Steven Pressfield: The War of Art | Lex Fridman Podcast #102

Lex Fridman 0:00 The following is a conversation with Steven Pressfield, author of several powerful non-fiction and historical fiction books, including The War of Art, a book that had a big impact on my life and the life of millions of people whose passion is to create in art, science, business, sport, and everywhere else. I highly recommend it and others of his books on this topic, including Turning Pro, Do The Work, Nobody Wants To Read Your Shit, and The Warrior Ethos. Also, his book Gates Of Fire, about the Spartans and the Battle of Thermopylae, The Lion's Gate, Tides of War, and others are some of the best historical fiction novels ever written. As some of you know, I don't shy away from taking on a big difficult challenge. One of the hardest for me and for millions of others is the discipline of staring at an empty page every day, pushing on to think deeply, to create, despite the millions of excuses that fill the head. In his work, Steven has articulated this struggle better than anyone I've ever read. Quick summary of the ads. Two sponsors, The Jordan Harbinger Show and Cash App. Please consider supporting the podcast by going to jordanharbinger.com/lex and subscribing to it everywhere after that. And downloading Cash App and using code LEXPODCAST. Click on the links, buy all of the stuff, it really is the best way to support this podcast. This is the Artificial Intelligence Podcast. I recently considered renaming this podcast, but decided against it. AI is my passion, and in some sense, this podcast is not as much about AI but more about a journey of an AI researcher struggling to explore the human mind, the physics of our universe, and the nature of human behavior, intelligence, consciousness, love, and power. I will continue to return home to the technical, computer science, machine learning, engineering, math, programming, but also venture out to talk to people who had a big impact on my life outside the technical fields. Writers like Steven Pressfield and Stephen King. Musicians like Tom Waits. Political leaders like, well, you know who. And even athletes. I hope you join me on this journey. As usual, I'll do a few minutes of ads now, and no ads in the middle that can break the flow of the conversation. Click on the links, buy all of the stuff. It's the best way to support this podcast. This episode is supported by The Jordan Harbinger Show. Go to jordanharbinger.com/lex. It's how he knows I sent you. On that page, there's links to subscribe to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and everywhere else. I've been binging on this podcast. Jordan is a great human being. He gets the best out of his guests, dives deep, calls them out when it's needed, and makes the whole thing fun to listen to. He's interviewed Kobe Bryant, Mark Cuban, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Garry Kasparov, and many more. I just finished listening to his recent conversation with Mick West about debunking conspiracy theories. This topic can be both fascinating and frustrating on both sides. But in this conversation, Jordan thread the needle beautifully, and so it turned out to be a great listen. I highly recommend it. Again, go to jordanharbinger.com/lex. It's how he knows I sent you. On that page, there's links to subscribe to this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and everywhere else. This show is presented by Cash App, the number one finance app in the App Store. When you get it, use code LEXPODCAST. Cash App lets you send money to friends, buy Bitcoin, and invest in the stock market with as little as $1. Since Cash App allows you to buy Bitcoin, let me mention that cryptocurrency in the context of the history of money is fascinating. I recommend A Cent Of Money as a great book on this history. Debits and credits on ledgers started around 30,000 years ago. The US dollar, created over 200 years ago, and the first decentralized cryptocurrency released just over 10 years ago. So given that history, cryptocurrency's still very much in its early days of development, but it's still aiming to and just might redefine the nature of money. So again, if you get Cash App from the App Store or Google Play and use the code LEXPODCAST, you get $10 and Cash App will also donate $10 to FIRST, an organization that is helping advance robotics and STEM education for young people around the world. And now here's my conversation with Steven Pressfield.

Lex Fridman 5:00 Modern society in many ways dreams of creating universal peace, and yet war has molded civilization as we know it throughout its history. So, let's start at the high philosophical level. If you could imagine a world without war, how would that world be different? Perhaps put another way, what purpose has war served? Why do we fight?

Steven Pressfield 5:27 I think we're basically the same creatures internally that we were in the cave, right? In tribal, uh, society back for however many, you know, hundreds of thousands, millions of years. Which means that we're in a, our, our, the dynamic in our mind is a kind of an us versus them dynamic where our tribe is the people-

Lex Fridman 5:51 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 5:52 ... and everybody else are whatever, you know? And, uh, I don't see that, I don't think that's changed one iota over the, over the centuries. It's just a question of how, how one might sublimate that...... that urge to compete. When you're a martial artist, you know that, you know, a great part of your day, I'm sure, is dedicated to reaching that place of, you know, of, uh, total commitment in, in the face of competition, in the face of adversity, et cetera, et cetera, which is, I think, natural and great for the human race on an individual basis. So the, the hope that I have, if there is any hope... Personally, I don't think the human race is gonna be around very long. But, um, would be in, in sports or in other kind of sublimated activities where people can act out their need for conquest or aggression or so forth, but at the same time relate to their opponents as human beings. And when the game is over, you know, you embrace your competitor and stuff like that.

Lex Fridman 7:01 So you think war was, uh, inevitable? It's a, it's a part of human nature, as opposed to a force, a creative force in society that served a benefit?

Steven Pressfield 7:14 Well, I'm sure it has benefited, you know, uh, spreading cultures and mixing cultures and stuff like that. But I think the, the urge to conquest, if you think about Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar or Napoleon or anybody like that, or e- even individual, or if we even think about one of the plants that we're looking at right outside. I mean, if you let a particular plant have its way, it would take over, you know, the whole hillside. And certainly in the days of Alexander the Great, let's say, there were, who knows, over the, over the face of the earth, hundreds of little kingdoms-

Lex Fridman 7:52 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 7:52 ... China, Japan, you know, Asia, Europe, wherever, and every prince that grew up dreamt of conquering his neighbor and conquering a neighbor after that. That seems to be a, a universal human imperative, at least in the male of the species. So-

Lex Fridman 8:14 And war is just a realization of that imperative?

Steven Pressfield 8:17 I think so.

Lex Fridman 8:18 So you've written about Spartans and the Battle of, uh, Thermopylae, you've... About Alexander the Great, about the Six-Day War in '67 in Israel, um, against Egypt, Jordan, Syria. What war, not just out of those but in general, do you think has been most transformative for the world?

Steven Pressfield 8:38 Well, these are great questions, Lex. Uh-

Lex Fridman 8:40 Tough. Easy ones, right?

Steven Pressfield 8:42 I mean, I wish I knew more about, uh, the Mongols, 'cause I certainly, from what I've, what little I know, I think that was a very... Their conquests were very transformative, bringing cultures, you know, in a horrible, bloody way together. But, um, gosh, what's been the most transformative? Maybe the Roman conquests, you know, establishing the Roman Empire and bringing that culture. Maybe Alexander the Great's wars that, uh, you know, united East and West, at least for a minute.

Lex Fridman 9:19 So building of empire. Do you have a sense... So there's wars. I mean, the, uh, the Six-Day War is not about building empires. It's about deep held, deeply held religious, cultural conflict and holding the line, holding the border. And then there is conquest, like the Mongols, that... What is it? Some large percentage of the population is a descendant of Genghis Khan, is, I believe, right? So that has transformative effects. And then World War II, I mean, personally and my family and so on, they had transformative effects.

Steven Pressfield 9:59 Let me ask you this, Lex. Why are you, what are you trying to get at with these questions? What is this, kind of the th- the theme that you're, you're aiming at?

Lex Fridman 10:09 Well, I, I talked to Eric Weinstein and he said everything is great about war except, uh, the killing.

Steven Pressfield 10:15 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 10:17 And, uh, there's a romantic notion of war. Certainly there's a romantic notion of being a warrior, but there's a romantic notion of war that somehow there's a creative force to it. That because we fight, out of that fighting comes culture, comes music and art, and more and more desire to create with the societies that win. And to me, war is not just, "Hey, I have a stick and I want your land." It's some kind of, um... Like, it has echoes of the, the creative force that makes humans unique to other animals. Like, wars, y- y- it can't be just four people or 10 people or 100 people. You have to have thousands of people agreeing, usually thousands or more, uh, for something s- so deeply, uh, that you would be willing to risk your own life. And there's a romantic notion to that. And because you've written so well and passionately about some of these, I wanted to see, 'cause I don't have any answers, I wanted to untangle that. Uh, if there is a reason we fight that's more than just anger and hate and, uh, wanting to conquer.

Steven Pressfield 11:43 Well, let me take it from a completely different side.

Lex Fridman 11:47 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 11:47 I don't think that I, in writing about war, am really that interested in war per se. I'm more interested in the metaphor. I, I think for me, I'm really writing about my own internal war and, and the war against myself and against my own, um, resistance, my own negativity, all, all of those things that are, uh...... that spirituality would, would be the opposite of. So, so I'm not really an expert on war. It's not like talking to Jim Mattis or to-

Lex Fridman 12:26 (laughs) Right.

Steven Pressfield 12:26 ... you know, um, Victor Davis Hanson or whatever. Um, to me, a human being, we are spiritual beings in a physical envelope. And there's a automatic terrible tension-

Lex Fridman 12:47 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 12:47 ... within that and, and which creates a war inside ourselves. So the outer, the outer war, when I, when I think about the Israeli army standing up to, you know, whatever, 10:1 odds or whatever it was, that is a metaphor, to me, of the fight we're fighting inside ourselves. For me, the Six-Day War was... As you know, my feeling was it, it was about a return from exile. It was sort of the culmination of the re-establishment of the state of Israel, which had never really been completed because the holiest places of the Jewish people were in the hands of their enemies. So now, on, on the other hand, Alexander the Great's conquests, I think, were a whole other different scenario where the metaphor was that H- Alexander's father, Philip, I think, created the first Nation, capital N Nation. And he created a sort of a pathway for these guys who were mountain men and basically barbarians-

Lex Fridman 13:54 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 13:55 ... Macedonians, and cre- by creating this army and this dream of conquering the world, which Alexander took to the... you know, really enact it, he gave them a way of, of rising out of themselves, of transcending themselves, not just individually but as a people. So, that would go along with what you're saying, Lex-

Lex Fridman 14:16 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 14:17 ... of a certain creativity to it. Um, but a- but again, that's not for whatever... And I'm just realizing this as I'm answering this. That's not really what's interesting to me about these stories. And the Spartans, th- was a whole... At Thermopylae, that was a whole other kind of metaphor of war. That was a sort of a, a, a willingly going to one's own death for a greater cause. Just like, to me, the Spartans at Thermopylae enacted as a group what Jesus Christ enacted as an individual, a sacrifice of their lives for the greater, for the greater good. I don't know if that answers your question-

Lex Fridman 15:00 (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 15:00 ... but that's how I, that's how I see it. Uh, I do feel like, you know, I get invited to speak to Marine Corps groups and things-

Lex Fridman 15:07 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 15:07 ... like that all the time and I decline, because I don't really feel like I'm a spokesman for the warrior class or anything like that. Um, it's not... that's not what's interesting about it to me.

