Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. In this episode,
Speaker 1: I talked to international bestselling author Robert Green about Strategy, Seduction,
Speaker 1: and the Sublime. Robert impoors us to get comfortable with
Speaker 1: the dark side of human nature and society. He argues
Speaker 1: that by acknowledging the reality of human interactions, we can
Speaker 1: use certain strategies to help us effectively navigate the workplace,
Speaker 1: our relationships, and daily life. We also touch on the
Speaker 1: topics of empathy, imagination, charisma, power, and his upcoming book
Speaker 1: on Transcendence and the Sublime. Chatting with Robert is always
Speaker 1: such a delight as we have many mutual areas of interest.
Speaker 1: I have been a longtime admirer of his books and
Speaker 1: I remember reading them in college and thinking that he
Speaker 1: seems to just get it. I hope you enjoyed this
Speaker 1: high level discussion as much as I did. So, without
Speaker 1: further ado, I bring you Robert Green. Robert, it's so
Speaker 1: great to talk to you today on the Psychology Podcast. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for having me again on your show.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it. Yeah, you've been on three times now,
Speaker 1: one of the records and really yeah, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's your third appearance. Well, no, I'm honored. Yeah, a veteran,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's right. Well, first of all, I want
Speaker 1: to just start off by saying my sincerest condolences on
Speaker 1: the passing of Brutus. Oh my god. Well when I
Speaker 1: heard about that, it made me really sad. That was
Speaker 1: exactly two years ago, so yeah, I mean you never
Speaker 1: met him, but he was the most amazing cat, and
Speaker 1: he had been with me. He was nineteen years old
Speaker 1: when he passed away, so he had been my constant
Speaker 1: companion through the writing of five books. You know, seeing
Speaker 1: him day in and day out in the backyard and everything.
Speaker 1: It just kind of keeping me company. I don't know
Speaker 1: the attachment that you get to an animal. It is
Speaker 1: just hard to explain to people who don't understand end
Speaker 1: of it. But I had such a deep, deep attachment
Speaker 1: to him, so it was very painful, I know, I know,
Speaker 1: so missin serious condolences And how are you doing. How's
Speaker 1: your health? Well, my health is good. I mean I
Speaker 1: can't really complain. It's just since I had my stroke
Speaker 1: three years ago and I'm not where I thought I
Speaker 1: would be. I thought it'd be much further along. So
Speaker 1: I've had to deal with some of my own impatience
Speaker 1: and some of my own limitations because I still can't
Speaker 1: like take a walk anywhere. You know, I'm kind of
Speaker 1: limited in that, and it's very very difficult to deal
Speaker 1: with things that you can't really change your control. I
Speaker 1: do a lot of therapy and there's hope, but I'm
Speaker 1: just dying to be like having my old life again
Speaker 1: where I swam and heked and stuff. And actually, honest
Speaker 1: I don't know if I will get it back, or
Speaker 1: if I'll get enough back that I Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: the doctors have said, have a full recovery, so you know,
Speaker 1: that's what But it might take like four more years
Speaker 1: or something, so instead went instead, But you can fill
Speaker 1: out of that time writing really influential books that change
Speaker 1: the world. So that's good, that's right us. The one
Speaker 1: compensation it didn't affect my brain as far as I know,
Speaker 1: so I can keep writing books. That is one good thing,
Speaker 1: because some people have strokes and it mostly affects the
Speaker 1: brain and your cognitive abilities. So I'm very grateful that
Speaker 1: it affected the other side. So yeah, Well, congratulations on
Speaker 1: your new book, The Daily Laws. That's a bit of
Speaker 1: a what is it a schmorgispor like like your Greatest
Speaker 1: Hits in a way, well, trying to think of the
Speaker 1: best metaphor here and to describe it, How would you
Speaker 1: describe it? People? Some people say that it is kind
Speaker 1: of a choice of some of what I consider the
Speaker 1: most salient parts of the book. But it does have
Speaker 1: a logic and a structure unlike kind of a Greatest
Speaker 1: Hits album, you know, it has a linear plot that
Speaker 1: goes through it where I'm sort of instructing you on
Speaker 1: various phases of my philosophy, you know. And each month
Speaker 1: has a kind of a theme to it, and then
Speaker 1: there's some original material in it. Each month is introduced
Speaker 1: by an essay of dealing with my own life and
Speaker 1: how that inform my books. And then the last month
Speaker 1: there's some passages from my new book. So there is
Speaker 1: some original material in there. Yeah, and I can't wait
Speaker 1: to get to the topic of your new book. And
Speaker 1: that's so well aligned with so many things I'm obsessed
Speaker 1: with these days. But let's go in order in a way,
Speaker 1: not like there's a necessary an order, but let's cover
Speaker 1: some other topics first. And I want to start this
Speaker 1: very kind of general level of this thread that runs
Speaker 1: through all of your writings, which is this connection to reality,
Speaker 1: this idea. What is a radical realist which is a
Speaker 1: term that you use. Well, you know, there's a degree
Speaker 1: of connection to what's really going on in the world,
Speaker 1: and we're never going to completely connect to it. I
Speaker 1: mean in a kind of a Zen Buddhist way. That's
Speaker 1: sort of the goal of enlightenment, where you have a
Speaker 1: complete grasp of what the world actually is. Right, But
Speaker 1: for those of us who haven't reached that state of enlightenment,
Speaker 1: it's a matter of degree. And I'd like to think
Speaker 1: of it in three parts. The first part is about
Speaker 1: yourself knowing who you are, and we live with a
Speaker 1: lot of illusions and delusions about who we are. You know,
Speaker 1: we're not really connected to what really motivates our desires,
Speaker 1: our behavior. We kind of exist in this fog, and
Speaker 1: if you think about it, it's actually quite startling and
Speaker 1: frightening at the same time when you realize that so
Speaker 1: many of your thoughts and your emotions and your behavior
Speaker 1: you're not really conscious of, right, you don't really know
Speaker 1: where it comes from, keep down inside the roots of
Speaker 1: why you react certain ways. So much of our behavior
Speaker 1: is kind of on an automatic level, and so we
Speaker 1: have this sort of robotic double that does most of
Speaker 1: our actions during our life. Right, So a radical realist
Speaker 1: applies that light, that illumination on oneself, on one's early childhood,
Speaker 1: on one's attachments early on in life, on what one loves,
Speaker 1: on what one hates. You're a big follower of Maslow,
Speaker 1: and I always got very excited by an expression he had,
Speaker 1: which was called impulse voices. Impulse voices are what an
Speaker 1: infant of one year old or younger has that kind
Speaker 1: of directs him or her to certain objects and food
Speaker 1: that he or she likes that are so powerful that
Speaker 1: it can only be something perhaps genetic, that comes from deep,
Speaker 1: deep inside. So we do. As we get older, we
Speaker 1: lose connection to those impulse voices, to what really is
Speaker 1: who we are as opposed to the social persona that
Speaker 1: we assume. So a radical realist has an ability to
Speaker 1: look deep inside and become more aware of who one is.
Speaker 1: Of course, you can never really know. Maybe we can
Speaker 1: only know ten percent of who we are, but that
Speaker 1: ten percent is greater than most people have, and it's powerful.
