FRED PINTO AND ROBERT GREENE INTERVIEW

 

Chapter 1: “GOAT Writing Method”

Timestamps: 0:00 – 8:37

 

Chapter 2: “Success and Power”

Timestamps: 8:38-15:32

 

Chapter 3: “Cultivating Self-Awareness”

Timestamps: 15:33-21:29

 

Chapter 4: “Outshining the Master”

Timestamps: 21:30 – 31:33

 

Chapter 5: “The Art of Seduction”

Timestamps: 31:34-38:27

 

Chapter 6: “Power in the Music Industry”

Timestamps: 38:30 – 45:40

 

Chapter 7: “Picking Your Spots and Authentic Selfhood”

Timestamps: 45:41 – 52:59

 

Chapter 8: “Your Life’s Work”

Timestamps: 53:00 – 1:07:25

 

Chapter 9: “Courting the Sublime”

Timestamps: 1:07:30 – 1:17:26

 

 

 

Chapter 1: “The GOAT of Nonfiction Writing”

Timestamps: 0:00 – 8:37

 

FRED: Robert Greene. Welcome.

 

ROBERT: Thanks for having me, Fred. My pleasure.

 

FRED: Absolutely. So I’ve been a really big fan of your books for years, sir. I remember seeing The 48 Laws of Power on a bookshelf when it first came out about 20 years ago. I’m thinking, “What is this?”  You know, I thought it was going to be, I thought it was going to be one of those formulaic books of simple rules that you see in the business section. And years later, I remember, my wife and I read it on vacation. And we both remember the feeling of opening the book and reading the first law: “Never Outshine the Master”. And it was just like, one of those arresting “wow” moments for both of us. “This is like, a different kind of book, right?” We told each other… And it was- just seems that there was a hard realism to it that you don’t normally get from advice books. And then, you know, the weaving in of the historical examples, the clean and elegant prose, it just felt like a completely different kind of reading experience. So, first of all, welcome. It’s a real honour and pleasure to have you here with me today.

 

ROBERT: Well, thank you very much. Thank you. I love hearing that.

 

FRED: Amazing. So I’d like to start with just your approach to the craft of nonfiction book writing.

It’s clearly an art form that you’ve reached a pinnacle of. Ryan Holiday, who I’ve also interviewed, calls you the GOAT of nonfiction writing- “greatest of all time”. He says you’re the only writer he knows who approaches being a writer like being a CEO: being supremely organized, putting into long hours… How did you develop your approach to the craft of writing books, and what would be, pound for pound, the most impactful insight that you have for achieving mastery in a complex craft like writing nonfiction books?

 

ROBERT: Well, it would be easy to say that I just, like, learned this method, but I had to kind of create it serendipitously through trial and error. I had spent years working as a researcher and as a writer in various different formats. So I had a lot of skills already developed. Writing on the deadline, writing things that are condensed, writing in a dramatic form, and being able to use a lot of research and telling a story. And so, when it came time to write The 48 Laws of Power– the first thing you have to understand is, I was approaching 40 years old, and I had never really had any success. I was actually quite poor at the time. So if I were to give you one piece of advice, it’s to be desperate. And I was utterly desperate, right? Making this book a success was like the 50 cent line of “Get Rich or Die Tryin’.” And this book was either going to make it, or I don’t know what was going to happen with my life because I was quite depressed at the time. So, I was supremely motivated. And as you mentioned before, so rightly, I knew the self-helped genre, which is not something I very much respected. I thought a lot of these books are very soft. They don’t reflect the reality of the world that we all live in. They’re not organized very well. They usually start off with the first chapter that’s kind of engrossing, that catches your eye, and then the same idea repeats over and over and over again, right? They, like, run out of steam somewhere, like in the fourth or fifth chapter. So I knew what I didn’t want to write. And I’m kind of a strange person, I have to admit. I’m not like- I don’t like following what other people do. I’m a bit of a rebel, I could say that. So I wanted to follow my own style. And so, in creating the book, I kind of created the template that I’ve used since then. I always believe most books fail because they’re not entertaining. Just to be frank. They’re boring, you know. Let’s just put it that way. They’re just damn boring. And I know telling a story is usually not boring if you tell it well. So, I wanted to bring in history, because I’m writing a book about power, and I’m trying to make the point that power is this timeless phenomenon that kind of transcends our cultural moment. That what happened with Louis the XIVth and “Never Outshine the Master”. It’s what’s going to happen today in your office, right? You won’t get put in prison, but you’ll probably be fired for outshining the Master. So in order to do that, I did massive research on history, using all of my research skills that I honed over many years in going to libraries, etc. because back then there was really no Internet research. And so, I wanted to be able to kind of ground this in all cultures, all-time stories from ancient China to modern America. So, I kind of created my own format. And I know that people don’t have big attention spans. I certainly could be guilty of that as well. So, I broke it up. I broke my book up into different sections. It would be easy for you to read, where you don’t see like 12, 15 pages of just text, right? And then, I had the things on the side, etc. In other words, I became creative with the form, with the genre, which is not something that’s easy to do. I, fortunately, had a partner, Joost Elffers, who is the producer of my book, who stood by me, because the editors were thinking, “This book is very strange, Robert. Maybe try and make it more like other books.” And I said, “No, you have to buy the book the way it is, or we’re leaving” which was kind of a ballsy thing to say for somebody who had no success or track record. But I stood by my guns. And I essentially created a new format of- for me, for writing a nonfiction, and self-help book, which is telling stories, grounding it in history, and kind of weaving in all different kinds of ideas from all different fields. Because the other bad thing about America right now, or the world in nonfiction writing, is everything is so siloed. You’re either writing about psychology or history or military history. This, that, these walls. I hate walls. I just wanted to write about life, about every form of power that there exists in entertainment, in politics, in business, etc. So I broke a lot of rules in creating this. And I think that the lesson that I try and tell people is: when you’re creating something new, and it could be a podcast, it could be a book, it could be a business… the little funnel that your mind will tend to fall into is “what else is out there? How can I copy what’s being successful, what’s making money?” You’re not even aware that you’re doing that, but your mind just kind of falls into that. And what happens is you create something that is like what is already out there, maybe a pale limitation. It might even be a little bit better, but it doesn’t stand out from the crowd. And right now, if you go into a bookstore, there are not very many bookstores left. Or if you look on Amazon, there are hundreds of thousands of books out there, right? And you know, you see rankings, a new book will be ranked 565,482 on Amazon. How’s your book ever going to stand out if it’s just like everything else out there? So the game is to not create something so weird and creative that nobody could understand. I didn’t want to do that. I used some kind of template there that already exists, you know, in the way I structured the book. So you don’t want to be like, completely odd. But the lesson is to follow your own feet. To not listen to what everybody tells you, that you got to write this kind of book, do this kind of podcast, because that’s a recipe for, you know, just falling into that hole where you’re like everybody else. So that’s sort of the lesson that I learned from my experience. And then, once I had this template for writing a book, I didn’t just repeat it. I didn’t write 48 Laws of Power part two, I wrote The Art of Seduction, and I made it similar but different. Every book is similar but different. And that’s another kind of path that I like to follow.

 

 

 

Chapter 2: “Success and Power”

Timestamps: 8:38 – 15:32

 

FRED: It’s really, really interesting. So, and do you think, like, breaking the rules and staying true to your vision, you feel that that energy of desperation that you had almost helped you kind of break through that, because you were like… I can see how, with that place of desperation, you can kind of go both ways, right? You can kind of say, “Listen, I need to play it safe, and I need to kind of do it inside of a format that’s already worked before.” Or it’s like, “You know what, I just need to break through on my own and kind of create my own playbook.” And it seems like you clearly took the second route.

