EVERY SPOKEN WORD
115 min read · 23,084 words- 0:00 – 15:00
I, I maintain that…
- RGRobert Greene
I, I maintain that seduction or exciting people or persuading them is a game of absence and presence. So if you're continually present, if you're so obvious, if you're always in people's face, you give them no room to use their imagination to think, "Oh, Robert might be this very exciting, mysterious person." You're so in their face, they have no room to imagine. They just see who you are. If you step back and you're not there so often, if instead of being seen every day, you're seen every other day or every three days, you give space for the imagination to imagine, "Maybe this person is actually quite interesting." So you feed other people's imag- you make them think about you when you're not there. And as they think about you, they start idealizing, they start imagining qualities that maybe aren't there. But if you're too absent, if you're there only once a week, for instance, then people might start forgetting about you. So you have to know how to play that game of back and forth absence and presence.
- CWChris Williamson
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I am joined by Robert Greene. I'm sure he needs no introduction, but Robert, thank you very much for coming on. I, I can't wait to sit down and talk with you today.
- RGRobert Greene
My pleasure, Chris. Thanks for inviting me.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, so I have a, a very lovely story to tell you actually about one of the guys behind the Modern Wisdom Project, a guy called Jordan, who said that your book, 48 Laws of Power, was the sole reason that he studied history at university. Apparently s-
- RGRobert Greene
Really? (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Apparently, somehow Tesco big supermarket in the UK randomly had it on a shelf. He picked it up at the age of 13, and that was the reason he studied history at the age of 18. So congratulations.
- RGRobert Greene
Oh, that's exciting. Thank you. I've heard such stories before, but that's always nice to hear. Thanks.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. It's- it must feel, um, it must feel very, I guess, scary to think when you reflect on stuff like that and realize the sort of impact that your work has on people.
- RGRobert Greene
Well, if I, uh, if, if I can get people to read, I, you know, what, what more can I ask? Um, you know, my, my view of history is that it's not something that should be thought of as boring or something that's just buried in the past and has no relevance to today. I wanna make history come to life, so when you're reading about Julius Caesar, you can feel what he felt like when he was on the battlefield, when he decided to cross the Rubicon-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- RGRobert Greene
... and fight, you know, Pompeii. So, uh, I try to make history come to life. And if readers feel that way, if they feel inspired to study, God, that's, that's the greatest compliment I could receive.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, I think you've, uh, you've definitely been paid that by Jordan. So 48 Laws of Power, I'm, I'm, uh, uh, a massive fan of, but we're talking about The Laws of Human Nature today, which is your new book as of October last year.
- RGRobert Greene
That's correct.
- CWChris Williamson
Fantastic. So first question I wanted to ask was how, how does this book relate to your past work, 48 Laws of Power, Art of Seduction, et cetera, et cetera?
- RGRobert Greene
Well, I kind of see it as the culmination, sort of the, the distillation of all that I've learned over (clears throat) excuse me, over 20 years of writing books and doing a lot of consulting work and just sort of observing people. And, uh, I wrote a book prior to this called Mastery, and I had a chapter in Mastery about social intelligence. And the idea is that you could be absolutely brilliant in your field. You could know all the technical things you need to know, but if you're really bad with people-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- RGRobert Greene
... you'll completely neutralize all of your brilliance. You can even be a genius, but if you don't know how to work with people, if you irritate and alienate them, then you're gonna, you're gonna have a life of misery and pain. And I wrote that chapter, this is one element of becoming a master in your field, is being able to work with people. And readers really responded to that, and they said, you know, "Robert, I really like that chapter, but I need more. Can you give me more?"
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- RGRobert Greene
I felt like, you know, this is an area where people really need help. You know, I needed help when I was just starting out in the work world and this kind of, this kind of knowledge. You know, we live in a world where people are increasingly self-absorbed. They're just lost in their smartphones, whatever. They're not paying attention to people, they're not interacting as much as we used to interact with people, and so we're losing some basic social skills, the ability to s- judge people and see their character and not just simply be taken in by their appearances. So I felt this was the culmination of all I've studied and learned over 20 some years. And I'm also trying to meet a really deep need that people have right now in the world today.
- CWChris Williamson
I couldn't agree more. Uh, I recently interviewed Robin Hanson, author of Elephant in the Brain. Um, and m- mo- secret motives in, uh, the way that people behave was it is, um, a way to expedite your, um, movement through the world and, and avoid pitfalls, I suppose, with other people, isn't it? Um, so I wanted to, I wanted to kind of a- ask something you've already basically answered, which is, why is understanding drives and motivations important for normal people? Like, you'd think maybe it's the sort of thing an evolutionary biologist might be interested in, but how, how does, how does that relate to the normal layperson?