Speaker 1: The other side is understanding people, which is extremely important
Speaker 1: because we're such a deep social animal and once again
Speaker 1: we're operating in this deep, deep fogs. We're constantly listening
Speaker 1: to this kind of tape rolling around in our heads.
Speaker 1: We're not really getting inside people. We don't really know
Speaker 1: what motivates them, what their world is, what their experiences.
Speaker 1: We project onto them our own emotions, our own fantasies, etc.
Speaker 1: So we don't really have a clue as to this
Speaker 1: extremely critical part of our lives, even our intimate partners,
Speaker 1: we don't truly understand. And it's getting worse and worse
Speaker 1: and worse. I think as people, as studies have shown
Speaker 1: that we're all becoming more narcissistic, more self absorbed. You know,
Speaker 1: I read novels from the nineteenth century like Jane Austen
Speaker 1: or I'm reading a lot now by Virginia Woolf, and
Speaker 1: I'm shocked at the level of understanding of people and
Speaker 1: people's psychology, like they're constantly having parties, interactions. Their life
Speaker 1: was so much more social than ours, was right, because
Speaker 1: they had no other form of entertainment. They had internet,
Speaker 1: no television, radio may have just been beginning. Their only
Speaker 1: form of entertainment was interacting with people, So they had
Speaker 1: a much deeper grasp and connection to the people around them,
Speaker 1: the kind of high level empathy that I think is
Speaker 1: getting degraded so that a radical realist will never truly understand.
Speaker 1: I can't understand what Scott Barry Kaufman is thinking right now,
Speaker 1: but I can get a little bit in tuned with
Speaker 1: your moods and your emotions and how you're feeling, and
Speaker 1: to that degree that I can get that kind of
Speaker 1: inside out perspective on you, you know, getting the theory
Speaker 1: of mind, get inside your mind and how it operates.
Speaker 1: You know, I have a greater connection to the reality
Speaker 1: of what makes you tick. And then finally, the radical
Speaker 1: realist is connected to the zeitgeist, to what's going on
Speaker 1: in the world, to an understanding of the historical social
Speaker 1: moment that we're going through to a degree that's possible.
Speaker 1: You know, we can never have perfect clarity there, but
Speaker 1: you add those three realms. If you're able to increase
Speaker 1: the sense of clarity you have about those those various aspects,
Speaker 1: that's sort of what makes to me a radical realist. Thanks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I really love that, and I completely agree with you
Speaker 1: about increasing problem a lot of what you describe. I
Speaker 1: know that you put the label empathy on it, and
Speaker 1: your idea of empathy is it's very clear that it's
Speaker 1: about perspective taking and getting really inside someone else's mind
Speaker 1: and being able to see what makes them tick. Like
Speaker 1: you say, I know we've discussed this before. Some other
Speaker 1: people in the psychological dature view empathy more is like
Speaker 1: mirror neuron mere emotional sharing of emotions and feelings. But
Speaker 1: it does sound like you have a bit of a
Speaker 1: different conceptuization of empathy. Is that right? No, I agree
Speaker 1: that it's mostly on the level of emotions. I consider
Speaker 1: it a kind of a visceral thing. Some people have
Speaker 1: criticized empathy as a more kind of abstract process where
Speaker 1: you're sort of trying to figure out mine read the
Speaker 1: other person and the limitations of that, right, But I'm
Speaker 1: trying to say that we have like a kind of
Speaker 1: a visceral connection to other people. I mean the books
Speaker 1: that I've read and people who speculate about our earliest ancestors.
Speaker 1: I think we were had almost a telepathic feel for
Speaker 1: what people were for their moods, their emotions thousands, hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of years ago, even before the invention of language,
Speaker 1: that we have this capacity that is kind of like
Speaker 1: an instrument that we don't really use very much because
Speaker 1: we don't practice with it. But that's my sense of
Speaker 1: empathy because sometimes I have this feeling that I really
Speaker 1: I'm almost can bete inside the skin of another person,
Speaker 1: right And I can't put it into words, something I
Speaker 1: talk about in my Sublime book. You can't really put
Speaker 1: it into words. You can't create a formula for it.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people in psychology are all into
Speaker 1: formulas and you know, kind of ways of describing things
Speaker 1: that are precise because you're so obsessed with science right
Speaker 1: now to a degree that I find kind of nausea
Speaker 1: and to be honest with you, whereas this kind of
Speaker 1: visceral sort of feeling that you have this connection that
Speaker 1: can't be quantified, I'm sorry to say, is to me
Speaker 1: the essence of our social nature. And you know that's
Speaker 1: sort of my concept of empathy. Yeah, I hear you.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think a useful distinction in my field
Speaker 1: is between affective empathy and cognitive empathy, because they do
Speaker 1: split apart. I mean, you do have some people of
Speaker 1: deficits and afflective empathy who have great cognitive empathy they
Speaker 1: use to manipulate people solely as their purpose, and of
Speaker 1: those that have the reverse, A lot of people with
Speaker 1: autism on the automate spectrum have the affect of empathy,
Speaker 1: but they have very difficult with cognitive empathy. So sometimes
Speaker 1: those distinctions that nauseate you are actually useful. Well, I
Speaker 1: don't find the distinctions nauseating. I just find trying to
Speaker 1: debunk I've read articles where people try to debunk the
Speaker 1: concept of empathy itself, saying that there's no evident like yeah,
Speaker 1: like paulblems the argument against empathy. Yeah, yeah, he argues
Speaker 1: for rational compassion. Yeah, the idea of congrational Actually, his
Speaker 1: episode on my podcast will be coming out right by yours.
Speaker 1: Oh well, a good contrast. Fun to have that exhibision. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think we live in times that are over intellectualized.
Speaker 1: It's sort of a lot of the theme of my
Speaker 1: new book, right, that we've become so abstract that we're
Speaker 1: losing a lot of what makes us deeply human. Right.
Speaker 1: So the kind of computer metaphor that the mind now
Speaker 1: people now associate with the mind, you know, as if
Speaker 1: it's this data processing instrument, as opposed to how you know,
Speaker 1: I would look at the mind a lot differently and
Speaker 1: that there are things about consciousness that will never be
Speaker 1: able to know, that will never be able to scientifically describe,
Speaker 1: you know, things that are kind of a realm that's
Speaker 1: I hate to say, it will always remain mysterious that
Speaker 1: we can't really figure out empirically and empathy. When you
Speaker 1: think of it only in this kind of intellectual, abstract realm,
Speaker 1: it can seem like something that has limitations. You don't
Speaker 1: understand it. But I know from my own experience, from
Speaker 1: a lot of things that I've read, and from what
Speaker 1: my connection other people and what I read a lot
Speaker 1: of history, etc. That there is something else to it
Speaker 1: that a lot of people by a hard time actually describing. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I hear you. Another major theme, you know, because I
Speaker 1: want to start I want to actually try to ask
Speaker 1: you some high level questions because I'm sure that you
Speaker 1: have been saying the same thing over and over and
Speaker 1: over again in an interview after an interview, after interviews. Yeah,
Speaker 1: hopefully I can we can have a little more of
Speaker 1: a you know, and I really respect this, so I
Speaker 1: want to have a little bit of a higher level discussion.
