Modern WisdomThe Path To Power: Ambition, Status, Strength & Respect - Robert Greene (4K)
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,210 words- 0:00 – 2:48
Robert’s First Appearance on Modern Wisdom
- CWChris Williamson
Robert Greene, welcome to the show.
- RGRobert Greene
Thank you for having me, Chris. My pleasure. We finally get to meet after all these years.
- CWChris Williamson
The first time that you came on this show was episode 78.
- RGRobert Greene
Where are you at now?
- CWChris Williamson
Five years ago, I'm on 820.
- RGRobert Greene
Wow.
- CWChris Williamson
The show is 400 times bigger than it was when you first came on, so I wanted to say thank you.
- RGRobert Greene
Only 400?
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) I know.
- RGRobert Greene
Come on, Chris.
- CWChris Williamson
I know, I know.
- RGRobert Greene
I'm disappointed.
- CWChris Williamson
I know. I really did try to impress you. I wanted to hit that 500 number before we got to me.
- RGRobert Greene
That part is pretty good.
- CWChris Williamson
But I wanted to say thank you for, for coming on very early.
- RGRobert Greene
Okay. You're very welcome. You're very welcome.
- CWChris Williamson
I also wanted to say thank you for sending me the special edition of 48 Laws of Power-
- RGRobert Greene
Ah.
- CWChris Williamson
... which is the coolest book.
- RGRobert Greene
Ah.
- CWChris Williamson
For the people that haven't seen it, it's a leather-bound, gold-embossed 48 on the front, and then as you look at the side, it's gold, so it like, just like a gold, um, boundary on the outside of the paper. But as you splay the pages out in one direction, it's your face. As you splay the pages out in the other, it's that famous portrait of Machiavelli. It's so cool.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
So cool.
- RGRobert Greene
I can't really totally take credit for it. My partner on, on the first three books, he did it. He's an brilliant designer.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- RGRobert Greene
He consulted me on it, but, um, he's really the genius behind that. But...
- CWChris Williamson
It's the sort of thing you can't not take a photo of.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
It's so... You, you, uh, I mean, it's the most basic technology as well. And stuff that's been around, you used to get it in, um-
- RGRobert Greene
No.
- 2:48 – 10:21
The Problem With Modern Philosophy
- CWChris Williamson
problem with modern philosophy, and where did we go wrong?
- RGRobert Greene
Well, I mean, it's a huge subject, and, you know, there are lots of different aspects of philosophy. But like, um, everything, it's... So much in our culture, it's kind of lost its soul. So, um, you know, years ago, um, we kind of somewhere went off on a wrong path. We lost faith in just our thinking, in our brains, in our minds, right? So Socrates or Nietzsche or, if, you know, skipping here 2,000 years, they didn't sit there and, and go through scientific journals about the origins of consciousness and do studies and data and mathematical formulas to figure out how the brain works or what makes a human being. I'm doing a lot of things on Socrates right now 'cause I'm writing about him. The stuff he's saying about is absolutely brilliant, it's mind-blowing, and it's incredibly relevant to our world today. But if he were around today, there, people would laugh at him. "Oh, well, it's all speculative," right? It's just subjective. Where's, where's the data? Where's the hard facts there? Psychology is even more infected with this kind of mindset, but philosophy is like that. I can't read that stuff. You know, for me, philosophy, it has to have like a direct connection to my life, to living, to my soul, to my day-to-day affairs, to what I have to think about when I wake up in the morning kind of thing, you know? It can't be all about this, this ethereal abstract stuff. I can't get my brain around it. I wanna know how to live. I wanna know how to think. I wanna know how to breathe. I do a lot of, uh... I'm heavily into Zen meditation and Zen philosophy. To me, that is like one of the most beautiful forms of philosophy, and it's all about how to ground your day-to-day life. And you can say Zen, it can be described as the ultimate realistic philosophy, the realist philosophy. It's taking you back to what is truly real. Okay? Yes, they ha- they, they kind of... The language could be very strange, like they, they try and present these riddles to you to alter your consciousness. But the essence of it is very relatable, and they want you to be able to take their philosophy and live in your day-to-day life and not have a separation between the two. So I can't read that stuff that goes on. No, I just can't read it. I mean, there's some people whose things I like, but they're usually not considered philosophers. One of my favorite writers that nobody will have ever heard of, he died a couple years ago so he's sort of contemporary, is a man named Roberto Colasso. He, um, writes the most fantastic books. I would consider it philosophy. Um, he's Italian. He ran an edit- uh, uh, a publishing company for many years. But he writes books about the ancient world, and he mixes it in with, with stories and anecdotes. He has a book called The Ruins of Kosh that's just one of the most brilliant books you'll ever read. That, to me, is philosophy because it stirs my soul, it makes me think, it makes me imagine the world, makes me rethink about the life I'm living.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh-huh.
- RGRobert Greene
... but so many of this stuff, other stuff I just can't read. I mean, I'm not saying it's their fault, maybe it's my own fault, but for me it's kind of gone down this- this wrong path, down a rabbit hole.
- CWChris Williamson
But if you're having to work that hard to resonate with the entire world's worth of philosophy, and you know, I feel like it's probably not a you problem if there's a lot of... You- you're trying your hardest, you're opening yourself up and you're only finding small glimmers here and there.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, um, so there's a philosopher, um, you have to excuse me, my memory is not what it used to be, um, maybe his name will come to me. Uh, he wrote an essay, a very famous essay about, "What is it like to be a bat?" And I was, "Great." I was so excited about it. And I did, I bought the book that it- it's in. He's a very famous philosopher. He's actually quite smart and very interesting. But the essay is, um... You're looking it up right now, aren't you?
- CWChris Williamson
I am. Thomas Nagel.
