Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind, brain, behavior and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a guest who will stimulate your mind and give
Speaker 1: you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
Speaker 1: to live in. Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into
Speaker 1: human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast. So
Speaker 1: today we have Robert Green on the podcast. Robert is
Speaker 1: the number one New York Times bestselling author of The
Speaker 1: forty eight Laws of Power, The thirty three Strategies of War,
Speaker 1: The Art of Seduction and Mastery, and as an internationally
Speaker 1: renowned expert on power strategies. His latest book is The
Speaker 1: Laws of Human Nature. Robert, really great to chat with
Speaker 1: you again on the podcast. Thanks for having me again, Scott,
Speaker 1: My pleasure. Yeah, So there's lots of talkt with this book.
Speaker 1: It's quite an insightful book that spans a wide range
Speaker 1: of territory. I thought we could start off with the
Speaker 1: question of your own definition of human nature that you
Speaker 1: present your book, because it was a I thought it
Speaker 1: was quite a unique definition. Well, my definition is that
Speaker 1: there are forces within us, we're not aware of it.
Speaker 1: In other words, there's kind of a stranger within each
Speaker 1: of us. There are patterns of behavior that are ingrained
Speaker 1: in us going back hundreds of thousands of years based
Speaker 1: on how we evolved as a species, and we're not
Speaker 1: aware of these forces as they operate within us. They
Speaker 1: kind of move us around like pawns on a chessboard.
Speaker 1: They sort of control a lot of our behavior if
Speaker 1: we don't make an effort to become aware of them.
Speaker 1: They just give you one simple example. We're extremely susceptible
Speaker 1: to the emotions of other people. If we're in a
Speaker 1: group or a crowd and people are suddenly getting excited
Speaker 1: or angry, we find ourselves getting swept up in those emotions.
Speaker 1: If we're in an office and somebody is kind of
Speaker 1: depressed that we're talking to a lot that we have
Speaker 1: a lot of, you know that we're around a lot,
Speaker 1: we kind of absorb their emotion and we're not aware
Speaker 1: of this. We're not aware that we're not as autonomous
Speaker 1: and independent as we think that something like that is
Speaker 1: actually altering our emotions. And this goes back to how
Speaker 1: we evolved, in which the contagiousness of emotions served a
Speaker 1: very important evolutionary process. But now as we're evolved and
Speaker 1: we no longer live in small bands of thirty or
Speaker 1: forty people, that kind of viral contagion of emotions can
Speaker 1: become very dangerous. And so we see that very much
Speaker 1: playing out in our politics today. So consider that one
Speaker 1: kind of elemental primal force that moves us around and
Speaker 1: that we're not aware of, and that I call human nature. Sure,
Speaker 1: and I have several other forces. I have eighteen of them,
Speaker 1: if you will, that I believe we need to become
Speaker 1: aware of to be conscious rational human beings. So our
Speaker 1: consciousness is part of our human nature, right, yes, very much.
Speaker 1: So our awareness is also part of our human nature.
Speaker 1: So it could also, but you don't include that as
Speaker 1: in your definition. Oh of course, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, well, part of our nature. The point of
Speaker 1: my book is to become aware of our nature so
Speaker 1: that we can use it for productive purposes. And I
Speaker 1: include in each of the laws a way that we
Speaker 1: can do that. So the awareness part, like I say,
Speaker 1: there's a lower and a higher self within all of us.
Speaker 1: The lower self is this animal self that's very much
Speaker 1: wanting immediate pleasures, that takes the path of least resistance,
Speaker 1: that wants everything easy and simple and fast. But within
Speaker 1: all of us, part of our nature is a higher self,
Speaker 1: a self that is disciplined, that gets things done, that
Speaker 1: is able to work in a group with other people,
Speaker 1: that feels empathy for others. This is a potential within
Speaker 1: all of us. It is part of our nature. It
Speaker 1: is deeply wired within us. But that higher self takes effort.
Speaker 1: It doesn't come naturally or easy to us. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: one of the forces that we're talking about that I
Speaker 1: think is very powerful, that I talk about in the
Speaker 1: book is empathy. I know it's a word that gets
Speaker 1: used a lot, and I try and define it in
Speaker 1: a more kind of practical way, bring it down to earth,
Speaker 1: and sort of show you where empathy originated. But as
Speaker 1: we evolved as a species, the ability to take the
Speaker 1: perspective of other people, to get inside their mindset, to
Speaker 1: understand how they are feeling their moods was very critical
Speaker 1: survival skill, and I maintain that before the invention of language,
Speaker 1: our ancestors have almost telepathic ability to understand the moods
Speaker 1: and emotions of other people. Around them. Empathy is a
Speaker 1: very powerful force within us that is a potential, and
Speaker 1: the problem is that it's something that is like a
Speaker 1: muscle that atrophies, that we don't use very much, and
Speaker 1: that needs to be brought out. So sort of the
Speaker 1: easy animal parts of our nature, like the fact that
Speaker 1: we feel envy or that we react emotionally, that doesn't
Speaker 1: take any effort, that just comes to us naturally. But
Speaker 1: the ability to be rational, which is part of our nature,
Speaker 1: which is a potential, or the ability to feel empathy,
Speaker 1: requires effort and awareness and consciousness. Thank you for that.
Speaker 1: So what do you make of the distinction in psychology
Speaker 1: between effective and cognitive empathy. It seems like you're focusing
Speaker 1: on the cognitive empathy part, right, No, I very much
Speaker 1: want to mix the two. Okay, cool, I'm kind of
Speaker 1: following Jung's sort of definition where there's visceral Well, I
Speaker 1: call it visceral empathy, which is maybe what you call
Speaker 1: effective empathy, which is very easy. We can pick up
Speaker 1: the moods of people much more easily than we can
Speaker 1: pick up their thoughts. And then I combine it with
Speaker 1: analytic empathy. If you simply have this visceral kind of
Speaker 1: empathic energy where you just pick up people's moods, it
Speaker 1: can be a bit dangerous. You need to be able
Speaker 1: to analyze the information that you're receiving from people. There
Speaker 1: are many errors you can make in your interpretation of
Speaker 1: the moods that you pick up. You need to be
Speaker 1: able to get inside the mindset of other people and
Speaker 1: to analyze where that's coming from. So I like to
Speaker 1: try and mix the cognitive and the visceral, and I
Speaker 1: make a very big point about how you need to
Speaker 1: do that. Okay, great, So when we jump into some
Speaker 1: of I mean, obviously don't have time to talk about
Speaker 1: all these different aspects of human nature, but I'd like
Speaker 1: to pick out some themes that I thought would be
Speaker 1: neat for us to discuss. Sure, let's start with transforming
Speaker 1: self love into empathy, because since we would to rip
Speaker 1: off of the fact that we're just talking about empathy
Speaker 1: a little bit, can you talk about what the deep
Speaker 1: narcissist is? Well, the point I'm trying to make that
Speaker 1: I think is not usually popular in our culture today
Speaker 1: is that all of us are narcissists. All of us
Speaker 1: are on the scale of narcissism. For yourself, talking about
Speaker 1: I am speaking for myself. I know, I know, I'm
Speaker 1: joking very much the degree of my own narcissism. I
Speaker 1: try and say that it's in our nature to be
Speaker 1: self absorbed, and part of that is the need that
Speaker 1: we have at a very early age to develop some
Speaker 1: kind of self love, some kind of self esteem that
Speaker 1: protects us from a harsh, very competitive world. So we
Speaker 1: are all on the scale of narcissism. We are all
Speaker 1: to some degree self absorbed. And I like to make
Speaker 1: it almost like a water mark, where at sort of
Speaker 1: the halfway point is kind of the difference between our
Speaker 1: self absorption and becoming aware of other people and being
Speaker 1: able to be empathetic. And at the high point, let's say,
Speaker 1: at the point one hundred would be complete empathy with
Speaker 1: other people, the complete ability to get inside their mindset,
Speaker 1: and at zero would be total self absorption. And most
Speaker 1: of us are sort of above that fifty percent mark.
Speaker 1: We are able to get outside of ourselves at moments
Speaker 1: and get inside other people and understand them to some degree.
Speaker 1: But then in some moments we sink below that fifty
Speaker 1: percent mark when we feel depressed or there's some kind
Speaker 1: of trauma in our life, and we tend to become
Speaker 1: self absorbed, so we fluctuate. But a deep narcissist is
Speaker 1: someone who is always below that level, who can never
Speaker 1: rise above. They have probably suffered some kind of deep
Speaker 1: wounds in early childhood. They never were able to develop
Speaker 1: that kind of self love that protects people. So I
Speaker 1: maintain we humans need validation and recognition and attention from
Speaker 1: other people. I believe that would be one of Maslow's
Speaker 1: needs in the hierarchy esteem esteem, And if we're not
Speaker 1: able to get that from our parents or from other
Speaker 1: people when we're very young, it's very wounding. And so
Speaker 1: what we do is we develop a self that we
Speaker 1: can love and that we can feel can be appreciated.
Speaker 1: And so in moments of doubt, when we're not getting
Speaker 1: attention from people, we withdraw. We retreat into that self
Speaker 1: where we can tell ourselves we are still good, we
Speaker 1: are still worthy, We're still somebody that can be loved.