Speaker 1: So another area of commonality that I notice in your
Speaker 1: writing is especially when it comes to things like seduction
Speaker 1: and strategy, is actually using imagination as a tool for manipulation,
Speaker 1: you know, keeping people unpredictable, playing to their senses, looking fantastical,
Speaker 1: these sorts of things. So I wanted to discuss. Someone
Speaker 1: might think, well, that seems at odds with your idea
Speaker 1: of the reality principle. I don't see it as odds,
Speaker 1: but I'm saying I thought we could have discussion about
Speaker 1: how we can kind of integrate these two themes that
Speaker 1: do run through. On the one hand, it's really important
Speaker 1: for you to be connected to reality as cully as possible,
Speaker 1: But another hand, a lot of people have used imagination
Speaker 1: as a tool for strategy, as a tool for seduction, etc. Well,
Speaker 1: that is a high level question you're getting at here.
Speaker 1: That's where I wanted to do with you today. Okay,
Speaker 1: a person, there's psychology and their desire for fantasy, which
Speaker 1: we all have. We all want to be taken outside
Speaker 1: of our world, our narrow little world, and we want
Speaker 1: to be engaged with something larger than life. Mythic, however
Speaker 1: you want to describe it, is something that's deeply rooted
Speaker 1: in human psychology, right understanding that is part of being
Speaker 1: a radical realist, I understand that I myself have a
Speaker 1: tremendous need for things that aren't necessarily hardcore realism. I
Speaker 1: need like theater. I'm obsessed with theater. I love drama,
Speaker 1: like films. I like reading fiction. Okay, a work of fiction.
Speaker 1: To use this as a prototype is complete work of imagination. Right,
Speaker 1: to actually get through seven volumes of Proost, which is
Speaker 1: an exhausting thing, which I did years ago. You know
Speaker 1: your del You're absorbed into this insane microcosm that he
Speaker 1: actually this world that he creates of all these characters.
Speaker 1: But there is no greater psychologist than Marcel Proused, in
Speaker 1: my opinion, on an incredible level, or someone like a
Speaker 1: Virginia Wolf, and they're getting at the reality of people
Speaker 1: through the device of fiction. Okay. But the other thing
Speaker 1: is understanding human nature is to me part of that
Speaker 1: aspect of understanding yourself and other people. Right, And we
Speaker 1: all have the desire, I believe to be seduced in
Speaker 1: some way, and that can go back from to our
Speaker 1: early relationships with our parents, to our siblings or et cetera,
Speaker 1: whatever the roots of that might be. We want to
Speaker 1: feel deep down inside that there is a vulnerability to
Speaker 1: us and that somebody else almost kind of inhabits our
Speaker 1: being in a way. It goes back to I think
Speaker 1: something in a relationship with one's mother, et cetera. So
Speaker 1: I think we want to all of us have a
Speaker 1: drive to be taken out of our little interior prisons
Speaker 1: and be drawn out into the world of someone else.
Speaker 1: To falling in love with another person. It makes us
Speaker 1: vulnerable to a piece of fiction that takes us on
Speaker 1: a journey. It can be negatively. It makes us vulnerable
Speaker 1: to a demagogue politician, for instance, to just getting outside
Speaker 1: of ourselves in some way, to transcending our limits. To
Speaker 1: look at the title of your book there a little
Speaker 1: bit and so you know, some of that involves use
Speaker 1: of fantasy, et cetera. But the other side of it
Speaker 1: that interests me is that, you know, people like to
Speaker 1: contrast what I write in my books with being authentic,
Speaker 1: and they say, Robert, you're kind of advocating a kind
Speaker 1: of inauthenticity about people where it's a lot it's you're
Speaker 1: talking about deception and manipulation, etc. And I'm kind of
Speaker 1: come from a different angle or a different perspective. I'm
Speaker 1: very much influenced by the writer Irving Goffman. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you're familiar with his work, and Goffin's approach
Speaker 1: is that we humans are continually acting in our daily lives.
Speaker 1: We are never really completely truly authentic. It's part of
Speaker 1: being a social animal. So when we assume a certain role,
Speaker 1: a certain position in a job or whatever, we have
Speaker 1: to assume that role where we become an actor. And
Speaker 1: then when we go home and we're dealing with our
Speaker 1: spouse or our children, we wear a different mask, we
Speaker 1: act in a different way. But this idea of our
Speaker 1: being an actor and play acting is suffused through out
Speaker 1: our daily life. And if you look at children, children
Speaker 1: learn at a very early age how to be highly manipulative.
Speaker 1: They know how to manipulate their parents, to use their smiles,
Speaker 1: to use their tears to get to get what they want.
Speaker 1: And the psychologist that I admire a lot, Milton Erickson,
Speaker 1: he was very attuned to this kind of manipulative side
Speaker 1: that comes out in humans at a very very early age.
Speaker 1: And we are deeply, deeply uncomfortable with that side of
Speaker 1: our nature. We want to deny it to as much
Speaker 1: as we can. We want to act as if this
Speaker 1: is not part of our reality, right, And I think
Speaker 1: that this play acting, this acting, part of our nature
Speaker 1: is deeply ingrained, but we're not comfortable with it, so
Speaker 1: we want to assume that there's some other ideal for us.
Speaker 1: And all I'm trying to say is, let's be a
Speaker 1: little more comfort with human nature, with the fact that etiquette,
Speaker 1: which we all believe in, is a form of continual
Speaker 1: daily deception. It's a continual stream of white lives that
Speaker 1: we tell people when we complement them, when we say
Speaker 1: we love their screenplay, when we think they're looking great.
Speaker 1: You know, if we weren't using etiquette in this way,
Speaker 1: you know, we wouldn't be able to get along. And
Speaker 1: it is a form of deception. It's not high level manipulation,
Speaker 1: don't get me wrong at any point, but this aspect
Speaker 1: of our daily lives that make us be somewhat a
Speaker 1: little bit false in our interactions. We want to imagine
Speaker 1: that this is not part of our reality, that we're
Speaker 1: in fact these kind of gandhiesque figures that are you know,
Speaker 1: truly noble and have this ideal of being authentic. And
Speaker 1: I just want to say that let's be a little
Speaker 1: more comfortable with this darker side of human nature. I'm
Speaker 1: not really sure I'm answering your questions, Scott, because it
Speaker 1: was so long ago. Well, thank you, thank you. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm still I appreciate your point, and I just want to,
Speaker 1: for the sake of conversation, just keep pushing this so
Speaker 1: we get really, really deep into this. There's such a
Speaker 1: thing as surely lying, and there's such a thing as
Speaker 1: surely telling the truth about yourself. Yes, it seems like
Speaker 1: on the one hand you stole the merits of reality
Speaker 1: and truth telling and really seeing things for what they are.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, you give a lot of
Speaker 1: advice for how we need to deceive. You do lots
Speaker 1: of things to put up smoke and mirrors in order
Speaker 1: to get what we want. Don't fully tell people how
Speaker 1: great you are, don't. I mean, there's a million things
Speaker 1: you talk about. So there's a one hand in another
Speaker 1: hand here, And how can a deep integration of those
Speaker 1: two what does that look like? Well, I don't really
Speaker 1: know what you mean about me believing in truth telling.
