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Trump Is the Greatest At One Law Of Power — And It Could Destroy Him - Robert Greene
01:10:58
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- [00:00]
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- [00:54]
Robert Greene
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- [00:55]
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- [01:00]
Robert Greene
Are you really buying a car online
- [01:02]
Interviewer 1
on Autotrader right now?
- [01:03]
Pharmaceutical Advertiser
Really? I can get super specific with dealer listings and see cars based on my budget.
- [01:07]
Robert Greene
You can really have it delivered or pick it up.
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Interviewer 1
Mommy's walking. I think kid is walking up the slide.
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Interviewer 2
Really?
- [01:13]
Pharmaceutical Advertiser
Autotrader Buy your car online. Really?
- [01:18]
Robert Greene
We have a hunger for something larger. The other motivating factor is every human being needs a degree of validation. The sense that you don't have any power in your life is deeply, deeply miserable for the human animal. Where one person doesn't feel like they have the power, but they don't feel strong enough to directly attack or deal with the person. They become indirect, they become passive aggressive. If you don't have power, you're going to find it somehow, some way, in some manner. You're going to do whatever you can to change that dynamic.
- [01:52]
Interviewer 1
When you look at Trump, do you think that he's a man who uses these laws of power effectively?
- [01:58]
Robert Greene
I know that he has a very powerful character flaw and the character flaw is going to constantly get in his way.
- [02:09]
Interviewer 2
Robert, welcome to Trigonometry.
- [02:10]
Robert Greene
Thank you for having me.
- [02:12]
Interviewer 2
We've been keen to get you on the show for a long time. As you know, you've written a large number of books exploring human nature, what motivates people in their actions, the nature of power, and that's a fascinating subject. What, what are the key things that motivate people to do what they do?
- [02:33]
Robert Greene
Well, it's. It's complicated, obviously, but people obviously want power. That's why I wrote my first book. I, I mentioned, I speculate or believe that the sense that you don't have any power in your life, any control over, any influence over your spouse, over your children, over your friends, over your colleagues, over your boss, is deeply, deeply miserable for the human animal. So we want to be able to have a sense of feeling that we have some power over our environment, over the people around us. Now, you can get power in various ways. You can use manipulation, you can play a softer, more seductive game. But it is my opinion that a great majority of people's behavior and actions are motivated by this desire to feel like there's a degree of control over their environment. Okay. And if you deny that need, if you can't seem to get it, if you don't have that power in your life, if you feel powerless, you can turn to some very negative forms of behavior. So I try to say that to be able to understand the game of power, to be able to feel like you can control people, you can influence them, you can move them in your direction, will save you a lot of energy in life, save you a lot of drama, save you a lot of self loathing and all kinds of bad patterns that you can fall into. The other motivating factor is every human being needs a degree of validation. They want. We, we're a social animal. We don't really. Our idea of existence as an individual is kind of a myth. It's sort of an illusion. We are social animals. Everything we think is reflected through the eyes of other people. Right? And so if people are alone, if they're isolated, their kind of sense of being a human being can dissolve, can fall apart. So we can't get validation or attention or love from ourselves. We need it from other people. So the sense of getting recognition, people validating you for your experience, for being who you are, is a deeply, deeply powerful motivating factor in human nature. I mean, these are generalizations. There are other things we can go into, but those I'd say would be the two main things.
- [04:53]
Interviewer 2
And I'm not an expert in this, obviously, but I imagine would that, would it be fair to say there's a significant gender divide in how this manifests itself? Men operate in a slightly different way to women on this or not. You're shaking your head.
- [05:06]
Robert Greene
Well, I believe the desire obviously for validation and Recognition and attention crosses all gender barriers. I do believe power is the same. How men and women get power, how they feel towards it, is different. Of course, that changes. Some men are more like women, some women are more like men. But women tend to have a more sort of social approach to power, right? Which often can make them better leaders. In some ways, they're more sensitive to what other people are feeling, what other people are thinking, which in some ways makes them a more powerful person in the power game, the way it is in 2026. But oftentimes, and once again, we're generalizing, women aren't so comfortable with the hard game of power, with the manipulating part, with the deception part, which is an elemental part of it. There's a hard part of power. There's the hard game and there's the soft game. Women are excellent at the soft game, and sometimes they're a little bit intimidated by the hard game. Now, as I said, that can change from individual to individual. But like my wife, for instance, she's a film director, and it's a brutal, brutal business. It is perhaps one of the most Machiavellian environments you can be in, comparable to the music industry, which is probably worse, right? And she's a very sensitive person. I'm a very sensitive person, but she's very sensitive, and it's very difficult for her handling some of the games that people are playing with her, Right. So of my books, her favorite, because we've been together throughout all of my books, is the war book, oddly enough, because that has helped her a lot in dealing with the film business and dealing with all of the kind of weird things that people. Because directing a film is like being a general in an army. You know, you've got 40, 50 people, you've got a lead, right? And it's, It's. It's incredibly complicated and difficult. So she found the war book very helpful. So I believe that the need for power, the desire for control, the desire to be able to not be. Not be vulnerable to everything that people are doing to you, to not feel weak crosses all ethnic, all barriers. How you get that, that could be different depending on individuals.
- [07:31]
Interviewer 1
And Robert, Social media must have changed that enormously, because power now comes with having a large social media account. If you've got a large social media account, that means that you can influence, you can change the way people think, you can put your message out there, you can create things that were previously unimaginable, certain political movements, etc. Do the laws of power change when it meets a Social media age.
- [08:01]
Robert Greene
Well, you can also deceive and manipulate on a grand, grand scale. No, human nature is human nature. Look, we evolved from, from our ancestors, from, you can go back millions of years, but let's say Homo sapiens 100,000, 550,000 years ago. Our brains are wired a particular way. I wrote a very thick book, I'm afraid to say, 600 pages on the laws of human nature. These go back to our earliest ancestors. We all feel envy, right? We all have an irrational side. We all tend to be self absorbed. All that social media does is, it is accentuates all of those qualities in human nature. It makes them worse, it makes them more extreme. So if I know what everybody in the world is doing right now, if all my friends are, I see all their photographs of their wonderful holidays they're taking, their men, the beautiful women they're dating, all the fabulous things going on in their lives because people curate their social media, they don't let you know of all terrible, boring, banal things in their life. Envy. I feel envy. Social media is this machine for creating vast amounts of envy, right? Also for creating irrationality. So the laws of power of human nature don't change. It's just that the tools that they're giving us make it easier for us to manipulate, to deceive, to create impressions and images. One of the laws of power is court attention at all cost. Right now, you know, you can court attention.