 

ROBERT: Well, law number, I don’t know if it’s 29 or 30 is “Interaction with Boldness”, right? So I’m just following my own advice in the book, you know. And I have to admit that, at the time, I had a kind of a bit of anger inside of me, of frustrating, particularly dealing with Hollywood and the hypocrisy that I saw, where nobody likes to talk about power, but everybody is obsessed with it, right? So putting in that kind of desperate edge, but also mixed in with a little bit of anger, which I tell people is always very, very attractive, in any kind of form, any kind of creative form. Because we live in times of such political correctness, where everyone is so, kind of holding down their emotions, they don’t want to say what they really feel. And to kind of let go, take the lid off, and let your anger sort of spill out, and direct about the world, about power, I think was very attractive to a lot of people. It gave it kind of a naughty, sort of transgressive edge to it. So, I think that desperation- you know, if you look at anybody with success in this world, and I mean true success, an Elon Musk, a Steve Jobs, on and on, or in sports- they’re not like anybody else. Who else is out there like Elon Musk? Who else out there was like Steve Jobs? Who else out there is like Kobe Bryant or whatever field you want to choose? That’s what makes them stand out. That’s what makes them successful. And so, that was the path I was going to follow. And I knew that this book could fail miserably. It was so different that I could be back into my one-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica for the rest of my life, you know, eating not TV dinners but eating- not having any money. And so I took that risk because I knew that that’s what power is about, you know.

 

FRED: Yeah. And I’ve heard you talk about the sort of- how the Hollywood elite and how they use manipulation and power in ways very similar to the great tyrants and kings and generals in history. And at the same time, the hypocrisy that you talk about, right, in front of the camera, in front of the media, everybody puts on their smiling faces, everybody puts on their politically correct persona, and no one is supposed to admit it. I’ve noticed a very, very similar phenomenon in the music industry, working in the music industry for years. I’m curious, do you think there’s something unique or specific about the creative industries that makes them particularly susceptible to this kind of ruthless power dynamic but also a little bit of the hypocrisy, right? Like projecting a bit of a persona that’s not reflective of the actual, sort of realities, what happens in the kitchen sort of thing?

 

ROBERT: I think that’s a good point. So there’s sort of two sides to that. I often think about books I used to read about the Soviet Union and the Politburo. And in that kind of world, your success did not depend on actual results. It didn’t depend on how well the economy was doing on numbers. It depended on you politically- how well you could cozy up to Stalin or Brejnev or Khrushchev. Your courtier skills was what raised you up. And my experience in Hollywood was- it wasn’t necessarily the people with the most talent, with the most experience, and even, it wasn’t necessarily the people with the most money, oddly enough. It was those who had these very subtle political skills. They knew how to cozy up to the people in power, how to flatter endlessly. “Oh, your screenplay is terrific. That’s the best film I’ve ever seen.” Blah, blah, blah. Just loads, piles and piles of bullshit, right? They were Masters at it. So there was that element where it didn’t- it wasn’t, like, numbers involved. It wasn’t quantified what success was or skills. It was all in that subtle game of play power. And then the creative industries have a lot to do with appearances. I mean, film is creating an illusion, right? It’s not reality. It’s creating an illusion. It’s about how things look. The music industry is similar in that way as well. You’re creating the image of this musical icon that has nothing necessarily to do with reality. And I’ve met with a lot of them, and I wrote a book with 50 Cent. And I love 50, he’s fantastic. But the image is not the reality, I can tell you for sure. And so when you’re in that kind of world of mirrors, you’re naturally going to become a great actor and appearances are what matter, right? So, if you say, “I’m a film director and what really motivates me is getting power”, that’s not going to look very good. You’re going to look like Machiavelli or something. It’s kind of a dirty word. “No, I’m interested in the art. I’m interested in creativity. I’m interested in helping people, in supporting a cause.” That’s what gets applause on Oscar night. Not “I love power. I like to manipulate. I like getting to the top.” Only, like an egotist could ever kind of admit that because it’s an agent. That’s such an ugly world that you can kind of admit that. But no director, no Spielberg, would ever admit that they’re motivated by power, which is, to me, sheer hypocrisy.

 

FRED: Yeah. And there’s a great sort of pulling back of the curtain experience in The 48 Laws of Power. And obviously, you share many insights that are inconvenient, politically incorrect, pretty dark, right? Some people have gone so far as to describe your books as ruthless, immoral, kind of Machiavelli for the modern world, all of that imagery. As I’m sure you know, your books, not just The 48 Laws of Power, but The Art of Seduction also were banned in many prisons. And, but you’ve said, like, your intention is for all of this to act as a kind of practical approach to power, right? You’ve written that power is basically amoral. It’s just a reality of the world. And you’ve written that you felt like you were a child, exposing what the parents were up to, opening the curtain, letting people see who the Wizard of Oz… Right?

 

 

 

Chapter 3: “Knowing our Flaws and Qualities”

Timestamps: 15:33 – 21:29

 

FRED: So, would you go so far as to say that human nature itself is mostly amoral, and that society behind all of those sort of, the images and the personas that we kind of project to each other, that society is mostly a game where everybody puts on a mask, but secretly angles for as much power and influence as they can get? Or is it possible or realistic for us to still strive for human societies that are mostly based on notions of empathy and respect? In other words, to what extent would you say that power games are kind of, highly context or situation specific versus completely generalized in human life?

 

ROBERT: Well, it’s a great question. And as in most things in the world, it’s not black or white. It’s kind of a mix. It’s gray, or it’s a mix of colours. So, I maintain that it’s part of our nature. The worst feeling that a human being can have is to have a sense of being powerless, having no control. So if you’re a child, you can’t get your parents’ attention. You can’t get them to give you the kind of toys or things that you need or want in life. It’s a terrible feeling. And so you’re going to act out. You’re going to use forms of manipulation, which children are brilliant at. You’re going to play passive-aggressive games. You’re going to play angel and devil at the same time to sort of throw them off balance. So it’s deeply embedded in human nature to want a degree of control over your life, okay? And if you don’t admit that, you don’t see that in yourself, if you can’t look in the mirror and say, “This is motivating-“ not all of my behaviour, I never want to say that, because that would make us to be truly evil creatures. And I don’t believe that at all. But to just look in the mirror and say, “Yeah, a lot of my behaviour in a relationship, even in an intimate relationship, or in the office, is governed by a desire for attention, for recognition and for power and control.” Okay? At least admit it and don’t let this be something that’s repressed, that’s a dark side in you, and that comes out in moments that you cannot control. And that was the theme of The Laws of Human Nature, my 6th book that came out about three years ago, which is, here are 18 Laws of Human Nature, and they’re mostly negative, to be honest with you. Irrationality, narcissism…

 

FRED: There’s a few positive ones, too, actually.