Lex Fridman 15:24 But didn't you just say, with war as a metaphor, that we're all essentially in various ways warriors? (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 15:33 If we think of it in terms of Jungian archetypes and think of our life as, at least as u- as males, and the earliest archetypes that kick in are the youth and the wanderer and the student and that kind of thing. And then at some point around age 15 to 20, whatever, the warrior archetype kicks in and we wanna play football, or we wanna do martial arts, we wanna d- join the Special Forces, we wanna hang out with our buddies, that's our great bond, we wanna test ourselves against adversity and so on and so forth. But at some point, that archetype, we move beyond that archetype.

Lex Fridman 16:09 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 16:09 And we become fathers and, and teachers and so on and so forth. And then there are many archetypes beyond that towards the end. So I'm, I'm interested in the warrior archetype-

Lex Fridman 16:23 Yes.

Steven Pressfield 16:23 ... but not to the be all and end all of everything else. You know, there's a... in, in, um, in my book, The Virtues of War, I-

Lex Fridman 16:32 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 16:33 Have you read that?

Lex Fridman 16:34 No.

Steven Pressfield 16:34 Well, there's a character named Telamon who's act- it's a long story. But, uh, when... He's with Alexander's army and when they arrive in India, he becomes fascinated by the gymnosophists, the fakirs, the naked wise men, the, the yogis. And he says to, uh, to Alexander that these guys are, are warriors beyond what we are-

Lex Fridman 17:04 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 17:05 ... even though they do nothing, because they, they are inside their own selves, you know, all day

Steven Pressfield 17:11 long.

Lex Fridman 17:12 If we, if we go to the Six-Day War, uh, you write about, uh... In Lions Gate, you write about the Six-Day War in Israel. Uh, I think of the wars you've written about, it's the one we're still in many ways in the midst of today.

Steven Pressfield 17:28 Yes.

Lex Fridman 17:29 So, um, what is at the core of that conflict in Israel?

Steven Pressfield 17:35 The, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

Lex Fridman 17:37 I mean, today it's the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it's, um, echoes of the same conflict in that part of the world with Israel. What is, uh, in your sense, um, the nature of that conflict? What can we learn about society and human nature from that conflict that is one of the hottest conflicts that still goes on today?

Steven Pressfield 18:01 Well, when I was working on the Lions Gate about the Six-Day War, I wrote in the, um, in the introduction that this was not gonna be a multi-sided story. I was taking an entirely... I'm a Jew, I identify with the Israeli people, I was gonna see it entirely from their side.... so that's probably not what you're asking, but-

Lex Fridman 18:28 (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 18:28 ... to me, the Six-Day War and that whole... You know, it's, it's a piece of land that's holy to at least three religions and probably more.

Lex Fridman 18:39 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 18:39 And from the Jewish point of view, it's where the State of Israel, it's where David founded Jerusalem. It's all... Where the 12 tribes were etc., etc., where Moses came and brought the people. So to, to me the, the Six-Day War was about, as I said, a return from exile, from diaspora after 2,000 years. Now obviously, from the Palestinian point of view or the Saudi Arabian point of view or whatever, as, it's a whole other scenario.

Lex Fridman 19:12 Religion is at the core of this conflict in some ways, r- religious beliefs.

Steven Pressfield 19:15 Religion and racial/ethnic tribal identity. I mean, again, what is a Jew? Is a Jew somebody that believes in the religion or is it somebody of a certain race that, that, who that race arose in a certain place?

Lex Fridman 19:31 Right.

Steven Pressfield 19:31 Same thing as a Muslim. What is a Muslim? Do they believe in, you know, Muhammad or whatever, uh, or-

Lex Fridman 19:37 So-

Steven Pressfield 19:37 ... did they arise in a certain place and a certain ethnicity? 'Cause if we landed from Mars, we couldn't tell a Jew from a Palestinian, could we? You know-

Lex Fridman 19:46 Right.

Steven Pressfield 19:46 ... just looking at them-

Lex Fridman 19:47 Right.

Steven Pressfield 19:47 ... you could easily mix them and you'd never know.

Lex Fridman 19:50 And the, th- the, the specifics of the faith is not necessarily the, the thing that defines-

Steven Pressfield 19:54 No.

Lex Fridman 19:54 ... the person.

Steven Pressfield 19:55 I don't think so.

Lex Fridman 19:56 All right. So you could be, like many are, a secular, uh, Jew living in Israel and still have a strong bond-

Steven Pressfield 20:04 Definitely, definitely.

Lex Fridman 20:05 ... to...

Steven Pressfield 20:05 In fact, almost all of the Jews, the fighters that I spoke to from, from the Six-Day War, were secular and it really was not, uh, you know, a religious thing with them as much as it was a national thing.

Lex Fridman 20:22 So having spent time in Israel, uh, how's the world where military conflict is directly felt as opposed to maybe if we look at the US, whereas distant and far away, how is that world different? How are the people different?

Steven Pressfield 20:37 It's very different, as you know. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 20:40 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 20:40 And-

Lex Fridman 20:40 I've never been to Israel actually, so-

Steven Pressfield 20:41 Oh, you haven't?

Lex Fridman 20:42 ... I haven't felt it.

Steven Pressfield 20:43 Ah. Well, (laughs) you should definitely go. I mean, here in the United States where... when, like this, an incident like Charlottesville comes up, you know, where people are chanting, "Jews will not replace us," blah, blah, blah. The impulse in the Jewish community is to think of, "Well, how can we reach out to the other side?"

Lex Fridman 21:05 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 21:05 You know, "How can, how can we show them that we are human beings like they are and show them that we care for them?" Et cetera, et cetera. That's the sort of distant from war. From, if you're in Israel, and, you know, like, if you and I were s- were Israeli citizens right now, you would be a fighter pilot or a tank commander or whatever.

Lex Fridman 21:27 Right.

Steven Pressfield 21:27 You know, you would not just be a, you know, working at MIT or whatever. And I would be in the army too. And so from their point of view, they say, "All those people who hate us..." Can I curse on this-

Lex Fridman 21:40 Of course. (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 21:40 ... on this thing? "Fuck them, we'll kill 'em."

Lex Fridman 21:43 We'll kill 'em.

Steven Pressfield 21:43 You know, if they dare to cross the line. And that's a whole different point of view.

Lex Fridman 21:49 Right.

Steven Pressfield 21:49 Um, to me, it's actually (laughs) a healthier point of view.

Lex Fridman 21:52 You think so?

Steven Pressfield 21:53 But, yeah.

Lex Fridman 21:53 So there's no... So let me ask, the hard question is, uh... Well, I, may- maybe it's an impossible question is, how do we resolve that conflict?

Steven Pressfield 22:03 In Israel and-

Lex Fridman 22:04 In Israel or-

Steven Pressfield 22:05 Anywhere.

Lex Fridman 22:06 ... anywhere where the instinct is to reach out in US and, uh, say, uh-

Steven Pressfield 22:11 I-

Lex Fridman 22:11 ... "F you" and, uh, and, uh, and the people, yeah.

Steven Pressfield 22:14 Here's my, here's what... I think that the only way the two warring sides or two sides that are opposed to one another can ever really come together is when there's mutual respect. We'll get you some more water. Uh-

Lex Fridman 22:26 No, I got it. I got this.

Steven Pressfield 22:27 When there's mutual respect and, and, and as, and they can see each other as equals and there's, and when there's mutual fear, you know?

Lex Fridman 22:36 (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 22:36 Where, where one side says, "We don't dare cross the line with this other side," and the other side says the same thing. I think then you can kind of reach across that thing and say, "Okay, then we'll stay here, you stay here. We'll, we'll mingle in cultural ways, and we'll have interchange, you know, intermarriage, da, da, da, da, da, da, da." But as soon as one side has no power, as the Jewish people have had no power throughout the diaspora forever, right? Then it's just a human nature. You can see it in Trump and what he does to any vulnerable minority, right?

Lex Fridman 23:12 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 23:13 Um, it's, it's... And he's not alone. I'm not blaming him a- alone. That's human nature. So I do think that-

Lex Fridman 23:21 It's-

Steven Pressfield 23:21 ... that idea of like, "Fuck you. If you cross the line, we'll kill you," is really a good way, is a, is a good place to start from because now you can sit down on opposite sides of the table and say, you know, "What do we have in common? How can we... We wanna raise our children, you wanna raise your children. How can we do this in a way that's, that, that we're not hurting each other?"

Lex Fridman 23:42 So you kind of said that you need to arrive at a balance, some kind of balance of power, but-

Steven Pressfield 23:47 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 23:47 ... uh, you haven't spoken to the fact that there's deeply rooted hatred of the other. So is there no way to alleviate that hatred or is that the, uh... I mean, what, wh- what role does love and hate-

Steven Pressfield 24:02 I think that hatred can go away. I really do. I mean, if you look at even, even now that, uh... I haven't seen this in person, but they say that the Saudis and the Israelis are collaborating on certain things, you know, by their mutual fear of or antagonism to Iran. Um, I do think that even really long, long, longstanding hatreds and animosities, thousands of years old, can, can go away under the right circumstances.

Lex Fridman 24:31 In, uh, on what time scale?

Steven Pressfield 24:34 ... uh, I mean, it-

Lex Fridman 24:35 That's the-

Steven Pressfield 24:35 For instance, (laughs) I don't know if this is something-

Lex Fridman 24:37 Do people have to die? Uh, do generations have to die and pass away and new generations come up with less hate, or can a single individual learn to not hate?

Steven Pressfield 24:47 I think a single individual can learn to not hate 'cause it certainly doesn't seem to... (laughs) Over thousands of years, it doesn't seem to work, you know? We keep thinking that that's gonna happen. But, uh, I- I think it's... W- we're in a real spiritual realm here when you're talking about that.