- [09:36]
Interviewer 2
I can think of some examples, yeah,
- [09:38]
Robert Greene
that just, you just have much more power to be able to do that. But I can't think of anything of a new law that I would write based on social media. If you could tell me when, I'd be happy to consider it.
- [09:51]
Interviewer 1
But I think one of the things that social media has done, and look, this has always been true, but we now see more and more people obsessed with appearing to be a good person, to be moral, to be virtuous in the way that I didn't see as much in the 90s before social media. I saw it because I was raised Catholic. So I saw the priests and the people who worked in the church and saw some people on a Sunday wishing to be, appear to appear holier than thou. But it now it seems that's the game everyone's playing.
- [10:25]
Robert Greene
Yeah, well, power is mostly about appearances, right? It's create, it's managing your appearances. So you seem powerful now, you can feel powerful, but it's more important to appear powerful. This is a very Machiavellian concept. Okay, so always say less than necessary law Number four, right? A powerful person. If they talk a lot, they appear kind of weak. They don't feel. You don't look like you're in control of yourself, right? You're talking too much. You're going to say something stupid. So power is a game of managing the appearances because we're a social animal. I don't judge you on. I can't see your character. I can't see deep inside of you. I can't read your thoughts. I can see how you look, how you appear. If I appear to be a certain thing, if I appear to be virtuous and good, you're going to judge me as someone who's virtuous and good. You don't know that deep down inside, I'm actually really nasty, evil, Machiavellian character. This isn't talking about myself personally here, right? So social media gives you this tremendous power to curate your own appearance. How people see you, how people judge you. And you're going to put out the things that are going to get positive attention, right? Like you're virtuous, like you're in favor of all of the great causes, or nowadays that you're actually kind of so authentically angry and you're full of rage. And, you know, you can be a bit nasty and people can even admire you for nastiness, but it's an invisible realm. I can't see all of the people who are emailing me, they present this certain facade about who they are or on my Instagram feed or whatever. I can't really see who they are. And that gives them tremendous power to create these kinds of impressions. It's a very, very dangerous world because it's not real. You know, you're not in. In flesh. When I see you two, I can get a feel for who you are. I can see that you are. You're nice people. You're. You know, I can see the human, the humanity.
- [12:35]
Interviewer 2
You can tell we've only just met.
- [12:37]
Robert Greene
I'm speculating in general. You know, I get a sense because we're. We're animals, after all. I mean, I know that we're animals. I don't think there's a disagreement there. We have a feel for what people are. We can sense their energy. We can sense their nonverbal cues. We can sense if they are a tricky, deceptive person. We can see through it. And so on the Internet, you can't see any of that, right? It's very deceptive, and it can be very troublesome. And it's creating a lot of mental illness.
- [13:13]
Interviewer 2
Right now, I believe this thing that you and Francis have just been talking about is a thread that runs through a lot of your work, which is the idea that what people present and what they are is different and necessarily so in some ways.
- [13:28]
Sponsor Voice / Advertiser
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- [13:29]
Interviewer 2
I don't know if you watched Game of Thrones, but there's a scene in which this kind of conversation about power is shown very well in an interesting way, where there's a character whose primary access to power is through knowledge and spying. Peter Baelish. And he's arguing with Queen Cersei and he says knowledge is power. And she gets her four armed guards to almost kill him and she says power is power. So where is the balance between those two points of view? But where's the truth, rather, is what I'm actually trying to ask, where's the truth between those two things? Because you mentioned appearing powerful is more important even than being powerful, whereas what she's saying is actually, no. Being powerful ultimately, at the end of the day, is the thing that determines how much power you have.
- [14:15]
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- [15:41]
Robert Greene
Well, they both, they both go together. I mean, if you try to pretend that you're a godlike creature, that you have all this power, but you have nothing behind you, you're going to be exposed, right? So it depends on where you are in life and how people will view you. But you know, if, if I appear to be confident. So let's take. Confidence is a very important component in the power game, right? So if I convince myself that I am powerful, that I am confident, that I am worthy of attention and getting things that I want, it creates this kind of self fulfilling dynamic. People read off of you that you're confident and they assume that it comes from something real. And so you can get power just by creating this facade, right? And it can be very real. I think of someone like Elon Musk, okay, Who's, you know, we can say whatever we want about him, but he's very brilliant at the marketing side of things, right? So here he is, he's got Tesla Motor company, which has just started out. And to start your own automobile company is incredibly difficult. It requires an awful lot of capital, okay. And you're starting a new con, you know, electric cars, etc. And so he creates this myth that he is this incredibly innovative, forward thinking person. I'm not saying it's completely unreal, but, but he creates this myth, this aura around him. That aura now creates this dynamic where people want to fund his company. He goes public and he gets massive amounts of capital from the aura, the appearance he creates of somebody who is very future oriented. That appearance translates into millions, billions of dollars coming into his company from his stock, right? Which now allows him to build the company to make it more powerful. So the appearance of power can draw power to you. Now, you know, if somebody has a gun and you're pretending to be something that you're not and they can go ahead and shoot you. Yeah, of course. They're, they're the ones in control. It's very important. I talk to this a lot about people. What is your leverage in a situation, right? If you have no leverage over somebody, then you have no power. So in all negotiations and things like that, you have to make this kind of calculation of this is where I do have actual real power. It's not bullshit. And these are things that I can leverage. So one thing that's very important in that kind of situation is to be willing to walk away, to say that there's a limit. I'm only going to go this far and I'm going to blow the whole thing up and if I walk away, fine, I don't care. That gives you power, that gives you leverage. So leverage can be something that's very psychological. But I don't know if I'm answering your question.