 

ROBERT: There are a few positive ones, I agree. But mostly, they have a negative tip to them, right? Our fear of mortality, our tendency to be grandiose, the sense of, kind of being aimless and not having a sense of purpose in life, our short side is on and on and on. And I want to say that this is something that is wired in our nature. That’s something that we can’t really control, that’s something we’re born with, that has to do with being a social animal, with a brain that was developed in much different circumstances. (Indiscernible) So the only way out of the trap, the only way to become truly empathetic, to become truly a better human being, is to confront your true nature, that you have some or all of these dark qualities, right? I have a quote in the book from Chekov- I can’t say it exactly, but humans cannot become better until they realize who they actually are. So if you never confront the fact of, what motivates your behaviour, if you can’t see that unconsciously, sometimes you do manipulate, that you do angle for power. If you can’t admit that you feel envy of people, we all feel envy. But if you can’t admit it, if you can’t admit that you can be irrational, that you can be self-absorbed, then you can’t begin to change because you have no honesty. You’re not looking at yourself, right? And, you know…

 

FRED: That’s what I was going to say. Like, the virtue of honesty seems really important to you. Like shining a light on the darkness, being honest, not letting people get away with all the little tales, all the little masks that they kind of project on each other. I feel like this virtue of honesty is something that’s really, really powerful for you.

 

ROBERT: It is, because I have an idea of authenticity, of coming to terms with who you really are.

And I’ve always been deeply annoyed by hypocrisy. So, you know, I know that I’m a flawed individual. And I’ve admitted it in many interviews and some things I’ve written. I know that in those 18 laws, I have all of them. And in writing the book, I had to confront them, right? So I know I’m no angel, but the thing is… This is who we are, we’re not descendants from angels. We’re descendants from primates, from chimpanzees, and chimpanzees have this nature that they are amazing animals. I absolutely love studying and watching them, but they can be extremely Machiavellian and very clever.

 

FRED: Oh, yeah.

 

ROBERT: Okay. This is who we’re descended from. This is who we are. This is the human animal. We would be much better off if we could all just get down on our hands and knees and say, “This is who I am. I am an animal. I have these qualities. I have these flaws.” Now I can begin with some awareness to take control of it. I can turn my usual self-absorption into empathy, which was law number two in the laws of human nature, how you can turn that obsession with yourself outward, which is actually something that is truly natural to us. We are split in that way because we’re social animals, and empathy is something that we’re actually gifted with. We have ability- Yes. I’m sorry. Go ahead.

 

 

 

Chapter 4: “Outshining the Master”

Timestamps: 21:30 – 31:33

 

FRED: No, that’s great, that’s great. And I was just, I was curious, going back to the example of the child or going back to your early experiences in Hollywood, is there a sense in which it’s even more important to really understand the rules and mechanics of power when you don’t have much power in a particular context, in a particular environment where other people have a lot of power over you, right? Because if you’re extremely powerful, it seems to me, you can be a little bit more sloppy and still kind of get your way. But if you’re a smaller player, a less powerful player, and you’re kind of subject to the power of others, you often need to be a lot more strategic and cunning just to survive.

 

ROBERT: I definitely agree with that, although I would say that even people in power have to be very careful because the fall from grace can be very sudden and very deep and painful. So even, even if you have power, there are pitfalls everywhere, you know. But yeah, I wrote the book basically from a position of someone who never really had power in this world, which is a bit ironic. You know, I’m writing the book that has had all of the success. But if you look at me at the time, I never had really an executive position. I never had people working for me. I was always working for other people, right? So, I was in a position of powerlessness. And I observed very carefully what people of power were doing, because I like observing things. And I violated many of the laws of power early in my career. I outshone the master at least three times. At least twice I got fired, and it was very painful for me. So, I know most people in this world are naive. They’re like me. You enter the world full of ideals and illusions, some of it inculcated from your parents or your college years or whatever, and then you’re kind of slapped by reality, and you don’t understand. Things happen where you’re fired, or you say something… “How can they have taken it that way?” Or you don’t realize that the people above you have an ego. Everybody has an ego, and you do something, and it has consequences that you never foresaw. It’s deeply, deeply painful. So, I’m writing the book from that perspective, of someone observing people in power. These are the mistakes to avoid, okay? So there’s a lot in there about, get others to do the work, but always take the credit. A particularly nasty, evil law, if you will, right? But I wrote that from the position of the victim of that. When I worked in Hollywood, and as you know, in the music industry, I’m sure this is very similar, other people do all of the work, do all of the writing, the producing, etc. Their name is never on it, right? And if you’re sensitive and you don’t like that, which I didn’t, it can cause a lot of problems. I would write whole bits of dialogue into screenplay. Nobody ever knew about that, right? And like, “Why not give me some credit?” “Well, that’s not how the game is played. You’re there, Robert, to make me look good, right? You’re not there to get any credit. Okay?” So behind the laws is this idea of the powerless person looking at the game of power, right? Almost like in the theater. And it shows the true- the nature of the book shows out in the results. Most of the people who glob onto the book, who really love it, are not the Bill Gates of this world, you know, because they don’t need that book. It’s the people who, like me, started out without any power, right? You need to learn how to control yourself. You need-

 

FRED: That’s so true. That’s so true. That’s been my experience, too, with that book.

 

ROBERT: Yeah. And that’s why it resonated so deeply with hip-hop artists and African American musicians. 50 told me, “I was dealing crack cocaine on the streets of Southside Queens. I saw every kind of imaginable, manipulation and backstab you can imagine. But nothing prepared me for the music industry, right? I’ve never seen such high-level power games. And your book really helped clarify for- that for me, because I had no business school, I had nobody telling me, I didn’t have my- a parent or anybody telling me this.” So most of the people that find the book helpful are from that position of powerlessness that I had when I wrote the book.

 

FRED: That’s such a good point. And it was definitely an eye-opening experience for me, too, that “Never Outshine the Master”, because just that first lesson put some of my past experiences as a young lawyer and big law firms, right? I thought, “Hey, if I come up with a better argument, you know, everyone’s going to be happy, right? If I come up with a better strategy than even, yeah, than even my boss, right? Why not, right? It’s about coming up with the best strategy, right?” The naive perspective, as you say, right? And no, like, that attitude made me a lot of enemies. I thought it was just a meritocracy. I kind of took the meritocratic ideal very literally, and I had to learn. And I knew that something connected to my behaviour was badly received in those environments. But I didn’t really understand what. And when I read that, “Never Outshine the Master”- And it’s connected to something else, all of that stuff just started making sense. It’s connected to something else you’ve written about. About how the higher up you go in a hierarchy, the more insecure you become. And this one was really counterintuitive for me at first. It was hard for me to understand because you think that people with power, if you have the power, you can kind of be secure, right? The more power you have, the more certainty and security you have, the less you have to be insecure. But then you look at the actual behaviour of people in power, and this starts to make a lot of sense, right? I’m not thinking, like, even on a political level; Trump getting into Twitter squabbles with pro athletes and, like, firing everybody around him when he’s at the peak of his powers. Or you look even at Putin now in Ukraine. You listen to his speeches, and he’s got this long list of grievances that almost make him sound like a powerless victim of the West.

 

ROBERT: Right.

 

FRED: So why is it from your perspective that powerful people so often act from a place of insecurity? Is it because they have just, like, that many more people coming for them? Is it- what gives them that sense of insecurity?

 

ROBERT: Well, you know… So you get attention rising to the top. You become a CEO or a President or whatever your position is. And now everybody in the world is looking at you and judging you on a level that you’ve never experienced before, right? And I know that myself, I’m never- I’m not anywhere near those levels. But compared to where I was, it was a striking contrast where nobody would give me the time of day or listen to anything I said. Just suddenly, people are hanging on my every word, right? With all that level of attention and recognition comes a little voice in the back of your head going, “Do I deserve this? Am I really that good? Do I really know all of these things?” And then the moment that attention drops or that recognition drops or you seem to reveal that you’re human and mortal and that you have an Achilles heel, those insecurities is like, Pandora’s box. All the little voices come out. And so you’re continually acting on this. And the paradigm for me I wrote about in Laws of Human Nature was the battle between Michael Eisner and, I’m sorry, Eisen. (Indiscernible) Jeffrey Katzenberg, right, at Disney.