Lex Fridman 25:02 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 25:02 You're in a realm of, you know, Buddha, Jesus, whatever. Something like that, that, uh... Where, uh, you know, a- a- a true change of soul-

Lex Fridman 25:13 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 25:13 ... happens. But I do think that's possible.

Lex Fridman 25:16 So,

Lex Fridman 25:18 what do you think is the future of warfare? Especially with, uh, what many people see as the expansion of the military-industrial conflict? Do, what... Do you... I know you're not a military historian. Uh, I'm asking more as a metaphor. (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 25:35 Uh-huh.

Lex Fridman 25:36 Would... Do you see us as people continuing to fight?

Steven Pressfield 25:41 You know, it's a really great question, Lex, because, because I think now with, uh, social media, TV, movies, all of these things that create empathy across cultures, it becomes harder and harder I think, I think, to totally demonize the other the way it was in, in previous wars. I also think... I don't really see an appetite for people wanting to go to war these days. I... And, and in a way, I don't know if that's good or bad. It's like everybody is so fat and lazy and so concerned with how many-

Lex Fridman 26:18 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 26:18 ... clicks they're getting that, uh, you know... Whereas I, I know at the start of World War I, the gen-... Both the younger generations were eager to go to war.

Lex Fridman 26:30 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 26:30 You know? Uh, I think it was a-... It was, it was insane, but it was that sort of warrior archetype that we were talking about before that, that generational, um, testosterone eros thing. Whereas nowadays, I don't know. I mean, it's hard to say there's not gonna be another war, because there always are, but it's sort of hard to imagine people getting off their ass these days to do anything.

Lex Fridman 26:59 Well, it's funny that you mentioned social media as a place for empathy, sure. But it's... Uh, in a sense, it's a place for, uh, for war as well.

Steven Pressfield 27:08 Or hatred, yeah. True.

Lex Fridman 27:09 For hatred. And, and perhaps, uh, uh, the positive aspect of hatred on social media is that s-... It's somewhat less harmful than murder, uh, and so it kinda dissipates sort of the hateful s-... Uh, you get the hate out at, um-

Steven Pressfield 27:30 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 27:31 ... at a, you know, at a less-

Steven Pressfield 27:34 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 27:34 ... uh, on a daily basis, and thereby it never boils up to a point where you want to kill.

Steven Pressfield 27:39 It's also a really weird th- thing that's going on, and I don't know if anybody really understands. Like, with video games, where kids are acting out these incredible horror things, right?

Lex Fridman 27:50 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 27:50 But you know that if s-... They cut their finger, they would, like, freak out, you know?

Lex Fridman 27:54 Freak out, yeah.

Steven Pressfield 27:55 Um, and, and I also don't think that many of the people that are hateful on social media, if they were face to face with the person-

Lex Fridman 28:04 Right.

Steven Pressfield 28:04 ... they wouldn't... So there's a sort of a two, two mental spheres happening at the same time. Uh, and I don't know how that-

Lex Fridman 28:15 Maps to the actual-

Steven Pressfield 28:16 ... plays out.

Lex Fridman 28:16 ... military... H- how that actually maps to military conflict, uh-

Steven Pressfield 28:19 Yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman 28:20 ... just like when you... I- if you, in the United States, have a draft, for example. What... How the populace would respond different than they did in previous generations.

Steven Pressfield 28:29 Yeah, I think they certainly would.

Lex Fridman 28:30 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 28:31 Another question. Not sure if you've thought about it, but, uh, I work on building artificial intelligence systems. In our community, many people are worried about AI being used in war. So, automating the killing process. The, uh... With, with, with drones, and in general. It's being used more and more, and s-

Steven Pressfield 28:49 I should recuse myself on that one. I really haven't thought about that, no.

Lex Fridman 28:51 You haven't thought about it? S-

Steven Pressfield 28:52 I'd rather ask you what you think about it.

Lex Fridman 28:55 (laughs) Well, it's interesting. I mean, because it's so fundamentally different from if you look at the Battle of Thermopylae. It, it... I mean, just if we talk about the difference between a gun and a-

Steven Pressfield 29:05 Uh...

Lex Fridman 29:05 ... and a sword. It's-

Steven Pressfield 29:07 Well, I'll tell you one little anecdote. There was a, uh, a, a Spartan king. I don't know which one it was. Uh, but at one point, they showed him a new invention, and it could launch a bolt that would, you know, kill someone in a range of 200 yards.

Lex Fridman 29:22 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 29:22 And the king wept and said, "Alas, valor is no more."

Lex Fridman 29:28 (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 29:28 'Cause their-

Lex Fridman 29:29 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 29:30 ... point of view of war, it was highly ritualized, as you know. And the, the, the code of honor was that you were not supposed to be able to kill another person unless you yourself were in equal danger of being killed. And any other way of doing that, even bow and arrow, was considered less than manly and less than honorable. And maybe we should go back to that, because at least it makes the stakes real and true.

Lex Fridman 29:59 And, uh-

Steven Pressfield 30:00 Not that we could.

Lex Fridman 30:02 Not, not... That's the point. Uh, you were in the Marine Corps, so

Lex Fridman 30:10 we talk about the real, the bloody conflicts. You've written about many of them. So let me ask a personal question. Have you, sort of as writing and in general, have you thought about what it takes to kill a person if you yourself could do it in a war?

Steven Pressfield 30:33 I have thought about it, yeah.

Lex Fridman 30:34 And how that would make you feel?

Steven Pressfield 30:37 ... of, of course, one never knows. I certainly, I have not been in combat, I haven't killed anybody. But I would imagine in the real world that it would change you utterly forever. Because you can't help but identify with the person that you've just killed.

Lex Fridman 31:00 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 31:01 And it's another human being and, uh, I mean, I have a hard time killing a spider. So I, I would imagine that it's something that warriors understand and nobody else understands.

Lex Fridman 31:15 And you've spoken with many how, uh... I mean, you, you've spoken with people who've seen military combat-

Steven Pressfield 31:20 Oh, yeah.

Lex Fridman 31:21 ... in Israel. Uh, what... Have they been able to articulate the, the experience of killing?

Steven Pressfield 31:29 It's the s- it's sort of just what I said. I mean, I'm, I'm even thinking of one pilot that I interviewed over there, um, who, uh, you know, was strafing a tank-

Lex Fridman 31:43 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 31:43 ... in his Mustang and saw at, at really low altitude and, you know, saw what his bullets did to the guy and could see his face and everything like that, which is even, you know, one remove or more removes from an infantryman, what an infantryman does. And he said that, uh, that same thing that I said, that it just changes you and you can never-

Lex Fridman 32:03 Changes you.

Steven Pressfield 32:03 ... say it, like never look at the world or look at anything the same way again.

Lex Fridman 32:08 And when you... if that happens at scale, so it's thousands-

Steven Pressfield 32:11 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 32:11 ... tens of thousands, hundred-

Steven Pressfield 32:12 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 32:13 ... that changes entire societies.

Steven Pressfield 32:14 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 32:14 I mean, that's what we've seen. What-

Steven Pressfield 32:16 At least it... But the problem is, it doesn't change the politicians back home.

Lex Fridman 32:20 Right.

Lex Fridman 32:22 How important is mortality, finiteness, the, the fact that this thing ends, to the creative process? So killing and war really emphasizes that. But in general, the fact that this thing ends, do you-

Steven Pressfield 32:42 It, it does? (laughs)

Lex Fridman 32:43 It does and, uh-

Steven Pressfield 32:46 Shit. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 32:49 (laughs) And on a, and on a serious note, do you think about your mortality? Do you meditate on your own mortality when you think about the work you do?

Steven Pressfield 32:57 That's another great question, Lex. Uh, I actually, I'm 75 and I just was having... I had breakfast in New York a few months ago with a friend of mine who's like my exact same age. And I said to him, uh, I said, "Nick, do you ever think about mortality?" And he said, "Every fucking minute of every day." (laughs)

Lex Fridman 33:16 (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 33:16 And I, I was kind of relieved to hear that because I d- I do too. Uh, but I actually, I always have, I think. And I, I think, you know, the fact of mortality is... kind of gives meaning to life, you know? I think that's why we wanna create, um, that's why we wanna make a mark of some kind or, uh... And the other aspect of it is what's on the other side of that mortality? I'm, I'm a believer in previous lives, so I, I sort of, uh, and I, I... The question I've never been able to answer among many, many others is like, why are we even here?

Lex Fridman 33:58 Right.

Steven Pressfield 33:59 Why are we in the flesh? You know, I sort of, I like to believe that God or some force is... we're on some kind of journey, um, but I'm not sure why, why we were put in this world where the ground rules are, if you think about animal life, that you cannot live from one day to the next without killing and eating some other form of life. I mean, what a demented thing-

Lex Fridman 34:28 (laughs) Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 34:29 ... you know?

Lex Fridman 34:29 Yes.

Steven Pressfield 34:29 Why couldn't we just have a solar panel on our head and, you know, be friends with everybody? So I sort of... I, I don't get what that was all about, but that's sort of the big issue.

Lex Fridman 34:42 Uh, have you read Ernest Becker's Denial of Death, for example? Is, uh, Ernest Becker's a philosopher, uh, that said that the, that death, that the fear of death is really the primary driver of everything we do. So Freud had what, the-

Steven Pressfield 35:00 Right.

Lex Fridman 35:00 ... the, the-

Steven Pressfield 35:00 I would agree with that.

Lex Fridman 35:02 So, d- to you, you've always thought about your, even your own mortality?

Steven Pressfield 35:06 Yes, definitely.

Lex Fridman 35:08 And, uh, can you elaborate on, um, the, the reincarnation aspect of what you were talking about? Like that we kinda... What's your sense that we had previous lives?

Steven Pressfield 35:20 Um-

Lex Fridman 35:20 Wha- wha- in what... Have you thought concretely or is it a lot of it kind of is...

Steven Pressfield 35:24 No, I've thought con- concretely about it.

Lex Fridman 35:26 Concretely.

Steven Pressfield 35:27 I mean, it's very clear when you see children, young kids, or even dogs and cats, that they come into the world with personalities, you know? And three kids in a family are gonna be com- completely different and completely their own person.