- [18:51]
Interviewer 2
No, you absolutely are answering my question. And it's a fascinating answer.
- [18:54]
Robert Greene
Sorry, I got a little convoluted there.
- [18:55]
Interviewer 2
No, no, not at all. I think smart people will be able to follow exactly what you said there, which is that there are situations.
- [19:02]
Robert Greene
I don't know if I could follow what I just said.
- [19:04]
Interviewer 2
Well, I certainly thought that I could. I think the point you're making is there are certain situations in which confidence and the presentation of power attracts things that actually make you powerful. But there's also other situations where if you don't have the hard leverage that you need, then you can't get any further because the other person has leverage of you. That makes perfect sense to me.
- [19:27]
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- [20:41]
Robert Greene
You always have some kind of leverage. You know, there's always something you can do. You can always take a little bit of the power that you have and you can use it in some way. We're talking in abstractions, but when people come to me with problems in a situation like this where they don't feel like they have power, I Always try and step back and analyze. You do have power. There is something you can do. You have leverage. It's small, but you can use it.
- [21:07]
Interviewer 2
Can you give us an example of that?
- [21:09]
Robert Greene
Well, so they have, you know, the company or the people that are above you, they control it. They own what you're doing. Right? Okay. But if you have the attitude, simply the attitude, that I'm going to walk away from this whole project, Right. It doesn't mean that much to me. All right? You're playing all of these games. You're using all of this power on me. I feel kind of weak in comparison to you, But I'm not going to show that. I'm going to say, look, I don't care anymore. I'm walking away. I'm finished. I don't want to deal with this project anymore. They have invested a lot of time and energy in it as well, Right. And they don't feel like you're somebody who will do that. But if you show them that at some point, it doesn't matter to you that you don't care about the money. This is a negotiating play. You do care about the money. But you're presenting this. I don't care about it. It's worth it. It's not worth it to me to do exactly what you want. It's more important for me to feel like I have integrity. I. I'm walking away. I don't care. Goodbye. At that moment, even though you don't feel it, you actually feel like, jesus, I don't want to lose this project. If you project that, they're suddenly back on their heels. They're going, I didn't see that in you. Well, we've invested a lot. All right, well, we don't want to blow this whole thing up, so maybe we'll give in on a couple of small points, and that's all that you're after. So in these situations, you have to be clear about who has the power, what the dynamic is, what your leverage is, and what your goal is in the end. So if they are imposing on you all of the control and they're trying to mess with you and trying to push you around, you want to get them to back off a little bit, Right? That's all you want. And by showing that you don't care that you're willing to walk away from it, that gives you power and control. I watched this when I wrote a book with 50 Cent, the rapper called the 50th law, right? And he told me this. This is his ploy all the time he appears completely uninterested in some deal somebody is going to make, even though he's very interested. Right. And the appearance of not really caring makes them. Puts them on their heels. They go, hmm, well, maybe we have to try harder to please 50. Maybe we have to give him more of what he wants. That's all he's after. Right. It's a negotiating ploy. So the sense that you signaling to the other side, that you can walk away, that it's. You're not so, you know, it's not so important to you is something very. It's a very powerful appearance to give and can give you power even though you don't have any power. That's the magical thing about playing the game. According to what I wrote in that book, you may not have any power at all in this world, but if you know how to use these small little things, you can take what is your weakness and you can turn it into strength.
- [24:21]
Interviewer 2
Very interesting. And just coming back to the example you gave about people within working on a particular project and have their different agendas playing all these games.
- [24:30]
Sponsor Voice / Advertiser
Why do people do that?
- [24:31]
Interviewer 2
Because, like for example, Francis and I, we run this YouTube channel. It's a small business. We employ people. Whatever. We don't, we. What we found is the best game to play is a collaborative game where the mission is more important than the people involved. You seem skeptical now.
- [24:48]
Robert Greene
I mean, I want to introduce you guys to the real world.
- [24:50]
Interviewer 2
Okay, please do.
- [24:51]
Robert Greene
The real world doesn't operate according to your ideal little utopia, which is a beautiful ideal. And I don't knock it at all. People have egos. They are political. This is the human animal as it is. It's not something I've just dreamed up.
- [25:06]
Interviewer 1
Sure, of course.
- [25:07]
Robert Greene
Right. So you'll be in a company. I worked for a company years ago, before I wrote books. A television company. A terrible, terrible television show. I won't even tell you the name of it. I was a researcher on it. Right, okay, the researcher. You were considered successful by how many stories you actually found that got made? I had the highest percentage of this team of a dozen researchers by far. But then I got fired. Why did I get fired? Because I was too good at the job. I wasn't playing the political game. I wasn't brown nosing. Sorry, that expression with the. With the boss. Right. I had a bit of an attitude, but the results. Who the fuck cares about my attitude? I gave you results. And yet I was fired because of people's stupid, stupid egos and stupid Political games that they play, they don't care about results. They care about how they feel about themselves, about their ego, about how people think about them. That's more important than results. And this crosses the line in business, in warfare, General Patton, the great American general who had some of his own issues and problems, he was kind of sidelined from the war effort in World War II because he was kind of abrasive and difficult. He was going, but, man, I marched through Sicily, I marched through Italy, I defeated the Nazis here and there. What difference does it make? Well, no, even in warfare, he got sidelined because he wasn't playing the political game. In entertainment, in law, in business, in government, in sports, I can give you examples because I deal with a lot of athletes and managers and coaches who come to me with their problems. This goes through sports. It goes through everything. It's a theme through everything. So you two, I love the fact that you collaborate, but I can guarantee if you bought a third person in that you were working with, all of a sudden, sort of egos and political games will start emerging. Maybe not, but probably because that is human nature.
- [27:12]
Interviewer 2
And I think it's also maybe a question of scale. I think I remember reading something. I don't remember the name of this concept, but once a business gets beyond a certain number of team members, that's when people start caring more about their position in the hierarchy than the mission. Which is why maybe it's good to keep things small, where that collaborative attitude is possible.
- [27:33]
Robert Greene
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I mean, obviously, the larger the group, the more the politics arrive, the more egos that are involved. But even among two people, even in a couple, a married couple, power games are being played.