 

FRED: Yes, I remember that.

 

ROBERT: So Eisner is like the most powerful person in all of Hollywood and all of entertainment. He rose up from Paramount. He had the magic touch. He had the Midas touch. Every film he did was spectacular. He gets brought on to Disney, given incredible power that nobody ever had. He turns that studio around. Why would anybody like that feel insecure? And then he has somebody working beneath him who is like the chief of one of his divisions, Jeffrey Katzenberg, who’s extremely talented, who’s a little too talented, because Katzenberg starts producing films, he starts getting attention, as if he’s the one behind Disney’s success in the early 90s. Well, Katz- Eisner, who is the most powerful person in entertainment, is deeply insecure by this man who’s 20 years younger, I don’t know exactly the number, but who has one-tenth of his power and success, because his position is being slightly challenged. And if someone like that can have all of these swords, all of these insecurities that come up, that come from rising to the top… So when you rise to the top, you’ve fought many battles, you’ve taken many wounds, you’ve had rejections, you have all of these little wounds that are kind of invisible now because they’re covered over by all of your success. And when the slightest bad thing happens, they just come all out. And so maybe it was someone like Putin, who up till now seemed- you know, had this perfect armour, nothing could touch him. When things aren’t going well, all of those little insecurities are going to come out. He’s going to be rabbity, he’s going to be foaming at the mouth, right? So people of power have an Achilles heel, which is showing that they are human, that they are mortal, and that they have insecurities and that their attention might be falling a little bit, that other people might be rising while they’re not being- certainly Trump is a classic example of that. So that’s what I think is behind that phenomenon to some degree.

 

 

 

Chapter 5: “Childhood and the Art of Seduction”

Timestamps: 31:34 – 38:27

 

FRED: You’ve got this unbelievable, such an astute way of kind of unpacking psychological phenomena. I’m curious, is that something you always had as a child, like growing up? That sense of observation, just kind of like looking around, trying to unpack people’s motivations. It doesn’t seem to be the kind of knowledge you just get from books. Am I wrong?

 

ROBERT: I think you’re right to some degree. I can’t recall me being that astute. But I do know that the nature of my parenting, and I had two wonderful parents, I’m not saying… I had a great childhood. But the nature of my parenting was very observant. If I didn’t do something right, if I wasn’t getting the right grades, if I wasn’t behaving correctly, I wasn’t going to get the love that I felt I deserved, right? So it made me, and you know, my sister is like that- it made me very observant of the adults around me; how to protect myself, how to see what is the right behaviour, what will please them, what won’t please them. And that kind of attitude, probably also with a degree of empathy that I have, not empathy, but a good sense of reading people, a feel for their nonverbal skills, probably veered me towards writing because writers have to be astute observers of people’s psychology. If they’re a good writer, if they write good novels or if they write good nonfiction. And so, that kind of passivity. “Are you not an active person? You’re a child that’s reading books, that’s kind of alone a lot.” I was always creating games and fantasy worlds for myself. So living in that kind of introspective world where you’re sort of observing year after year after year after year after year, you develop a skill, right? And you multiply that over 20, 30 years of paying deep attention to people, almost as a form of protection because you don’t want to get hurt. You know, observing not just what they say, but their smiles, their nonverbal behaviour, you know, the letters they write back in the day or emails. How do you read between the lines? You know, it becomes a skill. And, you know, I’ve been blessed with the fact of writing these books so that I can actually exercise my skill because I knew I had it. If I didn’t have the success, if I wasn’t able to write the books that I write, I wouldn’t be able to apply it to anything, because my wife now, we’ve been together for many years, she knew me before I had success, and she always said, “You know, you always gave me the best advice, and I understood it. Now it seems natural that you were able to transfer this to books.” And I go, “Yeah, but, you know, back then, nobody listened to me, right?” So, there are probably lots of other Robert Greenes out there, people like me, who nobody will listen to, but who actually have that kind of feel for human nature. I think it does stem from early childhood in some ways.

 

FRED: You talk about your wife. So that actually links up to my next question. Why is seduction a form of power?

 

ROBERT: Well, in this world today, where everything is very democratic, we’re very sensitive to people who have privilege or who are powerful in some way where we naturally feel that something might be wrong if you have power, where the word power is ugly, and manipulation is totally forbidden- seduction is a form of power, because if you are charming, if you know how to please people, if you know how to flatter them, if you know how to get them to like you or even love you, then they’ll do anything for you, their defences will fall down. This is an incredibly important lesson for everyone out there that I think is just a survival law is- people are naturally resistant and defensive.Especially in the modern world, where we face- we’re all dealing with too much information, too many intrusive things in our lives. We have these walls that go up. And so when you’re trying to persuade someone, when you’re trying to sell a product, when you’re trying to interest a man or a woman in your, you know, intimate life, they are resistant from you. They’re not there- they’re not going to melt at your first words. They’re not going to naturally succumb to your brilliant pitch. They’re in their own worlds- that are thinking about their own life. They have no reason to want you. So your first task is to lower that resistance, to melt those walls, if you will, so that you have a degree where you can enter their psychology. Seduction is an art where the person you’re trying to seduce or the group you’re trying to seduce, in an election or with a product, when they are thinking about you, when you’re not there, you will have seduced them, right? Your fantasy that you’ve created is in their head. You’ve penetrated their mind, their walls, and they’re thinking about you. You had a date with this woman two days ago, and she’s thinking about you, and that means you have seduced her, right? You’ve been able to penetrate those defences, unless everything she’s thinking is negative about you, but that even is a form of seduction as well. It’s better to have them thinking about you than to be ignored, right? So if you can understand that people are naturally resistant, and that you have to strategize to bring down those walls, you’re already going to be a master persuader, a master seducer. You enter their spirit, you enter their world. What it means to be Fred Pinto, what your weaknesses are, what- the things that you aren’t getting from other people. If I understand that, and I touch upon those things- you’re going to lower those defences. You’re going to say and do things, and you’re not even aware of it, that are going to be in my interest. If I could get you to promote my interests without you being aware of it, what form of power could be greater than that? You know… And that crosses-

 

FRED: True. It’s a very subtle way of kind of getting into somebody’s psychology.

 

ROBERT: Yeah.

 

 

 

Chapter 6: “Power in the Music Industry”

Timestamps: 38:30 – 43:29

 

FRED: Very interesting. Very, very interesting. So you mentioned working with 50 Cent, and obviously, over the years, you’ve developed a really interesting relationship with the rap game. The 48 Laws is almost like an unofficial Bible among famous rappers. It’s been referenced by Jay Z, Drake, Busta Rhymes, Kanye West, many, many others. And of course, you wrote The 50th Law with 50 Cent. So, you mentioned already why you feel that your books have appealed so much to people in the rap game. You’ve mentioned that, you know, it comes from a perspective of people who are powerless, who are kind of looking up trying to understand how society works. Do you think there are any other reasons why they’ve been so kind of hungry, taking in your insights, taking in your book and referencing it, and how was the experience of actually working with 50 Cent on the book? You mentioned that the image is not exactly the reality.