- RGRobert Greene
Yes, Thomas Nagel. He's written some very interesting books, but they're not... They don't grab me the way that- that Nietzsche or Schopenhauer or Heidegger even, um, grabs me. Um, but his idea about what it's like to be a bat, he's trying to be, essentially say, "We can't know," right? Because that kind of consciousness is so different from ours, right? It's echolocation. We have nothing to compare it to, therefore get out of your arrogance, you can't know it. And a part of me understands it, but a part of me disagrees with it. And I... 'Cause I wrote a chapter in my new book about animal consciousness and how we can put ourselves inside even something as strange as a bat or a spider, and I had wrote a lot about how spiders think. Yes, there are limits to it, and that's what the point of his essay, but so many times with... I find particularly now in the world today, particularly in academia, is the necessity to say you're against something, you're reacting, you know. He's reacting against people who put too much empathy and anthropomorphized things. Okay? So I'm gonna write a book that says the opposite and I'll get attention and I'll get in The New York Times Review of Books and people will listen because I'm standing against something. So academia's all about, like, having some novel stance usually from some cultural perspective. Whereas the truth is more rounded, it's more... It's- it's not so hard set, just reacting and going the opposite direction. You're not arriving at the truth. So maybe it's a combination of the two. Maybe there are limits to what we can know about a bat and how it thinks, but we have amazing capacity to put ourselves inside of other beings and to kind of get a feel, on an intellectual sense, but a feel of what it might be like to (imitates bat sounds) echoing, echoing. You know, we can get a feel for that. And I talk about spiders and how their more, their form of intelligence is all about vibrations. They feel in, in their eight legs, in the bottom of their eight legs. They feel the wind blowing, they feel the vibrations on the web, they feel the weather, they know a storm is coming. They can sense a creature that has landed on their web just by the vibrations. And elephants have a very similar, uh, power in- in their feet. They can, they can sense an earthquake from 10 miles away. But we can f- we can, s- sense that because we can feel vibrations and, you know, I can't really, uh, know a spider, but spiders are intelligent and the idea that they're intelligent and that they think is a radical idea, so... I don't know. I'm going off on- on some tangent here, but that's... I'm trying to answer your question.
- CWChris Williamson
There's a spirit of play in that which is fun, I think. And I- I know what you mean. There is a, sort of this odd, highly scrutinous, skeptical, uh-
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, it- it- there's a lack of play. Uh...
- RGRobert Greene
I think s- that... You said it perfectly. Thank you. That's, that... You hit the nail right there.
- CWChris Williamson
I learned something else that you taught-
- RGRobert Greene
Don't be...
- CWChris Williamson
... Billy Oppenheimer-
- 10:21 – 20:25
Knowledge & Skills Are Like Gold & Silver
- CWChris Williamson
- RGRobert Greene
I d- uh-huh.
- CWChris Williamson
... that said, "Above all else, focus on acquiring knowledge and skills. Knowledge and skills are like gold. A currency you will transform into something more valuable than you can imagine." And it's similar to one of your tweets which is, "Eventually, the time that was not spent on learning skills will catch up to you and the fall will be painful." What's that mean?
- RGRobert Greene
Well, um... You know, uh, life can be kind of difficult, right? Um, you don't really know sometimes where you're headed. Nobody kind of gives you any kind of guidance in this world, right? And they don't tell you when you graduate college, "Go ahead. Go, Robert. You go study this. This is what, you know, and you know, this is what your brain is suited for," et cetera, et cetera. You have to find your own path. And so for me personally, I spent years in the wilderness. Um, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna give this a personal spin because I think that helps a little bit, because what... I can answer it inside my own body here. So I- I know I want to be a writer, but I can't figure out what the hell I'm gonna write. So I leave college and I try journalism 'cause I have to make a living, I have to support myself, and I don't really like it, it doesn't suit me. You write an article and then a week later it's forgotten, nobody reads about it. And as somebody who studied Ancient Greek and Latin in college, I think in terms of thousands of years and not in three days or a week, you know. I want something that I write to be read in 3024, you know. Sorry. Um, so it wasn't a good fit, so I quit, I wander around Europe-... trying to write a novel with my backpack. I live in London, I live in Paris, I lived in Ireland, I lived in Greece, you name it. I taught English in Spain. Trying to write a novel, I had no discipline. I couldn't do it. It didn't work, and I get, started to get depressed. Then, um, my dad isn't well. I decide I'm gonna move back to Los Angeles. Hey, I'm gonna get a job in Hollywood, right? That, that'll be... I'll make, I'll make a ton of money and I'll be writing and, you know, et cetera. How glamorous, how sexy. You know, movie stars, starlets on my, knocking on my door, et cetera. Okay. Terrible, terrible fit because I'm a control freak. I don't like people coming in and changing everything I say, and I don't like conforming and I don't like compromise. Sorry, that's bad thing about me, but I didn't wanna have to lower my s- my high standards to, to what they were asking me to do. It's a terrible fit. All right. Now comes the chance... I meet this man, Joost Alfers, we mentioned earlier, in Italy, and he says... he asked me if I have any ideas for books, and I kind of improvised The 48 Laws of Power. The point of my long-winded story here is I had spent 18 years or so acquiring in-... high levels of skill in writing. Okay? I could... I learned in journalism how to write under a deadline, under pressure, how to make it dramatic, how to make the opening sentence exciting enough to make you read on further. Trying to write novels taught me about creating stories, which is a huge part of my writing. Working in Hollywood, I learned how to research, which is a huge element, and then the theatrical element, making things dramatic, also story. Okay? All of that time, slowly by slowly, brick by brick, I had developed real-level skill. So when it came time to write The 48 Laws of Power, I could do it. I had learned all this discipline. I had learned how to write under a deadline. I learned how to make things entertaining, the whole, the whole bag, okay? And so the world opened up for me. Prior to that time, I was miserable. Really w- really was. I mean, I had good moments too. You're young, you're always happy when you're young. But a lot of the times, I was miserable, and I didn't know why, but s- I was acquiring skills, not even aware of it. And so the reason I write that is when you develop that skill, when you're serious about it, 'cause I was very serious about writing, you change your brain. You rewire your brain. It's like, uh... and this is an im-... a remarkable power of the human brain that people don't realize, something I'm also writing in my new book. Um, this, this one writer, uh, his name is Schwartz, I believe. He's a UCLA neuroscientist. He wanted to help people who had OCD, right? Uh, obsessive compl-... com-... you know, compulsive disorder. And usually it's drugs and it's talking therapy. He wanted c-... find out something more effective, and he found that through certain strategies that he developed, um, that they could use in their life that they would get over their disorder, and he... the point isn't what the strategies were. The point was he did brain scans, and through the strategies that he gave them to do, which I can't remember right now, the brain scans show that they changed the brain. And his point was through thinking, through developing skills, you literally change matter. You change your brain. So something non-material like thoughts can literally change material things like the wiring of your brain. You learn skills, you're changing your brain, you're changing the matter of your brain. Things are connecting that weren't connected before. And slowly, if you do it, if you're serious enough, a point will be reached, like it was reached in my life, where either you will start a business or someone will ask you to do something like write a book or make a film, and the world will open up for you and you'll be able to do it because you have that... you've laid the ground, you've, you've, you've laid the soil, everything is there, it's rich, and now something great, amazing will sprout up out of it. When you have no talents, you have no skill, life is a series of con-... endless confusion. You, you hit this road, you go here, then something else, you go here, then you go here, you, you end up in a circle and you don't know where the hell you are. When you've got skills, you zoom, you know where to go. It's not, it's not zoom, it's more like... but your head is somewhere-
- CWChris Williamson
Meander.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah. It's not... (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- RGRobert Greene
I don't know if we're, uh, if we're being filmed, but (laughs) so yeah. So that's, that's my answer to your question.