- [27:49]
Interviewer 2
Oh, yeah, well, thank God we're not married.
- [27:53]
Robert Greene
You know, people feel like, well, you know, I'm having to do all the chores and you're not doing so much. I don't feel like I have as much power in the. In the. In this relationship. So you put two people together, it doesn't have to be a thousand. You're gonna get these egos clashing because that's who we are.
- [28:13]
Interviewer 1
And it's fascinating talking about power because I love Greek myths and I love Shakespeare, and a lot of Shakespeare's plays are about the lust for power and how ultimately it destroys you. Think about Macbeth, for example. At what point does the desire for power ultimately become self sabotaging?
- [28:35]
Robert Greene
Well, a lot of the laws that I talked about in the book are about knowing your limits. So Law 47, I believe, is in victory, know when to Stop, Right. So you can go too far. And when it becomes the fact, look, power is. We're a social animal. It's a people's game, Right. If you offend too many people, if you make so many enemies, it's going to come back and hurt you in the end, you're not going to get very far. Right? So if you have this attitude where I'm going to screw everybody around me, I'm just going to manipulate them, I'm going to control them, I'm going to push them around, you can get away with it for a while while you have power, but the moment that power stops starts to diminish. We see this in history all of the time. You know, suddenly people turn against you. You know, it caused the French Revolution, for God's sake. You know, when people smell a powerful person who's been evil and pushing people around is now in a slightly weakened position, oh, my God. They all turn into lines and they pounce on you because they hate you. Right. You can go too far. So power is a game of getting people on your side, and they don't even realize while they're. Why they're on your side. Right. That's the seduction part of the game. But if you're pushing everyone around and, you know, we're seeing this in American politics right now, right? I mean, Donald Trump is screwing all of these other leaders. Look what he's doing to European leaders and NATO. He's humiliating them, and now he's asking them to help him out in this war with Iran. And they're giving him the finger, obviously, in their own way, because, look, you've offended us, you humiliated us. You want our help, you're not going to get it. And so power is a game of using your allies, of creating as many allies as possible. If you go so far where you alienate everybody around you, then the game will turn against you. It's delicate. It's a delicate game.
- [30:37]
Interviewer 1
It's a great point because you look at Trump and his greatest weapon, I think, is his sense of humor.
- [30:44]
Robert Greene
His sense of humor?
- [30:45]
Interviewer 1
His sense of humor is that whenever he's in.
- [30:48]
Robert Greene
Never heard that before.
- [30:49]
Interviewer 1
Yeah. Whenever he's in a position where it looks like he's on the back foot, he's very sharp with a quick comeback. He makes people laugh. Laughter resets the room. People momentarily lose where they are. And then he can pivot out of it.
- [31:03]
Robert Greene
Yeah.
- [31:03]
Interviewer 1
And the humor is great. The problem is with humor is that invariably there needs to be a victim. So whilst it can appeal to your base.
- [31:12]
Robert Greene
Right.
- [31:13]
Interviewer 1
It can also antagonize the victim of your punchline.
- [31:16]
Robert Greene
Right, right.
- [31:17]
Interviewer 1
And it's really interesting to see that dynamic. What do you make of that, the use of humor and particularly when it comes to power and being powerful.
- [31:28]
Robert Greene
Well, what's important. So a huge motivating factor among the human animal is envy. Our brains operate through comparison. That's how the human brain operates. We take in information and we compare it to other pieces of information and we go, this is what this means. It's a machine. Our minds are machines for comparing things. Right. And we do the same with other people. We're constantly comparing ourselves to others. Right. Does that person have more powers? Why is she making more money than me? Why does he have more respect than me Constantly? I have it, everybody has it. It's natural. Right? Okay. So when you're a powerful person, people envy you. They envy your power. Having a sense of humor, a self deprecating sense of humor is very powerful because it kind of can lessen that envy that people have. And I mentioned in my power book and other books of figures like that who had that kind of self deprecating humor. Abraham Lincoln was a sort of a master of it. It makes you human. You can make fun of yourself. The problem is Donald Trump never makes fun of himself. His humor is at the expense of other people. Right. And that can wear on others. It can appeal to those who have that kind of slight cruel streak to them, to those who don't, who hate all the wokeness. And there's, you know, I can understand that a bit as well. But he never makes fun of himself. And that is a different kind of humor. You know, that's a different, he's always, it's always at the expense of other people. And I think eventually that can wear very thin.
- [33:14]
Interviewer 1
And when you look at Trump, do you think that he's a man who uses these laws of power effectively or is somebody who is ultimately setting himself up for a fall?
- [33:27]
Robert Greene
Well, I don't have a crystal ball. I'm not Nostradamus. I don't know what's going to happen in the next few years. But I know that he has a very powerful character flaw and the character flaw is going to constantly get in his way. So he's, he's absolutely brilliant at one law of power. It's the source of all of his power. And, and I can't think of anybody in history who's ever been better at it. Court attention at all cost. Law number six. Right. I remember years Ago, I. Years ago, eight years ago or so, I was traveling. I was in. I think I was in Singapore. Everybody was talking about Donald Trump. Everyone around the world is obsessed with him. I'm obsessed with him. He's in my head all of the time. Right. He courts attention at all costs. He's brilliant at that. He knows how to turn everything that looks like a negative into some kind of marketing, publicity thing. He knows he's very, very good at the attention game, not just at getting attention, but how to use that attention to his advantage. Okay? That has brought him a lot of power, but there is a limit to that, because that isn't enough. That isn't power by itself. Right? And so one of the most important things in the power game, as I say, it's a delicate game, is the ability to think ahead, plan all the way to the end, which is law, sorry, 28, or something like that. Plan all the way to the end, Think not just this move, this immediate move, but 2, 3, 4, 5 moves in advance, like you do in chess. If you're. If you're a good chess player, you're 10 moves ahead, further than your opponent is. Right? Okay. It's an extremely important part of power because it means you see the longer vision. And when things start interrupting your vision, when all kinds of circumstances arise that you hadn't expected, you know how to deal with it, because, oh, this is my end game. And if this occurs, well, I go attack a little bit in this direction, but eventually I have to head here. It gives you strength. It gives you this kind of anchor in life, right? This is a man because of his character, because of his ego, because of his extreme narcissism. I'm not trying to be political here because I think everybody sees his incredible narcissism, right? He can't. He can't get out of the moment. He can't get out of how people are reacting against him. He can't get out of his rage, his resentment, his anger, his bitterness, and see the bigger picture. If he came into power in 2025 and he moderated some of the things that he ended up doing, right, if he was more attentive to the larger picture that his power base, he brought in Latinos, black people, people who weren't part of the Republican base ever before, if he moderated, if he was smart, if he could think ahead, he would be doing really well right now. He'd be very popular, unfortunately, he would be right. But he can't think that far ahead. You can only think in Immediate terms. This person insulted me. Well, I have to humiliate him. I have to try and, and sue him and get him put in prison. Right. He can't see the larger picture. And that is a very, very limiting factor in power. I don't know. He's. He's like a cat with nine lives. He keeps escaping things. And you think he's done, he's finished. He pops out of another bag and he's fine. I think that eventually it's going to catch up with him. But as I said, I don't know.