- RGRobert Greene
Well, um, you know, if you want, for instance, take a common scenario in life, you either with your children or your boss or your spouse, they have some sort of irritating behavior that gets on your nerves, and you want to change them. You want to somehow find a way to change them. It's a very common scenario. Well, the normal thing that most humans do in that situation is to kind of preach, to tell them, "Look, this is what you're doing. It's irritating me. You've got to change, or else there's going to be consequences." You know? And we don't realize when we're in that situation and we talk like that...... even if we're being polite, that we're making people defensive, we're actually making the situation worse. We're making it harder to get them to change because people don't like being told what to do. They don't like being told that they have to, they're forced to do something to change themselves. And so when you're in that kind of scenario, you know, you have to understand something basic about human nature. You have to understand that people have an opinion of themselves. They like to think of themselves as basically good and decent, as basically autonomous, that they are in control of their own lives and their destiny, and that they're basically intelligent. It could be, in some, if it's your teenage son, it could be he thinks he's intelligent with video games. It doesn't matter. People think they're intelligent. And so you're pushing against that by telling people what to do. You're making them feel that they have no control, that they're not autonomous, that they have to be forced into changing their behavior. You're telling them they're not very smart. You're making them feel that they're not a good person. And so all you're doing is making the situation worse because you don't understand a very basic principle of human nature, that ins- instead of pushing against what people think about themselves, instead you have to validate what they think about themselves. You have to make them feel comfortable about who they are. You have to feed their idea that they are good and autonomous and intelligent. And once you validate and recognize the other human being you're dealing with as a human being, as an individual, then suddenly they're s- they're open to suggestion, they're open to change, but, 'cause you've worked with some basic human psychology, on and on and on. So constantly in life, we're dealing with hitting against walls with people, we're frustrated, we're disappointed. We can't get them to change their behavior. We don't know why they're acting this particular way, you know? I have a chapter on envy, and I discuss how dangerous envy is in the world today and how it's like a, it's like a secret gas. Nobody admits that they're envious-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- RGRobert Greene
... until you're suddenly attacked by an envious person and you find, you know, something awful is happening to you. Nobody comes with a sign saying, "I feel envy, I'm attacked-"
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- RGRobert Greene
"... for that reason." Right? So you have to understand where envy comes from, why it's a very basic human emotion, why you feel envy as well and I feel envy, and why some people are toxic in this direction. I could go on and on in all of the different chapters, but your ignorance of human nature, of what motivates human behavior, of why we are simply, many of us are prisoners of things that are wired into our brain from millions of years ago, is absolutely essential to navigating these very complicated social worlds that we inhabit.
- CWChris Williamson
I couldn't agree more. (laughs) I think that especially the modern workplace with its serendipitous open, uh, office plans and multiple emails, multiple meetings, it becomes a, uh, a petri dish for these sort of interactions, doesn't it?
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
So I wanted to talk about narcissism. It was, uh, uh, an interesting, um, uh, chapter that you touched on.
- RGRobert Greene
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
I wanted to ask about whether it's a negative emotion. I think when most people hear the word narcissism, they think immediately negative emotion.
- 15:00 – 30:00
What are some of…
- RGRobert Greene
well, it's very difficult. I mean, really often the best strategy of all is to learn about how to recognize a deep narcissist, because as I said before, they don't go around with a sign saying, "I'm a deep narcissist. You know, watch out." They can be very charming and charismatic, and so you want to look for signs early on that they're not really paying attention to you. Um, you know-
- CWChris Williamson
What are some of those signs?
- RGRobert Greene
Well, you'll notice that they- they'll... when you talk about yourself, they seem to be listening, but they're not really listening. Their eyes are kind of dead. They don't really engage with you. They're not really interested in your ideas and who you are. They give a kind of a surface impression that they are, but it's a ... So sometimes with a deep narcissist, you'll notice on their facial expressions that they'll be smiling a lot as they listen to you and nodding their head, but there's a deadness in their eyes. They're not really engaged with you. They're not really ... Uh, the eyes reveal a lot about how deeply people are looking at you and interested and engaged, and there's a kind of sheen there. They're not paying really attention to you. They're not interested in your ideas. Um, look at their past and their broken record of- of how many people they've alienated and how they can't stay very long in a relationship. See the patterns of that. Um, but most of all, notice that people who are extra dramatic, who- who even seem charismatic, um, they tend to be ... Narcissists learn how to charm you to get the attention that they need. It's called the- the narcissistic feed. They need- they need to be fed all the time, um, and so, um, they're always searching for that attention. So be able to look at people like that from a distance. If you know someone who's extremely dramatic like that and you find it interesting, perhaps your antenna should go off and think maybe all of that drama and all of that excitement that they generate is just to get attention, it's nothing to do with you. So sort of look for the signs beforehand, and so the best strategy is to not get involved (laughs) .