 

ROBERT: Well, I think that, there was a kind of history going prior to my book where rappers like Tupac were really into, he had the name Makaveli, who was interested in Machiavelli. And a lot of them were kind of referencing books like The Art of War. One of their favourite movies was… with Al Pacino, not The Godfather…

 

FRED: Scarface.

 

ROBERT: Scarface. That was one of their favourite movies. So things that display kind of power in its brute form had immense appeal to them already. So this is a book that had that, that had that kind of cultural reference to it, that they felt very comfortable. A lot of white people, to be honest with you, feel kind of guilty about that. They feel, “Robert, that’s not really the world. That’s not how things operate, you know. That’s not how politics is.” The Black African Americans, they know, “No way. That is exactly how power is.” Because they felt the end of it. They felt that boot crushing them, hitting them. They know what power can be like, and they know more than anything, what powerlessness is like, right? They’ve experienced it for so many years… Decades, centuries. And so in the music industry, that kind of power dynamic- there’s a huge history of people in that business exploiting Black artists, going back to jazz artists, going back to Duke Ellington, right? So the ability to turn that dynamic around, and in the late 90’s, the rap world was going through a big transformation where a lot of African Americans were getting into management. “We’re going to create our own record label”. People like Chris Leide created Violator. “We’re going to create our own management team, and we’re going to control the work. You’re not going to exploit us anymore.” They found the book revelatory. So, it was a shock to me. I’ve always been very excited, very interested in Black culture, etc, in music… So I was extremely pleased by this. I was more pleased that it had success there than it had success on Wall Street, because that was more personal to me. And so I was surprised and very excited. And then, somewhere back, you know, I met Busta Rhymes before I met 50, because Busta had found The 48 Laws very early on, and he wanted to make a movie out of The 48 Laws of Power. And we met. He was an extremely impressive guy. I really thought he was amazing. But then 50 contacted me, and I had a meeting that I’ve talked about a lot in other interviews where I flew to New York to meet him. And I was just this one kind of, you know, white, middle-class dude from Los Angeles, and here he was in the back room of a Steakhouse of Madison Avenue in Manhattan with his whole team of people, right? And it was 50, and I knew the legend. I was kind of intimidated, right? What came out later is, he was also intimidated by me. He thought, “The guy who wrote The 48 Laws of Power, this dude must be like Henry Kissinger. He must be so powerful.” He was nervous as well. And we both realized that the image wasn’t the reality; that the thug image of 50- there’s some truth to it, because he grew up in Southside, Queens, he’s not a softie by any means. But he’s a very charming, personable person who is very sensitive, who listens really well. You know, he wasn’t at all the image that I thought he would be, and I wasn’t what he thought I would be. I wasn’t this old grizzled guy who’d risen through all kinds of political games, etc. So we were both kind of surprised by that. And, you know, I thought- I spend all of my time hanging out with dead people, you know. I write books about kings and queens and emperors and generals, and they’re all dead, you know. I spent three years kind of living with Napoleon Bonaparte, studying it. So here I have a chance to write a book about someone who’s alive. Well, that’ll be novel. That would be fun. I don’t have to go to a library. I don’t have to go back into history. I can just simply observe a master player in power. I called him “the Napoleon Bonaparte of the hip-hop world”. Right? Because he is a brilliant player in the game of power. And he’s been able to-

 

FRED: Oh yeah. It’s amazing what he’s done in production as well, in producing a television series and so forth. Like, what he’s been able to do and also stay relevant- his music, even lately, it’s pretty, pretty impressive.

 

ROBERT: Yeah. There’s not much longevity in the music industry, in any form, in any genre in there. And in hip-hop particularly, there are so many one-hit wonders, it’s insane. And he and Jay Z, I suppose, are the only ones who have really been able to kind of defy the laws of gravity and last this long. And a lot of 50’s instincts on business and being an entrepreneur and being able to control his empire are what has served him throughout all of these years. So I was really impressed with him, and then I discovered the secret to his success. What I think is the secret is his degree of fearlessness. The 50th Law, the book we did together is basically a meditation on what can happen to you inside, if you transform yourself, you lose all of your layers of fear that are holding you back, right? And it’s not just the obvious forms of fear: your fear of conflict, your fear of being alone, your fear of being different, etc., etc., etc. Losing that is an incredibly empowering transformation for you.

 

 

 

Chapter 7: “Picking the Right Moments to be Your Authentic Self”

Timestamps: 45:41 – 52:59

 

FRED: Yeah. There’s a part I really, really like in The 50th Law, where 50 Cent writes: “The greatest fear people have is that of being themselves. They do what everyone else does, even if it doesn’t fit where and who they are. But you get nowhere that way. Your energy is weak, and no one pays attention to you. You’re running away from the one thing that you own, what makes you different. Once I felt the power I had by showing the world I didn’t care about being like other people, I could never go back.” And this echoes something you previously wrote, when you wrote: “The world wants to assign you a role in life, and once you accept that role, you are doomed.” So, there’s a really interesting dynamic there. It’s almost like, to be recognized and appreciated by others, even, you have to kind of be yourself. You can’t just play to the role or the expectations that others have of you, or care too much what they think of you. On the other hand, much of what you write about, on tactics and strategy, has to do with anticipating other people’s actions and adapting and responding accordingly. So how do you feel that we should strike that balance, right,  between sort of being unapologetically and fearlessly and spontaneously ourselves, but also anticipating people’s reactions and being smart and tactical in the world?

 

ROBERT: So, you know, like everything in life, it’s about context. It’s not a black-and-white thing where you just- must always be yourself. You enter the work world. You’re 22, you’re 23, you’re in a company of ten hundred thousand people. And if you just be yourself, if you just wear the clothes that you want to wear, if you just act and do that, you’re going to be fired in a couple of days, right? It won’t work.

 

FRED: Yeah, guilty as charged.

 

ROBERT: Okay, well, we’ve all been there on that. So, you know, you have to understand where you are, your circumstances in life, and what the game is at that particular moment, right? So I have the law of court attention at all cost, right? But that depends on where you are and what field you’re in, right? If you’re entering working at Microsoft, that’s your first job, and you’re courting attention at all costs, it won’t work. And that’s why I make everything in The 48 Laws, I make it very clear about the context of where you are in your particular status, and moment in life, and what is appropriate and what is not. And that’s also why I have the reversals for each chapter where I’m saying, “Here’s an instance where courting attention at all costs will be deadly for you. You shouldn’t do it, right?” So the game of power, the game of life, being a great strategist, is being able to let go of things from the past and be alive to the moment, to the circumstance. What is law number 48? Assume formlessness. It’s the last law because it’s the most important law. Being able to kind of flow with the moment and adapt to your circumstances. Okay, so you mentioned the game and the difficulty of that. And it is a bit of an art where, in your work, in what you do, you create something that is unique, right? When you get to that position where you can do that, right? So, if you’re able now to make the film or write the music or write the book or start the business, and you have money and backing and a bit of experience, then by all means try and be as different as possible, right? Because that’s the road to power. But if you’re not there yet, bide your time and wait and see when things are more, going in your direction, and you can afford to take risks, right? Because fortune favours the bold, as they say. And I’m greatly in favour of taking risks, not gambling. There’s a difference between risk and gamble. A risk is, if you lose, your life isn’t destroyed. You’re not like, devastated. You haven’t put all of your money on, in blackjack on one set of cards, and then you’re wiped out. You can land back on your feet. A gamble is if you lose, you’re in deep doo-doo, right, you’re in trouble, right? So, risk is something that is very important for you to take at the appropriate moment. So, that’s in your work, if you can afford it. And then maybe in your image, if that’s who- if you’re an artist, you can afford to be different and unique. But at the same time, when you’re dealing with people in the social sense, that’s where the game shifts. And that’s where you have to be able to kind of move between the two. Where you have different parts of your brain that you can access, where you’re not just one- you’re not this train headed in one direction. “I’m going to be different no matter what anybody, any says…” You’re going to offend a lot of people, unless you’re in a position where offending people is part of your reputation. But that won’t work very well, even for a comedian, so… You can’t just be going, “I’m going to do this one thing. That’s my source of power.” The game of being social and polite and being a courtier and pleasing people means you have to have a fine sensitivity to how other people think, right? So going back to 50, he’s somebody who understood very early on that his source of power is his being different. You had, in the world of hip hop, and then- everybody tried to pretend that they were a gangster, right? And even Ja Rule, which, with whom he had his famous beef with… 50 called them “fake gangsters”, because they didn’t come from wealth, but they came from decent backgrounds. Whereas 50 was a real gangster. He was shot nine times because of a failed drug deal, right? He had the wounds. He had the bullets still lodged in his mouth. “All right, I’m going to play that up. I’m going to be as different as possible and use that image. But at the same time, I have to be very pleasing to the industry people, the record label at Interscope. I have to be very polite and understand their mentality and how to fit into the world of Interscope, to the various different levels.” I forget the name of the… Is it Jimmy something or other?