- CWChris Williamson
Isn't it interesting that the accumulation of skills period at the time can be a little bit like being in the trenches? You have no promise of glory. You don't know if this is even going to work.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
You have no idea whether this is, is worth it, and you don't even have the context of how the journalism with the novel, with the Hollywood, with the interpersonal skills, with the guy that you meet in Italy with the... someone that you... uh, Germany, blah, blah, blah, blah. Uh, it's only in retrospect that you get to piece this entire arc together, and I think it's one of the reasons why, uh, reserving judgment on whether or not the situation you are in right now is good or bad is probably a, a, a, a, a pretty good idea because you just don't know what's around the corner that you've been preparing for that you didn't even know existed.
- RGRobert Greene
Yes, but there are parameters to it. It's not like you're totally... it's total mystery in the moment. So, um, you know, going back to what bothers me about philosophy, uh, we're so caught up in things that are rationable, rational, things that can be put into numbers, quantifiable data, you know, big data, uh, AI, et cetera, et cetera.But the human consciousness is more subtle than that, is more fine-grained. No numbers can actually approximate what human consciousness is capable of. And what we have sometimes is, we have an intuition about things in the moment. So, maybe I- in retrospect, I'm creating a story that didn't really exist back then, but at the same time, I kind of knew the future. I kind of knew that this would happen. I had a feeling of fate. It was always there. It's weird. I know it sounds woo-woo, I'm sorry to say, but it's very real. And I've studied millions of successful famous people, and a lot of them report the same thing. Sometimes you don't real- realize it, but your body and your brain has a sense of even the future and of where you're headed, but you're not totally aware of it. So, I knew that I wanted to be a writer. So, if people don't know that they wanna be a writer, they don't know wanna- they wanna go into engineering, it's that they'll never make those little connections that I was able to make. And having that sense that you wanna be a writer, that you wanna make films, that you wanna start a particular kind of business, you're interested in technology, creates a framework in your brain that kind of changes how you make decisions. You're not totally conscious of it, but not everything in life you're totally conscious of. Things are operating below the level. So, it's something- it's the chapter I'm writing right now about my Sublime book. There is something in you right- that is guiding you towards certain things, right? Guided you towards podcasting. I don't know your life, I don't know your biography before then, but something inched you towards that. What is that? It's interesting to find out. It's not all just chaos and random, is what I'm trying to say.
- CWChris Williamson
That's beautiful, and I agree. "Do not
- 20:25 – 24:52
Why You Shouldn’t Be Cynical
- CWChris Williamson
be the court cynic. The ability to express wonder and amazement and seem like you mean it is a rare and dying talent, but one still greatly valued."
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah. I mean, um, you know, I can, um, I can recall my own childhood, for instance, growing up here in Los Angeles (clears throat) and, um, I had a, a very vivid imagination, which I'm not unusual like that, most children do. But I was always inventing games. I loved inventing sports games, games with where you rolled dice and you created this whole world. I created war games, all these different things that my imagination was doing. And, um, and then when I'd take walks and stuff, I was like seeing, I was thinking about the world. I was going through all kinds of fantasies. I was dreaming about the future, okay? I was innocent, like children are supposed to be. And in their innocence, I was opening up to the world and I was experiencing the world as it is, because the reality is, we are born into a very, very strange and mysterious and wondrous world, which is the subject of my book, right? You take everything for granted, but you don't realize that to be alive, the odds against you being Chris Williamson are absolutely astronomical. To be around with all this technology where we were as humans 20,000 years ago, something you can't even begin to fathom. And when you're a child, you ask these questions. You know, Albert Einstein said the same thing, you know? He said genius is able to keep questioning, to be that child, to keep wondering about things, right? So, your ability to wonder, to ask questions, to not feel like you know all the answers is a beautiful thing. It's not just to make you more intelligent. It also makes you happier. So, cynics start from a place where they know everything. The world is just so rotten. It's just everybody is out for power. People will accuse me of saying that, but it's not true. Everyone's out for power. Everyone's like a- like an ulterior motive. It's all just about these, you know, "You're really not interested in other people, Robert, you're interested in making money." Right? Cynicism reduces everything to this one level. It has nothing to do with reality, because reality is much richer and weirder and more mysterious than that. So, when you're cy- when you're a cynic, you're missing the beauty of life. But also, people don't like to be around cynics, the court cynic is, to get back to your question, because, um, yeah, people like maybe some sarcasm, I don't deny that, but people want to feel that sense of innocence. They wanna feel excited. They wanna feel enthusiastic. And if you're a Debbie Downer, if everything is like, "B- oh, that's what's really going on here, you're not really blah, blah, blah, blah, blah," people will be like, yeah, you're- they'll maybe laugh at your jokes, but eventually they're gonna push you aside 'cause they don't wanna hear that kind of stuff. So-
- CWChris Williamson
Play and enthusiasm.
- RGRobert Greene
Huh?
- CWChris Williamson
Play and enthusiasm again.
- RGRobert Greene
We're coming back to play.
- CWChris Williamson
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- 24:52 – 30:19
Stupid People Are More Dangerous Than Evil People
- CWChris Williamson
Similar to another, uh, tweet you had, which I loved. Uh, "The stupidest people are always the ones who think they have the right answers."