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) The best strategy is to avoid them at all costs.
- RGRobert Greene
It is. It is.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- RGRobert Greene
Because, you know, most of us have degrees of narcissism, and we should be empathetic to that, and you can draw people out by getting them involved in a relationship or getting them interested in your life, or if you have a child that you suspect might have that tendency, getting them to become extremely excited by some field, some work, some object, something they can study to get outside of their self-absorption. But with someone who's an adult who's- has these tendencies, you're not really ever going to change them. So the best strategy is either to not avoid a relationship or to somehow manage it so that they're not kind of destroying your life.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Um, one of the points that you touched on there, which I found very useful and very interesting was, um, curiosity in what someone else is saying as being a useful strategy for- for bonding and for making people feel like the conversation's going in the right direction. Listeners may remember a recent, uh, conversation I had with David Perell, where he spoke about most conversations being two intersecting monologues, almost like a game of tennis, and-
- RGRobert Greene
Uh-
- CWChris Williamson
... as a solution to not coming across as too self-absorbed, genuine curiosity, like actually caring about what the other person is saying and genuinely wanting to know what they think about things appears to be a, a really good, uh, rough-hewn antidote to, to that.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah, very much so. I mean, it's kind of a cliché to say that people don't listen well and you just need to become a better listener, and I don't think that's gonna really change people's behavior. The problem why you're not really listening to other people in a conversation, while that kind of tennis game of monologues, uh, two monologues going on, is because you're not really that interested in what the other person has to say. You find your own problems, your own life, your own interests more fascinating than what they have to say. You're worried about, you know, your, what you're gonna do tomorrow or whether this woman is interested in you or not. You're absorbed in your own anxieties and problems, and what people are talking about aren't as interesting to you. So the only solution is to somehow get yourself to a place and realize that the people you deal with are actually very interesting. They're fascinating. You want to understand them. They're weirder than you imagine. People are weird. They have strange dreams just like you have strange dreams, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- RGRobert Greene
Uh, we watch movies because we're fascinated by the characters, and we wanna get inside what's motivating that evil person in that movie. Why is that person a, a k- a murderer, et cetera. We wanna get inside their worlds. We're fascinated by characters in a movie. Well, the people you're dealing with on a day-to-day basis are like characters in a movie. They have depths that you can't even begin to see or suspect. They have fantasies. They have a dark side. They have a shadow side that, uh, that they're trying to hide. So if you approach life like it's theater, like it's just all like a movie, and that people are interesting and you wanna figure out who they are, it suddenly changes the game, um, so that when you're sitting down tomorrow now with that friend who you've had endless boring conversations with, nobody ever listening to them, if suddenly you stop that and you actually stopped your interior monologue, and you paid attention, and you looked at their body language, and you looked at the way their eyes shift as they're talking about something or how their eyes light up when a certain subject is touched, if you suddenly stop and really pay attention, you're gonna learn things and it's gonna be fascinating, and you're gonna be able to apply that knowledge in many, many ways. But none of this, all of my talk, all of my books, all the books ever written won't matter at all if you don't find people inherently interesting.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. I think there's some people in your life that you have to put up with the conversations with. (laughs) Like, you're not gonna stop speaking to Grandma, like, when she wants to come round, but there's a, there- yeah.
- RGRobert Greene
Sure.
- CWChris Williamson
There's an- there's an upper bound on, on how far you can take that. But yeah, definitely, especially, um, my experience having done this podcast and, you know, recording two, three hours of deep conversations every week for a year, um, I've certainly noticed in myself that that, um, instantiation of genuinely being interested in a normal guest is now bleeding into my discourse day to day with other people, and that's making my conversations with other people so much more interesting than they ever were before. But I've not become any more interesting. Well, maybe a tiny bit. But obviously, after speaking to you, Robert, I'll be a, an awful lot (laughs) interesting. But, uh, yeah, the- I'm not that much more interesting, but I'm more interested in what they have to say, which elicits a better response from them, which raises the, the level of the conversation up. Um, but yeah, I, I, I totally agree. Uh, I wanted to move on to some of my favorite stories from the book, um, and I wanted to ask why Bill Clinton was a successful politician and how this relates to wearing masks.
- RGRobert Greene
That's strange, because I took that s- uh, what story are you referring to? The Ireland story?
- CWChris Williamson
The one where he was talking about why, uh, how Bill was able to curate himself and his accent towards different, uh-
- RGRobert Greene
Oh.
- CWChris Williamson
... audiences.