Speaker 1: So a lot of the forty eight laws of power
Speaker 1: which people misinterpret, is I come more from the side
Speaker 1: of the victim of the innocent side in the equation,
Speaker 1: which was who I was when I entered the work
Speaker 1: world at the age of twenty two after graduating university,
Speaker 1: and suddenly I became exposed to all these high level
Speaker 1: political games, the kind of manipulative things that go on
Speaker 1: in the work world. It's not the complete picture, don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong, but there's definitely that aspect that were
Speaker 1: all kind of shocked by, you know, when we enter
Speaker 1: the work world after being somewhat naiven, innocent. So I
Speaker 1: wanted to expose the reader to the kinds of things
Speaker 1: that go on in this environment that are not discussed.
Speaker 1: They're not discussed in self help books. There's not things
Speaker 1: that your parents talk about. It's not something you learned
Speaker 1: in university. The political aspect of human nature where people's
Speaker 1: egos are involved. Right, So if you're learning to never
Speaker 1: outshine the master, that you don't want to get fired
Speaker 1: for trying too hard and making the person above you
Speaker 1: feel insecure about their position in life. That is the
Speaker 1: reality of human nature. That is the reality that people
Speaker 1: above you have egos, that they're insecure, and you have
Speaker 1: to acknowledge that. And that's the truth about that situation,
Speaker 1: and that relationship. I'm not saying that you may have
Speaker 1: a boss where it's fine not to outshine him or her.
Speaker 1: It's you know, I'm not saying it's always the case, right,
Speaker 1: But I know so many people, including myself, who have
Speaker 1: suffered deeply from being fired and not understanding why I
Speaker 1: was fired. And if you examine the roots of it,
Speaker 1: it was this very kind of dynamic of outshining the
Speaker 1: master that was at the root of it. So, you know,
Speaker 1: get others to do the work, but always take the credit,
Speaker 1: which is a pretty nasty manipulative law in the forty
Speaker 1: eight Laws of Power. I quite honestly, I have many
Speaker 1: different markers in that chapter that make it clear that
Speaker 1: I'm talking about you, the person who's going to be
Speaker 1: the victim of that, like I was the victim of that.
Speaker 1: And to be aware that other people are going to
Speaker 1: get you to do the work, are going to put
Speaker 1: their name on it, and to not get defensive or
Speaker 1: upset that it's just part of it, and how to
Speaker 1: handle those kinds of situations, right. So, and then I
Speaker 1: talk about how in our culture there are a lot
Speaker 1: of con artists in our midst in politics, in business.
Speaker 1: You know, one thing that's very rarely covered is how
Speaker 1: much deception and manipulation go on in a very micro,
Speaker 1: day to day level in the business world. In advertising,
Speaker 1: in marketing, is a constant game of creating smoke screens,
Speaker 1: of creating this image that you want other people to
Speaker 1: believe in. Right, So I want you to be aware
Speaker 1: of these dynamics and how they occur. And that's part
Speaker 1: of being a radical realism. I don't know how else
Speaker 1: to explain it. That is the reality that we have
Speaker 1: to deal with. Now, is there a role? Is there
Speaker 1: important to tell people the truth? Obviously, yes, particularly in
Speaker 1: your intimate relationships, which I'm not covering in my books
Speaker 1: on that level, right, I mean, I know, seduction different,
Speaker 1: so I am contradicting myself a little bit here, but
Speaker 1: you know, dealing with your spouse or dealing with your
Speaker 1: intimate partner or your children, yes, truth telling is extremely valuable, right,
Speaker 1: And even in the work world there's a role for it, Okay,
Speaker 1: And you know, I've discussed that a little bit in
Speaker 1: my books, but mostly a lot of the times we
Speaker 1: do have to wear a mask when we enter that world, right,
Speaker 1: and we can't be completely honest. We have to kind
Speaker 1: of be continually aware of people's egos, their insecurities, and
Speaker 1: how we have to mold our actions, our behavior, our
Speaker 1: words to who that person is. So once again, I'm
Speaker 1: not quite sure if I'm answering your question, but I'm
Speaker 1: trying to No, Well, you're this is good. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is good. I really like to hear further qualification
Speaker 1: from you. You know, there is there are two sides
Speaker 1: of the story. There's you can learn about the reality
Speaker 1: of the matter so that you don't get duped or
Speaker 1: taken in, and then you can also look at the
Speaker 1: reality of the matter and use that tactically as a
Speaker 1: way to get what you want out of life. Now,
Speaker 1: that's not always necessarily a bad thing, as you point out,
Speaker 1: to do that, to do the latter. Sometimes it is
Speaker 1: a bad thing, but it's not always a bad thing.
Speaker 1: But I think you flip back and forth between the two.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not always so clear to me when
Speaker 1: you're in one mode or the other. You know, of
Speaker 1: like be wary of this, and then sometimes it does
Speaker 1: come across as advice on what to do. So do
Speaker 1: you see what I'm saying? Yeah, But you know, Scott,
Speaker 1: I'm a believer in specificity. So it's very hard to
Speaker 1: argue this in the abstract. So you point to me
Speaker 1: a chapter of passage that you find is ambiguous, and
Speaker 1: I'll clarify for you. I'd be happy to, but to
Speaker 1: discuss this abstractly about all seven of my books, it's
Speaker 1: very difficult for me. I hope you can understand that
Speaker 1: fair enough. So let's go through some specific ones. So
Speaker 1: poeticize your presence, never be ordinary or limited in poetry
Speaker 1: as opposed to reality, anything as possible. Can you tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about that one? Well, that's in
Speaker 1: the art of seduction, right, So it's specific about the
Speaker 1: seduction process, okay, And you know in seduction, I think
Speaker 1: that there's an element of theater and drama. There is
Speaker 1: what excites us about it. It's like a mating ritual
Speaker 1: in a way, right, in which we go through these
Speaker 1: kind of prescribed forms of behavior, et cetera. And one
Speaker 1: of the things about us humans and about love and
Speaker 1: even our sexual desires is it's deeply embedded in our psychology. Right.
Speaker 1: It's not just this animal drive where we want sex,
Speaker 1: et cetera. There's a lot of psychology involved. And one
Speaker 1: of the things is in a seduction in that kind
Speaker 1: of area of our life, we want to be taken
Speaker 1: out of the banality of our day to day world.
Speaker 1: That is sort of the essence of seduction, where you
Speaker 1: create almost a kind of theater in daily life, right,
Speaker 1: and you're making the other person enter this realm of
Speaker 1: that quite frankly, a bit of illusion, like as on
Speaker 1: a stage, as in theater, or as in a film. Right.
Speaker 1: So you're giving people this sense that when they're around you,
Speaker 1: that there's something more than just what they see. There's
Speaker 1: something exciting, there's something larger than life. You're kind of
Speaker 1: poeticizing your presence. This could mean in the kind of
Speaker 1: objects that surround you, in the way that you dress,
Speaker 1: in the way that you talk, and you know, in
Speaker 1: a seduction setting, when you're trying to make that other
Speaker 1: person be interested in you or fall in love with you, right,
Speaker 1: you normally naturally kind of go through this process. You
Speaker 1: don't normally wear the clothes that you normally would wear.
Speaker 1: You don't, you know, wear your sloppy jeans or your
Speaker 1: T shirt, although that might be changing now, I don't know.
Speaker 1: You tend to dress a little differently to kind of
Speaker 1: impress the other person. You don't just take them to
Speaker 1: the local pizza hut, you know, to have your meal.