 

FRED: Jimmy Iovine?

 

ROBERT: Jimmy Iovine who is a master player of power, a very difficult man, how you deal with him and his ego… So you can do both at the same time. You can walk and chew gum at the same time. You’d be surprised how you have that ability to be authentic, to let yourself out when it’s appropriate, in your work, in your music, in your business. But in other moments, you are deeply sensitive to people’s feelings, to their mood, to their spirit. You can enter their spirit. So, if you can play that two-prong game, if you can walk and chew gum at the same time, the doors are open to you, and that is: when it’s appropriate, be yourself, let go, create an image of something that’s not like anybody else, and at the same time, be deeply empathetic to the people around you and understand their needs and their weaknesses and how you can seduce them.

 

 

 

Chapter 8: “Forms of Intelligences and What You Are Meant To Do in Life”

Timestamps: 53:00 – 1:07:25

 

FRED: Yeah, that tense of nuance. Anybody who’s really grappled with your work is familiar with it, the reversals… And I love that “Being Formless”, the 48th law, kind of brings everything together. And it’s funny because you’re often mistakenly, in my opinion, thought of only as this Machiavellian writer about power or war or seduction. Just these, like, sort of tactical strategic angles. But you’ve written two other books that include a much broader set of perspectives, Mastery and The Laws of Human Nature that we talked about a little bit. And maybe one of the reasons that the nuance and depth in your work is less talked about is because it’s much harder to contain in a kind of a quick byline. Whereas when we talk, we just say Machiavelli for the modern times, it just kind of jumps off the page, right? And so I want to talk a little bit about Mastery and some of the lessons of The Laws of Human Nature. In the book, you mentioned that the first step to mastery is to discover your life’s task. You write that: “What we lack most in the modern world is a sense of a larger purpose. And so, in order to master a field, you must love the subject, and feel a profound connection to it. Your interest must transcend the field itself and border on the religious.” So first, why is it you think that we lack a sense of purpose in modern life? And how can we go about finding our life’s task if the very notion of a religious level interest seems almost distant for a lot of people today, right? We seem more as a culture focused on immediate things, like work and paying the bills and, I don’t know, watching Netflix, social media… How do we get to that quasi-religious state if that’s not what we’re taught to value in the culture?

 

ROBERT: Okay, what was the first part of the question? I’m sorry.

 

FRED: It was, why do we lack a sense of purpose in modern life?

 

ROBERT: Well, a lot of it has to do with something embedded in human nature. And I talk about that in both, in Mastery and in The Laws of Human Nature, in the chapter on Aimlessness, where… You know, if you’re an animal, if you’re a cat, a dog, a tiger, you don’t wake up in the morning and go, “What am I going to do today? Where am I going to find mice to kill? How am I going…” you know, etc., etc. You’re basically programmed by your instinct, by certain things that you don’t have to sit there and figure out, “What am I going to do?” We are born differently. We don’t operate on instinct. We have instincts, for sure, but they don’t govern most of our behaviour anymore, right? So, you wake up in the morning, you don’t have a direction. You don’t have somebody telling you, I mean, unless you have a job where you have to get somewhere, “This is what you must do. This is what you must wear. This is what you must believe. This is where you must go, etc., etc.” Okay, so we’re born in a much different state than any other animal, in a way that evolution has never prepared for it, in all of its millions of years of preparing for the evolution of humans. Okay? And so, you arrive at a moment where you can be very lost, and it’s easy to get lost. But if you compare this to the past, it wasn’t so egregious in the past. So, you had direction, you had social codes. You had… “This is what you’re supposed to do. This is how you’re supposed to behave. If you’re born into this class, if you’re born into this ethnicity, if you have this profession, this career…” Things were kind of spelled out for you. And even not so long ago. I remember my father, God bless him, he worked his whole life, basically 50 years, at one job, at one company, right? So he had a pretty much programmed life, even though he had a rich life in his own way. Nobody does that anymore. Nobody works at the same company for more than a few years usually. I never worked at one place more than eleven months. So when you have that situation, where you have the Internet, where you have all this information, all this possibility… I could go here, I could do this, I could do that, I could do that, I could learn this skill, I could do that. You’re lost, right? It’s like, I sometimes go to the supermarket and I go, “Damn, I wish somebody would just choose for me. I can’t choose between all of these different brands.” It’s overwhelming. Well, the Internet is like this market. It’s just, like, confusing and driving you crazy because there’s too much choice. You have too much choice in your life. And so it’s very easy to get lost and to get that aimlessness overwhelm you like a wave and just send you off in some direction that you never intended to go. And so when you’re in your twenties, you have energy, you look good, you’re excited, you dress well, etc. You can kind of cover-up that fact of being aimless, right? You can have fun, you can work, and be a barista, you can go travel to Finland, you can take advantage of blah, blah, blah. You get away with it. But then suddenly you’re 30 years old. You have no real skill base. You never really thought about it, you know. And you’re not so young, and you don’t look quite as good, and you don’t dress quite as well, and you’re not as hip as you used to be. “Well, shit, what am I going to do, man? I am lost.” It’s a terrible, terrible feeling. So that’s why it’s so dangerous for humans. To get to the second part of your question: you have to understand something very fundamental about the human brain that you were born with, in a lot of masteries about understanding how our brain is, and our neurology. All right? And it’s very simple. When you’re excited by something, when you want to learn a subject, you’re going to learn ten times faster than if you’re bored with it, because you’re paying attention, you’re paying deep attention. Things are getting into your brain. You’re learning, you’re retaining it. Whereas if you’re bored, you never retain anything. So I remember two things. When I was trying to graduate from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, I had one class I had to finish, which was in science, because I never really took many science classes. It was in pharmacology. I had to learn all these drug names, etc., etc. I crammed like crazy. It was like an intense three-month class, and I got an A from it. I can’t remember one thing to this day about anything from that class. Not one thing. I retained nothing, right? Okay? And the other example was, I studied French in the University. And I thought it was pretty good. I studied it for a couple of years, because I loved languages. And then I went to Paris when I was 22 years old, and I wanted to live there. I couldn’t understand a word. My University education was useless, because I had no reason to learn. But once I was in Paris, and I fell in love with this very beautiful Parisian girl… “Damn, I’ve got to learn French. I’m not going to be able to have any kind of… I won’t be able to talk to her for God’s sake. How can I alone ask her for a date if I can’t say anything? I can’t order on a menu, blah, blah, blah.” I had to- I learned more French in three weeks than I learned in three years at University, because I wanted to. So when you want to learn something, doors open up in the brain. Things come in, you retain them, and you learn at an incredibly fast rate. All right? So, if you choose a career that doesn’t excite you, that doesn’t hit you, that doesn’t connect to you, which is the case for most people, I’m afraid, then you’re never going to really learn. You’re never going to be able… Learning is a function both of what you absorb and the intensity of the absorption. And what I mean by that is, if you spend two years learning something very intensely, you’re going to go much further than if you learn the same amount in five or ten years, right? Because the brain makes all kinds of connections between things. With the intensity of focus, things start happening. You develop a momentum that I talk about in Mastery. All right? So the game is: if you want power, if you want success, if you want to be a master in this world, you have to choose a career that you emotionally connect to. So that you can, that you can access that part of the brain that was developed for learning, because you’re emotionally engaged in it. So that-