Lex Fridman 35:45 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 35:45 And, and, and that person that they are doesn't change over life. And I... You know, there's... one of the things that, uh, um, I did in, uh, my book, The Artist's Journey, is that there were certain things where I tracked or just listed in order, like all of Bruce Springsteen's albums or all of Philip Roth's books, you know, kind of a body of work throughout over, you know, a period of 30, 40, 50 years, you know? And you can see that there's a theme running through all of those things, that it's completely unique to that person. Nobody else could have written Philip Roth's books or Bruce Springsteen's songs. And you can even see sort of a, a destiny there. So I ask myself, "Well, where did that come from?" What... It, it s- it seems to be......a continuation of something that was, that happened before and that will lead to something else because it's not starting from scratch. It seems like there's a, uh, a calling, a destiny in there already. This gets back to the muse and all that kind of thing. And, uh-

Lex Fridman 36:56 So, yeah. It's almost like the, there's this, let- let- let's call it a god. Uh, it's passing... It's almost like, uh, sampling parts of a previous human that has lived and putting that, those into the, the new one. (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 37:11 Sampling is probably a pretty good word.

Lex Fridman 37:13 Uh, taking some of the good... Well, you can't take all the good parts because the bad parts is what makes the person, so-

Steven Pressfield 37:19 Right.

Lex Fridman 37:19 ... I'd say taking it all together. Okay. Uh, this is humans only, or does it pass around from animals, in your view? Uh, is it-

Steven Pressfield 37:26 I don't know. That's above my pay grade.

Lex Fridman 37:27 Right.

Steven Pressfield 37:28 I don't know.

Lex Fridman 37:28 (laughs) So,

Lex Fridman 37:30 okay. So you, you, you talk about the muse as, um, the source of, of ideas maybe. Since you've gotten a few glimpses of her in your writing, tell me, um, uh, what I mean, w- what is it possible for you to tell me about, about her? Where does she reside? What, what does she look like?

Steven Pressfield 37:55 I mean, you can look at it many different ways, right? Uh, the Greeks did it in an anthropomorphic way, right? They c- they created gods that were like human beings. Um, but if you look at it from, uh, a Kabbalistic Jewish perspective, Jewish mysticism, you could say that it's the soul, the neshama, right? That soul is above us on a higher plane, our own, your soul, my soul, and it's trying to reach down to us-

Lex Fridman 38:19 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 38:19 ... and, and communicate with us. And we're trying simultaneously to reach up to i- to it through prayer or through, if you're a writer or an artist, you know, when you sit down at the keyboard, you're entering into a kind of prayer. You're entering into a different state of, of, uh, an altered consciousness to some extent. You're opening yourself, opening the pipeline or turning on the radio to tune in to the cosmic radio station. An- another way of looking at it, this is an... Did you ever see, um, the movie City of Angels? The visual of the movie, it was, um, Meg Ryan and-

Lex Fridman 38:58 Oh, Nicolas Cage?

Steven Pressfield 38:59 ... Nicolas Cage.

Lex Fridman 38:59 Yeah, yeah, I've seen it. Yep.

Steven Pressfield 39:01 And right, the visual of the movie sort of was Meg Ryan is a, is a, uh, heart surgeon and as she's operating on somebody, suddenly Nicolas Cage in this long duster coat like Jesse James-

Lex Fridman 39:16 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 39:16 ... appears right next to her in the operating room, and he's an angel. And he's waiting to take out the soul of the pa- patient on the-

Lex Fridman 39:25 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 39:25 ... on the operating table. And she doesn't see him. She's totally unaware of him and so is everybody else in the operating room, except maybe the guy who's about to die-

Lex Fridman 39:33 Right.

Steven Pressfield 39:33 ... who suddenly sees him. But I kind of believe that w- that there are beings like that, or if you don't like that, it's a force, it's a consciousness, it's something that are right here, right now. And, and we... And they're trying to communicate to us.

Lex Fridman 39:53 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 39:54 And like through a membrane, like tapping on that window over there.

Lex Fridman 39:59 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 39:59 They're like right out there and they carry the future. They are everything that is in potential. All the works that you will do, Lex-

Lex Fridman 40:10 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 40:11 ... your startup, whatever else-

Lex Fridman 40:13 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 40:13 ... you're doing, they, they know that. And it's not really you that's coming up with those ideas, in my opinion. Those things are appearing, you know... It's like somebody knocks on the door-

Lex Fridman 40:26 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 40:27 ... and puts it in. I mean, in The Iliad where gods and goddesses appear along with the human antagonists on the battlefield all the time, right? They'll be... You know, Homer flashes to Olympus and then back to the real world. And there's a thing where one Aphrodite, let's say, wants to help Paris. And so she says, "Well, I will appear to him in a dream, and I'll take the form of his brother, and I'll say bumpida bumpida bump." So that's creatures, beings on one dimension, as the Greeks saw it, communicating with... And I believe that that's exactly what's going on in one, whatever analogy you wanna use.

Lex Fridman 41:12 But that, that communication, to which degree is, uh... do you play the role in that communication as opposed to sitting at the computer, if you're a writer, and staring at the blank page and putting in the time and waiting? What... So i- if, uh... In your, in your view, i- is, are these creatures basically waiting to tell you about your future (laughs) or is there choice? How many possible futures are there? How many possible ideas are there?

Steven Pressfield 41:48 That's a great question. I think there's basically... Yes, there are al- alternatives, you know, degrees within it, but I... If you look at Bruce Springsteen's albums, how much could he-

Lex Fridman 42:02 (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 42:03 ... have done really differently? Yeah. He c- he would... You can just see there's a whole impetus w- going through the whole thing. And nothing was gonna shake him off that, you know? And yeah, maybe The River could have been different, could have been called something else, but, but he was dealing with certain issues. His conscious self was dealing with certain issues that were really out of his control. He was, he was drawn. He was called to it, right? Nothing could stop him. And so it is sort of a partnership betw- I think, the creative process, between the... And, and, and creative impulse that's coming from some other place-... or it's coming from deep within us is another way to look at it. You know, it's a, like if we are acorns and-

Lex Fridman 42:51 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 42:51 ... and we're growing th- into oaks. Um, so the conscious per- artist who's sitting there at the keyboard or- or whatever is applying his or her consciousness to that, but is also going into opening themselves to the unconscious or to this other realm, whatever- whatever that is. I mean, certainly songwriters for a million years have said, you know, a song just came into their head, right?

Lex Fridman 43:18 Yes, yes.

Steven Pressfield 43:19 Poem just... (fingers snapping) All they had to do was write. But then, you ever see that thing where ke- of Keats' notes for a thing of beauty is a joy forever?

Lex Fridman 43:28 Mm.

Steven Pressfield 43:28 It like covers entire pages like, you know, he's crossing this out and that out and this, and though his consciousness is... His conscious mind is working on it.

Lex Fridman 43:36 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 43:36 But I... So I- I do think it's a partnership and I think that... I know when I was first starting out as a writer, I worked in advertising and I- and I tried to do novels that I could never do. I was like really unskilled at getting to that... tuning into that station. I just... I beat my brains out and was unable to- to do it, you know, except in... because I was sort of trying too hard. It was sort of like a- a zen monk or a monk of some kind trying to meditate and just like constantly thoughts driving you crazy. But over time, you know, knock wood, I've kind of gotten better at it, and I can sort of let go of those... that part of me that's trying so hard and, um, so these angels can speak a little more easily through the membrane.

Lex Fridman 44:32 Can you put into words the process of letting go and clearing that channel of communication? What- what does it take?

Steven Pressfield 44:41 That's another great question. For me, it just took... It took probably 30 years. And I don't even... I- I would... I guess I would liken it to meditation, even though I'm not a meditator. But it would seem to me to be one of the hardest things in the world to just sit still and stop thinking, right? (laughs) And h- so it's very hard to put into words, and I think that's why these teachers of meditation use tricks-

Lex Fridman 45:07 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 45:08 ... and koans and stuff like that. But for me at least, I think it was just-

Lex Fridman 45:14 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 45:15 ... a process of years of years and years of trying and finally... of beating my head into the wall.

Lex Fridman 45:20 (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 45:20 And finally, little by little, giving up the- that beating of the- the head.

Lex Fridman 45:25 (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 45:26 But there's doesn't seem to be any trick. Everybody wants a hack these days.

Lex Fridman 45:30 Right.

Steven Pressfield 45:30 And I don't think there is a hack.

Lex Fridman 45:34 (sighs) Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 45:34 If you look at it in terms of the goddess, the muse, she's watching you down there, beating your head in the wall. You're like a Marine going through an obstacle course or a martial artist trying to learn, you know, like, uh, Uma Thurman doing the casket, you know, trying to make that little-

Lex Fridman 45:50 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 45:50 ... four-inch punch, you know? Um, the- the muse or the goddess is just sort of watching going, "Uh, as long as he's trying. He's trying."

Lex Fridman 45:59 (laughs) He's trying.

Steven Pressfield 45:59 "I'm gonna come back in another couple of months and see if he's still there."

Lex Fridman 46:02 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 46:03 And finally she'll say, "All right, he's had a... He's beaten... He's paid his dues."

Lex Fridman 46:08 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 46:08 "I'm gonna give it

Steven Pressfield 46:09 to him."

Lex Fridman 46:09 So (laughs) the- the hard work and the suffering, yeah. But, uh, you know, I'm also, being Russian, uh, in wrestling and martial arts, we're big into drilling technique. I was also just even getting at... There's... Certainly, there's no shortcut, but is there a process? So you're an- uh, it... The prac- there can be... The process of practice. Uh, so you had two. One, you had an example of, uh, meditation. So it's essentially the practice of meditation, is you-

Steven Pressfield 46:42 I think so.

Lex Fridman 46:43 ... sitting-

Steven Pressfield 46:43 Well, drill, I think, is a good way to look at it too.

Lex Fridman 46:46 But what are you- what are you drilling? You're just sitting and-

Steven Pressfield 46:50 You're- you're- you're writing, you know?

Lex Fridman 46:51 Just writing.

Steven Pressfield 46:52 You're writing. You're l- then you're looking at what you wrote, you know? You're hitting moments when it flows, you know, and you're- and you're... and then there are other hitting moments where you just can't do anything and you're trying to... from the moments that- where it flowed, you're trying to come back and look at it and say, "What- what did I do? How did that- how did that happen? Where was my mind?" You know? But I think it's just a process of over and over and over and over until finally it gets a little bit easier.

Lex Fridman 47:22 And did you, uh... Did you always... When you- when you read something you write, did you always have a pretty good radar for what's good and not after it's written?

Steven Pressfield 47:33 No. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 47:34 (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 47:34 I think I do now but, uh, but no, it was always really hard for me to know what was good. Um...