Speaker 1: You take them to a restaurant that you think. So
Speaker 1: you try and create this aspect of theater in your
Speaker 1: daily life. And we don't get enough of that in
Speaker 1: our world, because you know, it's sort of an aspect
Speaker 1: that used to be in our social interactions, where we
Speaker 1: used to being at a party or being with people,
Speaker 1: there was a kind of this heightened aspect of it,
Speaker 1: the sense of being drawn out of yourself, this kind
Speaker 1: of Durkheim's sense of being in a crowd and being
Speaker 1: involved and this kind of large, this sort of collective
Speaker 1: consciousness of and you know, our daily life used to
Speaker 1: involve a lot of these kind of theatrical moments, and
Speaker 1: they don't anymore. So I'm trying to signal to put
Speaker 1: a little bit of poetry into who you are, into
Speaker 1: how you act to the thing, into the gifts that
Speaker 1: you give, into the words that you say. You know,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's sort of what I'm talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm also thinking that one to a very
Speaker 1: interesting point you make about charisma and how the most
Speaker 1: charismatic individuals are not those who inhibit their emotions. I
Speaker 1: thought that was really interesting. You said, those who actually
Speaker 1: harness their emotions in a very directed, focused way. Can
Speaker 1: you elaborate a little more on that. Well, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of someone. I mean, I'm thinking that the metaphor for charisma,
Speaker 1: this is kind of this inner light. It's like this
Speaker 1: lamp that's inside it's illuminating or whatever metaphor you want,
Speaker 1: a lantern or whatever. And you can't literally see through
Speaker 1: a person and see that light, but it's inside that
Speaker 1: person and it animates them. It animates their eyes, it
Speaker 1: animates their mouth, their gestures, their words, their tone of voice,
Speaker 1: their body language right, and it becomes apparent you can
Speaker 1: feel it, and that comes from something deep inside that person.
Speaker 1: So the kind of the person that I used as
Speaker 1: an great example of it was Malcolm X. Now, Malcolm
Speaker 1: X obviously had a great deal of anger inside of
Speaker 1: himself for all that he had suffered, you know, and
Speaker 1: for all the injustice that he saw in his daily life.
Speaker 1: You know, he was a kind of a hustler in
Speaker 1: Boston who then got put into prison for drug dealing, etc.
Speaker 1: And he spent you know, several years in prison, and
Speaker 1: that's kind of when he turned his life around. But
Speaker 1: his form of charisma comes from this tremendous sense of
Speaker 1: injustice that he couldn't control. But he learned in public
Speaker 1: speaking that if you just ranted and got angry and
Speaker 1: just spewed all of your emotions out there, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be effective. What was effective for him, I don't know
Speaker 1: whether he came upon this naturally or whether it was conscious.
Speaker 1: I don't have knowledge of that. But his idea was
Speaker 1: that by channeling this emotion, by kind of giving it
Speaker 1: a form and giving it a degree of restraint, not
Speaker 1: very much, but just a little bit of restraint, it
Speaker 1: created this very powerful effect. The audience could sense, could
Speaker 1: sense the anger, but they knew that he was struggling
Speaker 1: to control it in some way, and it kind of
Speaker 1: lit up his face and it made everything about him deeply,
Speaker 1: deeply appealing. The original origin of charisma goes back to Moses.
Speaker 1: Moses goes up to the top of Mount Sinai, he
Speaker 1: sees God. God gives him the tame commandments, and when
Speaker 1: he comes down from the mountain people are looking at him.
Speaker 1: His face is like glowing. The presence of God gave
Speaker 1: him this glowing sense. It wasn't literally glowing. It wasn't
Speaker 1: literally a flame, but they could see it. That's the
Speaker 1: words that they use, And that's kind of the sense
Speaker 1: that a charismatic person has, so another to give a
Speaker 1: different side of it, like a Marilyn Monroe, whose charisma
Speaker 1: came from a great deal of hurt, because a lot
Speaker 1: of charismatics, in my belief, come from broken childhoods, come
Speaker 1: from a lot of deep pain somewhere deep in side,
Speaker 1: and they have a tremendous need to connect to people,
Speaker 1: to find the love they didn't get at home through
Speaker 1: their connection to other people. Marilyn Monroe was an orphan
Speaker 1: who you know, had a lot of abuse in her
Speaker 1: early childhood, and when she was in front of the camera,
Speaker 1: you could sense that she was literally kind of making
Speaker 1: love with the camera. She so deeply wanted your attention,
Speaker 1: your affection, your approval of her, that just animated everything
Speaker 1: about her and gave her this kind of sense of charisma.
Speaker 1: So that's sort of, you know how, my view of it.
Speaker 1: So you learn, you learned to channel that, you don't
Speaker 1: just she just just went like, you know, doing whatever
Speaker 1: in front of the camera. She knew in a professional,
Speaker 1: in a craft way, how to use that energy and
Speaker 1: kind of channel it. So it's like you can see
Speaker 1: a river that's really wide and flowing with a lot
Speaker 1: of power. You're able to kind of take that river
Speaker 1: and make it more ordered and restrained, so instead of
Speaker 1: being all over the place that kind of goes like this.
Speaker 1: It has a lot of power and energy and force,
Speaker 1: and by your ability to kind of restrain it to
Speaker 1: some degree. Yeah, No, I find your description of chrisma
Speaker 1: really powerful and it just got me thinking about this
Speaker 1: other one that seems related to me, and that's the
Speaker 1: one where you say, any man who tries to be
Speaker 1: good all the time is bound to come to ruin
Speaker 1: among the great number who are not good. Now this
Speaker 1: you say this multiple times throughout in different ways that
Speaker 1: you know, being trying to be nice. You have another
Speaker 1: one called like don't be so nice or something like that.
Speaker 1: Can you elaborate a little more and what you mean
Speaker 1: by that, Well, it's a quote from from Machiavelli directly,
Speaker 1: that particular thing about you know, if you're nice all
Speaker 1: the time, if you're too good all the time, you
Speaker 1: get in a lot of trouble, et cetera. The idea
Speaker 1: is that there are moments in life where you have
Speaker 1: to learn to let go of your kind of perpetual,
Speaker 1: pleasant demeanor and you have to learn how to be
Speaker 1: a little bit tough and a little bit resilient and
Speaker 1: be able to play some of that hardball game that
Speaker 1: goes on in life now. I had to chat recently
Speaker 1: with people. We were talking politics. We were talking about
Speaker 1: what's going on with the Democrats and the Republicans, and
Speaker 1: a lot of the frustration that a lot of us feel,
Speaker 1: who happen to be more on the side of the Democrats,
Speaker 1: with how little anything is happening, how slow things are.