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah. Yeah, so, um, getting back to my studies of, of the ancient world, which is main, main part of, of me. One thing that always excited me was this concept of the ancient Greeks that, um, more harm is caused in this world by stupid, incompetent people than by evil people, right? And what they, there's a, there's a, um, a word in Greek called phronesis, which is a form of wisdom, to use your title here. But it's a form of practical wisdom to be able to get things done, to navigate through life, navigate through people, to be balanced and get things done, okay? So, um, what makes people stupid, and right now we have a lot of stupid people in this world. There always have been stupid people, but because there are more people on the planet exponentially, there are more stupid people on the planet. What makes people stupid, and I'm sorry, I'm just gonna tell it like it is, is their certainty that they have all the answers. "This is what's going on with our government. This is what's wrong, you know, with this or that. This is what people should be like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." So you're narrowing your focus to this little, tiny, little rail, something that you heard from somebody else, it's not even your own stupid idea, so you absorbed it on the internet, whatever, and you're going down on this, this kind of monorail path. M- meanwhile, the world is all around you and you're just going like zoom, like that, because you're so certain you have the answer. And when you have leaders, this is to get back to the Greek thing, when you have leaders who are so certain, they g- enter y- they enter a country into a war that hav- they haven't been thought out of, because... And, and so the paradigm in, in ancient culture was the Peloponnesian War of, between Athens and Sparta, the war that ended up kind of being the end of Athenian democracy and of their golden era, right? And it was the idea th- and, and Thucydides, one of the greatest writers who ever lived, wrote the history of the Peloponnesian War, living at that time. He was saying that people, the leaders thought, "Oh, this will be so easy. And think of all the great things when we go and we take Sicily and we conquer that. The whole world will e- and Sparta will be destroyed," right? It wasn't thought through. They were so certain of the answer that they didn't think of the parameters, right? They didn't think really on a grand strate- strategic level. So people who are certain of things are very stupid, and when they have power, they're very, very dangerous. I'm not saying evil people aren't dangerous, but incompetent, stupid people who are so certain, who haven't thought things through are just as dangerous as evil people.
- CWChris Williamson
I think there's far more stupid people than there are evil people as well.
- RGRobert Greene
Probably. Probably, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. It's very interesting to think about the, uh, where the Venn diagram intersects for people who are always cynical and people who always have the right answer, or who always know.
- RGRobert Greene
They go hand in hand.
- CWChris Williamson
Correct.
- RGRobert Greene
Totally overlap, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Correct. Yeah.
- RGRobert Greene
So, um, one of your fellow countrymen from 200 years ago, exactly 200 years ago, a gentleman named John Keats, a poet, came up with a concept called negative capability. And negative capability, he wanted to answer the question was why is Shakespeare another one of your c- countrymen? Why was Shakespeare so brilliant? Well, his characters were so realistic, because he made them as real human beings, and what he could do was, they weren't stick figures. Shakespeare could think of a person and entertain two things about them at the same time. They could be both evil, but also have a strain of goodness inside of them. They were complex. Human beings are complex. And negative capability is the essence of be- of being creative. It means you can hold two thoughts in your head at the same time, two thoughts that apparently contradict each other, but you can entertain them and not grasp at one or the other.
- CWChris Williamson
Not pass judgment immediately.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah. So you're kind of able to deal with ambiguity, and you're able to say, "Life isn't that and isn't that. It's kind of both at the same time." That is creativity. That is real thinking, you know? I mean, I could go on and on about my ideas about live ideas and dead ideas, but this is real live thinking.
- CWChris Williamson
I have been playing with an idea that's basically the same thing, just repurposed with a silly meme from me, which is a cognitive superposition. So like how in physics-
- RGRobert Greene
In physics.
- CWChris Williamson
Yes. And then when you decide, you collapse the superposition down.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, but that I try to, you know, think in superpositions as much as possible.
- RGRobert Greene
There's a very good book written about like that. It, it's not perfect, it's a pretty good book, called The Possibility Principle. You can look that up. He tries to apply those kind of ideas in physics to day-to-day life and psychology. It is interesting. It's worth looking at.
- 30:19 – 44:39
The Power of Your Reputation
- CWChris Williamson
"So much depends on reputation. Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone, you can intimidate and win. Once it slips, however, you are vulnerable and will be attacked on all sides. Never let others define it for you."
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah, um, you know, so when I wrote The 48 Laws of Power, I tried to... I've somebody through my whole life loves playing games. I don't mean that in the abstract sense. I mean literally, like chess, backgammon.... sports, poker, whatever. And, um, I like the cleanness of a game. It's like, you do this and you can win, et cetera. But there's also a psychological element in it. So particularly when you're playing poker and you're bluffing, and you're... and I was always fascinated by this. It's a game of chance. You don't really know what cards you're gonna get. But that fellow over there, he's been bluffing. He bluffed before. I'm sure he did. He's gonna do it again, right? So the psychology starts entering into the picture in a game of chance. It's not a game of ch- There's skill, certainly skill involved, but a lot of it's chance. And because he bluffed before and he's got that look in his eye... It could be a woman. I don't mean to generalize. All right. I'm gonna fold, okay? So, you don't realize that so much of the game of power has nothing to do with data and you being better person at something. A lot of it is pure psychology, and intimidating people, and winning before you even enter into a battle. So if you have a reputation, you carry it with you, and the reputation doesn't have to be real. Personally, I don't know how valid this is, I have this reputation now of being this Machiavellian character, you know? And so if Robert's five minutes late for a meeting, it means he's playing a game, even though it was probably just the traffic. But my reputation now kind of put people a little bit on their heels-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- RGRobert Greene
... you know? Where it's not necessarily true about me, but it kind of goes ahead of me and it makes... It influences-
- CWChris Williamson
Reputation precedes you.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah. And so it's a p- extra form of power. So the idea you have to... The overall arching idea to pull this out of th- the specific is, power is pure psychology. Pure psychology. And what I mean by that is, um, the CEO of a company, he doesn't get there based on... It's not like baseball where it's balls and stars... Soccer, I'm sorry, you probably don't unders-... Probably don't even know what baseball is.
- CWChris Williamson
I, I'm a Ranger, I'm a Texas Rangers fan, I'll have you know.