- RGRobert Greene
Okay. Well, um, he was, you know ... Bill Clinton was kind of a, a master actor, um, and I have nothing against people being actors in life. In fact, I'd say it's essential. We are all actors. We're all performing. Uh, some of us are good actors and some of us are bad actors. But when you're inter- interacting with your boss, you're not the same person as you are when you're interacting with your intimate partner. You change. You put on a different mask. You change your body language, the way you talk. We do that with everybody that we deal with. And so, people who are really good at this game, who get far, who have high level of social skill, know how to kind of blend into the audience, to the people that they're dealing with. They can, um, sometimes, uh, s- you know, change their accent a little bit, like he would do. He, you know, if he wanted, if he was talking to a working class group, he would kind of, you know, uh, emphasize his own working class southern roots. But if he was talking to a group of intellectuals, he would kind of soften his southern accent a bit, on and on. A lot of people find that false and manipulative. I don't. I think being able to adapt to the people that you're dealing with is a high level of social skill, because what it means is you're thinking about who that audience is, about who the people you're dealing with, and you're trying to get into their spirit, and you're not just simply looking at them as something from a distance, like objects that you manipulate, you know, to win an election. You actually care about them, and you're getting into their world and into their mindset. And so, I wanna take away the guilt that we humans have for who we really are.That's the main theme in all of my books. We're so goddamn guilty about the desires that we want for power, for instance. That was the subject of The 48 Laws of Power. And we're so, we feel so guilty about this idea that we might be manipulative, that we might be actors, as if we're being fake or inauthentic. It's just a lot of bullshit in my mind, because we are all acting all of the time. Look at yourself in your day-to-day interactions. You change your mask, you change your expression, your words, depending on who you're dealing with. You never tell people, "Damn it, you've put on 40 pounds. You're not looking so..."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- RGRobert Greene
You say, "No, you look great today. Wow." You know? "I loved your screenplay. It was great." You don't tell them the truth.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- RGRobert Greene
Just admit that you do that and stop being this kind of fake saint that everybody's trying to pose like they are. So I applaud someone like a Bill Clinton, who knows how to be a consummate actor and change according to who he's talking to.
- CWChris Williamson
Why do you think we are so guilty about our natural human natures? Is that because we are only exposed to the highlight reel of other people, so the sort of the darker, um, depths of them is never really shown with that same degree of fidelity that we get to see our own kind of, um, biases at work and our, our, um, darker parts?
- RGRobert Greene
Well, you know, I was... A few years ago, I was in Sydney, Australia, and I went to the zoo there. (clears throat) And I was kind of transfixed by the chimpanzee compound that they have at the Sydney Zoo. It's amazing. It's this very open space where you can observe an entire community of about 30 chimpanzees. And what shocked me more than anything, I was sat there for two hours watching them-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- RGRobert Greene
... because they were so human. It was just like looking at an office situation with the alpha male and all the others kind of. But what was equally fascinating was all the young people who would stop by and they were very embarrassed by looking at the chimpanzees. They were giggling, they were made uncomfortable about it. And my, the point I'm making is, I think we feel uncomfortable about our own animal nature, about our own primate roots, about the primitive part of ourselves. We want to think of ourselves... Angela Carter, the English writer, she said, "We like to think that we're descended from angels instead of primates." You know? But we are descended from primates, and primates have tendencies that are embedded in us. Our tendency to feel envy, our own aggressive impulses. These are things that come from millions of years of evolution, but we're uncomfortable with it. We want to think of ourselves as these sort of 21st century incredibly sophisticated people, that we don't have these sort of dark animal-like impulses. But just spend a couple weeks on social media, on the internet, and you see that primate part of our nature is out there in full display, even though it's the most sophisticated tool of communication ever invented.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- 30:00 – 45:00
Yeah, I mean, another…
- CWChris Williamson
it so fascinating. So I, I, I really enjoyed getting into learning about it recently.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah, I mean, another aspect that, that's similar to that is, um, our an... And going into the evolutionary biology part, is (clears throat) before the invention of language, we, as a social animal, our survival depended on our ability to communicate with a group. And so we humans developed complex emotions, more emotions than other animals have, that could be displayed on our face and in our body language that would communicate to people. So if we felt fear about a situation, we would have, you know... Chimpanzees and other animals have the hair stand on the back of their neck.... we had many more ways of signaling fear, and this would-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- RGRobert Greene
... communicate itself to the entire group. And the whole group would feel that fear, and they would know, "We better f- run away, you know, better get out of this situation." But other, other emotions like joy, et cetera, so the group, we were primed evolutionarily to feel the emotions of the group, to be susceptible and vulnerable to what other people are feeling as a form of communication and survival. Well, fast-forward to hundreds of thousands of years later, and that kind of viral susceptibility that we have to the emotions and ideas of other people is in full display on social media, in, in our politics, et cetera. We're extremely susceptible to the moods and ideas and opinions of other people. We like to think, "Well, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm left wing. I have all my ideas are my own. I, nobody ever told me..." But you'll notice if, if they, uh, if they explain their ideas, they're just exactly the same as thousands of other people. Why do they share all of the same ideas about the same subject as thousands of other people? It's because they're conforming to the group. It's because you're susceptible to that pressure to feel like you're fitting into the group, and you're, you're very vulnerable to what other people are saying and doing. We're constantly imitating, and we're constantly being influenced by people and not realizing it. So that's just another aspect of how something very ancient that served a purpose for our ancestors is now something that doesn't serve so well for us in the modern age.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. I think people being very careful about the circles that they expose themselves to online is an incredibly useful tool. I think I went onto your Twitter early on. Am I right in saying that you follow 68 people on Twitter, or a very low number of people? Yes.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
So I'm, I'm on 66, um, which is (laughs) ...