Speaker 1: And I brought up that chapter that you mentioned, that
Speaker 1: passage you mentioned the daily laws about stop being so nice,
Speaker 1: And what I said was, you're dealing with an opponent
Speaker 1: the Republicans who have that kind of idea where they're
Speaker 1: going to obstruct no matter what right and they're going
Speaker 1: to bend the rules however they can to. Their obsession
Speaker 1: is with power. It's not with getting anything done, it's
Speaker 1: with maintaining their power. Right. Look at the tact that
Speaker 1: they have used in the last twelve years or so,
Speaker 1: going back to Obama, where they obstructed every single thing
Speaker 1: that he did with a very conscious purpose that Mitch
Speaker 1: McConnell said, this is what I'm going to do. And
Speaker 1: then look at the thing with happen with Merritt Garland
Speaker 1: where they wouldn't nominate him when you know, put him
Speaker 1: up for nomination for the Supreme Court. They're constantly bending
Speaker 1: the rules. They're playing a very machiavellian game. And the
Speaker 1: Democrats they're as if they're playing in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: You know, Obama said, when they go low, we go high,
Speaker 1: kind of thing. They believe in, let's follow the norms,
Speaker 1: let's not you know, let's let's be nice. Let's not
Speaker 1: play the game like they do. And look where they're at,
Speaker 1: the position they're in, you know, they're getting It's like
Speaker 1: a chess game where they're they're you know what, they're
Speaker 1: getting what's called forget the word in chess where you're pushed,
Speaker 1: where no matter where you move, you're in trouble, nothing
Speaker 1: will work. I think it's called strategic crush. Any move
Speaker 1: that you make is going to end up. Something bad
Speaker 1: will happen, rolling everything from voting rights on and on
Speaker 1: down the line. They're creating permanent minority power. My point
Speaker 1: is the Democrats need to learn how to not be
Speaker 1: so nice they need, how to place some of that
Speaker 1: game back. It's not that you give completely your morals away.
Speaker 1: It's not that you go completely down to their level.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to simple things like strain to
Speaker 1: get rid of the filibuster, when it comes down to
Speaker 1: maybe gerrymandering yourself in a state like New York to
Speaker 1: kind of neutralize what they're doing in the state of Texas.
Speaker 1: Do it for God's sake, you know. So to me,
Speaker 1: that's an example, a real life example where sometimes you
Speaker 1: have to let go of your ideals and you have
Speaker 1: to be willing to play and understand what the other
Speaker 1: side is doing. Yeah, and that's when that one seems
Speaker 1: to dovetail with your mixed harshness and kindness. Keep them
Speaker 1: in suspense. So how would the suspense part apply to
Speaker 1: the Democrats? Well, I don't think it really empty books
Speaker 1: more suspense. Okay, that doesn't have to I'm just wondering. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that was more of a seduction tactic
Speaker 1: than anything else. I mean, you know, I'm talking about
Speaker 1: how like in Napoleon Bonaparte, he as a leader and
Speaker 1: a motivator, he would learn to sometimes with the same lieutenant.
Speaker 1: He would criticize them harshly, they'd even go a little
Speaker 1: too far and blaming them for something, and then the
Speaker 1: next day or a week later, he'd be incredibly kind
Speaker 1: to them and say, you know, compliment them for something
Speaker 1: that they didn't give them a reward. And that mix
Speaker 1: of criticizing and then being very kind has a very
Speaker 1: powerful effect on human psychology. Kind of makes you confused,
Speaker 1: and it makes you want to please that person on
Speaker 1: a higher level, and it's kind of something that people
Speaker 1: use to kind of motivate the troops, if you will.
Speaker 1: I don't think it really applies. I'm not sure. I'd
Speaker 1: have to think about it more deeply to this scenario.
Speaker 1: I was just painting between the Democrats and Republicans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people are always expecting to me, you know, being my normal,
Speaker 1: agreeable self. That when the second that I'm not like
Speaker 1: it shocks people, you know, and then I feel a
Speaker 1: bit like an asshole, you know, just even if I'm
Speaker 1: just not being completely agreeable. So that's something I think
Speaker 1: a lot of agreeable people need to kind of deal
Speaker 1: with to realize some of your laws here, I have
Speaker 1: that kind of issue. I don't know, if you say
Speaker 1: it's a problem not where I want to please people
Speaker 1: a little too much and be agreeable, but what it's
Speaker 1: a matter of When it's as a public person who
Speaker 1: you are very friendly and very agreeable and very open
Speaker 1: on your podcast, you don't want to change that. That's
Speaker 1: who you are. It's going to look weird. But in actions,
Speaker 1: in behavior, where you learn to set boundaries with people
Speaker 1: who are doing things that you find either offensive or
Speaker 1: not productive or not working with the team, you learn
Speaker 1: to create boundaries. If there's someone on your team who's
Speaker 1: not performing the way you want, you have to sometimes
Speaker 1: be a little bit harsh with them. You have to,
Speaker 1: you know, tell them what you're really thinking and maybe
Speaker 1: even take action to make it clear to them that
Speaker 1: their job is in jeopardy. But your public persona, you
Speaker 1: shouldn't be mixing that up because that would be too
Speaker 1: confusing him. It's not who you are. But I know
Speaker 1: a lot of people. I'm consulting right now with a
Speaker 1: gentleman who runs a very large company, and his problem
Speaker 1: is he doesn't know how to be hard with people.
Speaker 1: He doesn't know how to be tough and sometimes necessary,
Speaker 1: and I have to help him. He has to channel
Speaker 1: me kind of telling him in a sort of Cirno
Speaker 1: di Berger act way. You know, how you have to
Speaker 1: behave with some people, how you have to set limits
Speaker 1: to them, how you have you can't be so nice
Speaker 1: and run a very large company. You know, you can't
Speaker 1: always be so nice. So I think there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people who do have that problem, and I
Speaker 1: myself in that group. Yeah, you know, we're just seeing
Speaker 1: reality of ourselves as clearly as possible there and being
Speaker 1: honest about it. So yeah, well, coming to terms with
Speaker 1: our dark side. This is a huge, huge theme of
Speaker 1: your work, and I think it's so important. So what
Speaker 1: is the primary wall of human nature? Well, the primary
Speaker 1: law of human nature is that we want to deny
Speaker 1: that we have human nature. So I discuss in the
Speaker 1: book sort of sixteen eighteen facets of human nature that
Speaker 1: can have a negative aspect to it, but that can
Speaker 1: be turned around and have a very positive aspect. So
Speaker 1: if you look at how we evolved hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of years ago, certain forms of behavior are ingrained in
Speaker 1: our nature as a primate. But some things emerged in
Speaker 1: our years spent as one hundred gatherers, et cetera, and
Speaker 1: they're not really applicable to the world that we live in.
Speaker 1: So there are aspects of our nature that can get
Speaker 1: us in trouble, that not very social, that don't really
Speaker 1: work very well. And you know, I talk about our irrationality.
Speaker 1: I talk about our narcissism, our self absorption. I talk
Speaker 1: about our propensity to envy, which is something that chimpanzees have.
Speaker 1: I talk about our grandiosity. Give us just a taste
Speaker 1: of success and we start becoming grandiose. I talk about
Speaker 1: our aggressive impulses, our passive aggressive impulses, our conformity, on
Speaker 1: and on and on, And what is it that you
Speaker 1: ask me? The primary law of human nature? The primary
Speaker 1: law of human nature is to deny that I have anything,
Speaker 1: as if I Robert Green could be the exception in
Speaker 1: that rule. Oh it's he that's narcissistic. Oh, she's the
Speaker 1: one that's aggressive or passive aggressive. Oh they're feeling envy.