Speaker 1: Deep narcissists never develop that anchor, that sense of self
Speaker 1: that will control them. They are always in need of
Speaker 1: getting attention from other people. They can't get it from themselves.
Speaker 1: They can't get that love or that sense of a
Speaker 1: self from within. They must get it from without, so
Speaker 1: they're constantly playing to other people and it can make
Speaker 1: them kind of praised. There are introverts who are deep narcissists,
Speaker 1: who tend to go into their own shell, into their
Speaker 1: own fantasy world and reality. And they're extroverts sort of
Speaker 1: like the classic sort of Donald Trump paradigm, who must
Speaker 1: get that attention constantly from other people and stir up
Speaker 1: all kinds of drama. But the main thing that I
Speaker 1: want to emphasize here is that we always like to
Speaker 1: point fingers and say, oh, that person's a narcissist or
Speaker 1: they are, and we never like to think of ourselves
Speaker 1: in that category. And I want to make I want
Speaker 1: to get you away from this idea that there's somehow people,
Speaker 1: some people are different, some people aren't subject to these
Speaker 1: laws of human nature. We all have various degrees of
Speaker 1: self absorption, and we're all capable of becoming deep narcissists
Speaker 1: if we suffer some kind of trauma. Yeah. I like that.
Speaker 1: And you know that was the conceptulation of like the
Speaker 1: earlier psychoanalysts like Cohut. You know, it is so very
Speaker 1: much influenced by COVID. It was sort of the main
Speaker 1: influence there. Yeah, but it seems like we may have
Speaker 1: lost that perspective a little bit. I mean, that was
Speaker 1: much more in the consciousness of the psychoanalytic perspective, but
Speaker 1: it's not maybe so much anymore. So I'm really glad
Speaker 1: that you made that point, and and I'm so glad
Speaker 1: that you talk about it as you know, the spectrum,
Speaker 1: the narsic spectrum, and we have a deep narciss and
Speaker 1: then we have something kind of in the middle, which
Speaker 1: you call functional narcissist, and then you have on the
Speaker 1: kind of the far right of the spectrum, you have
Speaker 1: the healthy narcissis. Could you maybe talk about the difference
Speaker 1: between the functional and the healthy. Well, I've maintained that
Speaker 1: most of us are sort of functional narcissists. We fluctuate
Speaker 1: between moments of self absorption and then the ability to
Speaker 1: feel empathy for other people, for our children, for our
Speaker 1: loved ones, et cetera. So we're able to get outside
Speaker 1: of ourselves. That's what empathy is. It's the ability to
Speaker 1: get outside of ourselves. At the highest end of that
Speaker 1: spectrum would be what I call a healthy narcissist. That is,
Speaker 1: somebody who has a much higher level, much deeper ability
Speaker 1: to get inside the perspective of other people. They are
Speaker 1: not so quick to judge others. Their first instinct is
Speaker 1: to understand where people are coming from, as opposed to
Speaker 1: judging them. If you measure by the ability to get
Speaker 1: outside of ourselves, it's not just the ability to get
Speaker 1: inside other people, but it's also the ability to get
Speaker 1: inside your work. So work is a main area in
Speaker 1: which you can kind of heal some of the narcissistic
Speaker 1: wounds that you might have. And I have in the
Speaker 1: book an example that I actually took out because the
Speaker 1: book is so long. One of them is the scientist,
Speaker 1: the great scientist Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist, he who was
Speaker 1: what we would definitely categorize as a deep narcissist. He
Speaker 1: had tremendous wounds from his childhood. He continually felt like
Speaker 1: he was a victim, and he was actually sometimes on
Speaker 1: the verge of sort of psychotic behavior. He once tried
Speaker 1: to murder one of his professors. And he was later
Speaker 1: in life able to heal himself by completely absorbing his
Speaker 1: mind in his work. And it all kind of came
Speaker 1: together on the Manhattan Project, where he was the head.
Speaker 1: I know it was for the purpose of creating an
Speaker 1: Adam bomb. So we think that's the whole other issue
Speaker 1: over that, Yeah, we gloss over. But in that project,
Speaker 1: in working with other people and absorbing his mind in
Speaker 1: his work, he was aware that he was actually healing
Speaker 1: his own narcissistic wounds. So work is another area where
Speaker 1: we can get outside of ourselves and feel like we're
Speaker 1: contributing and producing something positive. So that's what a healthy
Speaker 1: narcissist is nice. He or she is able to put
Speaker 1: their energy into other people, into taking their perspective and
Speaker 1: into their work. I love that. Just to circle back
Speaker 1: to Heinz Cohaed again, it sounds a lot like in
Speaker 1: his language it would be like wholesome transformation or something
Speaker 1: like that. You know, Like this is actually a quote
Speaker 1: from presentation he gave nineteen sixty five that I think
Speaker 1: really highlights that really well. In many instances, the reshaping
Speaker 1: of the narcissis structures and their integration into the personality,
Speaker 1: the strengthening of ideals, and the achievement, even to a
Speaker 1: modest degree of such wholesome transformation of narcissism as humor, creativity, empathy,
Speaker 1: and wisdom must be rated as a more genuine and
Speaker 1: valid result of a therapy than that patient's precarious compliance
Speaker 1: with demands for a change of his narcissism into object love.
Speaker 1: And you know, object love was, you know, the drive
Speaker 1: to form close relationships with others and things. You know.
Speaker 1: So we're not saying like we're trying to change you
Speaker 1: into a completely different person. We're trying to have a
Speaker 1: healthy whole I like that phrase wholesome. What do you
Speaker 1: think that phrase wholesome transformation? I kind of like it.
Speaker 1: I like it very much. And what's interesting, I'm so
Speaker 1: glad that you're familiar with Koho because I'm a big fan.
Speaker 1: I'm a big fani. He's very difficult to read. Yeah,
Speaker 1: nobody is, especially in German. Oh god. But the interesting
Speaker 1: thing about Coohu is he knows what he's talking about
Speaker 1: because he was a deep narcissist. He is like Robert Oppenheimer.
Speaker 1: He was very much aware of how profound he was
Speaker 1: on that narcissistic spectrum. He had a troubled childhood. He
Speaker 1: was alienated. We had a sort of a suffocating mother,
Speaker 1: and he was constantly trying to transform himself. It was
Speaker 1: a struggle for him, so he was very it was
Speaker 1: not just some intellectual idea. It was something very very
Speaker 1: close to him. But yeah, I love the expression wholesome transformation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that part of that is, you know, whole the
Speaker 1: word hole in there, and it just really dealt us
Speaker 1: so nicely with some core themes. We're meant were meant
Speaker 1: as humans to be. We're a social animal. Yeah, We're
Speaker 1: not meant to be so atimistic, to be kind of
Speaker 1: balkanized like the way we are now. We were designed
Speaker 1: to be completely social and to the sense that we
Speaker 1: can heal ourselves. It isn't the ability. This is an
Speaker 1: idea from Adler more than anything. That's what he called
Speaker 1: social interest, and he a person as healthy by their
Speaker 1: degree of social interest, by their ability to have their
Speaker 1: interests applied to other people, to society, to the group.
Speaker 1: That is. I believe our ideal, but it doesn't come
Speaker 1: easier naturally, particularly in this world. It is a struggle.
Speaker 1: But by the fact that you're aware. I want to
Speaker 1: make the reader aware that you're a narcissist, so you
Speaker 1: don't get to escape this and think that you can
Speaker 1: just be who you are and that you're naturally healthy.
Speaker 1: I want you to be aware that it's a struggle
Speaker 1: that you must work at this, that you must overcome
Speaker 1: your own tendencies towards being self absorbed. Yeah, it's that's
Speaker 1: an important point. By the way, do you know how
Speaker 1: to pronounce odd Or's notion of socialisms like full something
Speaker 1: like that. Do you know how to pronounce it? The
Speaker 1: German word force would be gazelle shots for society. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, gazelle shops. I don't know what it
Speaker 1: would be. I've seen it spelled out before, and I
Speaker 1: always have to. I learned German diction when I studied
Speaker 1: opera and undergraduate, and I've always had trouble pronouncing that whole.
Speaker 1: It's like it's spelled g E M E I N
Speaker 1: s c h A f T s g E f
Speaker 1: u h l. Anyway, let's just say social interest good,
Speaker 1: mind shoft dude, mind shoftful, something like that, Yeah, mind shocked, yeah,
Speaker 1: f u h l. Yeah. I feel that's feeling, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel yeah, the feeling. Yes, So yeah, yeah, there
Speaker 1: you go. You know, reading your book, it just occurs
Speaker 1: to me, like how many areas of mutual I guess
Speaker 1: nerdiness and we have we share I don't know, lack
Speaker 1: of a better word for it, but that is the
Speaker 1: right way because and you know, we both are appreciated
Speaker 1: Abraham Maslow's work and he was deeply, deep influenced by Adler.