Lex Fridman 47:45 I mean, do you edit? The process of editing, uh, is the process of looking at what you've written and improving it. Uh, are you a better writer or an editor? How often do you edit?

Steven Pressfield 47:57 That's another great question. Great question, 'cause I do think that in writing, the real process of looking at it is the process that an editor does rather than what a writer does. The- the gentleman I was just talking to on the phone is my editor, Sean Coyne, who was the guy who bought Gates of Fire-

Lex Fridman 48:14 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 48:14 ... when he was an editor at Doubleday, and who... Basically, when I finish a book, I give it to him.

Lex Fridman 48:20 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 48:21 And he- and he gives me... You know, he- he... Editing doesn't really mean like crossing out commas. It really means looking at the overall work and saying, "Does it work? And if it doesn't work, why doesn't it work? Is there something wrong here?" You know, like if you're building the Golden Gate Bridge, you know, and one span was out of whack, you know, you could... And- and, uh, I think a really skilled editor, which Sean is-... understands what, what makes a story tick. And he also has the perspective that I've lost in something I wrote 'cause I'm so close to it, to say, you know, "This, you know, this isn't working, and, and that is working."

Lex Fridman 49:06 What kind of advice is he giving you? Is it like, like layout? Like, uh, "This story doesn't flow correctly." Like, "It, you shouldn't start at this point." Or does he even sit back at a higher level and say, "I see what you're doing, but you could do better"? (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 49:22 No, he doesn't do that.

Lex Fridman 49:23 Okay. (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 49:24 But a lot of it is about, um, genre and kind of the, defining what genre you're working in. And, um, in f- I'm gonna get up here to just-

Lex Fridman 49:35 Sure.

Steven Pressfield 49:35 ... bring something over here for the camera. Um, this was one where Sean tore this down and made me start from scratch.

Lex Fridman 49:44 Okay.

Steven Pressfield 49:44 And what the, the specifics of it were really, this is a, a c- a supernatural thriller. That's the genre, sort of like Rosemary's Baby or, um, The Exorcist.

Lex Fridman 49:55 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 49:56 And what he made, what he showed me was that I had kind of... I had violated certain conventions of the genre, you know, that, uh... And you just can't do that, you know. It's gotta be, you know... it has to be done the right way.

Lex Fridman 50:12 Oh, that's good.

Steven Pressfield 50:12 And so he, he pointed out certain things to me. Um...

Lex Fridman 50:18 So he must be a prolific reader himself too, actually. That's such an i- it's such a tough job of editor.

Steven Pressfield 50:26 Yeah. Again, he was sort of born to do that.

Lex Fridman 50:28 Okay.

Steven Pressfield 50:28 He just kind of glommed onto it. And, and... But since he was... his first job publishing, you know, um, cat thrillers, (laughs) you know, cat detective book, you know, he studied how it works, what makes a story work, et cetera, et cetera. So he really... he's, he's great. And I think any really successful writer, unless they're u- utterly brilliant on their own, has got to have a great editor behind them.

Lex Fridman 50:57 But you yourself edit as well.

Steven Pressfield 51:00 I'm constantly trying to learn from him and teach myself. Everything you see in, uh, my blog posts about... that is about the craft of writing is me trying to teach myself the rules so that... You know, I'm sure it's the same in martial arts or, or anything else, right? You, you try to not be dependent on that other person 'cause it's so painful to make those mistakes. You really feel like, "God, I wish I could get it right the first time the next time I do it."

Lex Fridman 51:29 Well, in research we go through that. I- in research more than writing. So what you do is a little more solitary.

Steven Pressfield 51:35 Uh-huh.

Lex Fridman 51:35 In research, there's usually two, three, four people working on something together, and we write a paper. And there's that painful process of where you write it down, and then you share it with other... And not only do they criticize the writing, they criticize the fundamental aspects of the approach you've taken. So-

Steven Pressfield 51:55 I would think so.

Lex Fridman 51:55 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 51:55 So it's exactly like, you know, they would say, "You're attacking... you're asking the wrong questions," right?

Lex Fridman 52:00 The wrong questions, yeah. And that's extremely, you know, painful-

Steven Pressfield 52:03 Helpful.

Lex Fridman 52:03 ... especially when you... Well, yes, painful and helpful, but, uh, there's disagreement and so on. Uh, it's, uh... And through that comes out a better product in the end-

Steven Pressfield 52:12 Yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman 52:13 ... if, if, uh... 'Cause you want to still have an ego, but you also want to silence it every once in a while. So there's a balance.

Lex Fridman 52:20 In your book, The War of Art, you talk about resistance with a capital R as the invisible force in this universe of ours that finds a way to prevent you from, uh, starting or doing the work. Wh- where do you think resistant comes from? Why is there a force in our mind that's constantly trying to jeopardize our efforts with laziness, excuses, and so on?

Steven Pressfield 52:46 That's, that's another great question. I mean, in, in Jewish mysticism, in Kabbalistic thinking, it's called the Yetzer Hara, right? And it's a s- it's a force that if, if this up here is your soul of neshama trying to talk to you, us down here-

Lex Fridman 53:02 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 53:03 ... the Yetzer Hara is this negative force in the middle. So I'm not the only one that ever thought about this. But... And, and I don't know if anybody really a- knows the answer, but h- here's my answer. I think that there are two places where we as human beings can seat our identity. One is the ego, the conscious ego, and the other is the greater self. And the self in the, in the Jungian sense, the self in the Jungian sense includes the unconscious and butts up against what Jung called the divine ground, which what I would call the muse, the goddess or whatever. And I think... And the ego is just this little dot inside this bigger self.

Lex Fridman 53:44 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 53:45 And the ego has a completely different view of, of life as from the self. The ego believes... I'm gonna give you a long answer here, Lex.

Lex Fridman 53:56 No, perfect.

Steven Pressfield 53:57 The ego believes that death is real. The ego believes that time and space are real. The ego believes that each one of us is separate from the other. I'm separate from you. You know, I could punch you in the face, and it wouldn't hurt me. It would only hurt you. And in the ego's world, the dominant emotion is fear. Because we are all made of flesh. We can all die, we can all be hurt, we can all be ruined, bum-ba-da-bum. So we're protecting ourselves. And even our desire to create-

Lex Fridman 54:30 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 54:31 ... as we were talking about before, comes out of that fear of death. The self, on the other hand, the greater self that butts up against the divine ground, believes that death is not real, that time and space are not real, that the gods travel swift as thought. And the ego also believes that... I mean, the self believes that there's no difference between you and me, that we're all one. If I hurt you......I hurt myself, karma, right? And in the world of the self, of the greater self, the dominant emotion is love, not fear.

Lex Fridman 55:06 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 55:07 Now, so I think that... Let me... I'll go farther back here. I'll try... It's a long way to answer your question. When Jesus died on the cross or when the 300 Spartans willingly sacrificed their lives at Thermopylae, they were acting according to the rules of the self.

Lex Fridman 55:27 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 55:28 Death is not real. No difference between you and me. Time and space are not real. Predominant emotion is love. So in my opinion, we, as conscious human vessels-

Lex Fridman 55:43 (smacks lips) Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 55:43 ... have... Are, are in a struggle between these two things, the ego and the self. To me, resistance is the voice of the ego saying... And it's a fearful voice, because if... When we identify with the self, we move our consciousness over to the self, as, as artists or scientists opening ourselves up to the cosmic dimension, to the, to the other forces, the ego is tremendously threatened by that. Because if we're, if we're in that space, that headspace, we don't need the ego anymore. So I think resistance is a voice of, of the ego trying to keep control of us.

Lex Fridman 56:26 Keep you there. Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 56:26 Um, in a way, I'll give you a bad example. Trump-

Lex Fridman 56:30 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 56:30 ... is the ego.

Lex Fridman 56:31 That's probably a very good example, right? Yeah. (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 56:35 You know? It's a zero-sum world for him-

Lex Fridman 56:38 Yes.

Steven Pressfield 56:38 ... and for anybody that's in that. And the opposite of that would be somebody like Martin Luther King or Gandhi.

Lex Fridman 56:46 Gandhi. Gandhi, yep.

Steven Pressfield 56:47 Um, and that's of course why they all wind up getting assassinated. Because that voice, that ego is hanging onto itself and feels so threatened-

Lex Fridman 56:58 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 56:58 ... by, um... I could talk more about this if you want. You can-

Lex Fridman 57:01 No, for sure. That's, uh, that's, uh, that's fascinating. It's just... It's interesting why the fear is attached to the ego. I really like this dichotomy of ego and self and that struggle. It's just, um... Ego has a, you know, the self-obsession of it. Why, why, uh, fear is such a predominant thing? Like, why is resistance trying to undermine everything? Uh, the, the-

Steven Pressfield 57:30 It's fear. It's out of fear. L- let's think about the whole thing in terms of stories. In a story, the villain is always resistance, is always the ego. The hero is, is always... Of course, always is not everything, but you know what I mean, pretty much, represents kind of the self. If you think about the alien on the spaceship, that's like the ultimate kind of villain. It keeps changing form, right? First, it goes on the guy's face, then it pops out of his chest, but it all... Always just has that one monomaniacal thing to, to, to destroy, you know? And, uh, just like the ego, just like resistance. And maybe Alien is a bad example because Sigourney Weaver has to sort of, um, fight on the same terms as, as the alien. But maybe a better example might be something like Casablanca-

Lex Fridman 58:24 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 58:25 ... where in the end, the Humphrey Bogart character has to... Acting o- operating out of the self, has to give up his, his selfish dream of going off with Ingrid Bergman, Neil Solondz, the love of his life, and instead, you know, puts her on a plane to Lisbon while he goes off to fight the Nazis in, you know, in the desert. Um, I don't know if that's clear, but in, uh... But in almost every story, the villain is the ego, is resistance, is fear, is that zero-sum thing. And in almost every story, the hero is someone that is willing to make a sacrifice to help others.

Lex Fridman 59:11 It's letting go of that fear is what leads to productivity and to success.

Steven Pressfield 59:16 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 59:18 Uh, do you think there's a... I... This probably the answer is either obvious or impossible.

Steven Pressfield 59:25 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 59:26 But do you think there's an evolutionary advantage to resistance? Like, what would life look like without resistance?

Steven Pressfield 59:36 That's a r- that's another great question. I think... I also believe that resistance, like death, gives a meaning to life.