- RGRobert Greene
Oh. Oh.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, and I, I found it very interesting to, to, to, f- uh, see that you'd done the same. And I'm going to presume that it is because your newsfeed is to be curated to only see things that you want to see.
- RGRobert Greene
Sh- yeah. But, you know, you can take that too far because, you know, you do sort of wanna expose yourself to what other people are, are, are saying and thinking, you know. Um, so you do wanna not just read the same blogs and the same podcasts that confirm what you already believe.
- CWChris Williamson
The echo chamber effect's dangerous.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah. So sometimes it's good to expose yourself to what Trump supporters are saying on the internet. I find that fascinating, and I don't, I don't demonize them because they are human beings. I do wanna understand why they have fallen under the spell of this madman.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- RGRobert Greene
You know, I think. So it's good to, like, not just consume the ideas that support and confirm what you already believe. But also, you're right. You do have to regulate it as well because those, that anger that you can feel when you read something so frustrating and irritating can ruin your whole day. It's, so-
- CWChris Williamson
Ah, it, it blows my mind. So the listeners at home will know, um, mine and the team's personal feelings with regards to notifications on phones. But if you are listening to this, perhaps for the first time, because you've seen that we've got Robert on, I'm going to sing the song to you right now, which is, please go onto your iPhone settings or, or Android or whatever you're using, and just turn off the notifications on your social media. Check them at your will, not at the will of the, of the machine that's in your pocket, because this, uh, sort of unscheduled dopamine release that we're at the mercy of throughout the day, I mean, it must, especially for you, Robert, as someone who's been understanding human nature for such a long time, presumably before the advent of smartphone, social media, and then seeing, I guess, all of these, uh, human characteristics that you've known for so long get, like, um, amplified and then broadcast to the world, it must have been a very interesting, uh, fascinating sort of, uh, experiment and also terrifying, I'm going to presume. (laughs)
- RGRobert Greene
Well, if you read books by marketing people (clears throat) and, uh, the psychology of marketing, you'll understand how insidious that can be. These are people who, who study psychology more than anybody else, who understand why, how the human brain works and how to pass information along without giving the appearance that you're giving people news, how to be so sneaky with how you can influence human behavior. And you better believe that Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, has studied, in depth, all of these marketing tools and has applied them to a great degree on Facebook. So just the idea of that pinging noise, of creating a noise, like, like for a child, that kind of has that dopamine effect that you have, on and on and on. They know, they know completely all the viral effects that they can create.
- CWChris Williamson
It's the reason why the badge color is red because red is a, a high-alert color, right?
- RGRobert Greene
Right. Exactly. So you're, we're all just being dupes of a great marketing team of people who know how to feed upon the vulnerabilities in human nature, you know. Uh, I read a book a while ago, a French book. I, I don't know how to translate the title.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- RGRobert Greene
It has to do about a guy to how to manipulate people is basically what it's called, and it was written by two social scientists in France, who revealed all of the tricks that marketing people, all of the studies that they've used. You know, in, in universities around the world, psychology departments are doing studies about human behavior where they actually do experiments with people. The number one audience for reading those studies are people in marketing. So they know, for instance, they knew about virtue signaling well before we ever heard about it.... they know that people like to share the fact that they're giving to causes. You look on Facebook and you see all that time for your birthday, "I want to contribute, you know, $1,500 to the Save the Gorilla Fund," or whatever. They know that this is a supreme marketing skill that people want to signal to others, you know, so there's- it- it increases their look, how many people look at it, how- how much traffic they have. So don't be naive about social media. These people are geniuses, evil geniuses, but-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Listen-
- RGRobert Greene
... (...) nature.
- CWChris Williamson
... everybody that's listening, just unfollow everyone from Twitter, then go follow myself and Robert, and then-
- RGRobert Greene
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... slowly begin to build it back up. Obviously, you re- you need us two first. And once you've got us two, you can start to build it up from there. Um, I- I don't know, just to bookend that, I don't know if you're familiar with Tristan Harris from the Center for Humane Technology. So he used to be a design ethicist at Google, um, and has now- he is the equivalent of, like, an Edward Snowden for social media. Uh, and-
- RGRobert Greene
Oh. Oh, I'm not sure-
- CWChris Williamson
You need-
- RGRobert Greene
... it's Tristan.