Speaker 1: We never want to admit that we have these qualities,
Speaker 1: that we have aggressive impulses, that we can be passive aggressive,
Speaker 1: that we can be extremely self absorbed. And when I
Speaker 1: was writing the book, it was kind of a shock
Speaker 1: for me as I wrote the chapters, the ones I've
Speaker 1: just elucidated to you. Go, wow, Robert, you're actually more
Speaker 1: self absorbed than I thought, and I generally think of myself.
Speaker 1: You're actually quite narcissistic in some ways. You have these
Speaker 1: qualities that you're describing, right, And so we have this Robert,
Speaker 1: I know, I know you said, you said right, and
Speaker 1: that's right. I led myself over into a thing. So
Speaker 1: we're deeply invested in this kind of ideal image that
Speaker 1: we have of ourselves. Right. So it's always the and
Speaker 1: I'm trying to say, the key to being a human
Speaker 1: being is to be self aware and to be aware
Speaker 1: that you have these problems. Yes, there are other people
Speaker 1: who are more narcissistic than you are. Yes there are
Speaker 1: people who are more envious and grandiose, always, of course,
Speaker 1: but we all come from the same origins, the same
Speaker 1: fabric that created every human around the planet. We share,
Speaker 1: So it would be impossible, it'd be a contradiction to
Speaker 1: say somehow we're exempted from something so deeply ingrained in
Speaker 1: our nature, something that's wired into our brains. Envy is
Speaker 1: deeply deeply wired into how our brains operate by comparing
Speaker 1: bits of information, So naturally we compare ourselves to other
Speaker 1: people as a social animal. Right, and we all continually,
Speaker 1: in the course of a day, feel envy towards others.
Speaker 1: We're just not honest about it. So that's the primary
Speaker 1: law of human nature. Yeah, and relatedly, I thought this
Speaker 1: one was really interesting where you're talking about an importance
Speaker 1: of confronting your dark side. You said depression and anxiety
Speaker 1: come from not being your complete self, from always playing
Speaker 1: a role. It requires great energy to keep this dark
Speaker 1: side at bay, but at times unpleasant behavior leaks out
Speaker 1: as a way to release the intertention. Do you want
Speaker 1: to elaborate on that a little bit. Yeah. The idea
Speaker 1: is that you know, when you're a child. The metaphor
Speaker 1: I use is kind of like a round ball, right
Speaker 1: in three dimensions, And when you were a child, you
Speaker 1: were a complete person. That round ball was very clear.
Speaker 1: You had a sweet, angelic sigh, and you were very
Speaker 1: nice and lovable to your parents. But you also had
Speaker 1: a side where you could be very aggressive, where you
Speaker 1: could pull your sister's hair, or you could scream nasty thoughts.
Speaker 1: You didn't have as much self control as you gain
Speaker 1: later on in life. Right, you were a complete human being. Right,
Speaker 1: you expressed every aspect of who you were, like this
Speaker 1: round ball. And then what happens is you get older,
Speaker 1: people start telling you you can't behave like that, Robert.
Speaker 1: You have to be nicer. You can't say those kinds
Speaker 1: of things to people. You can't pull your sister's hair,
Speaker 1: you can't throw things at people. You have to be nicer.
Speaker 1: You have to be a comedy, you have to fit
Speaker 1: in with the group. And slowly those parts of ourself
Speaker 1: that are deeply, deeply embedded in our nature, some of
Speaker 1: which are naturally don't function on the social role, they
Speaker 1: get cut off, and so you become this kind of
Speaker 1: moon where there's only the bright side that people see.
Speaker 1: Then the dark side is kind of hidden, and it
Speaker 1: gets repressed and repressed and pushed down right, and you're
Speaker 1: in complete denial that you have these feelings, that you
Speaker 1: have these aggressive impulses, that you have these dark desires,
Speaker 1: And if you examine any of your dreams, you will
Speaker 1: see leaking out continually, these kind of dark desires that
Speaker 1: none of us want to really discuss. Right a point
Speaker 1: can be reached later on in life, and we see
Speaker 1: that in public characters, we can see it in ourselves
Speaker 1: or that dark side that's been repressed. It's almost like
Speaker 1: the child, the dark child in you that you don't
Speaker 1: want to admit exists, and sometimes later in life that
Speaker 1: comes screaming out of you and you're not even aware
Speaker 1: of it, and it causes behavior that you might even see, Well,
Speaker 1: that wasn't really me. I don't know where that came from.
Speaker 1: Where suddenly you say something a little bit mean, or
Speaker 1: you take an action, you hurt your partner by having
Speaker 1: an affair with someone, or you do something that you
Speaker 1: don't know where it came from. It's almost like you
Speaker 1: feel afterwards as says, somebody else inhabited your body. Right.
Speaker 1: I mean that's an extreme example, but it comes out
Speaker 1: in day to day affairs on a more banal level,
Speaker 1: right into sort of dark emotions that you sense in you.
Speaker 1: It leaks out and it causes sometimes very weird behavior.
Speaker 1: And so what I'm telling you is not to become
Speaker 1: that child, because you can't be completely always expressing how
Speaker 1: you feel. Right, That's part of being a social human
Speaker 1: is that we learn to kind of mold our behavior,
Speaker 1: but to recognize that unwanted child in you, that person
Speaker 1: that you've repressed, to say hello to it, to kind
Speaker 1: of welcome it, to even kind of embrace it in
Speaker 1: a way and say, it's a part of me. Now,
Speaker 1: how can I use that part of me instead of
Speaker 1: denying it? Can I channel it into something productive? Can
Speaker 1: I use my anger and aggressive impulses towards writing books,
Speaker 1: which is something I use, or to creating some kind
Speaker 1: of just cause you know, I feel angry and upset
Speaker 1: and I'm yelling at people. Maybe I can channel that
Speaker 1: into something productive. And I give plenty of examples in
Speaker 1: that chapter of how you can do that and very
Speaker 1: famous successful people who manage to channel that dark energy
Speaker 1: their competitive instincts or whatever it is. But the first
Speaker 1: step is to acknowledge that kind of ugly child that
Speaker 1: you don't want to see in yourself, not ugly but unwanted,
Speaker 1: and to accept it and to find a way to
Speaker 1: maybe use it in a productive way. That energy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well I kind of agree with that more. And I
Speaker 1: really love this phrase you said mitt Freuda, you know,
Speaker 1: as a contrast to shot in the Freuda can you
Speaker 1: I've never heard that before, and that's really cool, So
Speaker 1: tell tell our listen. This comes from Fredrich Nietzsche kind
Speaker 1: of coined the expression. So sean freude. Freude means joy
Speaker 1: or pleasure in German, and shaan means kind of pain,
Speaker 1: So it literally means finding joy in other people's pain,
Speaker 1: not in your own pain, but in other people's pain.
Speaker 1: And that's sort of what schadenfreude is. To some degree.
Speaker 1: You hear news of your friend who got fired or
Speaker 1: something bad happened to them, and deep down inside you
Speaker 1: feel a little bit of gloating, you know, like, ha haha, right,
Speaker 1: they're human, after all, Maybe I'm not so bad, maybe
Speaker 1: they're not so great. That's sean freude. And Nietzsche found
Speaker 1: that kind of aspect of human nature deeply petty and
Speaker 1: deeply kind of base, and he had this ideal of
Speaker 1: something more kind of noble, and the nobility part of
Speaker 1: it would be mitfreude and mitt means in German with
Speaker 1: so it means with the joy, And how he defined
Speaker 1: it is when other people have news that is good,
Speaker 1: instead of feeling envious or upset, you feel joy with them.