Speaker 1: I mean, his whole thesis was a way of trying
Speaker 1: to kind of prove AdWords theory of power. It was right,
Speaker 1: but among monkeys, you know, like he looked at it
Speaker 1: among monkeys. And I don't know if you heard this story,
Speaker 1: but he met Adler in New York when he moved
Speaker 1: to New York and was so excited to tell him
Speaker 1: about all his research, and they became friends until one day,
Speaker 1: I think you'll appreciate the story, until they were having
Speaker 1: lunch in the grammar Sy or something in New York,
Speaker 1: and and he hit a very sore spot, you know,
Speaker 1: about his rift with Freud, and he said something like
Speaker 1: about that rift with Freud or whatever, and he said,
Speaker 1: this was not the rift and it was just, you know,
Speaker 1: he hit a very sore spuand they never were the
Speaker 1: same ever since. And at the end of Maslow's life,
Speaker 1: I saw a note he wrote in something where he said,
Speaker 1: I have always had this regret that I never patched
Speaker 1: things up with that or before he died, because we
Speaker 1: were never good after that. Yeah. Well, I guess as
Speaker 1: I was a bit hypersensitive, that sort of doesn't show
Speaker 1: in the best line. Yeah. And apparently like Maswell was
Speaker 1: disagreeing with him at one of these intellectual soires that
Speaker 1: Adam had in his apartment, and Award threw Maswell up
Speaker 1: against the wall and said, do you agree with me
Speaker 1: or don't you? Wow? Yeah, isn't this amazing? So it
Speaker 1: it's exciting to live in a world where people took
Speaker 1: these ideas so seriously, these kind of rifts and battles.
Speaker 1: It feels so old fashioned. But Maslow talking about this
Speaker 1: health wholesome transformation. Maslow talks about this a lot as well. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The book that I used was The Farther Reaches of
Speaker 1: Human Nature, which is an excellent book, and he to
Speaker 1: himself talks a lot about well in the hierarchy of needs,
Speaker 1: that that highest need is to feel whole, and a
Speaker 1: lot of that does come through your work etca. So
Speaker 1: he's definitely mirroring what we're talking about here, definitely, And
Speaker 1: he was influenced by these other people that we're talking about,
Speaker 1: so it's not coincidence. So I think I'm trying to
Speaker 1: like in real time, like segue into the ones that
Speaker 1: naturally fits. So I think the one confront your dark
Speaker 1: Side feels right to talk about as right. This seems
Speaker 1: to naturally fit with what we're talking about. So you
Speaker 1: talk about confront your dark side, and you say, quote
Speaker 1: I'm quoting Robert Green, by integrating the dark side into
Speaker 1: your personality, you'll become a more complete human and will
Speaker 1: radiate and authenticity that will draw people to you. Wow,
Speaker 1: I mean talk about truth. You have this way of
Speaker 1: like having piercing statements of reality. It's like interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: well the idea is, you know, I'm very much one
Speaker 1: of the main influences on this book was young, but
Speaker 1: there were of course other people like Cohut et cetera,
Speaker 1: and Fairburn and beyond. But his concept of the shadow
Speaker 1: I was extremely interested in, and I try and based
Speaker 1: on him and others, I try and trace it in
Speaker 1: the following source in that when we were born, we
Speaker 1: were very young, we were like complete individuals. We felt
Speaker 1: a wide range of emotions that were naturally to us,
Speaker 1: natural to us. I can remember when I was a child,
Speaker 1: I could be quite angry and destructive and mean, but
Speaker 1: at the same time I could also be very loving
Speaker 1: and empathetic. But children are like that. They're just complete.
Speaker 1: They don't know how to regulate their emotions, so they
Speaker 1: simply vent them. And then as we get older, we're
Speaker 1: socialized and we have to learn to repress a lot
Speaker 1: of these qualities that are very natural to us. Perhaps
Speaker 1: these are aggressive impulses. A lot of them are aggressive impulses,
Speaker 1: and they go into what Jung called the shadow, and
Speaker 1: they cause as we get older and we repress them more,
Speaker 1: they cause all kinds of weird behavior. And I try
Speaker 1: and go into that weird behavior. I call it like
Speaker 1: looking for signs of the shadow. So, for instance, you
Speaker 1: see people to sudden very contradictory behavior. Some very stodgy
Speaker 1: professor will suddenly run leave his wife and run away
Speaker 1: with an actress or something, or a politician will get
Speaker 1: caught out doing some behavior that completely contradicts the image
Speaker 1: they've presented. So we notice, or someone who's so quiet
Speaker 1: and timid suddenly lashes out in an outburst of anger
Speaker 1: that seems very violent, and we see in those moments
Speaker 1: another side to a person, and our tendency is to think, well,
Speaker 1: that was just sort of some weird behavior. Some eccentricity.
Speaker 1: That's not who they are. They'll usually excuse themselves saying,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know what came over me. But
Speaker 1: in fact, what is happening is the shadow part of
Speaker 1: the personality is speaking, it's coming out, it's leaking. And
Speaker 1: the fact that we're always trying to hide it and
Speaker 1: contain it and repress us, I believe has a very
Speaker 1: long term deleterious effect on us. I think it tamps
Speaker 1: down a lot of our creative energies, among other things.
Speaker 1: And so I want to try and bring you back
Speaker 1: in some way to that child, to the more authentic self,
Speaker 1: and which you could express the full range of your emotions.
Speaker 1: Of course, some of it is destructive, and some of
Speaker 1: it you naturally had to kind of you had to
Speaker 1: become socialized, and you had to sort of adapt and mold,
Speaker 1: and you can't just be or say whatever you want.
Speaker 1: But I think there is a way to take the
Speaker 1: shadow side, the repressed part of your personality, and bring
Speaker 1: it out in your work, for instance, or express it
Speaker 1: in your relationships, but in a healthy way, in a
Speaker 1: productive way. And I think that there are people out
Speaker 1: there who we see as more authentic because they express
Speaker 1: more of their shadow, and they're admired for that. And
Speaker 1: as you say, they're more you know, there are people
Speaker 1: just seem like you know, people like me and you
Speaker 1: seem very comfortable with ourselves. Well yeah no, but you
Speaker 1: say people who seem comfortable in their own skin sort
Speaker 1: of thing is a good thing. You know, you made
Speaker 1: me think of roll May the daimonic. His notion of
Speaker 1: the dimonic, you know, it was is different than the demon,
Speaker 1: as he was very clear to say, it could be demon,
Speaker 1: but if it's integrated healthily, it's creative power prowess. So
Speaker 1: that was nice. I also really like this. Do you
Speaker 1: say here the emphatic trait generally rest on top of
Speaker 1: the opposite trait, distracting, concealing it from public view. Now
Speaker 1: this is very interesting me because you know, on the
Speaker 1: one hand, I don't want to become too cynical about people.
Speaker 1: I don't want to suddenly think that every single person
Speaker 1: who has some And you aren't saying this at all.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that, but I'm saying I want you
Speaker 1: to help me kind of find this healthy awareness of
Speaker 1: this without automatically assuming that everyone who is And I'll
Speaker 1: give you a specific example I mean, what do you
Speaker 1: make of people who I know some people who are
Speaker 1: just hyper hyper spiritual, and it just seems every time
Speaker 1: you talk to them, like everything is just like they're
Speaker 1: just these they radiate light and sun and it's like
Speaker 1: this person doesn't have any darkness at all. Right, but
Speaker 1: there's got to be right Like this is where young
Speaker 1: comes in, Yeah, and he nice to say that there
Speaker 1: is something else going on here that the complete person
Speaker 1: can't possibly be. He calls that one sidedness. And people
Speaker 1: who are one sided are definitely concealing the opposite trait
Speaker 1: because that's not natural. It's not natural to be completely
Speaker 1: spiritual like that. Because we are bodily creatures. We all
Speaker 1: feel deep physical needs, we all feel frustration, we all
Speaker 1: have moments of anger and depression. And so the person
Speaker 1: who is continually trying to project an aura of being
Speaker 1: saintly and calm is more than likely disguising something. And
Speaker 1: I don't think that's being cynical. I just think that's
Speaker 1: looking at the human animal as we are without judging it,
Speaker 1: you know. And I made the point in another chapter
Speaker 1: that a generation can have a shadow, and I talked
Speaker 1: about the people in the sixties with everything being so
Speaker 1: spiritual and about a cause, and the whole New Age
Speaker 1: movement that's just sort of came out of that, and
Speaker 1: how the hippies would seem to be people who were
Speaker 1: not materialistic. But underneath that was a shadow, which is
Speaker 1: the need to be always the best hippie, to have
Speaker 1: always the best pot, to have to know the best guru,
Speaker 1: and that kind of morph later on into yuppies having
Speaker 1: the best pasta machine. So there's this shadow side to
Speaker 1: that incredibly spiritual person who's revealed through their obsessive need
Speaker 1: to have something be the best, and then maybe they'll
Speaker 1: have the best yoga mat or they'll find the best
Speaker 1: retreat to go to. So there's a physical element that's
Speaker 1: sneaking through that isn't so high brow and spiritual. But
Speaker 1: this principle doesn't seem to work in reverse. And now
Speaker 1: that's maybe like a cheeky question, but I'm just trying
Speaker 1: to think of illogically. It's not like people who are
Speaker 1: emphatically assholes are actually secretly nice, great people, do you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. So it seems that there doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to be a bi directionality of this. There is
Speaker 1: a bidirection, so you have to look at it differently.