- CWChris Williamson
Tristan Harris. I'll send you it once we're done, and I'll link it in the show notes below to anyone who is interested. Um, his podcast with Sam Harris, no relation, um, is mind-blowing, unbelievable about the- the psychology of persuasion and all of the different tactics that are being used. I think you're gonna find it fascinating, Robert.
- RGRobert Greene
Oh, well, that's great. Thank you very much.
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
Right. …
- CWChris Williamson
more subtle these steps that we take to get us to this recommendation for a product. Um, and yeah-
- RGRobert Greene
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... I, I wonder where the future of that lies. I wonder how much more subtle and subversive the, the tactics can get. We're just gonna riff on social media, right? Stop the podcast, Robert. We're just gonna complain about social media (laughs) for the rest of it.
- RGRobert Greene
Well, I mean, subliminal advertising, which was the big subject back in the '60s when people would put in one frame of a, of a soft drink in a movie and see that people, you know, pass so quickly you couldn't realize it. And then everybody at, at the intermission would go buy a Coca-Cola. You know, that got joked about because, you know, nobody does that anymore. It's illegal, in fact, to do that in the United States. But subliminal advertising, using subliminal effects, is extremely powerful, and it's at the level of, of what you do for an infant. So people know that certain sounds have a certain effect. Movies are now designed by sound designers who know how not to use music, but how to create that continual drone that's going to have the precise effect of creating horror and anxiety or raising ... They are masters at manipulating you on a subliminal level. That's the future. That's the scary Matrix future that we have, but hopefully we can control and not get into. But if you know so well how to affect people subliminally on that infant level of, "Ooh, there's a mobile up here. I wanna touch and play with this pretty little things."
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- RGRobert Greene
But that's how they operate. That's very powerful and very insidious.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, it really is. Um, one of the chapters that I really ... really resonated with me, I work in club promo, so I run nightclubs. Um-
- RGRobert Greene
Oh.
- CWChris Williamson
As a, a, a part of that, I'm exposed to a very high velocity, wide range of personality types.
- RGRobert Greene
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
And the, the toxic types of people that you identified, particularly the big talker and the drama magnet, as I'm sure (laughs) you can imagine working in nightlife, they really, really resonated with me. Um, I wondered if you might be able to just-
- RGRobert Greene
Should write a book.
- CWChris Williamson
I should. (laughs)
- RGRobert Greene
You should write a book for this.
- CWChris Williamson
I should. (laughs) I should. Honestly, the observations of human behavior in nightclubs is, it, I feel like I should be an anthropologist just sat on the front door observing what happens and ...
- RGRobert Greene
It'd be a great book, I'm telling you.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, maybe, maybe. That might be, that might be the next step. But yes, um, I wanted to just ask yourself about what toxic types of people you have seen consistently in your life. The ones that swim in the academic circles perhaps, or the ones who you think-
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... that, that are, are, are, are more common to yourself. I would be interested to find that out.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah, I notice, um, a lot of academic people, intellectuals, um, they're very aggressive, but they put all of their aggression into argument, into certain style of arguing, and they're masters at putting you down. Um, so I, you know, I get a lot of grief for, um, writing The 48 Laws of Power, for being kind of manipulative, for being ... for writing a popular bestselling book, and it's not, you know, not fairly weighty enough for them. And so people who are intellectuals have very subtle ways of putting you down, you know, of saying, "Wow, Robert, I see that your book has sold very well amongst people on Wall Street." You know, so there's complimenting you that your book is selling well, but they're also dissing you for the fact that you're appealing to, to sharks out there, you know? So ...... the subtle put down that kind of disguises envy, I get a lot from people who are, who are academic intellectual types. Um, you know, I, I found ... I do a lot of consulting work with people who are high level in business and, um, I was on the board of directors of a publicly traded company. And, uh, when I talk about a narcissist, a kind of a toxic deep narcissist, believe me, I know what I'm talking about because I've dealt with them on a very person to person level. So this CEO that I was working with who was head of this company, I was on the board of directors, he was very charismatic, very dramatic, and I was seduced by him. I fell for him. I thought, "This guy is brilliant. He's a genius." And it was only as evidence piled up, as I tried to give him advice and I tried to tell him, "The company's heading downward quickly. You need to do this, this, and this." And I realized he wouldn't listen to anything I said, even though he hired me for my brilliant 48 Laws of Power advice. So, you know, there are a lot of people, you know, like an Elon Musk, have this kind of quality where they attract a lot of followers, um, and they seem so exciting and interesting, but they're actually disguising a lot of deep-rooted emotional problems. And the person in, in The Laws of Human Nature that really resonates with me on that level is the story of Howard Hughes, whom, um ... You didn't read that part?