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Interviewer 1
let alone a VPN.
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Interviewer 1
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- [38:45]
Interviewer 2
I want to come back to something you said at the beginning because I think it ties potentially with politics as well, which is you mentioned that when people feel like they have no power, there is a whole swath of negative behaviors that they can exhibit. And we see on both sides, I would argue, of the political spectrum, people who feel like they have no power burning things down, you know, burning things down, metaphorically speaking, wanting to tear down certain things about the society they live in. What happens when people feel at the individual level but also the collective level that they don't have the power that they want or should.
- [39:25]
Robert Greene
Well, you can't deal with that feeling. Right. It's unbearable. So you're going to try and get power some way that you can on the individual level. You'll find people play, and I talked about this in the book Negative Power Games, they'll become passive aggressive. That happens a lot in individual. In relationships where one person doesn't feel like they have the power, but they don't feel strong enough to directly attack or deal with the person, they become indirect, they become passive aggressive.
- [40:02]
Interviewer 1
We're British. You don't have to explain that to us.
- [40:06]
Interviewer 2
National.
- [40:07]
Interviewer 1
Yeah, sorry.
- [40:08]
Robert Greene
Americans can be very passive. Yeah, you're true. You're right. Okay, so when you feel like you have no power, you'll turn, won't be aggressive, you'll be passive aggressive. Right. On a. On a collective level. I mean, we can see countries around the world that have felt disrespected and screwed and, you know, and feel like they've been humiliated on the world stage. And it creates a kind of a similar dynamic to the passive aggressiveness. Well, we're going to get back at you some way, you know, you can't control us completely and, you know, even to some degree. I mean, this is maybe a horrible way to put it, but like with Iran right now, you know, they. They obviously don't have the power that the United States military has, but they can certainly be very passive aggressive. I mean, it's not really passive, but they can be very indirect. They can a very. When you're weak. This is the whole origin of guerrilla warfare and terrorism. Right. And guerrilla warfare is one of the most powerful strategies ever invented in military history. It's one side that has no power, but they use their lack of power to torment and torture the other side. And they don't, as the phrase goes, the weaker side doesn't have to win, they just have to survive. And so they'll play games like that. But if you don't have power, you're going to find it somehow, some way, in some manner. You're going to do whatever you can to change that dynamic.
- [41:48]
Interviewer 2
Well, it's interesting you mention the geopolitical side of it, because I would argue from direct experience in Russia and also from history that I know that whipping up or at least addressing and those both can be true. The sense of loss or resentment or grievance, envy that people have and channeling that is a very powerful tool.
- [42:13]
Sponsor Voice / Advertiser
I mean, in Russia right now, the
- [42:14]
Interviewer 2
narrative is, you know, the evil Americans Took advantage of us in the 90s. And we have to. We have to, you know, secure our board, take. Take control of our neighborhood, etc.
- [42:26]
Sponsor Voice / Advertiser
Hitler, likewise, whipped that up. A very powerful tool.
- [42:30]
Robert Greene
Yeah.
- [42:32]
Interviewer 2
For political leaders to achieve their objectives, isn't it?
- [42:37]
Robert Greene
Yeah, yeah, very much so. I mean, it's definitely what Putin is doing with Russia right now. And, you know, but in the end, you know, I don't know how successful that is, because you can. It's kind of like you're riding a tiger. You're creating so much anger and resentment. Can you control it? You know, where is it? Are you in control of, or is it leading you around? You know, appealing to people's basest emotions is a very, very powerful political weapon. Right. But it can hurt you, and it can bite back and hurt you in the end because you can't really control it, you know, so. But I see what you're saying, and it is. And the sense of a country feeling that kind of grievance, incredibly powerful motivating factor. And I see that around the world right now. You know, we're living through very chaotic moment in history. I read a lot of history. I don't know a lot of things about this world, but I do read a lot of history. And it's a very strange moment. It's one of those transitional moments where the world, the paradigms are shifting. What we used to believe in doesn't seem to work anymore. Right. And it makes people go crazy. I feel like sometimes I was on a bike ride the other day, and I was thinking, sometimes I feel like I'm living in an insane asylum. Like, people are literally going mad, and I include myself in that. I don't separate myself from that. And so when people feel like they have no control, mostly over their pocketbook, which is happening a lot now, but also a sense of the future. My values, what matters, they go a little bit crazy. And it creates incredible space for demagogues to use that kind of confusion, to use that sense of. Of. Of, like, powerlessness to. To. To whip people up into a frenzy, to. To get control of them. And it's a very dangerous times because you're seeing a steering towards authoritarianism all around the globe. And what's going on here? Why is this happening now? It happened in the 1920s and the 30s, but it seems to be happening now. And I think there's this overall sense that people feel like we're losing control over their own lives, over the lives, the future of their country, their children. It's very strange, dark Moment, I think.
- [45:22]
Interviewer 2
And to your point, this is something you see across Europe, across the political spectrum. By the way, you see populist left parties rising very quickly and populist right parties.
- [45:33]
Robert Greene
Where are the populist left parties?