Speaker 1: The person who is an asshole or who is extremely
Speaker 1: manipulated is probably covering up deep insecurities and vulnerability. There
Speaker 1: is a soft side to them that they hate, they
Speaker 1: hate interesting. They have to repress that down and they
Speaker 1: have to be tough and verea island masculine and macho
Speaker 1: and aggressive. But deep inside their wound is they know
Speaker 1: that they have a soft spot. They know there's a
Speaker 1: feminine part of their personality that they just don't want
Speaker 1: others to see. They're covering it up, and it's very
Speaker 1: much there. And we often see that where the gangster
Speaker 1: I mean in old movies suddenly has an incredible soft spot.
Speaker 1: I talked in the forty eight Laws of Power how
Speaker 1: al Capone, the most violent, kind of macho, trump like
Speaker 1: man around, would sometimes be a conned by a con
Speaker 1: artist because who would give a story about his grandmother
Speaker 1: who was ill or something, and al Capone would kind
Speaker 1: of melt and give you give him the five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars for this cause. So a con artist knows this
Speaker 1: is always a part of someone's personality, that the tough
Speaker 1: guy is concealing deep vulnerabilities and insecurities and that you
Speaker 1: can play on those. So I think the asshole definitely
Speaker 1: does have a shadow side. It's just there is a
Speaker 1: soft part of them that they're trying to cover up
Speaker 1: and run from. Yeah, no, you're right. I'm now recalling
Speaker 1: this paper from nineteen thirty seven. Masow wrote on dominance, feeling, behavior,
Speaker 1: and status, where he distinguishes between the feeling of dominance
Speaker 1: and dominance behavior. So there are those who are projecting
Speaker 1: this dominance behavior, but they're not actually authentically these people, right,
Speaker 1: So he actually made this clever distinction between the behavior
Speaker 1: and the feeling. Well, you know, in a different chapter
Speaker 1: on aggression, I look at like the hyper aggressive person,
Speaker 1: someone like a Trump or a Putin, And when you
Speaker 1: look at these people, you realize that they cannot tolerate
Speaker 1: any kind of criticism. They need to be surrounded by sycophants,
Speaker 1: people who are always adulating them. Any kind of criticism
Speaker 1: makes some fears. They go into a narcissistic rage. And
Speaker 1: so we like to think of them as being incredibly strong.
Speaker 1: Look how strong that Putin guy is, But in fact
Speaker 1: they're riddled with deep, deep insecurities. Because a person who
Speaker 1: was really strong from within would be able to take
Speaker 1: some criticism from other people and absorb it and not
Speaker 1: be so hyper sensitive. So these very aggressive people are
Speaker 1: always concealing some kind of wound or insecurity. That's definitely
Speaker 1: a Union perspective, and I think there's a lot of
Speaker 1: truth there for sure. I'm trying to think, you know,
Speaker 1: we all have insecurities, so it's not like you ever
Speaker 1: meet someone who doesn't have in security. I find personally,
Speaker 1: I don't know what you find, but I find it
Speaker 1: really helpful that when I have these insecurities, Like I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed telling people, like just saying it out loud.
Speaker 1: Like even sometimes in some of my talks, I'll just
Speaker 1: like have stream of consciousness. I'll be like, look, I'm
Speaker 1: really nervous right now, Like try to like project something different.
Speaker 1: I just like try to just state what is in
Speaker 1: the moment, and I find that really helps calm me down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's a good strategy for you. Everybody is different.
Speaker 1: I mean, I do have the idea in the book
Speaker 1: that we are actors, that in the social realm, we're
Speaker 1: never just who we are. That's kind of an absurd
Speaker 1: notion that a human being is always performing. We naturally
Speaker 1: conceal our flaws. We don't want people to see everything
Speaker 1: that's going on inside of us. We don't want them
Speaker 1: to know about our dark moods or our moments of
Speaker 1: deepest doubt about ourselves. So we project something that's more
Speaker 1: consistent than we really are. One of the main points
Speaker 1: in my book, and something that kind of overwhelmed me
Speaker 1: as I wrote it, is that human beings are incredibly complex,
Speaker 1: much more complicated than we think. In the course of
Speaker 1: a day, we're feeling does of emotions that are constantly conflicting.
Speaker 1: We are very ambivalent. We never feel pure love or
Speaker 1: pure hatred. It's always mixed with something else. We're much
Speaker 1: more complicated and interesting than we think we are. But
Speaker 1: we're trying to present a persona to the world that's
Speaker 1: more consistent. So we are wearing masks, and so I
Speaker 1: think at some point your strategy is very effective to
Speaker 1: sometimes let the mask down and to kind of reveal
Speaker 1: what's going on. But in the sense of irving Goffman
Speaker 1: to rehabilitate him, I would have to say Scott that
Speaker 1: he would say that you're doing that is a kind
Speaker 1: of a performance in its own right. Well Mark Cleary
Speaker 1: would say that, yeah, modern psychologist Mark Cleary does study
Speaker 1: self presentational strategies. You know, I think that we can
Speaker 1: run amok with this idea though, and see everything as
Speaker 1: a self presentation strategy and kind of lose a humanity
Speaker 1: there of. Like, No, I think there's a lot of
Speaker 1: truth to that. You know. It's like I am try
Speaker 1: trying to kind of put a stop to I want
Speaker 1: to be run in control of what people think, right,
Speaker 1: you know, like by expressing it. But I am genuinely
Speaker 1: feeling that way though, So I'm not making that up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't deny that. But as part of the complexity
Speaker 1: of humans, people can have two things going on at
Speaker 1: the same time. They can be genuinely wanting to share something.
Speaker 1: I know this happens with myself because I am like
Speaker 1: you in many ways, I do the same strategy. You
Speaker 1: can genuinely feel the need to open up and show
Speaker 1: your vulnerability, and at the same time you are aware
Speaker 1: that you are performing on a kind of subconscious level. Yeah,
Speaker 1: two things can go on at the same time in
Speaker 1: the human We're more complicated than we think. Yeah, so true,
Speaker 1: And you know I try not to take another thing.
Speaker 1: I think it's just important. It's just don't take yourself
Speaker 1: too seriously, Like no one should take themselves too seriously.
Speaker 1: That's extremely important. Like I try not. I try to
Speaker 1: kind of just walk around this world. It's very absurdist
Speaker 1: sort of like attitude about everything. So could you maybe
Speaker 1: give some strategies to people and how you can see
Speaker 1: through people's masks? And I'd like to combine these two.
Speaker 1: If you don't mind seeing through people's masks and determining
Speaker 1: the strength of their character, I'd combine two of yours well.
Speaker 1: Seeing through people's masks is a chapter that I wrote
Speaker 1: on nonverbal communication. Now I know people write entire books
Speaker 1: on it, and it's the subject that people go over
Speaker 1: a lot. So I try to navigate to explore some
Speaker 1: new territory and nonverbal communication and make it very clear
Speaker 1: on how you can practice and become better at it.
Speaker 1: But the idea is that there's a human beings have
Speaker 1: two languages. One is the verbal language in which we're
Speaker 1: conscious and we say things. But then there's a second language.
Speaker 1: It's just nonverbal, which comes from our tone of voice,
Speaker 1: where how our eyes move, from our smile, from our energy,
Speaker 1: from the moods that we have, from our body posture, etc.
Speaker 1: And this second language is extremely eloquent. It is revealing
Speaker 1: all kinds of information about people. And you must understand
Speaker 1: we existed for hundreds of thousands of years before the
Speaker 1: invention of language, so nonverbal communication was an extremely important
Speaker 1: part of human survival, an important part of communication. But
Speaker 1: we don't pay attention to this. And I use as
Speaker 1: my icon for this Milton Erickson, who is a therapist.
Speaker 1: He sort of invented hypnotherapy. Some people don't take him
Speaker 1: so seriously. I'm sure known Erickson right the lesson. I
Speaker 1: think it's absolutely brilliant. I think he was very practical,
Speaker 1: and some people don't like that about him, but I
Speaker 1: think the man was incredibly brilliant, and he was a
Speaker 1: master at picking up this second language, and so you
Speaker 1: could say he was fluent in it in a way
Speaker 1: that no human that I know of was, at least
Speaker 1: by the way it was recorded. Mostly because he was
Speaker 1: had polio and he was paralyzed as a young man,
Speaker 1: and he couldn't move his mouth, he couldn't move a
Speaker 1: single muscle on his body. So he spent years just
Speaker 1: absorbing and looking at people and learning that language of
Speaker 1: their nonverbal communication. And his point was that we go
Speaker 1: around sleepwalking, we're so taken in by people's words that
Speaker 1: we're not paying attention to all of the signs they're
Speaker 1: revealing of what's really going on behind the mask. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, one of the main signals of what's going
Speaker 1: on behind the mask that people wear is mixed signals,
Speaker 1: which is very common. A person will say something to
Speaker 1: you that seems very nice and polite, but their body
Speaker 1: language expresses something else. It's not natural, it's not comfortable.