- CWChris Williamson
I must have missed that bit. Please tell us.
- RGRobert Greene
Well, now, he ... Howard Hughes, as you know, was a great... They did the film about him. He's the great, um, aviator who started, you know, a n- a ma- a very important, um, airline company manufacturing airplanes, Hughes Aircraft. And he had this reputation for being this incredible maverick, for being, um, someone who would fly a plane and, and risk death and, and, and do all sorts of crazy things. Um, and so he got this reputation and people thought this is ... He's like an American icon. We venerate him. And he started this business, this airline company, and he ... If you add up the number of failures that he had in business, he has to be probably the worst businessman that ever lived. He lost more money than anybody that I can think of in history through various ventures, on and on and on. He's ... The Army commissions him to build this air- air- this new airplane. He can't, he can't do it. He can't bring it to pass. He creates one of them, the, the largest plane ever invented. If you saw the movie, you saw it. But it can't fly anywhere, it can't do anything. There's only one of them. It was never used. He had other commissions like that. He was an incredible failure, but time and again, people s- funded him and, and supported him because they fell for this belief in the myth about how great he was. And, um, a lot of what happens to people is, uh ... I talk in, in the book about grandiosity. Um, when you have success, like he had, or you get attention like that, you think that you're a god, you think that you're infallible, that no matter what you create or produce, it's going to be, you know, absolutely perfect, and so you kind of believe in your own myth. That's a very big to- sort of toxic type that I've met in my consulting work with people in business. They've had some success and they think that nothing they can do is wrong, so they don't listen to anybody and they feel like they can control everything, a kind of micromanager type of profile. That's one toxic type I've ... I could go on and on. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) I'm sure, I'm sure that you could. Um, I did want to ask a question actually that Sam Harris asked Daniel Kahneman when they did a podcast recently, and he said, "How much of your writing is advice for yourself versus for others, and does the understanding of these laws help your behavior?" When Sam asks Dan Kahneman this, he said, "I ... He's n-" (laughs) "He's no better at avoiding his own biases, just more cognizant when it happens and more regretful after the fact." (laughs) And I found it so hilarious.
- RGRobert Greene
Well, that's true. I mean, I can, I can see that, but I, I'm a little more hopeful than maybe Dan Kahneman is. I think that if you recognize your own biases, it gives you a, a d- a degree of control over them. So I, I say that we're n- we humans aren't rational, that we're basically driven by our emotions, which is something that he talks a lot about. They call it the effective heuristic, that when people buy economic behavior, it's not driven by rationality, it's driven more by emotions. Um, and so, you know, I have these biases, obviously, as well. So when I'm writing the book on human nature, um, I have a bias, which is I have a negative bias. I tend to view people from a ... through a negative lens. I don't think we're so great as we think we are. I think we're more violent and aggressive than we want to admit. So it's a bias of mine, and the tendency is to go read books that confirm that bias, and so I've deliberately made a point of being aware of that. And so the percentage of books that I read probably were weighted for sure on the negative side. I can't help it. 60, 70% were on the negative side. But I overcame my bias to some degree in order to include books by, like, Steven Pinker, whom I hate-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- RGRobert Greene
... who I can't stand his books, but I, I read them, sort of forced myself, like Our Better Angels, you know?
- CWChris Williamson
Yup.
- RGRobert Greene
And, and Enlightenment Now. Whatever.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- RGRobert Greene
I read those books. You know, he's a very important thinker. He's, he's brilliant. He's, you know, at Harvard and all that.... um, just to balance out my own biases. But, you know, it's a margin there. You're never ... as he- as Dan Kahneman say, you can never really completely overcome those biases that you have because they're built into you, it's ... But if you can recognize them, change, you can open your mind a little bit up to some information that won't necessarily confirm what you are already looking for. So my books have helped me in that sense of ... When I wrote the book, I- I sort of had to come to certain t- realizations. Number one, I had to realize I'm not as great a person as I thought I was. I'm actually more of a narcissist than I imagined. I'm actually ... Writing that chapter on aggression was a real eye-opener to me because I go, "Wow, Robert, you are actually a very aggressive person. You manage to disguise it. People think you're so nice and polite, but you're actually, deep down, very aggressive." And it was kind of painful for me. But coming to terms with these sort of qualities that I have, have made me sort of more aware of how I'm operating in the social realm so that I can control it better. So I disagree a little bit with him. I- it has given me not complete control, but more self-awareness.