- [45:34]
Interviewer 2
Well, the party with the biggest momentum in the UK right now is the Green Party.
- [45:39]
Robert Greene
That's right, yeah.
- [45:40]
Interviewer 2
And. And also, it's not just about political parties. It's also now increasingly about influences. If you start a YouTube channel in Britain now talking about how you've been screwed by the rich and the billionaires and tax the rich and all of this, you're going to do extremely well because there is, there is ample ground for, for that sentiment, which is rising very quickly.
- [46:02]
Robert Greene
Yeah.
- [46:03]
Interviewer 2
And likewise on the right, you know, the, the. And by the way, both of these can be somewhat true. Inequality is a problem on the right, of course, mass immigration. The, the way that we've had in Britain bothers a hell of a lot of people as, as I think it does probably in your country, although it's different here. And those are things that are creating these on both sides, a rising populist tide, I think. And that speaks very much to what you're saying.
- [46:27]
Robert Greene
Yeah, yeah, I agree. Um, I mean, you know, if you feel like, like, you know, I was, I was in France. I, I have a kind of a long love affair with France. I'm sorry to say that.
- [46:44]
Interviewer 2
Yeah, I love England now. We're disappointed ending interview.
- [46:49]
Robert Greene
Yeah, I, I live there and I studied the language and. And I remember I was there about 12 years ago and I was going through Paris, and I'm actually somebody who's very open to immigrants and to their plight. But I was thinking France is in trouble because they're losing a sense of their identity. And a country like that has a very, very powerful sense of identity because it's a country that's actually a feudalism that's kind of disguised as. As a nation. And people like de Gaulle had to struggle to create this kind of national unity around Joan of Arc and around these various myths and Louis XIV and on and on, Napoleon, etc. Very powerful myths of identity, of this is who the French are. And I could sense that there was something very dangerous going on because they were going to lose that sense of. Of who they were with all of the immigrants that were pouring in at this time. And I can, I can empathize with that to a point where, you know, you have this sense of what your country is and you're losing that. Right. So it creates an opening for Some ugly kind of politics, I'm afraid.
- [48:13]
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- [48:33]
Robert Greene
Get it?
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- [48:43]
Interviewer 1
and when we're talking about people who live in these countries where things aren't as good as they used to be, they feel under the things, feel on the decline, socially, economically, what we're talking about and what I feel in the UK is demoralization. And when people are demoralized, that's a very, very dangerous space for a populace to be in.
- [49:06]
Robert Greene
Yeah, yeah. I mean, what are you referring to?
- [49:11]
Interviewer 1
Particularly, for instance, in the uk where people feel that things are getting worse and they're not gonna get any better and we're on a current downward trajectory. And if you look at the economics of the situation, that would bear it out. If you look at it culturally, societally, it would bear it out again. I think once you hit that, that's when people become incredibly vulnerable.
- [49:31]
Interviewer 2
Yeah, well, it speaks to your point, doesn't it, about when people don't feel that they have the power. And particularly in the uk,
- [49:40]
Sponsor Voice / Advertiser
a lot
- [49:40]
Interviewer 2
of people feel that voting a certain way and even electing parties that say they will deal with certain problems doesn't actually produce the results. And I imagine, based on your analysis, that would be, like Francis says, quite a dangerous place to be. Right?
- [49:55]
Robert Greene
Yeah. I mean, you know, politicians don't really control as much as they think they control. And we're as much as Donald Trump rails against globalism and wants to go back, it is an interconnected planet and you don't have control over forces. You see in the war going on right now how this is rippling across, particularly across Asia and who knows, in a few months or years, the kind of dynamic, the kind of problems that is going to set off in countries where the populace feels so, so diminished in their power that all kinds of rebellions. History is weird because what's happening in the moment, you don't know. You don't see the seeds of the kind of ugliness or bad things that could be happening in a year or two years from now. And a simple thing like cutting off oil and making the price of oil go up has a rippling effect that can create a revolution in some Eastern Asian country. That then triggers, you know, a world war or something. I mean, I'm. I'm being apocalyptic here, but you don't know these, these little effects. And political leaders, as I said, was kind of like riding a tiger. They feel like I can get to power using all of this resentment and grievance and anger and bitterness, but I can't control it because I can't really deliver what I'm promising I'm going to deliver, you know? So, yeah, it's very dangerous game.
- [51:30]
Interviewer 1
Do you think that, for instance, if a politician came out and actually said, look, there are things that I can control or that we can control? There are things that we simply cannot control.
- [51:41]
Robert Greene
Yeah.
- [51:42]
Interviewer 1
As a result of that, this is the path that we're going to plot, Would that be more appealing to people? Or do people, what people actually desire deep down, is a strong man to come in and go, I'm gonna sort it out. This is what's gonna happen.
- [51:59]
Robert Greene
Yeah, I mean, we. We talked earlier about social media, and part of the problem that's going on is, is people think in. In very simplistic terms.
- [52:10]
Interviewer 2
Right.