Speaker 1: So they're kind of praising you, were saying something good,
Speaker 1: but there's a slight coldness about it, and unconsciously you
Speaker 1: register this and it makes you a little bit anxious
Speaker 1: get about it, but it kind of gets under your skin. Well,
Speaker 1: you need to pay more attention to that negative signal
Speaker 1: that's coming through in that mixed signal, because most often
Speaker 1: the mixed signal involved the negative is with real And
Speaker 1: this is a language that you can develop. It could
Speaker 1: be used for very cynical, manipulative purposes, and a lot
Speaker 1: of psychopaths are actually very very good at picking up
Speaker 1: these signals in this language. But I think it's something
Speaker 1: that can be extremely positive because it can give you
Speaker 1: insights into people that you can't get in any other way.
Speaker 1: If people are telling you about their childhood or about
Speaker 1: their insecurities, they're not probably giving you the unvarnished truth.
Speaker 1: And unless you're jung Rollo may or Heinz Coh, you're
Speaker 1: not going to be able to decipher what there's really
Speaker 1: the subtext behind what they're saying. But their body language
Speaker 1: is revealing so much, so much information, and you're just
Speaker 1: not paying attention. So I want to ground you in
Speaker 1: skins and how you and make it like like you
Speaker 1: learn how to play basketball, you learn how to play
Speaker 1: the piano. I want you to learn how to pick
Speaker 1: up these nonverbal signs from people because it's a fascinating subject.
Speaker 1: It's like a masterclass in human nature apprenticeship. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so throughout my book, I'm talking about the signs, Like
Speaker 1: I have a chapter on envy, and envy is probably
Speaker 1: the hardest emotion to detect in other people because it's
Speaker 1: the one that people disguise the most. But even with envy,
Speaker 1: there are nonverbal signs of it. I'm kind of very
Speaker 1: excited by Paul Ekman's notion of micro expressions. I don't
Speaker 1: know if he invented it. I know maybe he just
Speaker 1: picked it up. You know, that flicker, that instance of
Speaker 1: kind of displeasure when you first encounter someone where they're
Speaker 1: trying to show that that they like you, but in
Speaker 1: fact there's a flicker of kind of oh why are
Speaker 1: you here? So yeah, Robert, I kind of got that
Speaker 1: from you a little bit at the beginning of this. No,
Speaker 1: I'm jokayjok I was like, so, I'd not have ignored
Speaker 1: that flicker. I'm just joking. I could have been I'm
Speaker 1: just really is that true? I remember in high school, know,
Speaker 1: in college, I was staying with my girlfriend at her
Speaker 1: house in Chicago or Evanston, and I was like being
Speaker 1: very friendly and vivacious and trying to please her family.
Speaker 1: In the middle of the night, she woke me up
Speaker 1: and said, Robert, you have to get out of the house.
Speaker 1: You have to leave, Like why my mother just was
Speaker 1: picking up such aggressive, angry energy from you, and you know,
Speaker 1: she couldn't believe it. It It was so strong, and you
Speaker 1: have to get out of the house. I left, and
Speaker 1: I thought about it later, and it probably was very
Speaker 1: much true because I didn't like her. I knew I
Speaker 1: didn't like I felt her really false and phony and
Speaker 1: and all that, and so she was picking up something
Speaker 1: that was sort of leaking out from me. So I'm capable. Wait,
Speaker 1: do you feel that way about me? It wasn't a
Speaker 1: subtle way to say that. Oh okay, I feel quite
Speaker 1: the opposite of you, Scott, thanks much, a nerdy jewish bomb. Oh,
Speaker 1: I mean it's like, yeah, so let me ask you
Speaker 1: something because, like in the when you determine the strength
Speaker 1: of people's character, you talked about the importance of assessing
Speaker 1: their character over their actions over time. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: just want to stress that point because I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, we can be wrong sometimes in what we're
Speaker 1: picking up, and some people that I've thought, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, this person really doesn't like me or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, I realized that like they had a bad day.
Speaker 1: It was like totally impersonal. It had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with me at all. Right, And so I just want
Speaker 1: you to riff on that point a little more because
Speaker 1: you do emphasize that in your book that we need
Speaker 1: to think of this as an overtime issue, right, Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: you need to be humble in your assessments of people.
Speaker 1: There is the idea of a fellow's arrow. I don't
Speaker 1: know if your error or sorry not errow error in
Speaker 1: which he assumes that Desdemona is guilty of adultery because
Speaker 1: she's so insecure and defensive when he confronts her, but
Speaker 1: in fact she's just simply really worried about his aggressive energy.
Speaker 1: So they call this Othellow's error, because often when you
Speaker 1: see someone's overt behavior, like particularly anger, your first assumption
Speaker 1: is that it's personal, that it's about you, and you
Speaker 1: interpret it while that's an asshole. Why is he so
Speaker 1: angry when in fact maybe that isn't really anger. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's some sort of frustration that's boiling over from some
Speaker 1: other issue that's nothing to do with you. So I'm
Speaker 1: trying to teach you to not rush to judgment, to
Speaker 1: be a bit humble, that your assessments of people are
Speaker 1: quite often wrong, and that you need to take a
Speaker 1: step back and develop the skill. And one of the
Speaker 1: key things is viewing people over time. So the idea
Speaker 1: is that people tend to reveal who they are, They
Speaker 1: reveal their character through patterns of behavior. I've always, for
Speaker 1: some reason, going back to my day's college, interested in
Speaker 1: this idea of character, coming from the Greek word chiros,
Speaker 1: which literally means an engravement, something engraved like in stone
Speaker 1: or whatever the engraving is. And so your character is
Speaker 1: something that's carved deep deep within you, your core of
Speaker 1: your being. It's qualities that you really aren't even conscious
Speaker 1: or control. They come from your DNA. They come from
Speaker 1: your early attachments to your parents or not attachment to them.
Speaker 1: They come from your experiences in childhood, and it causes
Speaker 1: you to behave in compulsive ways, to repeat certain patterns
Speaker 1: of behavior. And people will repeat patterns of behavior, and
Speaker 1: particularly I want you to be looking for the toxic
Speaker 1: types among us. Can we talk about some of them?
Speaker 1: I wrote down some of my favorite ones. Do you
Speaker 1: mind if we talk about some of them? No? And
Speaker 1: it's funny because, okay, if you could see my notes
Speaker 1: in your book, By the way, I have notes on
Speaker 1: every page, but if you could see my notes in
Speaker 1: that section in particular, you would see every page it
Speaker 1: says Trump at the top. Trump. It's very interesting stuff.
Speaker 1: Because I was writing the book it kind of you know,
Speaker 1: overlapped his rise to power. So I started, you know,
Speaker 1: in twenty fifteen, and then as I'm writing it, like
Speaker 1: I'm writing a chapter on grandiosity, just at the moment
Speaker 1: where his grandiosity is so evident, the chapter on aggression,
Speaker 1: or the chapter on the shadow, or the chapter on
Speaker 1: gender and toxic masculine. He's all the toxic types, like
Speaker 1: the integration, the unhealthy integration of all the toxic types.
Speaker 1: And yet, and yet the shocking thing is that has
Speaker 1: tremendous appeal to one third of the population country or less,
Speaker 1: probably one quarter. Because I feel like we're just stating
Speaker 1: some facts that like he conforms to some of these
Speaker 1: archetypes that throughout history that you've identified. It's obvious, it's obvious, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: But you know, on the other hand, you have to
Speaker 1: recognize the attraction that it has to people. So I
Speaker 1: try and talk in the book, how very toxic types
Speaker 1: have people who are grandiose or aggressive have this peculiar
Speaker 1: kind of charm. Why do they have this charm? You know,
Speaker 1: it's fascinating because we should never undervaluate them or underestimate them,
Speaker 1: like a lot of people on the left have underestimated
Speaker 1: the power of a Donald Trump. Yeah, okay, so I
Speaker 1: identify people. I know I can think of people like
Speaker 1: that moment of names in this podcast. But for each
Speaker 1: one of these, so we all know, the relentless rebel right.
Speaker 1: I know people you know that seem to have this
Speaker 1: psychopathological need to say the opposite, like to non conform
Speaker 1: to anything, even when like the conforming would actually be
Speaker 1: the healthy choice for them, or would be the obvious
Speaker 1: like normal. Like it's like, you know, you could say
Speaker 1: the world is round, you know, the earth is round
Speaker 1: there and be like it's flat. You know, like they
Speaker 1: have to say that, you know, they think that that's
Speaker 1: a sign of the intelligence, the intelligence that they're able
Speaker 1: to think for themselves as opposed to you who are
Speaker 1: just accepting the conventional wisdom. Well, you know what I
Speaker 1: try to say about these people, the toxic types that
Speaker 1: I'm pointing out, going back to what I said earlier,
Speaker 1: is I have a quote in there from Schopenhauer that
Speaker 1: evil people don't go around with horns on their head,
Speaker 1: and fools don't go around wearing caps and bells. In
Speaker 1: other words, people learn who are toxic from an early
Speaker 1: age to disguise it and to present a persona that
Speaker 1: will get them some kind of social power. They know
Speaker 1: that if they are truly showing their toxicity to everyone,
Speaker 1: they'll be alienated, and they will you know, they won't
Speaker 1: get very far, so they learn to disguise it. And
Speaker 1: the relentless rebel is someone who's probably dealing, in this
Speaker 1: particular instance, with a lot of deep rooted issues from
Speaker 1: childhood with perhaps a father figure. I don't want to
Speaker 1: get too Freudian here, but you know, a deep level
Speaker 1: of resentment towards the father figure, perhaps the mother figure,
Speaker 1: if the mother figure was the dominant one in the relationship.