Lex Fridman 59:44 Right.

Steven Pressfield 59:44 If we didn't have it, it's gonna be... You know, what would we be? We'd be in the Garden of Eden picking fruit and just happy and stupid, you know? Um, and I do think that that myth of the Garden of Eden is really about this kind of thing, you know, where, where Adam and Eve decide to sort of take matters into their own hands and, and, um, acquire knowledge.

Lex Fridman 1:00:09 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 1:00:10 That until then, God had said, "I'm the only one that's got that knowledge." And of course, once they've acquired that knowledge, they're cast out into the world you and I live in now, where they do have to deal with that fear and they do have to deal with all that stuff.

Lex Fridman 1:00:26 Th- this is the-

Steven Pressfield 1:00:26 The human condition.

Lex Fridman 1:00:27 The human condition. And the meaning and the purpose comes from, uh, the resistance being there and the struggle to overcome it.

Steven Pressfield 1:00:38 To overcome it, right.

Lex Fridman 1:00:39 That's-

Steven Pressfield 1:00:39 And also the other aspect of it is that it's not real at all. It's not even like it's, uh, an actual force. It's all here, right? So the, the sort of, uh... In a way, it's sort of a surrender to it, you know? Um-

Lex Fridman 1:01:00 (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 1:01:01 ... you know?

Lex Fridman 1:01:01 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 1:01:01 Or, or it's just-

Lex Fridman 1:01:02 It's sorta, it's sorta truth's reality, I mean.

Steven Pressfield 1:01:03 It's sort of like turning on a light in a dark thing. It's like, "Oh, it's gone."

Lex Fridman 1:01:08 (laughs) But, uh, not quite because it's never really-

Steven Pressfield 1:01:11 Not quite 'cause it comes back again tomorrow morning.

Lex Fridman 1:01:13 (laughs) Comes back, yeah, exactly. Uh, so you have to keep changing light bulbs every day. Uh, so what's been, uh, maybe recently, but in general maybe, in your life, what's been a m- the most relentless, or one of the more relentless, sources of resistance to you personally?

Steven Pressfield 1:01:28 I mean, it, it's always the same. It f- it's about writing, for me, um, and an evolving within my own body of work, you know? It never, um, goes away, it never gets any less.

Lex Fridman 1:01:44 Do you have particular excuses, particular justifications that come out, um, in- in-

Steven Pressfield 1:01:50 No. It's always the same... Well, I, I would say so, isn't it the same, but it's really not because resistance is so protean, you know? It keeps changing form. And as you, as you move to, hopefully, a higher level, I mean, the resistance gets a little more nuanced and a little more subtle, trying to fake you out. But I think you learn that it's always there and you're always gonna have to face it, so...

Lex Fridman 1:02:14 I mean, your ba- your battle, uh, is sitting down and writing to... some number of words to a blank page.

Steven Pressfield 1:02:23 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:02:24 Um, do you have a process there with this battle? Do you have a number of hours that you put in?

Steven Pressfield 1:02:31 On-

Lex Fridman 1:02:31 Do you sit down?

Steven Pressfield 1:02:32 Yeah, I'm definitely a, a believer that even though this battle is fought on the highest sort of spiritual level, that the way you fight it is on the most mundane, uh... I'm sure it's like martial arts must be the same way. I mean, I go to the gym-

Lex Fridman 1:02:48 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 1:02:48 ... first thing in the morning, and I s- sort of am, am rehearsing myself. Face, you know, s- it, uh, d- the gym is called resistance training, right?

Lex Fridman 1:02:57 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 1:02:57 You're working against-

Lex Fridman 1:02:58 (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 1:02:58 ... resistance, right?

Lex Fridman 1:02:59 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 1:02:59 And I don't wanna go, I don't wanna get out of bed. I hate to, you know. Um, so but I'm sort of fortifying myself to, to be ready for the day. And, uh, you know, like I said, over, knock wood, over years, I've learned to sort of get into the right kind of mindset, and it's not as hard for me as it used to be. The real resistance, I think, for me, and I think this is true for anybody, is, uh, the question of sort of, what's the next idea? What's the next book? What's the next project that you're gonna work on? And when I, when I ask that question, I'm s- I'm asking it of the muse. I'm kinda saying, "What do you want me..." Or I'm asking it of my unconscious. I- if we're looking at Bruce Springsteen's albums-

Lex Fridman 1:03:42 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 1:03:43 ... it's kinda, "Well, what's the next album?" You know, now he's on Broadway. That was a great idea, right?

Lex Fridman 1:03:47 Yeah, that was-

Steven Pressfield 1:03:48 Um, uh, where'd that come from, you know?

Lex Fridman 1:03:51 (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 1:03:52 But, uh, and then for him, what's, what's after that, you know? Because that, that body of work is already alive. It already exists inside us, kinda like a woman's biological clock.

Lex Fridman 1:04:09 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 1:04:10 And we have to serve it, and we have to... otherwise it'll give us cancer, you know? I don't mean to say that if anybody has cancer that they're not, you know?

Lex Fridman 1:04:20 Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's-

Steven Pressfield 1:04:20 But you know what I mean? It'll give, it'll do s-

Lex Fridman 1:04:22 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 1:04:22 It'll take its revenge on us. So the next, uh, resistance to me is sort of, or a big aspect of it is, what's next, you know? When I finish the book I'm working on now, I'm not sure what I'm gonna do next. Uh...

Lex Fridman 1:04:33 And, but see, at the same time you have a kinda, a, a... you have a sense that there is a Bruce Springsteen single line of, uh, albums. So like, it's, it's already known somewhere in the universe what you're going to do next, is the sense you have.

Steven Pressfield 1:04:52 In a se- in a sense, yes. I don't know if it's like predetermined, you know? But it's, but there's something like that.

Lex Fridman 1:05:00 Yeah, I'd like to believe, uh, that there's a... Well, it's, it's kinda like quantum mechanics, I guess. Um, once, once you observe it, maybe once you talk to the muse, it's, it's a, it's one thing for sure, it was always going to be that one thing. But really, in reality, it's a distribution. It could be any number of things.

Steven Pressfield 1:05:20 Yeah, I think so.

Lex Fridman 1:05:21 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 1:05:21 There's alternate realities out there.

Lex Fridman 1:05:22 Alternate realities, yeah.

Steven Pressfield 1:05:24 But they're not that far apart. I mean-

Lex Fridman 1:05:26 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 1:05:26 ... Bruce Springsteen is not gonna write a, you know, a Joni Mitchell song, you know?

Lex Fridman 1:05:29 (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 1:05:30 No matter how hard he tries.

Lex Fridman 1:05:31 But he still went on broad... I mean, he still did that, which is not a Bruce Springsteen thing to do, so-

Steven Pressfield 1:05:36 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:05:36 ... I think, I think you're being... In retrospect, it all makes sense.

Steven Pressfield 1:05:40 I think it is a Bruce Springsteen thing to do. It's a next sort of evolution for him. Why not take his music to there, you know?

Lex Fridman 1:05:46 In retrospect, it all makes-

Steven Pressfield 1:05:48 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:05:48 ... perfect sense, I think.

Steven Pressfield 1:05:50 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:05:50 'Cause he, w- if you pull it off especially. Uh, do you visualize yourself completing the work like Olympic athletes visualize getting the gold medal? Uh, do you... You know, they, that's... They go through... I mean, that, that's actually a really... You can learn something from athletes on that is, um, years out, uh, certainly in t- two, three years out, some, some people do much longer, every day you visualize how the day of the, the, the championship will go, the, uh, down to e- I mean everything, down to how will it feel to stand on the podium and so on. Do you do anything like that in how you approach writing?

Steven Pressfield 1:06:31 No. Because it's-

Lex Fridman 1:06:32 It's always in the moment.

Steven Pressfield 1:06:33 Because, yeah, it is in the moment I think.

Lex Fridman 1:06:35 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 1:06:35 Because it's such a mystery, you just don't know. I think it's different from sports.

Lex Fridman 1:06:39 Right.

Steven Pressfield 1:06:39 Um...

Lex Fridman 1:06:40 'Cause you don't know the desti- there's no gold medal at the end.

Steven Pressfield 1:06:43 No. In fact, I would like to think, and I, uh, that as soon as you finish one, the next day you're on the other. And in fact, hopefully you've already started the other. You're already, you know, 100 pages into the other when you finish the, the ne- the first one. But it is a, it is a-... it's a journey, it's a process. I don't think it is a... In fact, I think it's very dangerous to think that way.

Lex Fridman 1:07:14 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 1:07:16 To think, "Oh, this, I'm gonna win the Oscar," you know?

Lex Fridman 1:07:19 Yeah. It's interesting, for the creative process, it might be dangerous. It, it's, it's, uh, may- maybe you can... Like, why is that dangerous? Because I kinda know you from-

Steven Pressfield 1:07:31 'Cause it's the ego.

Lex Fridman 1:07:32 It's the ego.

Steven Pressfield 1:07:32 Because you're giving yourself over to the ego. You know, I, uh, I keep saying this (laughs) myself, my job, I'm a servant of the muse. I, I'm there to do what she tells me to do. And if I suddenly think, "Oh, I'm really... I just wanna..." you know, whatever, the muse doesn't like that.

Lex Fridman 1:07:51 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 1:07:51 And, uh-

Lex Fridman 1:07:52 (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 1:07:53 ... you know?

Lex Fridman 1:07:54 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 1:07:54 And she's on another dimension from me.

Lex Fridman 1:07:58 I'm try- trying to square that 'cause I, I agree. I'm trying to square that with, um... I think there's a meditation to visualizing success in the athletic realm to where it focuses, it removes everything else away to where you focus on this particular battle. I mean, I think that you can do that in many kinds of ways. And in sports, the ego serves a more important role, I think, than it does in writing, and the ego, there's something...

Steven Pressfield 1:08:33 Well, no, let me, uh... When you say that, I know what you mean, Lex, and I do think there is a sort of a... You know, it's interesting to watch, uh, interviews with S- with Steph Curry-

Lex Fridman 1:08:44 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 1:08:44 ... who's such, obviously such a nice guy, um, but he's got such tremendous self-confidence.

Lex Fridman 1:08:54 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 1:08:54 You know, that it... But it's, it doesn't border on ego so much he... Because he's worked so hard for it, you know? But he knows... So he has visualized.

Lex Fridman 1:09:04 Yes.