 

FRED: Right. It gives you that fuel. It gives you that fuel to go further, to create more connections. You have a lot more engagement.

 

ROBERT: Right. So the earlier you can understand that, the more deeply you understand what it was you were meant to do in life. If you could connect to what I call your primal inclinations, what separated you, what you were excited about when you were two years old, three years old, etc. And I have many historic examples of people who became very successful, who had those moments when they were almost infants. You’re going to be able to figure it out earlier on, and you’re going to go through that process, that accelerated learning process in your teens and your early twenties, and you’re going to be called a child prodigy. You’re going to be a boy or girl wonder, you know. And I give example after example after example of this. So, the most important thing in life is figuring that out: it’s knowing what you are meant to do in life, to know what your destiny is.

 

FRED: This reminds me of something I read also in The Laws of Human Nature when you wrote “There are no superior callings.” Right? People tend to start by saying, “Okay, is there a path to fame? Is there a path to entrepreneurship? Is there a path to making it really, really big?” And you write: “What matters is that your calling be tied to a personal need and inclination and that your energy moves you toward improvement and continuous learning. No calling is superior to another.” So it kind of echoes with what you’re saying now about: start with something that you’re really, really passionate about, that you’re really engaged with, and let that be your sort of North Star.

 

ROBERT: Yeah. I mean, there’s a book that I recommend to a lot of people. It’s by a man named Howard Gardner. It’s called The Five Frames of Mind, I believe. I don’t remember the last word. But I think it’s called The Five Frames of Mind.

 

FRED: Howard Gardner, is he the psychologist that wrote about the theory of multiple intelligences?

 

ROBERT: Yes, that’s what this is about. These are about the five forms of intelligences. So, I don’t have all five memorized. I’m sorry. But there’s obviously mathematical numbers, kind of that sort of abstract reasoning. There’s words and linguistics. There’s kinetics, it’s like body movement, etc.

 

FRED: The body…

 

ROBERT: Yeah. There’s social intelligence. And there’s something else. I can’t remember what it is.

 

FRED: I believe he has musical intelligence, too. Like, some people are just really brilliant at music, and it’s not necessarily, not necessarily, like, more rational or more, you know, skilled at even, like, writing, but, like, music just really makes sense to them.

 

ROBERT: Well, he boils it down to something even more basic. I think it’s about being, like, being able to know patterns, that you’re obsessed with patterns. And music is all about creating certain kinds of patterns. And so, there’s deep below, the level of actually being good at music, there’s something going on in the brain. And if you can say the brain has these inclinations, we all basically have the same brain, the same design, but there’s just little differences that create a bent in that mind, a bent, an inclination to your spirit. And those are the five frames that he talks about. You inevitably are bent towards one of them, right? Just every single human being has that. And you need to know what that is, right? So for me, it was words, it was linguistics. I was obsessed with language when I was five years old. You know, I can remember. I can recall things in elementary school. Whoa. And I just love looking things up in a dictionary. Well, that was a sign of what I was meant to do. And if I had followed my parents’ advice and went to law school and become a lawyer or become a doctor, I’d probably be- probably have cancer by now or have died from a heart attack or something.

 

FRED: Well, law does… As a fellow linguistic sort of obsessed person, it does give you a bit of an outlet towards that. You know, the reading, the writing, the playing with words… But if you have a strong creative side, you’re always going to be sort of hitting your head against the wall.

 

ROBERT: That’s true. If you’re like a defence lawyer or if you’re in court and you’re able to like, kind of give your final summation or something, there’s some interesting writing involved in that and writing briefs, etc. Yeah, but it’s a little bit constricting, you know. It wasn’t my world. Anyway… You have one of those bents, one of those inclinations. The game is understanding what that is, right? And nothing is superior to another. So, one of the skills, one of the forms of intelligence is working with your hands. It’s something that’s very degraded in the world today, right? We don’t really respect people who just make things with their hands, you know, a carpenter or a craftsman. But in the past, that was considered one of the highest forms of human intelligence. And it’s where, as a species, we evolved- was our hand-eye coordination, our ability to make tools. That’s who we are. Well, I had a guy, a carpenter here at the house, who made the tiles for my patio. He was a master. He was brilliant. He was- he could just figure things out. And so, working with your hands, building something, making something beautiful is a form of intelligence. It’s not any less of an intelligence than what Elon Musk or Albert Einstein or James Joyce creates. It’s just as beautiful, just as human, just as sublime as anything else. I don’t have any kind of hierarchy among them. The hierarchy is: those who figure it out and those who never figure it out. If you never figure it out, you’re never going to go very far in this world I’m afraid.

 

 

 

Chapter 9: “The Sublime”

Timestamps: 1:07:30 – 1:17:26

 

FRED: You mentioned the word there. That was actually my next question. And it’s “the sublime”.

You write a lot about this concept of “the sublime”. And I actually got a lot of my downloads on it in The Daily Laws, which is sort of a great compendium of all the laws and wisdom that you’ve written about over the years. And this is the whole month of December. And you write that in our culture, we’re uncomfortable with even the thought of death. And I know that two months after finishing The Laws of Human Nature, you suffered a serious stroke. So first of all, I hope that you’re doing better, and I see that you’re doing a lot better. You write that after that happened to you, you had to confront the reality of death more viscerally than ever. And that power of confronting your mortality gives us access to what you call “the sublime”. Can you expand a little bit on what you mean by this expression, “the sublime”?