Speaker 1: And so they present this an extremely positive light. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm so cool. I'm such an anti authoritarian. I'm James Dean,
Speaker 1: I'm really him. I'm against this, I'm against that. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to vote for Hillary Clinton. I'm going
Speaker 1: to go for Jill Stein because you know, man, you know,
Speaker 1: that's just kind of thing, that's just the rebel post. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a really rebel vote for Jill Stein. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I know people like that cool someone in particular, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, and they present themselves as like it's a
Speaker 1: really strong thing, that they're not so stodgy as you are.
Speaker 1: They're just full of this rebellious energy. But in fact
Speaker 1: it comes from kind of an ugly place where this
Speaker 1: is their only way of asserting themselves and feeling like
Speaker 1: it's a form of superiority, right, Yeah, a flight in
Speaker 1: that is you are kind of stodgy and conventional, and
Speaker 1: I'm sort of the bearer of truth. And you know,
Speaker 1: you'll get attracted to this person because you kind of
Speaker 1: were all attracted to the maverick, to the underdog. But
Speaker 1: then in a relationship, we'll find that that rebelliousness turns
Speaker 1: against us. That it's very hard to get along with
Speaker 1: someone who who's always seen the contrary sign to things.
Speaker 1: For sure. You know, there's a statistical technique called factor
Speaker 1: analysis in psychology where you take a bunch of things
Speaker 1: and you simplified into their main dimensions. I feel like
Speaker 1: I want to run this empirical analysis of all your
Speaker 1: toxic types because I intuitively it's I can see some clusters,
Speaker 1: like it seems to me like and I'm sure you'd
Speaker 1: agree so like I found personal experience that the following
Speaker 1: tend to cluster together drama, magnet, sexualized, and princess, but
Speaker 1: it could be princes as well. You know, do you
Speaker 1: see what I'm saying? I see those three tend to
Speaker 1: go together. Yeah, I would agree with you there, although
Speaker 1: I imagine there are drama magnets who don't sexualize everything.
Speaker 1: But I believe every sexualizer is a drama. It seems so,
Speaker 1: it seems so right age they're drawing you into the
Speaker 1: drama through their sexual lore, right and then you know,
Speaker 1: you talk about the pleaser. I worry sometimes that's perhaps
Speaker 1: my biggest problem is people pleaser. Yeah, I have a
Speaker 1: people pleasing ten I have a real people pleasing tendency,
Speaker 1: and I don't like it, like I don't want it,
Speaker 1: you know, but I can't help it. Sometimes there's the
Speaker 1: kind of benign form of all of these types, which
Speaker 1: we all are, and then there's the toxic types. And
Speaker 1: so you're not the toxic type of pleaser because the
Speaker 1: toxic type of pleaser is basically disguising a desire to
Speaker 1: wound others. Oh so they don't actually want to reach
Speaker 1: out genuinely. Well, they do, but they want to protect
Speaker 1: themselves from any kind of conflict. But a lot of
Speaker 1: them are very passive aggressive. So their way of pleasing
Speaker 1: you is to get you sort of entangled into their drama,
Speaker 1: sort of become their friend, and then they're going to
Speaker 1: find some way to wound you or hurt you in
Speaker 1: some way. The toxic pleaser type is not benign. So
Speaker 1: for instance, you meet somebody and instantly they're like, Wow,
Speaker 1: you're amazing, You're one be friends, I mean friends you
Speaker 1: want on Facebook, really really connect. You're very wary of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm very aware of that. That is not natural. That's
Speaker 1: not natural, because what's natural is for us to be
Speaker 1: wary of strangers, to have a little bit of distance.
Speaker 1: But it's very seductive when people do that. You're not
Speaker 1: the toxic type. That's glad to hear that. I do
Speaker 1: sometimes want to just somehow like a false turn off
Speaker 1: my you know, like I've got to answer all my
Speaker 1: email that, you know what I mean, that kind of
Speaker 1: people pleaser. It's like I gotta gotta answer all the emails,
Speaker 1: gotta like, you know, check this box in this box,
Speaker 1: and and sometimes I just want to just like give
Speaker 1: myself permission to just like I'm taking a day off
Speaker 1: from pleasing anyone. You know. Yeah, well that maybe should
Speaker 1: be part of your shadow side that you're labeled to
Speaker 1: get out. I like that. Oh gosh, I'm going to
Speaker 1: embrace that shadow side. Once a week, how about one
Speaker 1: like Sunday's or something. I've been starting to do that
Speaker 1: like Sundays be like that's my dark side day. So yeah,
Speaker 1: let me get to some of my last couple that
Speaker 1: I think take us into more of a higher nature,
Speaker 1: because some of the people listening to this podcast might
Speaker 1: feel like we're kind of maybe stuck in the look
Speaker 1: in a way. But that's not all of your book,
Speaker 1: and so I want to make that very very clear
Speaker 1: by focusing on some of these others. So you say,
Speaker 1: advance with a sense of purpose. So we do have
Speaker 1: as part of our human nature of the capacity for
Speaker 1: a sense of mission or a pro social drive to
Speaker 1: get out out of ourselves. Is that right? Yes, that
Speaker 1: chapter is sort of an elaboration or a continuation of
Speaker 1: Mastery of a chapter in Mastery, And essentially I'm saying
Speaker 1: as part of our nature, the problem that we humans
Speaker 1: face is that we don't seem to be born with
Speaker 1: a purpose. Like today, I wake up and I could
Speaker 1: play golf, although I don't play golf, or I could
Speaker 1: get drunk, or I could try and start writing my novel,
Speaker 1: or I could just go watch a movie, or I
Speaker 1: could read a book. Nothing tells me what I have
Speaker 1: to do. You know, there's no direction in life, and
Speaker 1: I feel that that is what causes a deep degrees
Speaker 1: of pain in people, the sense that they have no
Speaker 1: natural direction in life, what guides me towards this career,
Speaker 1: what guides me towards having this partner in my life?
Speaker 1: Why am I doing this instead of that? And that
Speaker 1: sense of swimming in the sea of possibility of being
Speaker 1: able to do anything can create deep wells of depression
Speaker 1: and pain in people. And you know, an animal has
Speaker 1: a built in sense of purpose. They know who they are.
Speaker 1: A tiger as a tiger, a dog is a dog.
Speaker 1: We don't know what we were intended to do, but
Speaker 1: I maintain that we do have a sense of purpose actually,
Speaker 1: but it's hidden. We have to discover it. It doesn't
Speaker 1: come immediately apparent to us when we're suddenly twenty one
Speaker 1: years old, when we enter the work world. It actually
Speaker 1: involves a process. But if you can discover this sense
Speaker 1: of purpose, I call it a form of internal radar.
Speaker 1: It now gives you a sense of direction and a
Speaker 1: sense of channeling your energies. This is where I should go,
Speaker 1: not wasting my time over there. It gives you concentrated
Speaker 1: energy and force, and it's an extremely liberating and beautiful thing.
Speaker 1: To discover that sense of purpose. Once you have it,
Speaker 1: everything kind of falls into you're able to prioritize your life.
Speaker 1: And a lot of young people, particularly nowadays, are really
Speaker 1: really suffering in this way because in some ways, like
Speaker 1: with the Internet, you believe that this whole feast is
Speaker 1: opened up in front of you, that you can learn
Speaker 1: anything that you want, that you could become this or that,
Speaker 1: or you know, tomorrow, I could study online and become,
Speaker 1: you know, a great psychologist or something whatever it is.
Speaker 1: But you know it's not true. It's not true that
Speaker 1: you can become anything. You only have a limited amount
Speaker 1: of time and a limited amount of energy, and that
Speaker 1: sense of purpose comes from the fact that you have
Speaker 1: to be aware of what makes you different. I was
Speaker 1: very much taken by a phrase that Maslow used in
Speaker 1: that book that I mentioned. He calls it impulse voices,
Speaker 1: and what he meant by impulse voices is an infant
Speaker 1: knows that it likes this particular food, and it eats
Speaker 1: it and it enjoys it. It's an impulse voice saying
Speaker 1: this is what I like, what I love. And when
Speaker 1: we're young, we feel these voices, they say this is
Speaker 1: I love, you know, playing sports, I love music, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And what happens is most people, as they get older,
Speaker 1: lose that impulse voice. They don't longer know what they
Speaker 1: like or what they dislike. They only know what other
Speaker 1: people like and dislike, and they're conforming to that. Oh
Speaker 1: that kind of movie or entertainment is cool, I better
Speaker 1: like it, whereas in fact it may not be natural
Speaker 1: or authentic to you. You have impulse voices. They were
Speaker 1: telling you when you were three or four, what you
Speaker 1: naturally love, what you gravitate towards. What is an intellectual
Speaker 1: area that you should be moving towards. And I don't
Speaker 1: mean just intellectual. It could be working with your hands,
Speaker 1: or working with other people, etc. Or sports or physical activity.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm very much taken in by Gardner's book
Speaker 1: The Five Frames of Mind that there are five forms
Speaker 1: of intelligence. That every person has a natural bent towards
Speaker 1: one of these forms of intelligence. You need to connect
Speaker 1: to that. That voice is deep within you. It's an
Speaker 1: impulse voice. It's telling you, you know, what makes you different,
Speaker 1: what makes you special, what makes your energy different from
Speaker 1: other people's energy, And that is your internal radar system.