Steven Pressfield 1:09:04 He has visualized maybe not so much winning, you know, the... As just him being the best he can be, him being in the flow, you know, doing his thing that he knows he can do.

Lex Fridman 1:09:18 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 1:09:18 Um, and I do think in the creative world, yeah, there is a sort of a thing like that where you, where an, you know, uh, a choreographer or filmmaker or whatever might, uh, s- be... Do an internal thing where they're saying, "I can make an Oscar-winning movie. I can direct this movie."

Lex Fridman 1:09:38 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 1:09:38 "You know, I'm, I'm banishing these thoughts that I'm not good enough. I can do that. I can, I can edit it. I can s- score it. I can, you know, bumpeta, bumpeta, bump." But I... And I don't think that's really ego. I think that's, uh, that's part of the process in a good way, like an athlete does that.

Lex Fridman 1:09:55 So, extreme confidence is what some of the best athletes come, come with and you think it's possible to, as a writer, to have extreme confidence in yourself?

Steven Pressfield 1:10:04 I do think so, you know, that, uh, I'm sure when John Lennon sat down to write a song, he felt like, "Shit, I can do this," you know?

Lex Fridman 1:10:14 I'm not so sure. I, I, I think, uh, I... 'Cause as... The great artists I've seen and you're, the... You're, you're haunted by self-doubt. It's that resist... I mean, the confidence-

Steven Pressfield 1:10:26 Yes, but, I mean, I guess... But even beyond the self-

Lex Fridman 1:10:28 I do-

Steven Pressfield 1:10:29 Within the sel- Above the self-doubt is-

Lex Fridman 1:10:30 Oh, it's the bigger-

Steven Pressfield 1:10:31 ... is the-

Lex Fridman 1:10:31 ... the bigger picture is something-

Steven Pressfield 1:10:32 ... self-belief, you know?

Lex Fridman 1:10:33 ... yeah, the self-

Steven Pressfield 1:10:34 Yeah, I'm freaking out. Yeah, I'm worried that I'm not gonna be able to do it. But, you know, I know I, I can do this.

Lex Fridman 1:10:38 Yeah. And when you look at... When you take a bigger picture view

Lex Fridman 1:10:41 of it.

Steven Pressfield 1:10:41 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:10:41 So, uh, the writing process, uh, is it fundamentally lonely? So-

Steven Pressfield 1:10:48 No.

Lex Fridman 1:10:50 And-

Steven Pressfield 1:10:50 Because you're with your characters.

Lex Fridman 1:10:53 (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 1:10:55 You are.

Lex Fridman 1:10:55 So you really put yourself in the world?

Steven Pressfield 1:10:58 Absolutely. You know, uh, I've, I've written about this before that I used to h... My desk used to face a wall instead of seeing... And people would say, "Well, don't you wanna look out the window?" But I'm, I'm in here. I'm, you know, I'm seeing, you know, the Spartans. I'm seeing, you know, whatever. And the charac- the characters that are on the page or that you create are not accidents, you know? They're coming out of some issue, some deep issue that you have-

Lex Fridman 1:11:26 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 1:11:27 ... whether you realize it or not. You might not realize it till 20 years later or if somebody explains it to you. So, your characters are kind of fascinating to you and their dilemmas are, are fascinating to you. And you're also trying to, to, um, come to grips with them, you know? You sort of see them through a glass darkly, you know, and you really wanna go... See them more clearly. Um, so yeah, no, it's not lonely at all. In fact, I'm more lonely sometimes later or going out to dinner with some people and actually talking to people.

Lex Fridman 1:11:59 Do you miss the characters after it's over?

Steven Pressfield 1:12:02 Uh, let's say I have, I have affection for them, kind of like children-

Lex Fridman 1:12:07 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 1:12:08 ... that have gone off to college and now are-

Lex Fridman 1:12:10 (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 1:12:10 ... you know, you only see them at Thanksgiving.

Lex Fridman 1:12:13 Uh, it's a...

Steven Pressfield 1:12:14 Definitely, I have affection for 'em, even the bad guys.

Lex Fridman 1:12:19 (laughs) Maybe especially the bad guys?

Steven Pressfield 1:12:22 Especially the bad guys.

Lex Fridman 1:12:23 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:12:25 Uh, you've, uh, said that writers, even successful writers, are often not tough-minded enough. And I've read that in a post, that you have to be a professional in the way you handle your emotions, that you have to be a bit of a warrior to be a writer. So, what are... Uh, what do you think makes a warrior? Is it, uh... Is a warrior born or trained in the realm, in the bigger realm, in, in the realm of writing and the creative process?

Steven Pressfield 1:12:55 I think, uh, I think they're born to some extent. You have the gift. Like you might have the gift as a martial artist to do whatever martial artists do. But the, the training is, is the big thing, 90% training, 10%, 10% genetics. And, uh, you know, I use another analogy other than warrior to... As far as writers, and that's like to be a mother.

Lex Fridman 1:13:16 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 1:13:16 If you think about...... if you're a writer or any creative person, you're giving birth to something, right? You're carrying a new life inside you. And, uh, in terms of bravery, if your child, your two-year-old child is underneath a, a car is coming down the street, the mother's gonna like stop a Buick, you know-

Lex Fridman 1:13:36 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 1:13:36 ... with her bare hands. So that's, uh, that's another way to think about how a, how a writer has to think about, or any creative person has to think about, I think, what they're, what they're doing, what this, this child, this new creation that they're bringing forth.

Lex Fridman 1:13:53 Yeah, so the hard work that's underlying that, I've, uh, just a couple weeks ago talked to, just happened to be in the same room, both gave talks, Arianna Huffington. I did this conversation-

Steven Pressfield 1:14:05 Uh-huh.

Lex Fridman 1:14:05 ... with her. Uh, she, uh, I didn't know much about her be- before then. But she has recently been, she wrote a couple books and been promoting a lifestyle where she basically, she created The Huffington Post and she gave herself like, I don't know, 20 hours a day just obsessed with her work. And then she, uh, she fainted, passed out, and kind of, uh, there was some health issues. And so she wrote this book saying that, um, you know, sleep, basically you want to establish a lifestyle that doesn't sacrifice health, that's productive but doesn't sacrifice health. She thinks that you can have both, productivity and health, criticizing Elon Musk, who I've also spoken with-

Steven Pressfield 1:14:49 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:14:49 ... for working too hard and thereby sacrificing, um, you know, uh, being less effective than he could be. So, uh, I'm, I'm trying to get at this balance between health and obsessively working at something and really working hard. So I'm, what Arianna is talking about makes sense to me, but I'm a little bit torn. To me, passion and reason do not overlap much or at all sometimes. Uh, maybe I'm being too Russian, but uh-

Steven Pressfield 1:15:21 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:15:22 ... uh, I feel madness and obsession does not care for health or sleep or diet or any of that. And hard work, just hard work a- and everything else can go to hell. So if you're really focused on, whether it's writing a book, ev- it should, everything should just go to hell. Uh, where do you stand on this balance? How important is health for productivity? How important is it to sort of get sleep and so on?

Steven Pressfield 1:15:49 I'm fr- on the, on the health side.

Lex Fridman 1:15:51 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 1:15:51 Uh, I mean, th- there was a period of my life when I was just, uh, uh, I had no obligations and I was just living in a little house and just working nonstop, you know? But even then, I would get up in the morning and I would have liver and eggs for breakfast-

Lex Fridman 1:16:10 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 1:16:10 ... every day, and I would do my, you know, exercise, whatever it was. But, although I was still doing like, you know, 18 hours a day. But I, I, I'm definitely, I kind of think of it sort of like an athlete does.

Lex Fridman 1:16:21 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 1:16:22 I'm sure that like Steph Curry, um, is, is, is totally committed to winning championships and stuff like that. But he has his family, he sees his fam- you know, family is always there. He, I'm sure he eats, you know, perfect, great stuff, gets his sleep, you know, gets the, the, the, the, uh, train- you know, the whatever a trainer does to him for his knees and his ankles and whatever. So I, or Kobe Bryant or anybody that's, uh, that's operating at a high level. So I do think I'm from the kind of the health school. The good thing about being a writer-

Lex Fridman 1:16:56 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 1:16:57 ... is it d- you can't work very many hours a day. You, you know, four hours is like the maximum I can work. I've never been able to work more than that. I don't know how people do it. I've c- heard of people do 10, 12, I don't know how they do it. So that gives you a lot of other time to, to do it.

Lex Fridman 1:17:14 Optimize, uh, your health, right?

Steven Pressfield 1:17:16 Yeah, optimize your health.

Lex Fridman 1:17:16 To do the exercise, to-

Steven Pressfield 1:17:17 'Cause you need to. You're in training, you know? You're, you're really, you're burning up a lot of B vitamins when you're working there at the...

Lex Fridman 1:17:23 (laughs) Yeah, but uh-

Steven Pressfield 1:17:27 Maybe it's a-

Lex Fridman 1:17:27 ... some-

Steven Pressfield 1:17:27 ... Russian thing with you, Lex.

Lex Fridman 1:17:28 Well, it's not even a Russian thing. I mean, uh-

Steven Pressfield 1:17:30 It also may be youth, you know?

Lex Fridman 1:17:32 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 1:17:32 At 35 you can be crazy.

Lex Fridman 1:17:35 You know, that's, that's the thing they, they keep telling me, but I'm pretty sure I'll be, um, at it still at a li- a later time too. I think, um, and it has to do with the career choice too. Uh, I think writing is almost, from everything I've heard, it's almost impossible to do it more than a few hours really well. The, when you start to get into certain disciplines, like with Elon Musk and me, uh, engineering disciplines, that really there's a lot more non-muse time needed.

Steven Pressfield 1:18:08 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:18:08 (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 1:18:09 Right, right, right.

Lex Fridman 1:18:09 So, um, the crazy hours that you're talk- uh, that you often are talking about, um, have to be done.

Steven Pressfield 1:18:18 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:18:19 And it doesn't, uh, so-

Steven Pressfield 1:18:20 I think that's true.

Lex Fridman 1:18:22 Yeah, so there's still the two, three hours of muse time (laughs) needed for truly genius ideas. But it's, uh, it's something s- something I certainly struggle with, um. Um, but yeah, I, I, I hear you lo- loud and clear on the health. So, uh,

Lex Fridman 1:18:41 what does a perfect day look like for you, um, if we're talking about writing? An hour by hour schedule of a perfect day.

