doing them all. I'm so absorbed in them, I don't really go back and think, "What did I miss in that book over there?" I try to tell myself psychologically, "You covered it all. Move on onto the next project. Don't look back," kind of thing. That's sort of my guiding philosophy in life.

    9. JFJefferson Fisher42:09

       I think that's a pretty good philosophy, one I can, I can certainly relate to. Well, I appreciate, uh, from me to you, I, I appreciate your dedication-

    10. RGRobert Greene42:17

        Oh, thank you

    11. JFJefferson Fisher42:18

        ... uh, to your, to your art and to your projects and what you've chosen to, to share in the world, and I know that, you know, as I've read them, anybody can... And the same with my content. You can always take them in the way that you want to choose to receive them and how you accept them, but they are what they are. They, in many ways, uh, power, like you've mentioned, is a neutral tool. And so what I've learned in our conversation today is, number one, power is the ability to control or influence another to your desired outcome, and those that don't have the power, they're the ones that they feel powerless, in many ways feel like they got left behind and didn't learn these tools. These are the kind of lessons that you teach in that book that you didn't just write off the top of your head. You researched it f- from globally, from different ages to all across the world, and these are things that can help a lot of people. If anything, give them a really genuine perspective of what the real world is like. Two, when it comes to dealing with people that are attacking you and trying to put you down and, and instill doubts in you, their ability to do so is, is corresponding to those level of self-love that you have invested in yourself. And those with higher self-love, they're gonna be less affected by those trying to sow doubts into them. And then three, I wanna touch on The Law of the Sublime. Uh, it gave me just such a wonderful picture, um, as you were even listening here and you saw a coyote run by. It, the appreciation for life and how precious it is is something that we should never forget. Robert, thank you so much for taking the time to share, share with us and my audience.

    12. RGRobert Greene43:56

        I hope you're able to see me. I see all this light coming in. God, I should've moved over.

    13. JFJefferson Fisher44:00

        I just thought you were glowing. Yeah, you know, I really... It's just, you're just glowing. [laughs] That's awesome.

    14. RGRobert Greene44:05

        Okay.

    15. JFJefferson Fisher44:05

        Robert, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

    16. RGRobert Greene44:06

        Thank you so much for having me, Jefferson. I'm glad that we finally-

    17. JFJefferson Fisher44:08

        Great to meet you

    18. RGRobert Greene44:08

        ... got to be able to do this. Thank you. Take care, man.

    19. JFJefferson Fisher44:10

        Me too, absolutely. Yes, sir.

Episode duration: 44:13