- RGRobert Greene
Oh, okay. All right. Well, it's not like baseball where it's balls... You know, you hit... Y- you have a good batting average or OPS, all right? You're, you're, you're, you're going to get in the lineup. They're gonna bat you in the, in the cleanup spot, okay? Um, life isn't like that. So the way somebody rises to CEO, and I know because I was on the board of directors of a publicly traded company, it's not about metrics, it's not about things that they've actually done, it's about psychology, right? People rise to positions of power because they know how to play the game and they know how to play the game as psychology. They know how to appear, they know how to play the optics. They know how to intimidate. They know how to say less than necessary. They know all the psychological little gambits. And that's why I wrote The 48 Laws of Power. It's kind of like this is the game of life, the game of power. The rules are, are a little bit nebulous, but here's how you play. You play by mastering these little psychological bits. One of them is your reputation.
- CWChris Williamson
I'm fascinated by reputation and credibility, especially given what I do now. Uh, but my previous life, I was a club promoter. I ran-
- RGRobert Greene
You were a what?
- CWChris Williamson
Club promoter. I ran nightclubs-
- RGRobert Greene
Oh.
- CWChris Williamson
... for a very long time.
- RGRobert Greene
Club promoter. What, what, what do we call that here?
- CWChris Williamson
Club... It would still be... It would just be a promoter, it's called. Uh, so marketing for nightclubs essentially.
- RGRobert Greene
Ah.
- CWChris Williamson
The guys stood on the front door with the guest list and the bands for VIP and all of the hot girls' names. And then after a while, we owned a group of guys that did that, and then we owned a group of guys that owned a gr-... And you start to build up this company.
- RGRobert Greene
Oh.
- CWChris Williamson
And, um, in that, every single nightclub that you've ever been to is the same thing. It's people getting drunk in a room to music. It'll never be anything else. Now, you can dress this one up pink and give out-
- RGRobert Greene
(laughs) Right, right, right.
- CWChris Williamson
... inflatable flamingos on the door, or this one's really cheap, or this one's on a Wednesday and it's sort of naughty-
- RGRobert Greene
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... that you shouldn't be going out on a Wednesday.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Dress it up however you want. It's people getting drunk in a room to music. That's all it's ever going to be. And what I realized from doing that was the power of reputation. Now, this isn't the reputation of a person, it's the reputation of a brand. But if your company is known for always putting on good parties, then you get to benefit from that. And it is-
- RGRobert Greene
And what happens is, when you have a reputation for good... putting on good parties-
- CWChris Williamson
People come.
- RGRobert Greene
... more people come, so you have better parties.
- CWChris Williamson
Which makes your parties good. Yep, correct.
- RGRobert Greene
Of course.
- 44:39 – 1:06:48
Your Weirdness is Your Strength
- CWChris Williamson
Always stick to what makes you weird, odd, strange, different. That's your source of power, which is similar to occupy your niche. Embrace your strangeness, identify what makes you different, fuse those things together and become an anomaly.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah. Well, um, you know, uh, in this world, if- if you're replaceable, you will be replaced, right? So if you're in your job, you're in your 20s, and you're doing something that other people could do, by the time you become 28, they can hire somebody 24 when they hired you, but for less money. They will do that right away. It's a brutal world. So if you're replaceable, you will be replaced. So the only defense about that, against that is to be irreplaceable in this world. And the good news is that you are, at- at your core, irreplaceable. There is something strange and weird about you. Once again, I hate to say it, but it's a chapter that I'm writing right now for my- my Sublime book, okay? And so... And I explain in Mastery where that comes from biologically, your DNA, how you are marked as a unique individual at birth, the combination of variance in your chromosomes. It's mathematically impossible for it to ever be replicated. Yes, the variations are marginal. The differences aren't great between you and me, but those little differences are the differences between me liking this kind of hip-hop music and you liking a different kind of hip-hop music, right? It creates your inclinations, it creates your tastes. And so what the game of life is, involves is knowing your uniqueness, is knowing who you are, is knowing what makes you weird and what makes you odd, okay? And the problem is, is that we're social animals, and the pressure continually on us is to fit into a group, is to be like other people, to have their ideas, to have their values, to have their taste, to dress like them, okay? And that happens when you're young, you're in your adolescence. We all go through that phase, I went through that phase. But if you keep on that track when you're in your 20s and on, which is happening a lot today through social media, you're gonna lose that sense of what makes you odd and different.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- RGRobert Greene
I compare it to a voice. When you're very young, that little voice in you is going, "Robert, you should be a writer. Chris, you should be a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." I don't know what it is, right? It's telling you something. And as you get older, you don't hear it anymore because you're hearing all the other vo... You're hearing your voices of your parents, the teachers, the culture around you, your peers, your friends, telling you this is what's cool, this is what's not cool. And that little voice comes completely drowned out. And so you don't know who you are anymore and you're afraid. Particularly young people today, I mean, maybe it's always been that way, are so afraid of being different. They're so afraid of being odd. But look at all the powerful people in this world. Look at your Elon Musks, look at your celebrities in- in entertainment, in business, in politics. They're one of a kind. They- they have like... You... I hate that word, but it's like a brand. They're different. They stand out for something that's truly different. You know, even Albert Einstein, there's nobody else like Einstein. There's nobody like da Vinci. Okay? That's where your power lies. And you'll go, "Oh, but Robert, those are people that were brilliant, that were talented. I'm not like that. I don't have that." Well, bullshit, you do have that. It's just you... You're... It's... You're not... You're forgetting about it and you don't want to put the effort into it. I talked in Mastery of a woman named Temple Grandin, who was born with severe, severe autism, and she was able to find her way to become a very brilliant professor, academic, writer, and... About animals, animal behavior and about autism itself. She found her way to it when she couldn't... When she was three or four, she couldn't even speak any language, she was gonna be hospitalized. You have that potential. It's just you're not putting the effort into... You're lazy. You want to fit into the group. You want to conform 'cause it's easy.... but your oddness, what makes you weird, what makes you different, that little strange quirk in how you wanna dress yourself, that little strange quirk in your musical taste, that little quirk in the food that you like to eat, that is who you are. Those are signs from deep within, from your core, from your soul. There is , this is who you are. And if you lose that, not only are you not gonna be successful in life, you will also lose yourself and you will be mis- you will be unhappy, you'll be unfeeling, you'll be alienated from who you are. And you can get away with that when you're young because you're happy, you look good, you've got energy, things are going right. You get into your 30s and you're like everybody else and you don't know who you are and you don't know what you like anymore, you're just following the trends, you start to get depressed and you start going down this, this rabbit hole and things can turn really ugly. So, you need a bit of courage in life, you need to go, "Okay, I am weird. I am strange." You know, lean into it. So, um, when I had The 48 Laws of Power, when it first, when I first wrote the book, um, without it being published yet, it was a very strange looking book, and it reflects my own strangeness. Things on the margin, stories, everything broken up, images, quotes here and there. It's kinda how my brain is, a hodgepodge, kind of a mess really. And the publishers, they bought the book, but then they came back to us and they said, "Robert, can you kind of maybe make this more like other books? Can you get rid of all those sections and everything?" And I said, "No. Take it or leave it. This is the book as it is." It's odd, it's strange. They didn't like that because if it doesn't fit into all the other books that have had successful, it's too big of a risk. If this movie isn't like the movies that were made last year, who knows who'll go see it? People are so conservative. But because it was odd, it stood out, and it was successful. If I had s- succumbed and I compromised and made it more like other books, I wouldn't be here talking to you. So sometimes you need a little bit of cajones, you know, a little bit of courage, you need to stand up and say, "I'm okay being different."