Steven Pressfield 1:18:50 Um, I get up early, I go to the gym, I have breakfast with some friends of mine. I come-

Lex Fridman 1:18:57 What's early, by the way? What's, like I, how early-

Steven Pressfield 1:19:00 3:15.

Lex Fridman 1:19:02 AM?

Steven Pressfield 1:19:02 AM.

Lex Fridman 1:19:03 So we're talking really early.

Steven Pressfield 1:19:05 Really early. And I'm crazy early, ridiculously early.

Lex Fridman 1:19:08 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 1:19:09 But, and I haven't done that always, but that's kind of what-

Lex Fridman 1:19:12 Perfect day.

Steven Pressfield 1:19:12 ... what I'm on now. Um, so I'm in bed like, uh, when I'm with my, my nephews that are like four years old and three years old-

Lex Fridman 1:19:21 (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 1:19:21 ... I'm in bed before them.

Lex Fridman 1:19:22 Okay.

Steven Pressfield 1:19:23 Um-

Lex Fridman 1:19:23 You got a beat.

Steven Pressfield 1:19:25 ... uh...

Lex Fridman 1:19:25 You wake up... So- so, you said exercise first?

Steven Pressfield 1:19:28 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:19:29 And what does that look like? What's exercise for you?

Steven Pressfield 1:19:32 Uh...

Lex Fridman 1:19:32 You go to the gym?

Steven Pressfield 1:19:32 I go to the gym.

Lex Fridman 1:19:33 Okay.

Steven Pressfield 1:19:34 Um, I- I have a trainer. I have a couple of guys that I work out with. And, uh, I'll, you know... It's maybe an hour, maybe a little more. I'll do a little warm-up before, stretching afterwards, take a shower, go have breakfast. Um, but it's an intense kind of a thing that I definitely don't wanna do that's hard.

Lex Fridman 1:19:55 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 1:19:55 You know?

Lex Fridman 1:19:55 So you feel like you've accomplished something, first thing.

Steven Pressfield 1:19:58 Yeah. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:19:59 That's a big accomplishment of the day.

Steven Pressfield 1:20:00 But at the same time, it's not, like, so hard that I'm completely exhausted, you know? Um, and then I'll come home and handle whatever correspondence and stuff has to be done, and then I work for maybe three hours, and then I just sorta crash.

Lex Fridman 1:20:15 (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 1:20:15 The- the office is closed. I turn the switch. I don't think about any... I don't think about anything. I don't think about the work at all.

Lex Fridman 1:20:23 Do you listen to... Oh, uh, you mean afterwards?

Steven Pressfield 1:20:25 After work, once the office is closed.

Lex Fridman 1:20:27 But dur- during... So this was like 12:00 to 3:00 kinda thing?

Steven Pressfield 1:20:31 Something like that, yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:20:31 Something like that, okay.

Steven Pressfield 1:20:32 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:20:33 Uh, do you listen to music?

Steven Pressfield 1:20:34 No.

Lex Fridman 1:20:35 Do you have anything-

Steven Pressfield 1:20:36 But that's just me. I mean, I don't think... You know, but somebody could do it-

Lex Fridman 1:20:39 It's fascinating.

Steven Pressfield 1:20:39 ... a million different ways.

Lex Fridman 1:20:40 It's fascinating. You know, the... I mean, you've also... (laughs) Of- of most... Of many writers, you've really, uh... But like I've read Stephen King 'cause I'm writing it, you've optimized this con- conversation with the muse you're having. Not optimized, but you've at least, um, thought about it. So what's... Can you say a little bit more about the trivialities of that process, of, um, like you said, facing the wall? What's... Do you have little rituals?

Steven Pressfield 1:21:13 You mean, like, the granular aspect of it here?

Lex Fridman 1:21:15 The granular aspects, yeah.

Steven Pressfield 1:21:17 Uh, um...

Lex Fridman 1:21:19 Is there-

Steven Pressfield 1:21:19 I do have little rituals. I do have all kinds of-

Lex Fridman 1:21:21 All kinds of-

Steven Pressfield 1:21:21 ... which I'm not even gonna tell you about.

Lex Fridman 1:21:22 Sure. (laughs)

Steven Pressfield 1:21:23 But, uh, um, the one thing... I mean, I don't wanna, like, talk about this too much 'cause it sort of jinxes things, I think. But the one thing I- I do try to do is when I... The... When I sit down, I immediately get into it. First second.

Lex Fridman 1:21:40 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 1:21:41 I don't sit and fuck around with anything.

Lex Fridman 1:21:43 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 1:21:44 I immediately try to get into it as- as quickly as I can. The other thing is that writing a- a book or screenplay or anything like that is a process of multiple drafts. And it's the first draft that's where you're most with the muse, where you're going to the blank page. Like, right now, I'm on, I don't know, what, the fifth or sixth, seventh draft of some- of the thing I'm working on. So when I... I'm- I'm... I've got pages already written. And I'm kinda reading them afresh as I- as I go through the story. So it's not quite where I am now. It's not quite a deep muse scenario. Partly it is, but it's also sorta bouncing back and forth between the different... between the right brain and the left brain. I'm kinda looking at it and trying to evaluate it, and then I'm going into it and try to change it a little bit. Uh-

Lex Fridman 1:22:35 And when, uh... Do you know... Sit down, get right into it, do you know the night before of what that starting point is?

Steven Pressfield 1:22:43 Y- yeah, I always try to stop, and I learned this... I think Hemingway wrote about this or John Steinbeck or one of the... or maybe both of them, to- to always stop when you kinda know what's coming next so you're not at a- facing a chasm, you know?

Lex Fridman 1:22:58 Yeah. Okay, so... And afterwards, when you're done, the office is closed.

Steven Pressfield 1:23:03 The office is closed. I let the muse take care of it, you know? And- and I don't wanna w- uh... And I think it's a very unhealthy thing to worry about it or think about any creative process.

Lex Fridman 1:23:14 You don't, like on a long walk later, think about-

Steven Pressfield 1:23:18 Yeah. At that... Then I will sorta keep my mind open to it, but I won't be, like, obsessing about it.

Lex Fridman 1:23:24 Right. Okay. And so-

Steven Pressfield 1:23:25 'Cause a- actually, on walks, sometimes things will pop in your head, you know, and you'll go, "Uh-oh, I should change that or..." But that's not your ego doing it. That's a deeper level.

Lex Fridman 1:23:36 Okay, so how does the day end? So going-

Steven Pressfield 1:23:38 In terms of writing?

Lex Fridman 1:23:39 So, yeah, the writing... Well, no. The writing, cl- uh, the office door closes, and, uh, then the rest of the day, just do whatever the hell.

Steven Pressfield 1:23:48 Um, maybe go out to dinner. My girlfriend is not here now. She's in New York working. We'll make dinner or whatever.

Lex Fridman 1:23:55 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 1:23:56 Go out to dinner, something like that. And, uh, maybe- maybe I'll read something, nothing heavy. Uh, and I- I go to bed pretty early. And, um... The gym is a big thing for me. I'll already... Sort of probably with y- like with you with martial arts. The night before, I'll be- I'll be visualizing what I have to do the next day and getting myself psyched up for that.

Lex Fridman 1:24:19 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 1:24:20 And then I'll just conk out like a light and wake up (laughs) at the crack of dawn.

Lex Fridman 1:24:25 So looking out into the future, this year, next few years, what do you think the muse has in store for you?

Steven Pressfield 1:24:33 (laughs) Uh, I don't think you can ever know. Um, it's probably-

Lex Fridman 1:24:38 Do you have hopes?

Steven Pressfield 1:24:38 ... something along the same... I really believe... Uh, you know, there's that exercise where you s- where they say to you, "Visualize yourself five years in the future-"

Lex Fridman 1:24:47 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 1:24:48 "... and then write a letter to your... from that person to yourself." I don't believe in that at all, because I don't think you can... You know, there's a line in, uh, Out of Africa, that God made the world round so that we couldn't see too far-

Lex Fridman 1:25:01 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 1:25:01 ... ahead. Um, you- you just don't know as a writer or as a crea- a person. You know, uh, I never knew... My first book was A Legend of Bagger Vance.

Lex Fridman 1:25:12 Mm-hmm.

Steven Pressfield 1:25:12 I hadn't... Before that happened, I had no clue that I was gonna be writing anything like that on that subject, anything at all. No clue-

Lex Fridman 1:25:20 Oh, wow.

Steven Pressfield 1:25:20 ... until it just sorta came. And then when I've... when that was done, people said, "Well, you gotta write another one." I had no idea what it was, which was gonna be Gates of Fire. No clue. So, (laughs) so if- if somebody had sat me down at the start of that and s- asked the question-I would have been in, crazy to have said it, to say it. And so, I just hope as, as the future unfolds that I'm open to it, you know?

Lex Fridman 1:25:48 Well, I think I speak for a lot of people in s- in saying that, uh, we look forward to what that future looks like.

Steven Pressfield 1:25:54 (laughs) . Well, thank you, Lex.

Lex Fridman 1:25:54 Steven, thank you so much for talking today. It was fun.

Steven Pressfield 1:25:56 Yeah. It's a great ... You got the best job in the world going around talking to people that you wanna talk to-

Lex Fridman 1:26:01 Yeah.

Steven Pressfield 1:26:02 ... and that they will talk to you, you know?

Lex Fridman 1:26:03 Yeah. So, thank you for doing it.

Steven Pressfield 1:26:05 Hey, thank you for the great questions. You made me think.

Lex Fridman 1:26:07 (laughs) .

Steven Pressfield 1:26:07 I have certainly a bunch of questions I never, ever a- answered before.

Lex Fridman 1:26:11 Awesome. Thank you so much.

Steven Pressfield 1:26:11 So, thanks a lot. Great.

Lex Fridman 1:26:12 Thank you. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Steven Pressfield. And thank you to our sponsors, the Jordan Harbinger Show and Cash App. Please consider supporting the podcast by going to jordanharbinger.com/lex and downloading Cash App and using code LEXPODCAST. Click on the links, buy the stuff. It's the best way to support this podcast. If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with five stars on Apple Podcasts, support it on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter @LexFridman, spelled without the E, just F-R-I-D-M-A-N. And now, let me leave you with some words from Steven Pressfield. "Are you paralyzed by fear? That's a good sign. Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember one rule of thumb. The more scared we are of a work or a calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it." Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.