- [52:11]
Robert Greene
Things are delivered in a way, like there's no nuance anymore. It's just. It's this way or it's that way kind of thing. So if a political leader came about now who was very realistic and very honest, you know, Biden was a little bit like that, and he got chewed apart, he got decimated, he wasn't very effective, but he was trying to be honest and say, this is what I can do, this is what I can't do. I don't think people want to hear that right now. They want to hear easy, simple solutions. I mean, if you look at the global stage right now, it's startling. It's really startling because 70 years ago, you would see leaders who. And parties that would stay in power for decades, sometimes through corruption, I don't deny, but there was a consistency, Right. And now it's like it's turning over by the month, practically. You said the Green Party. Well, three months ago it was Farage, and I forgot the name of his party, but the Reform. The Reform Party, you know, and in three months, it's going to be some other party. The volatility is out of this roof. And that's why I said there's a kind of madness going on in the world. Kind of madness where people's opinions are shifting so quickly like that. There's no anchor, there's no sort of. There's nothing kind of holding it all together. Where this politician, I believe, can solve my problems. I'm willing to wait, I'm willing to be patient with him or her and give him or her three years, four years for your. That can't happen. You know, I was. I don't know if this is how relevant this is, but I was on the board of directors of a publicly traded company, American Apparel, Right. Which no longer exists. And I saw upfront how the business world operates, and it was startling to me. So this was a company that was probably expanding way too fast. Right. And of course. And it went public and that's when I was brought onto the board of directors. Okay. And I was seeing, I was foreseeing long term problems. He had created Dove Charney. He created this brand that was all about sexiness for young women based on the 80s kind of. The 80s aesthetic, you know, the kind of short workout, you know, short sort of thing. And I was thinking there's, there's a shift going on in people's taste. This is 2009 or so. I feel like in a couple years it's not going to be the aesthetic, it's not going to be the ethos anymore of young women, because that's who the company was appealing to. And I was trying to tell the director there, I was thinking, we've got to make a shift in the brand. You've got to be more forward thinking. But the pressures of Wall street and the quarterly report were so powerful that you could not think long term. You could not project six months in advance because you had to make a quarterly report that showed Wall street that you were making, that you were growing. Right? That was the growth. Right. New markets were getting market share, and if you did that, then you'd get more money coming in. But you couldn't raise your head this much above the moment to think in advance. That's the business world that we live now in the United States. And it's very. I think it's creating a lot of problems.
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Interviewer 2
Here's what I said.
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Interviewer 2
speak it, not work through textbooks.
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Interviewer 2
in a real conversation rather than on a printed page.
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Interviewer 2
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- [56:50]
Interviewer 2
to learn.lingopie.com trigonometry that's learn.lingopie.com Trigonometry it's interesting you say that because there are people who've offered to invest in our show and help, and it's not really ever appealed to us because we know that if that happens, we no longer can have the conversations we want. We have to have the conversations that are going to get views.
- [57:16]
Robert Greene
Yeah.
- [57:16]
Interviewer 2
And then that would ruin the whole thing that we do because it works, because we. It's authentic.
- [57:22]
Robert Greene
Yeah.
- [57:22]
Interviewer 2
And if you try and create something fake, then you make more. You get more clicks. But then the people who actually watch the show in the beginning don't want to watch it anymore, and we'd hate our job as well. But I can see how that would affect a business.
- [57:35]
Robert Greene
Yeah.
- [57:35]
Interviewer 2
To the point where it's no longer actually fulfilling its mission. It's now just trying to make money.
- [57:40]
Robert Greene
Yeah.
- [57:40]
Interviewer 2
And making bad decisions and then goes out of business.
- [57:43]
Robert Greene
Yeah.
- [57:43]
Interviewer 2
Is your point?
- [57:44]
Robert Greene
Yeah. Yeah. If I would advise you guys, I would say stay small. You know, when he started this business, I'm talking about American Apparel, he had one store here in Los Angeles when I first met him. Right. And. And then it got like 10 stores and 20 stores. But it was solid. It had a. It had. You know, I could see the point of it. Right. By the time he expanded to 300 stores around the world, it lost its meaning, it lost its brand, it lost what it was. And then forget it. You're never going to get it back.
- [58:19]
Interviewer 2
You know, it's interesting as well, something you mentioned. I just remember Desmond Morris, who is a writer, who's. I've read a lot with Naked Ape, Human Zoo, and a bunch of others, but one of the things he talked about is the length of women's skirts goes up. So the skirts get longer when economic times are bad. So 2009 would have been exactly the right time to pivot to longer rather than shorter.
- [58:42]
Robert Greene
Yeah. Yeah. It was right after the financial crisis. Yeah.
- [58:47]
Interviewer 1
Does it help in a society where power is shared? So, for instance, is part of the problem with our society is that it's become ever more secular, so we don't most. There's a lot of us who are not religious. There's a lot of us who don't believe in God. And as a result of that, we, instead of looking maybe to the church or to the mosque or whatever it may be, we now look only to our political leaders.
- [59:13]
Robert Greene
That's a very good point. Well, you're a Catholic, right?
- [59:17]
Interviewer 1
I was raised Catholic. It never leaves you. The guilt is always there.
- [59:21]
Robert Greene
I'm Jewish, so I know this. Yeah. I mean, my new book that I. I'm. I finished the last chapter a month ago, and I'm almost finished with the introduction, so I'm almost there. To be out in November is kind of dealing with that because we humans have a spiritual side to us. We have a hunger for something larger than aren't just our egos, than just making money, than just surviving. We need to feel connected to something larger. It's part of our nature. And in my book, I explained where that comes from. And that never goes away. I don't care how sophisticated we are. I don't care if it's 3,000 years in advance and we're all like Borgs, we're part cyborgs, et cetera. It's still a part of human nature. It isn't going away. And so organized religion was sort of the main source of that first for centuries, right? And it kind of become. Became dead in a way. It wasn't really connected to people's authentic experience anymore, particularly as we became technologically so sophisticated. It seemed like something kind of superstitious, something from the past. And also, it wasn't appealing to our lived experience. I remember as a child going to the synagogue, right? And it just like, what does this have to do with my life here in Los angeles? It's the 60s, and people are going nuts in the streets in the Vietnam War and, you know, sex and everything. And here there's like these prayers and like, it had no connection to my life as a child and to my world. So I couldn't. I couldn't understand organized religion, okay? But people still have this need. They still have this hunger. They still are looking for some kind of meaning. They want to connect to something bigger than just their egos, right? And there's nothing out there that's supplying that, I think. And you find because of that, a lot of people are going into these sort of Niche spiritual worlds that at least feel a little more direct and part of their everyday life, but aren't connected to anything larger, any kind of movement. And so it shifts now it's. I'm interested in this little form of Buddhism. Then six months it'll be, you know, I'll be getting drug therapy and then it'll. Six months it'll be something else. Right. So there's nothing kind of solid and. And it's a very. And it's an emptiness that people feel. And so the book that I wrote was trying to. To deal with that kind of emptiness and how you as an individual, or we as a collective can find our way back to finding this kind of higher meaning in our life. But.
- [62:11]
Interviewer 1
Yeah, so, so carry on. No, no, no, I was saying. But it also speaks to a kind of.