- CWChris Williamson
It's fascinating that lots of people, maybe most people want to be extraordinary in some way, but also don't want to stand out th- in a way that allows them to be mocked. But, you know, the latter is the price of the former. You can't behave the way that everybody else does and expect to not get the results that everybody else gets. It's like, I think about regressing to a mean that doesn't exist. Uh, you know, the everybody is idiosyncratic and unusual in their, their own way, and we're all imagining this sort of odd 50th percentile avatar that is the most acceptable. But when we think about why we love the people that we love, we don't love them for how average they are. No one's ever said, "Do you know what it is? I'm just besotted with how predictable all of her opinions are." No one's ever said that. We love people for their ex- eccrentis- eccentricities. And, uh, our friend George has the idea of non-fungible people, like non-fungible tokens, that it's un- irreplaceable.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
There is nobody else like them.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, if you think about your favorite memories from your favorite people, it's not from the things that are easily replaceable. It's from the fact that they were just obsessed with football and when the football was on the TV you could talk to them and they wouldn't even turn to you. Or it was the fact that they hated violence or they loved dogs. Every dog walked into the room and they would be gone, they would be away. That's what we love people for. And my favorite, uh, strange person from history is Salvador Dali, and I would take it one step further. You said he kind of had this, uh, it's- it's advantageous and also, uh, psychologically healthy for you to embrace who you are fully. I actually think in some ways it's our, um, maybe I would go as far as to say that it is our duty to humanity. I think it's-
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... our duty to embrace the things that only you can do.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah, well, in, um, in nature, um, the diversity of species in a habitat make it vital, make it alive, make it sustainable, and that comes from mutations in the genetic code. Some insect has a mutation, and therefore a whole new species, a whole new thing splinters off from that and it creates variety. Well, in human culture is like a habitat in a way, um, so you're marked with uniqueness by your genetic code. Insects don't really have individuality. We have individuality and they are like mutations. And so your mutation, your difference, you being Chris, is for a purpose. You are marked that way because by mining your uniqueness, your weirdness, your oddness, your little quirky tastes, you're gonna contribute something new to the culture, and in contributing something new to the culture, you enrich it and you keep it turning around and round and round. Cultures in the past that die on the vine don't have any variety. You know, you can look at like the Soviet Union at its most, uh, you know, decadent or when it was really at its worst phase like in the '70s and '80s, there's no change, there's no variety. Early on, there was all sorts of weird different voices, they ended up getting imprisoned and- and murdered, okay? But a culture has to have variety. It has to have a diversity of voices.
- CWChris Williamson
Like a gene pool or an immune system.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah. And so you, by being odd, you're contributing to that. You're contributing to the culture. By not doing that, you're not contributing at all and it's a real waste of what nature gave you.
- CWChris Williamson
I always think, uh, again about Dali, I spent quite a bit of time researching him, and I think as brilliant as they were, Michelangelo didn't do Dali.... Da Vinci didn't do Dali. In fact, there's that, uh, famous job application that, uh, Da Vinci sends, I think, to the king of Italy. And Da Vinci's sort of listing all of the different things that he can do, "I can make machines for war, and a trebuchet, and a..."
- RGRobert Greene
Oh, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... blah, blah, blah. In the final paragraph, he writes this sentence, "Also, I can paint."
- RGRobert Greene
(laughs) Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I th- I always think about, "Also, I can paint." What is the, "Also, I can paint" that I don't see in myself? What are the things that my friends really value? Perfect example, the guy that I was talking about earlier on, George. I, um, I've been learning a little bit about myself, and I, I discovered over the last year that I'm a people pleaser in some regard. And I was lamenting this to him over Christmas as we were driving to go and get food, and I'd sort of brought up something I'd done with him, which was e- sort of being overly cautious that I, I would've done something that would've annoyed him or, or, or, or stepped on his toes in, in some manner. And, uh, he said, "I just wanna sort of stop you there, because I'm aware that to you, you've been able to frame that as people pleasing in this thing that is malignant and you want to get rid of, but to me, that's you thinking about me first, which is actually one of the things that makes me love you as a friend. So be very careful sort of labeling areas, uh, g- creating an unnecessary value judgment," and I think getting an- getting another perspective, and that, that really gave me pause. I just thought, "Yeah, I'm so agreeable with all of these things, and I c- I hate disappointing people, and I think that other people's emotional states are my responsibility," and so on and so forth. And then I bring it up to a friend, and he says, "Yeah, that's why I love you."
- RGRobert Greene
(laughs) Yeah, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And, uh, I... It was, it was interesting.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah. I mean, um, it's good to have a little bit of control over something, so if, in certain situations, sometimes it's good to be able to not be so pleasing. 'Cause I'm a people pleaser too, it's my nature, so I understand that. And sometimes you have the feeling that it's not coming from the right place.
- CWChris Williamson
Correct. You're not choosing to, you're obligated to by your nature.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah, and you're feeling a little bit of fear involved in it.
- CWChris Williamson
Yep.
- RGRobert Greene
Fear of displeasing, a fear of rejection, a fear of being different. Um, and it c- probably goes back to childhood and to my parents, who probably have similar parental, uh, dynamics. Um, so, but what's good about what you're saying is, and I completely agree, and I wrote about this, I think, in Human Nature, is that you have this quality. You can't really control it. It's who you are. You know, it's either genetic or it comes from those first couple of years with your mother or father. So, make it work for you. Find the way that it's a strength, and see it as a strength, and use it, and don't have second thoughts about it. Use it for power, right? And don't be so conflicted about it. It's all how you look at it. And there's a reason why you're a people pleaser, and you can... If you weren't a people pleaser, you wouldn't be doing podcasting. You'd be this asshole. I would never have agreed-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- RGRobert Greene
... to be on this podcast, right? So, um, it's just that in moments, you wish you could control it a little bit.