 

ROBERT: Well, I’ve written the 18th chapter in The Laws of Human Nature, which is about confronting your mortality in May of 2018. And in August, literally three months afterwards, I came this close to dying. I was driving a car, and my wife was in the passenger seat. If she hadn’t been there, which was, very frequently I’d be driving by myself, I wouldn’t be here talking to you right now. She saw something going on with my face, which is what happens when you’re having a stroke. Everything gets really weird and strange and, like, half your face is collapsing. She goes, “Robert, pull over. Pull over.” “What? Nothing’s going on.” She forced me to pull over to the side of the road, and then, you know, I went unconscious. I don’t remember anything. And she called 911, and fortunately an ambulance was there. So, a series of fortunate things were: she was with me, she called quickly, she knew what to do, they arrived quickly… I would have otherwise either been dead, or I would have suffered permanent brain damage, and I wouldn’t be able to talk to you, or I wouldn’t have been able to write another book. So, I’m very fortunate on that. And so, the irony was, I wrote a chapter that is kind of intellectual and abstract. And then three months later, I literally experienced what I had been writing about. And so “the sublime”, I tell people the word “sublime” comes from the Latin of sublimis, and limis is the threshold of a door or a window. And so sublimis means to move up to the threshold of a door or a window. And so that- what I call that is: that door, on the other side of that door is death, right? That’s the ultimate mystery. That’s the ultimate door we all pass through. If you can say when you’re born, you enter life. It’s like opening a door and entering it. And when you die, that door is closed. And “the sublime”, in that sense of the word, is going right up to that door of death, experiencing it, peering on the other side, getting a sense of what it feels like, what it could mean, and then pulling back and living. And what it does is it totally changes your mind. It totally changes your mindset, your spirit. It’s like, the most powerful drug experience you could ever have. Because everything in your brain shifts in those kinds of moments. And if you read the literature on near-death experiences, it’s both really, really interesting and also a little bit scary in some ways, because it shows that the brain, as it functions, is largely creating an illusion that we live in. And that when you come close to death, you’re actually experiencing the reality of what is going on in the world. And so, to me, what “the sublime” is, if I can make that metaphor, is I like to say that there’s kind of a circle, and this circle represents what we humans in our particular cultural moment are supposed to think, believe, and behave like, right? This is what’s appropriate to our cultural moment. These are the ideas that are acceptable. This is the reality that our society believes in, right? We no longer believe that there’s Zeus in the sky, and Athena. We no longer believe in the Egyptian Gods. We have our own reality. A lot of it has to do with science, okay? So there’s a circle there. You’re not supposed to go beyond that. You’re supposed to stay inside that circle, to be a socially acceptable human being. That circle existed in ancient Egypt, but it wasn’t the same values…

 

FRED: It wasn’t the same, right.

 

ROBERT: …but it had the same limitations. But what human nature is, some psychologists have called this the phenomenon of induction: the moment you prohibit something to the human brain, we’re fascinated by it. We’re fascinated by that taboo. This is where we’re not supposed to go. This is what we’re not supposed to think. These are the sexual practices we’re not supposed to do, etc. Whoa. You start thinking about them because we don’t- We have a perverse streak to us. Try an example. If I tell you, “Fred, right now, don’t think of an elephant. Whatever you do, don’t think of an elephant.”

 

FRED: Too late.

 

ROBERT: You can’t. You’re thinking of it, right? Don’t immediately think of what you’re not supposed to do. You can’t help it, okay? So what lies beyond that circle is like the elephant. We’re interested in it, but we’re almost a little bit afraid to go there. So “the sublime” is exploring those aspects around that circle that are not accepted ideas that we don’t really normally entertain, feelings we don’t normally entertain, thoughts that we’re not supposed to think, actions we’re not supposed to do. And experiencing them, going up there and getting rid of your fear, opens your mind up, because living in that circle can become very boring and familiar. Everything you experience day to day is the same. You live in your little phone world, and everything is kind of limited, and based on algorithms… You’re not experiencing what the human brain and the human spirit is capable of, right? There’s a whole world out there you’re not aware of. Our consciousness were developed for incredible expansion, for understanding these mysteries of life itself. And you’re living in this little narrow circle. I’m trying to open you up to the sublime realities. And each chapter in the new book has an aspect of that. The Cosmos, your own childhood, ancient history, evolution of life… You know, just for instance, on that score, if you understand how unlikely it is that human beings ever evolved with our consciousness as it is, and that I’m talking to you via the Internet, via Riverside or whatever it’s called, is incredible. The odds against it are mind-blowing. Because they had all of these bottlenecks in evolution where multicellular organisms almost never evolved like, body parts, the way our bodies are organized almost never evolved. If dinosaurs had been killed off 67 million years ago, you and I wouldn’t be here. If mammals hadn’t evolved on and on and on and on and on… So, thinking that way makes you realize just to be alive is the most insane experience. The world that you live in, with all of its technology, with all of the nature around there, is so unlikely, and you never think about that. When you think about a sublime thought or have a sublime experience, it sends a chill up your spine. I compare it to the combination of two contrary emotions. And neurologists have emphasized this. When you experience two contrary emotions at the same time, it gives you a very powerful emotional impact. And “the sublime” is pain and pleasure at the same time. Fear and fascination at the same time.  You’re afraid of the eternity of time and the vastness of space, but you’re also fascinated by it. And the combination of the two creates a sort of tingling effect in your brain. If you were simply fascinated, it’d just be a fascination. If you were simply afraid, you wouldn’t go there. But the two together create this kind of sublime effect. I could go on for hours, but that’s the book that I’m currently in.

 

FRED: That is, that is so powerful. And I feel like we’re kind of full circle with the notion, again, of pulling back the curtain. We started with the hypocrisies of power, and now it’s like, all these, this unbelievable grand mystery of the Cosmos, and what lies outside of the circle that our culture draws for ourselves. And again, we’re back at that theme of, like, pulling back the curtain, experiencing what is hidden, kind of revealing what is hidden. Is that- Do you feel a theme that has been kind of consistent for you throughout your unbelievable writing career?

 

ROBERT: Yeah, I think so. I’m always trying to challenge myself. I’m always trying to go past where I was before. But I must say that I’ve been wanting to write this book on “the sublime” for 16 years. I got- I was supposed to write it after the War book, and then I got into the 50 book, and  the Mastery, but something that means a lot to me- but, yeah, exploring things that are taboo, that you’re not supposed to talk about, that are a little bit beyond, that are unfamiliar, that are outside the banality of what we normally think and do during our lives, has always, has always fascinated me. The not-

 

FRED: So that’s the next book, officially, the book on “the sublime”?

 

ROBERT: Yes, it is. Yes, it is. I’m working-

 

FRED: Amazing. Any kind of idea of when that might come out?

 

ROBERT: I’m having a really hard time for it, to be honest with you, because it’s going very slowly. I’ve had a lot of distractions, The Daily Laws, etc., and also, physically, I can’t type because I still have weakness in my left hand. It still doesn’t respond. And so, I have to go through this almost medieval process of writing a book where I handwrite everything, and edit it handwriting it, and then dictate it to the computer, and then edit it with one hand. So I’ve written about a third of the book, but it’s going very slowly. So don’t pressure me. Give me a couple of years, it’ll be out.

 

FRED: No pressure.

 

ROBERT: Hopefully, we’ll all be alive.

 

FRED: If you need any help, if you need any support whatsoever, I’m sure we can get Ryan back in the fold. Anything at all. But that sounds like- the topic is just absolutely unbelievable and the way you’ve just described it, it’s just like, really wow, so… but no pressure!

 

ROBERT: Thank you. I appreciate that. I don’t respond very well to stress and pressure. That’s probably what led to my stroke in the first place. So I have to try and train myself to chill, to relax, and not get myself too stressed, so I don’t have another one of those accidents.

 

FRED: No stress, but the world can’t wait to read your book on “the sublime”.

 

ROBERT: Okay, that is stress.

 

FRED: Robert Greene, thank you very much, sir. It was an absolute honour. It was everything I wished it was and even more. Thank you so much, sir. I really appreciate it.

 

ROBERT: I really appreciate it. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.

 

FRED: Awesome.