- [62:15]
Sponsor Voice / Advertiser
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- [62:16]
Interviewer 1
We were having a conversation, Konstantin and the rest of the team last night, literally about this topic. It speaks to a kind of arrogance, doesn't it, Particularly in the west, that somehow we superseded religion. We don't need it anymore because we're so smart. We have this amazing technology.
- [62:32]
Robert Greene
It's stupidity. I mean, I'm reading quotes from Albert Einstein, probably the most brilliant scientist of our era, and he believed in what he called cosmic religion. And he said mysticism is as much a part of the arts as it is of the sciences. And if you can't feel awe in front of this universe that we have, then you might as well be dead. Right. So you can mix science, technology and sophisticated thinking and 21st century thinking with something spiritual. You can, it can be done. But the idea that everything has to be rational, everything has to be data, algorithms, you know, program, etc. Is just creating deadness in people. It's making them insane because that's not how the human animal is. We need to something else. So, yes, it is very arrogant to believe they can just get rid of religion. Sorry to say, but Nazism was a religion. Chinese communism and what Mao had was a religion. Stalin had a. Is a religion without religion, but it was still based on that kind of form. That's what happens when you get rid completely of things that meant so much to people.
- [63:52]
Interviewer 1
Absolutely. Because look, we respect science, we respect data, we respect all of those things. Those things are highly important. But let's be very real about it. If you've had a diagnosis, a terrible diagnosis, let's say you've stage four cancer. Data and science are not going to keep you warm at night. There's going to be something else that we're going to reach towards and that transcends intelligence around everything. We need something else.
- [64:19]
Robert Greene
And you know, I had a stroke about eight years ago. That's why I, my hand is like this and why I can't walk very well. I came this close to dying, right? And I had, I didn't have a near death experience, but it was close to something like that and it shook me up, it changed me. And so in my book that I'm writing, I, the last chapter is about death and people who had near death experiences. And there was this theme of. I was diagnosed with stage four cancer as you mentioned. I have only three months to live. I've never felt more alive than in these three months. I don't have to think about social media, I don't have to think about my admission. I don't have to think about all these other little problems. Suddenly the world opens up to me and I'm thinking about what really matters, about what really life is about, right? Because no amount of technology is going to keep me alive. And even if it does, I'm still going to have, the cancer will come back. And so you're forced to think about what really matters to you. And that's what death can do for you, you know. And so, you know, we're taking away things that really matter to human beings and we're paying a price for it. And so we have to find a way back to some of these things that our ancestors understood about the human animal and how we need an anchor in our lives.
- [65:49]
Interviewer 2
What's interesting is you see both in this country and in many other countries now actually religious attendance of church at least is actually. Or other religions is on the rise slowly, particularly among young people. So it may be happening voluntarily, which is how you, you'd hope it happens really, I guess. Rob, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for coming. And what is your book called? And you mentioned it comes out in November. When will people be able to pre order it?
- [66:15]
Robert Greene
I don't know when the bill pre order. Probably fairly soon, like within a month or two. I think it's been announced, it'll be out in November. And the title, it's called the Law of the Sublime. The book is about the sublime. And the idea is a, when we as a human animal, as a social creature, we live with certain conventions and limits and codes that tell us this is how we're supposed to think, this is how we're supposed to live, this is how we're supposed to behave. And the sublime are experiences that lie outside that circle, that kind of expand our consciousness. And I say that there's a lot of things going on in science that should naturally do this, like the nature of human consciousness, like the origin of the universe and the origin of life and all these amazing discoveries going that should be expanding our minds outside this circle. And as the mind expands, you naturally feel this kind of awe, this kind of cosmic sense that was once a part of religion. But at the same time that science is expanding this, and we should be going, whoa, whoa, social media is doing this to us. The mind is getting narrower and narrower, narrower. What is she having for breakfast? You know, all these sort of trivial, banal things that we're worried about. Right. And so I'm trying to explode all of that and get you back into thinking about what lies outside that circle. And that's what I call the sublime.
- [67:48]
Interviewer 2
We'll put the link in the description if it's available when this episode comes out. Before we ask you questions from our supporters, the final question we ask all our guests is, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be?
- [67:59]
Interviewer 1
Before Robert answers a final question at the end of the interview, make sure to head over to our substack. The link is in the description where you'll be able to see this.
- [68:08]
Interviewer 2
If you had to add new or amend existing laws from the 48, what changes would you make?
- [68:14]
Interviewer 1
Critiques of your book have suggested you're teaching people to be coldly manipulative. What do you say?
- [68:19]
Interviewer 2
What's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be?
- [68:24]
Robert Greene
Well, how about my book? I guess we just did, you know, because I hate to say it, but because of my stroke, I had to. I can't type, so I had to handwrite this entire book.
- [68:43]
Interviewer 2
Wow.
- [68:44]
Robert Greene
And that means handwriting it, then doing another notebook and editing it in another notebook, then editing it in another, then editing it, editing, and then finally dictating it right into the computer and then trying to edit it with one hand. And then I couldn't take a walk if I needed to clear my mind. Right. I'm sort of trapped in my office. And I'm somebody who loves exercise, loves hiking, being out in the world. And whenever my other books, I felt blocked, I would go on an amazing hike and all these ideas would come to me. I was trapped in this world and I couldn't. I had to handwrite everything. And yet the book is about the sublime. I had to feel it. How am I going to feel it when I'm like a bird in a cage. I had to overcome all of these things in my head and in my body. And so it took me seven years to write this book. Almost seven years. I don't care if it doesn't sell a single copy. I've never been felt more pride in myself that I overcame all of this. And there were difficult moments where I was like, crying, like, I can't do it, it's not working. But I did it. And it's a sense of achievement that I've never had before. So I don't know that maybe that's something I just wanted to share.
- [70:05]
Interviewer 2
That's awesome, man. Yeah, that's really special. Well, thank you for coming to coming here and talking to us about it. Head on over to triggerpod.co.uk, where we ask Robert your questions.
- [70:16]
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- [70:28]
Interviewer 2
Do you see parallels with historical movements such as communism in using constructed claims of victimhood and moral arguments to gain legitimacy and consolidate power?
- [70:54]
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