- CWChris Williamson
It's kind of like the grass is greener thing that we were talking about before we got started, you know, this assumption that the thing you don't have is more valuable than the one that you do, or that things would be fixed if only you could have that.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah.
- 1:06:48 – 1:18:11
How to Stop Wasting Your Time
- CWChris Williamson
You are your own worst enemy. You waste precious time dreaming of the future instead of engaging in the present. Since nothing seems urgent to you, you're only half involved in what you do.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah. Um, well, I like to think of, uh, who the, the human animal is. I like to take this out of the little specific and go into the meta area here and, um, what it meant to be human. We're a very creative species, right? We have language, we have consciousness, we have immense powers. Those powers developed under the pressures of necessity, of having to get things done, of having to survive in a very brutal, ruthless world where a leopard could pop out tomorrow and, and eat me, where there were dangers all around, where there was, food was scarce and under the pressure...We had to think, we had to be creative, we had to be inventive, we had to be strategic. The human brain evolved under immense amounts of pressure, okay? That's how the brain works. And I almost like to think of it in terms of barometric pressure. So in your brain when you're feeling that barometric pressure, it's like, "I've got to get this done, or I'm going to fail, and I'm not, this project won't happen, and people will laugh at me." You work like a fiend. Energy. Your whole body responds, right? Your blood gets moving. You, you accomplish things that would normally take you months, you do it in days, because you feel that pressure. You take away that pressure, and you don't know what to do. "And I've got like three years, I could do this or that," and now that you just wander around, you're lost, you have no energy, you have no focus. You know, you're maybe playing video games, maybe watching porn, you're kind of distracting yourself in the moment. But it's ... (clears throat) But your energy is just being dissipated in like f- 20 different directions. So your brain needs pressure, it needs constant pressure, and stress, and pressure is not a bad thing. We have this thing where we feel like stress is bad. It's bad for you. Bad. You know, you need to relax man, you need to chill. Stress will kill you. No, being bored will kill you. Not having anything to do will kill you. It's much more dangerous than stress. Yes, you can work too hard, you can work where there's no soul involved. I work like a fiend 'cause I'm writing a book and it's a very hard process for me, and I'm working far too much. But man, I love it. It's fantastic, right? And it's, it could kill me, the stress could kill me, gave me a stroke, but I'd rather die under the stress than be bored and have nothing to do. Okay? So feeling that pressure, it makes your eyes pop open, it makes your brain focus, it makes you alert, it makes you want to live, it makes everything seem exciting to you, because you've got to get things done. So I'm writing a book right now, (clears throat) I could take 12 years to write it, but that wouldn't be very ni- I wouldn't feel good about it, so I give myself deadlines. I gave myself a deadline of finishing this chapter by July 31st, here it's August 10th, I haven't finished it, but now I'm working double hard to try and finish it in time, because if I didn't have a deadline, I would take forever.
- CWChris Williamson
Manana, manana, manana.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah. So create pressure for yourself, is a good thing, you know? I gave a talk recently (clears throat) in which I talked about Thomas Edison, the great inventor. And Thomas Edison was a young man, he's in his early 30s. He'd invented the phonograph and a new way for the telegraph, but he wasn't, hadn't really had any major inventions. He had started Menlo Park, his industrial park for doing research. We're talking about the 1870s, I believe. But he did something very interesting and very strange. Um, I don't know how conscious it was, but he gave an interview with a newspaper and he said, "I've been working on creating the incandescent light bulb." Now before that there was the arc light which was a light that was really powerful that used far too much energy, you couldn't use it in the house. The way houses were lit was with gas light. Gas light was dangerous, it was explosive, and it w- and the companies in America that, that had a monopoly on it, so the prices ... It was very corrupt business. So he goes, "I'm working on the incandescent light bulb." The reporter's going, "That's interesting." He says, "Yeah, I'm close to, I'm close to getting it, I'm close to nailing it." "Wow." And he goes, "Yeah, and in five years, I'm gonna light the entire city of New York with the incandescent light, with electric light." "Whoa." They go crazy. They publish this article and the stock prices of gas start going down, down, down, down, down. Money flows into his coffers because the abil- the cheapness of light, of a light bulb, the profits are just insane, so money is pouring in. He goes back to his Menlo Park where he develops ideas, and his employees who are reading about this go, "Mr. Edison, what are you thinking? You had just tinkered with the incandescent light bulb. We're not even near inventing it, we're not even near creating it. And the idea of lighting New York, it's, it's ... What were you thinking, what were you smoking?" The equivalent thereof. And he goes, "Well gentlemen, I said it to this major newspaper, we better get to work and we better make it happen." What happened with all the money that came in, he could now hire the people to do it, but the pressure of getting that done in five years made him do it in five years. It was a monumental work of persistence and discipline and detail. But he had a deadline, he didn't want on his reputation, he didn't want to disappoint the public. He had to get it done in five years, and he did get it done in five years. So he created his own pressure by using the publicity angle.
- CWChris Williamson
And people are going to expect it. When's it happening? Has it happened yet?