Speaker 1: You know, the oracle of Delphi, the main font of
Speaker 1: wisdom was know thyself. So the ability to know who
Speaker 1: you are, what makes you different, what makes you unique,
Speaker 1: is to me the key towards fulfillment in life. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, I kind of describe a way to discover
Speaker 1: that path, to discover those impulse voices later on when
Speaker 1: they're drowned out by other things and get closer to it.
Speaker 1: But it's also a matter of not listening so much
Speaker 1: to your parents, to other people, and getting in tune
Speaker 1: with what makes you different and unique and following that path.
Speaker 1: But you know, you talk about that in Mastery, right,
Speaker 1: that's a very big, big component of mastery as getting
Speaker 1: in touch with that. But you say you discover your
Speaker 1: the life life's task. That seems similar, right, Yes, it is.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah. And then I
Speaker 1: noticed also, like you talk about in a way, this
Speaker 1: current book is like a grand integration, right of lots
Speaker 1: of prior laws, because you also talk about the you know,
Speaker 1: how to create an air of mystery, and that was
Speaker 1: in your Walls of Seduction. Yeah, so it's sort of
Speaker 1: coming together of all the things that I've written into
Speaker 1: this is sort of what grounds all of them is
Speaker 1: what's lying the laws underneath all of them. But just
Speaker 1: to say one more thing about the sense of purpose,
Speaker 1: I don't mind wax sort of poetic here, but for
Speaker 1: a moment I will, which is I believe that this
Speaker 1: kind of diversity in nature, which is embedded in you
Speaker 1: as you're listening to this podcast, in your DNA and
Speaker 1: what makes you different is actually has a purpose to it.
Speaker 1: That we know in ecosystems, when there's a diversity in
Speaker 1: that ecosystem, that things thrive and it becomes a self
Speaker 1: fulfilling process. We're more and different forms of life can evolve.
Speaker 1: And we know that when a culture has a variety
Speaker 1: of people and a variety of voices, that culture is
Speaker 1: much richer. That's what made Athens in the fifth century BC,
Speaker 1: or Renaissance Italy, or France during the Enlightenment, or perhaps
Speaker 1: Paris in the nineteen twenties, these moments of tremendous cultural ferment.
Speaker 1: But there's incredible diversity of people and ideas in there.
Speaker 1: And so diversity is a positive thing for humans in
Speaker 1: our culture. It's a necessity, I would say. And you
Speaker 1: bringing out your uniqueness, you being Scott very Kaufman and
Speaker 1: finding a way to blend psychology with your podcast, with
Speaker 1: your books and put it a unique quirky personality. Your
Speaker 1: quirky personality is fulfilling that sense of purpose, that diversity.
Speaker 1: It's like you're contributing to something that's extremely necessary. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, thank you, I hope. So sometimes you know,
Speaker 1: you don't know. I guess you have to really trust
Speaker 1: that we got lots of voices, right, Like, we've got
Speaker 1: voices that are trying to take us away from that purpose,
Speaker 1: you know, that are trying to steer us in a
Speaker 1: self destructive way. So I mean holding that intuition to
Speaker 1: tell the difference between all these competing impulses is part
Speaker 1: of the task itself, right, Yes, it is, I know.
Speaker 1: So for instance, for my life, I didn't start writing
Speaker 1: The forty eight Laws of Power, my first book, until
Speaker 1: I was thirty eight, and up until that moment, I
Speaker 1: was kind of a lost cause, and even my parents
Speaker 1: were on the verge of giving up on me. And
Speaker 1: you know, I knew that I wanted to write from
Speaker 1: very early age, that I couldn't figure out what I
Speaker 1: wanted to do, what kind of writing, and I messed around.
Speaker 1: I tried journalism. I tried Hollywood, I tried writing plays novels,
Speaker 1: and I was really depressed. But I had a sense
Speaker 1: of overall frame. This is what I was headed towards.
Speaker 1: It was writing, but I couldn't channel it the right
Speaker 1: way and it was causing a lot of pain. And
Speaker 1: then I discovered, through writing a book, this is what
Speaker 1: I was meant to do, and it completely eased got
Speaker 1: rid of all of that pain in my life because
Speaker 1: now I know I don't waste my time. I don't
Speaker 1: start thinking, oh I should start writing a screenplay, Oh
Speaker 1: I should start writing for the New York Times magazine
Speaker 1: or whatever. No, my energy is focused on this. This
Speaker 1: is what I was meant to do. This is what
Speaker 1: it feels right, and it cuts out a lot of
Speaker 1: you know, tangents that I could take and wasted time,
Speaker 1: and it makes me feel very guided. And it is
Speaker 1: a powerful force. You say, I'm going to quote Robert
Speaker 1: Green again quote operating with a higher sense of purpose
Speaker 1: is a force multiplier. All of your decisions and actions
Speaker 1: have greater power behind them because they're guided by a
Speaker 1: central idea and purpose. So you're getting more bang for
Speaker 1: your buck by choosing wisely. Yeah, because you only have
Speaker 1: so much energy in life, and when you focus it
Speaker 1: on something that you want or that you love, you're
Speaker 1: able to accomplish something in one year that would have
Speaker 1: taken you ten years if your energies are diffused. You know,
Speaker 1: we only learn when we really learn something deeply, when
Speaker 1: we're excited by the subject. So if we're forced to
Speaker 1: study physics in high school, it goes in one ear
Speaker 1: or out the other. But if we love it like
Speaker 1: an Einstein, you know, by the time you're fourteen or fifteen,
Speaker 1: you're already on your way to becoming a genius because
Speaker 1: you love it so much. You want to devote all
Speaker 1: of your energy, and you learn really quickly because you're motivated.
Speaker 1: And so it's a force multiplier in that it concentrates
Speaker 1: your energy on something that you love and it makes
Speaker 1: you learn more quickly. This doesn't mean that you have
Speaker 1: to focus your whole life on one thing. The beauty
Speaker 1: of this purpose is that it can mean combining three
Speaker 1: or four some central interests in your life. You know,
Speaker 1: I talk in Mastery about Da vinci Is interest in architecture, engineering,
Speaker 1: in science, and painting, et cetera, all kind of an
Speaker 1: anatomy he was able to combine all of these things
Speaker 1: into something very unique. So you could combine several interests,
Speaker 1: but there's an overall framework and overall purpose to that. Yes,
Speaker 1: and we can also be wored by false purposes, which
Speaker 1: we just touched on that for a second and use
Speaker 1: the phrase love this phrase transcendence on the cheap, and
Speaker 1: it made me think of Maslow's phrase that I saw
Speaker 1: a footnote of one of his books. He called it
Speaker 1: pseudo growth. I think we can have pseudo transcendence as well,
Speaker 1: because he defines pseudo growth as you know, growth built
Speaker 1: on a shaky foundation right of needs. Well, what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to say in the false purpose section is the
Speaker 1: need for a purpose is so deep in humans that
Speaker 1: if we don't find it through what I'm talking about,
Speaker 1: finding your career path to your life's task, we will
Speaker 1: find it in other ways. We will find it in
Speaker 1: the pursuit of pleasure, will become a hedonist and that
Speaker 1: will give us a sense of pleasure a sense of purpose,
Speaker 1: or will go in money and becoming successful will become
Speaker 1: our sense of purpose. But that money is not really
Speaker 1: a sense of purpose because it's soul as it's not
Speaker 1: connected to who you are, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: who have a one track mind about obsessed about making
Speaker 1: money end up burning themselves out in their mid thirties,
Speaker 1: becoming alcoholics, porn addicts, whatever. And you know, that kind
Speaker 1: of shadow side comes creeping out. Other kinds of things
Speaker 1: would be some sort of cause or cult that you
Speaker 1: can join that will give you a sense of purpose.
Speaker 1: You know, you could feel alienated in your town in
Speaker 1: Illinois and becoming a white supremacist or not trying to
Speaker 1: gloss this over, does literally give you a sense of purpose.
Speaker 1: You're part of a group, you have a cause, you
Speaker 1: believe in, getting a sense of belonging, a belonging, and
Speaker 1: that here is a narrative about what's wrong with the
Speaker 1: world and how we can fix it and everything will
Speaker 1: be great and right. So that can give you a
Speaker 1: sense of purpose as well. But these are faults and
Speaker 1: they lead into rabbit holes, and they don't lead to
Speaker 1: anything deeply fulfilling in the sense that I try and
Speaker 1: say that, you know, or attention can become a false
Speaker 1: sense of purpose that a lot of people have now
Speaker 1: on social media getting the most amount of attention, but
Speaker 1: you're feeling very empty. The thing is when you have
Speaker 1: a real sense of purpose. You know, when you've reached
Speaker 1: something like I wrote this book, I feel good about it,
Speaker 1: and now I go on to the next book. How
Speaker 1: do you know when you have enough money? How do
Speaker 1: you know when you have enough attention from other people?