- 1:00:00 – 1:06:52
I totally get it.…
- RGRobert Greene
from sticking to being myself, from sticking to my own weirdness, to putting out ideas that are kind of strange to a lot of people and not worrying about it, has been the source of a lot of a- at social attention and social validation. I was actually a lot lonelier before I wrote these books and before I had the acclaim. Um, I couldn't connect to people. I felt like I had something strange to say, but no one would listen to me at all. So in some sense, I always preach peop- to people, if you want to create something that's interesting and that lasts and that ha- is meaningful, kind of stay true to what makes you different, to what, you know, is that quality that Alain de Botton says is going to make you lonely. In some ways, it's sort of the source of your power and it's the way ... I think people are hungry in the world for something new, for some kind of new form of communication, from people who are coming from a different angle. And it's a source of power. And yeah, it brings loneliness, but loneliness happens anyway, it would have happened anyway. You know, I've- I've always had that degree of-... being alone and kind of wa- I, I, I actually like being alone. I like being able to ha- be away from the crowd or to have my distance and space. So that's just my slight little take on, on what you said.
- CWChris Williamson
I totally get it. I, I think you have two choices when you're talking about how you, um, how you view loneliness or how you view solitude, I suppose. Um, on one hand, like you say, you can have honesty or acceptability. And on the side of honesty, you have the virtue, you have creations of work like yours or, for me at the moment, it's currently this podcast. It's me talking and, and, and being unashamed about the things that I'm interested in, whether it-
- RGRobert Greene
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... whether it does or does not fit the heritage or the mold that I'm supposed to have. Again, to give you a, a very brief bit of background, I did some reality TV stuff, it would be the equivalent of The Bachelor, I guess, in, in the US.
- RGRobert Greene
Oh.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, and i- i- for that kind of archetypal role th- going and doing a podcast based in, uh, interviewing very successful and interesting authors and talking about the finer points of human nature probably doesn't really fit, but you're totally right. You can have the choice of being lonely and truthful to yourself or lonely and compromising yourself (laughs) .
- RGRobert Greene
(laughs) Right. You're gonna be lonely either way.
- CWChris Williamson
Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, that's a, a really lovely point.
- RGRobert Greene
But one thing I say is loneliness is not a bad thing. I mean, it can get depressing, but it's also gives you the space to kind of st- step away from the crowd and think for yourself and think about your own taste and your own values and what you wanna say in life. So, a lot of times people have a hard time these days being alone. They always have to be surrounded by something that's, you know, attention at their phone or whatever. But creating that space where you can reflect and have some distance from the world, I think, is very powerful and important.
- CWChris Williamson
Absolutely. For anyone who is listening, there's a very interesting definition of, uh, solitude which Cal Newport used from Digital Minimalism and it's a, a different one to what most people will consider. A lot of people may think, "Well, I spend time on my own. I maybe drive, drive a lot or I work from home," as, as I do, I work from home. But Cal's definition of solitude which he says is important for us to develop particular qualities of mind, he defines it as time for your mind to be away from the input of other minds.
- RGRobert Greene
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
And that's very different. Solitude, in that way, is different to what most people would consider when the phone's still on and email's still on, or they're-
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
You know, I, I think that that distinction and the time that you can spend alone with your thoughts reflecting on the day-
- RGRobert Greene
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... or your bigger picture, I think is, is very important.
- RGRobert Greene
I agree. I agree with everything you said.
- CWChris Williamson
Robert, R- Robert, I, I, I've absolutely loved today. I, uh, I know that your books take a very long time to write, but I, I really hope that you hasten the next one along, because I wanna (laughs) sit down with you and talk again.
- RGRobert Greene
Okay. We, we can always talk before the next book comes out because these books sometimes take several years. So, you just let me know.
- CWChris Williamson
Fantastic. Um, for the listeners at home, can you tell them where they can find you online and where they can look to, uh, find some more resources or some more info?
- RGRobert Greene
Well, uh, the main site is my old website which is powerseductionandwar.com. Those are the titles of my first three books (clears throat) , excuse me. Power Seduction, the word and spelled out, and war.com. And there you'll find links to the book... I did, I wrote a book with 50 Cent called The 50th Law, my book Mastery, and my new book, The Laws of Human Nature, and links to the Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and all the stuff that we were yelling about earlier, all that evil social media stuff that I was decrying but I still participate in.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) We have to play the game.
- RGRobert Greene
So just to be a hypocrite, yeah. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
We have to play the game.
- RGRobert Greene
It's Is there from there, yeah, I know we have to play the game.
- CWChris Williamson
Absolutely. Robert, I really appreciate your time. I, I can't thank you enough for coming on. And I, I'm afraid that I'm probably going to hassle you for that, uh, before the next book podcast invite that you've extended my way and I'm sure that the listeners are gonna want it as well.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah, I'd be happy to. I very much enjoyed it. Thank you so much. You have great style, great podcasting style.
- CWChris Williamson
Thank you. That's really, really kind to hear.
- RGRobert Greene
What's, what's that shark in the background?
- CWChris Williamson
What's that?
Episode duration: 1:06:52
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