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
You said it was going to have happened by now.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, I think, uh, Naval Ravikant talks about how when he was at one of the first companies he ever worked for in Silicon Valley and he started telling people, "I'm going to start my own startup." And six months later he was still there, and everyone said, "Well, I thought you were starting your own startup?" And that was the push out of the door for him.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
He couldn't bear the expectation-
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... that he'd put not on himself, only on himself, but also from other people too. So I suppose our, um, need to be socially consistent can be bad when it's maybe derogating your uniqueness, your idiosyncrasies and your weirdness. But if you can-... funnel it to motivate you to go forward.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
So the reason why, you know, I-I don't think that I would be particularly successful, um, being a journalist, for instance, uh, despite the fact that I do three episodes a week for ... it's been four years that we've done that. It's been six years the show's been going. But this is because my need to not look silly in front of other humans and how much I am, uh, enthused by the presence of others, even whilst being quite introverted, means that by doing a podcast, I've never not shown up, I've never canceled because of something that hasn't been, you know, a justifiable reason. So I don't want to look silly in front of the person I'm sat opposite. If it was me and a blank piece of paper, God, the motivation to do that ... You know, every, wh- three times a week, I need to come up with a new column of a thousand words. That'd be... Whereas for the person who wants to just write on their own and come up with headlines and stuff, oh, can I sit down with a person again, have a conversation with them and ask them questions? That's not my sort of thing. Um, so yeah, being able to use the social mores to kind of pull you, uh, to where you want to be, to understand, again, your own-
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, fallibility and- and insecurities and attach those like a- a- a south and a north magnet-
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... and sort of use that to pull you along.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah, I always like to, um, to riff on what you're saying, I always like to challenge myself. Um, so I never... Each book that I do, I'm now on my eighth book, is different from the other one. Right? And my books take several years to write. They're not like ... I can't put- put them out in six months. Each one is different from the last one, and I'm taking a risk because my readers are expecting Robert to write about strategy and power, and now he's writing about mastery.
- CWChris Williamson
Seduction.
- RGRobert Greene
Seduction, yeah. Now he's writing about the sublime. What the hell? What's his problem? Okay. It's a challenge. And the challenge is good, 'cause it gets my energy levels going. But if I took a challenge that was too difficult ... So there's a level here. So I could go here and- and write another 48 Laws of Power, it would be like this, it would be kind of easy. I could go here and write a book on how to build a- a si- skyscraper out of 10 si- ... I don't know, whatever. Okay. I could never write it. I can never ... it's too big of a challenge. Or, you know, the history of all human ideas. Okay. That would be the equivalent there. Okay. No, I'd kind of go here. It's a challenge. It's not here, boring, 48 Laws of Power Part Two. It's not History of World Ideas, 4,000 pages. It's here. It's a little bit above me. It's gonna get my energy going, but it's not impossible. And that's the g- that's the game of life. So if Edison had said, "I'm gonna light the entire world in five years," no way. New York was- was a pretty hefty lift.
- CWChris Williamson
So I'm gonna, I'm gonna light New York in 50 years also.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah, exactly. Which is probably more realistic.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- RGRobert Greene
Um, you know, uh, it was a challenge. It was a pretty big challenge, but it was not an impossible one.
- CWChris Williamson
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- 1:18:11 – 1:30:53
The Curse of Immediate Success
- CWChris Williamson
It is a curse to have everything go right on your first attempt.
- RGRobert Greene
Yeah. Uh, the proverbial one-hit wonders. Um, you know, uh, what happens is ... You know, there was, there was a real syndrome in, in hip-hop, and, uh, you know, I talked a lot about that with 50, where, um, you come from, you come from the hood and you've never had any kind of money. And then overnight you've got, you know, six figures, seven figures. You've got women like, you know, left, right, and center coming to you. You've got all this power and attention and celebrity, and it goes to your head. And you start partying and you start thinking, um, like, "Well, uh, okay, I better put out another album." But you get a little bit conservative now because you want to keep going and you think that you've got a formula for it, right? And then your second album doesn't do nearly as well. So ... But if that first album didn't do well and you were smart about it, it would have taught you a valuable lesson about, about the music industry. So 50, he, uh, he did his first album called Power of the Dollar. And I- I- I have a kind of a bootleg copy of it he gave me, and it's, it's absolutely fan- ... You can, you can... It's available now pretty much on the internet. It's absolutely fantastic. But right before it was to be launched, he got shot, and the producers dropped him on the prod-, dropped his, the album. They didn't release it, and they dropped him from Columbia Records. He was too dangerous. It was a drug beef, and-... we can't have this guy touring if he's gonna be... if there's gonna be violence. And so, he was thinking, you know, the failure... Instead of it had been a big hit, would have gone to his head, he'd... You know, who knows what would've happened to him? Here he was, like, completely at back to square z- zero. In fact, worse, he had nothing. He did all this work, and he had this price on his head and, and nobody would come near him, and he wanted to learn what the lesson was from this, from his... this failure. It wasn't really... It wasn't his fault. It, it... Although it sort of was, because he, he had been a, a crack dealer, and it was like a previous beef that had... he hadn't really resolved. So, you know, it was maybe partially his fault. Anyway, um, he goes, "Well, the lesson is I can't be dependent on a record label. They're too conservative, they're too cautious. I'm somebody who lives on the edge. My music plays on the fact that I was a crack dealer, that I live dangerously, that I'm the real thing, that I'm not a fake gangster. I'm the real thing, okay? So, what am I gonna do? I'm not gonna put out a record. I'm gonna do mixtapes, and I'm gonna sell them on the streets of Sout- of Queens, and then Brooklyn, and then Manhattan." You know, just these little tapes, these singles. "And I'm gonna be as vio-" His first one that he puts out is called Fuck You. He's saying, "Fuck you to everybody who ever doubted me. Fuck you who tried to kill me. Fuck you to the record labels," pardon my language, et cetera. So, he learned from that. He learned not to take success for granted, and he built on that. And so, he's not a one-hit wonder. So sometimes success, when you're in your 20s, is the worst thing that could happen to you, 'cause you have no discipline, you have no perspective, you think it's just gonna keep going the way it is. You're not aware-
- CWChris Williamson
(clears throat)
- RGRobert Greene
... of all the dangers out there. You don't have life experience enough to realize how things could turn on you very quickly. If I had been given the chance to write The 48 Laws of Power when I was in my 20s, and I had success, it would have ruined me. I probably wouldn't have had success.
- CWChris Williamson
Why?
- RGRobert Greene
Because I wasn't ready for it. Look, Chris, I had had so much failure until I was essentially 39 years old, pushing 40, that I had perspective that I know what it's like to f- to fail. And so, when I had success, it wasn't like, "Wow, I'm the greatest thing that ever happened. I can just live off this forever. My next book is gonna be fantastic." No. I have a little voice in me that says, "Robert, you failed so many times, you're probably gonna fail again." Right? You've seen so many people in Hollywood who, who started off hot and, and, and bombed. I had experience to know that I can't take this for granted. I have to be careful, I have to be strategic, I have to build on it and not let the success go to my head. And it didn't go to my head. When I wrote The Art of Seduction, I was so worried that book would fail. I was certain it was gonna fail. I felt that way about every single book I've ever written.
Episode duration: 2:06:00
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