Speaker 1: How do you know? It's never enough? Well, it's never enough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it never leads to anything, to an endpoint, to something
Speaker 1: that fulfills you or that you can you know, it's
Speaker 1: a good point. It's a very good point. They describe
Speaker 1: in the literature the psychology or the difference between authentic
Speaker 1: pride and he bristoled pride. And it seems like you're
Speaker 1: saying we should really foster our authentic pride and earned accomplishments.
Speaker 1: That's another chapter. I talk about grandiosity, which is influenced
Speaker 1: another chapter influenced by Cohu, and I try and make
Speaker 1: the distinction that we all have grandiose tendencies to get
Speaker 1: out of this notion that only some people are grandiose.
Speaker 1: Grandiosity is built into human nature in a very deep level,
Speaker 1: and I don't think it's necessarily a negative. I have
Speaker 1: what I call practical grandiosity, the sense that you can
Speaker 1: actually feel great and greater than yourself through your work,
Speaker 1: through making something that contributes to society is a practical
Speaker 1: and realistic form of grandiosity that is healthy. Combining these,
Speaker 1: it seems like having a sense of purpose, and combining
Speaker 1: that with understanding the historical moment and having awareness is
Speaker 1: going to be even a more potent force because your
Speaker 1: purpose will really resonate with the most amount of people
Speaker 1: within your generation. Yeah. I have a chapter on the
Speaker 1: zeitgeist Dan, becoming aware of your generation. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: spirit of the generation and your sense of purpose should
Speaker 1: fit in with that in some ways. Yeah, yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: So I'm going to end with edroid one of your
Speaker 1: mindful of the time. I want to end with this
Speaker 1: notion of open the mind to the sublime. I thought
Speaker 1: that would be I can't think of a better way
Speaker 1: of ending this conversation with opening your mind to the sublime?
Speaker 1: Any tips for doing that in thirty seconds? I've always
Speaker 1: intended to write a book on the sublime, and it's
Speaker 1: still on my list. I will do it before I die, hopefully.
Speaker 1: Oh you should. You should totally do that though. And
Speaker 1: when you call it the sublime or something like that, yeah,
Speaker 1: I call it towards the Sublime. Yeah, I like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a subject in a word that fascinates me, and
Speaker 1: I can't really give it the thirty second treatment, so
Speaker 1: I'll do my best here. I have it in the
Speaker 1: chapter about confronting your Mortalit about you know, as far
Speaker 1: as when it comes to human nature, we're the only
Speaker 1: animal that's aware of our mortality, and how deeply deeply
Speaker 1: that has wounded us and created all kinds of reactions
Speaker 1: that we're still paying for that we're deeply afraid of
Speaker 1: our mortality and we're fleeing from it, and it creates continual,
Speaker 1: latent anxiety in people. And in the past, people fled
Speaker 1: this sense of mortality through creating it the afterlife, in
Speaker 1: a sense that death is not the end. And now
Speaker 1: we flee it by never confronting the reality of death,
Speaker 1: by never seeing a dead person in hospital, by never
Speaker 1: seeing an animal that we eat being killed, by having
Speaker 1: movies filled with kind of cartoonish violence, as if death
Speaker 1: is just like a cartoon thing. So we're in deep,
Speaker 1: deep denial about death in the year twenty eighteen. And
Speaker 1: the sublime is a word that literally means up to
Speaker 1: the threshold from Latin. I'm a threshold okay, to the threshold,
Speaker 1: and it literally. The ancient conception of it from the
Speaker 1: Latin writers was that death is the ultimate threshold. When
Speaker 1: you cross that, you don't know what it is. We
Speaker 1: have no idea what death means. The sublime is moving
Speaker 1: up to that threshold. So death is something so awesome
Speaker 1: and so vast that our puny little minds can't wrap
Speaker 1: ourselves around it. Nobody on Scott Berry Kaufman's podcast find it.
Speaker 1: It's too great, it's too vast to think that you
Speaker 1: can is rather grandiose, and a lot of scientists can
Speaker 1: be rather grandiose in that sense. It's too vast. But
Speaker 1: a sublime moment is creating that sense of confronting anything
Speaker 1: in life that is almost too vast to comprehend, that
Speaker 1: you can't put it in words. And a lot of
Speaker 1: religions have this notion. The sublime is a notion. It's
Speaker 1: very important in Buddhis and I recently discovered it in Christianity,
Speaker 1: in what is known as the via negativa, which is
Speaker 1: you cannot know God through words. It is nonverbal. It
Speaker 1: is something so vast, so superior to you, that only
Speaker 1: in moments of meditation can you begin to experience that
Speaker 1: shiver of the sublime, of something too big for even
Speaker 1: words to encapsulate. And so I believe there are sublime
Speaker 1: moments that we can create in life by opening our
Speaker 1: minds intellectually to experiences that are just blow you away.
Speaker 1: So I have a simple banal example of think of
Speaker 1: yourself that you're alive right now, and think of the
Speaker 1: fact that three billion years ago life on planet Earth began,
Speaker 1: and it was extremely unlikely that life ever began. It
Speaker 1: had a particular combination of chemicals that occurred and life started,
Speaker 1: and so many other planets are lifeless. It was like
Speaker 1: this freak occurrence that occurred. And then in this freak
Speaker 1: occurrence was a vast chain of evolution in which animals
Speaker 1: were appearing and disappearing in very rapid rates, and near
Speaker 1: the end of that comes this weird animal to primate,
Speaker 1: and then comes these early hominids and these early humans,
Speaker 1: of which there were maybe ten different varieties of and
Speaker 1: nine of them disappeared, never to reappear again Australopithecus et cetera.
Speaker 1: But one survived, Homo sapiens, And at some point Homo
Speaker 1: sapiens was probably on the verge of extinction because we
Speaker 1: were so small in number, yet we survived. And if
Speaker 1: we hadn't, I wouldn't be on a podcast with Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Hoffmann right now, and so on and on. You
Speaker 1: go down this chain, and each person meeting another person,
Speaker 1: having children, your parents meeting and begetting you to use
Speaker 1: a biblical word, depended on all sorts of freak occurrences
Speaker 1: of other people meeting other people meeting other people. You
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been you if your parents hadn't met who.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't have the philosophical answer. Maybe
Speaker 1: you would, your atoms would have been in something else.
Speaker 1: But the fact that that you're you right here stands
Speaker 1: at the end of this insane chain of causation that
Speaker 1: is so unlikely, and if you thought about it, it it
Speaker 1: would blow your mind away and you would never commit
Speaker 1: think of committing suicide because you would realize that to
Speaker 1: be alive, it's this remarkable, incredible thing that you're conscious,
Speaker 1: that you're aware that is a very sublime thought. And
Speaker 1: I have others that I can talk about, you know, like,
Speaker 1: what is it that you know? I'm very fascinated by
Speaker 1: the idea of how animals think. What is the reality
Speaker 1: for a bat or for a bee, it's completely different
Speaker 1: from our reality. To sort of submerge yourself in what
Speaker 1: their intelligence and what their reality would be is kind
Speaker 1: of you can't intellectually understand it, but you can have
Speaker 1: a moment of Wow, that's that's amazing. It's beyond anything
Speaker 1: I can begin to put into words. And these things
Speaker 1: take you out of our banality. We're bathed in banality
Speaker 1: right now in the world. Right now, we're bathed in
Speaker 1: cheap entertainment, in all sorts of trivial gossip about celebrities.
Speaker 1: We're obsessed with Donald Trump. We're kind of lost in
Speaker 1: these kind of obsessive thoughts. And the sublime opens your
Speaker 1: mind up to something vaster, and it's very liberating and
Speaker 1: it's very therapeutic. And I want to eventually write a
Speaker 1: book that sort of bathes you in the sublime, but
Speaker 1: in this chapter I sort of show you some ways
Speaker 1: to kind of start to approach that threshold. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much that I can't wait for that book, and
Speaker 1: I have to end on that note. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: nothing I could possibly ask after that that would be
Speaker 1: any more transcendent or higher reach of our human nature.
Speaker 1: So thank you so much for all the work you've
Speaker 1: done through all your books and really I've learned so
Speaker 1: much from them in literally half of my existence. And
Speaker 1: thanks for being on the chat today. Well, thank you, Scott.
Speaker 1: I must say your interviews are one of the most
Speaker 1: enjoyable for me because I bring out my nerd. Yay,
Speaker 1: I don't have to repress it. No, no, none of
Speaker 1: my guests should ever have to feel like they have
Speaker 1: to repress their nerd. I can talk about coho. Do
Speaker 1: not feel like I'm being proposed story? Yeah, you sure can.
Speaker 1: Thanks Robert, Thanks Scott. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: react in some way to something you heard, I encourage
Speaker 1: you to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Also, please
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