Speaker 1: You experience their good news, their good fortune with joy.
Speaker 1: The flip side would be I don't know what expression
Speaker 1: I could come up with in German, but if I
Speaker 1: thought about it, I could where if something bad happens
Speaker 1: to someone, you don't gloat. You feel their pain. You know,
Speaker 1: I have to figure out what that word would be midshot,
Speaker 1: and maybe you feel their pain with them. Don't gloat, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: you feel their pain with them, right. But he wanted
Speaker 1: this kind of sense where empathy. If somebody has something
Speaker 1: great happen to them, you're normal and it's all human.
Speaker 1: It's I go through it myself is to feel why
Speaker 1: did it happen to them? Why couldn't it have been me?
Speaker 1: Maybe they don't deserve that good thing that happened to them,
Speaker 1: Maybe they're not as great as people think they are.
Speaker 1: To go the opposite direction and to literally force yourself
Speaker 1: and to make get a habit of that's wonderful, and
Speaker 1: not to just to not just to fool yourself, but
Speaker 1: to literally feel inside of yourself joy at their good fortune,
Speaker 1: to experience it with them, right, And in the process
Speaker 1: of doing that, they will sense it and they will
Speaker 1: feel incredibly grateful because it's not it's rare to have
Speaker 1: someone truly participate in your your good in your good fortune,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But also it'll make you feel a lot
Speaker 1: better about yourself. You know, you'll feel because those kind
Speaker 1: of petty instincts that we have, which are natural, we
Speaker 1: don't like indulging in them. They make they don't make
Speaker 1: us feel very good. But you can practice these other habits,
Speaker 1: which I think Midfreud is part of Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just love like seeing the potential in
Speaker 1: someone they don't see themselves, you know. I think that
Speaker 1: that might be related to that emotion, you know, especially
Speaker 1: if it's like a student, a student or something and
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know what, you really could do this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's an amazing thing. And I'm sure you know all
Speaker 1: about that more than I do. But like the Pygmalion
Speaker 1: effect that they've studied in students where great studies done
Speaker 1: back in the sixties and seventies, where a teacher if
Speaker 1: they simply felt, without ever expressing it, that their students
Speaker 1: were good students deep down and they were all deserving
Speaker 1: to go to college or university, the grades of those
Speaker 1: students would suddenly rise. Right. It was never spoken, but
Speaker 1: the feeling that the teacher felt that they were worthwhile
Speaker 1: something good would happen to them. The students would feel
Speaker 1: that from the teacher in a nonverbal way. It would
Speaker 1: come you know, it would pass through them and they
Speaker 1: would try harder, and they would feel better about themselves.
Speaker 1: There's a whole realm of human psychology that involves these
Speaker 1: kind of nonverbal interactions where how you feel about another
Speaker 1: person it translates to them in a way that they're
Speaker 1: not even aware of and alters their behavior, which in
Speaker 1: turn alters your behavior. I wish somebody would go into
Speaker 1: that in a deep level and kind of expose it,
Speaker 1: because to me, it's fascinating. To me, it's the new
Speaker 1: frontier of human psychology, you know, and I, you know,
Speaker 1: keeping notes about these things in different phenomenon that I
Speaker 1: think could go into it. But for instance, one psychologist
Speaker 1: had this example where a woman was dealing with a
Speaker 1: very kind of angry, abusive boss and she didn't know
Speaker 1: what the hell anything she did. He just got angry
Speaker 1: at She went to a therapist and the therapist said,
Speaker 1: next time, just go in there and think good thoughts
Speaker 1: about him. Maybe he's like this because of something going
Speaker 1: on in his life that he can't control. Have a
Speaker 1: little bit of empathy and go in there and go
Speaker 1: into in the interaction and go I don't feel resentful
Speaker 1: or angry. I sympathize. I feel a little bit sorry
Speaker 1: for you, and I actually like you, but don't say it,
Speaker 1: just feel it. She went in there and suddenly he
Speaker 1: was so put you didn't know how to react because
Speaker 1: it was so different just her body language, and he
Speaker 1: kind of melted and kind of changed his behavior. So
Speaker 1: these are things that are similar to the Pygmalion effect,
Speaker 1: to the mid Freud. If you will, I'm doing it
Speaker 1: right now towards you. I want to see if it
Speaker 1: affects you at all. I'm very proud of you. I'm
Speaker 1: proud of you. Okay, good God good. So I really
Speaker 1: like the integration of the shadow. That's that's you know,
Speaker 1: we're you know, we're we're reaching the end of our
Speaker 1: interview today, and there's no better place than the very
Speaker 1: high level of integration. Right It takes makes so much
Speaker 1: work to do that. Oh no, we'll get there, we'll
Speaker 1: get there. But we're as we're, as we're approaching the mountain,
Speaker 1: extending the mountain. Integration at a high level seems to
Speaker 1: be up there. And you know, you talk about absorb
Speaker 1: yourself and your work, not your ego, and that requires
Speaker 1: a really high level of integration, you know, because the
Speaker 1: ego is constantly screaming at us, right, So, do you
Speaker 1: have some tips or ideas on how how we can
Speaker 1: work on that. Well, it's a feeling of whether you're
Speaker 1: turning inward or whether you're turning outward. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: there's going to be gradations of that. We're not always
Speaker 1: completely turning out or inward. But the degree to which
Speaker 1: you can get outside of yourself and make that inward
Speaker 1: pull towards your ego, towards your insecurities, towards your own
Speaker 1: continual recurring thoughts, and get outside of yourself and put
Speaker 1: yourself into your work fully and engage with it as
Speaker 1: if it's something outside of you, to the degree that
Speaker 1: you're able to get outside of yourself and engage completely
Speaker 1: with other people as a reality that has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with you. They have their own reality, their own experience,
Speaker 1: you know, as you're able to do that with people
Speaker 1: in all sorts of situations. To me, that's the highest
Speaker 1: form of therapy that you can have right where you're
Speaker 1: And so much of the dynamic that's taking over us
Speaker 1: in the twenty first century is that inward turning is
Speaker 1: getting deeper and deeper and stronger and stronger that pull, right,
Speaker 1: And I talk about in my new book, which we
Speaker 1: may get to or not. I talk about how in
Speaker 1: the ancient world, in the pagan world, if you will,
Speaker 1: the sense the greatest feeling that a person have was
Speaker 1: to be possessed by something outside of them. That was
Speaker 1: what was kind of ecstasy. That was what religion was,
Speaker 1: that was what the divine was. It was being possessed
Speaker 1: by some force beyond you, whether that was love and aphrodity,
Speaker 1: whether that was clear thinking and the theena, just to
Speaker 1: use the Greek examples, et cetera. So back in those
Speaker 1: in our earlier years, people were much more vulnerable. And
Speaker 1: are you familiar with the work The Secular Age by
Speaker 1: Charles Taylor. I'm actually not now. No. Oh, it's a
Speaker 1: fascinating book. It's really interesting. He kind of is trying
Speaker 1: to show the roots of where how are we evolved
Speaker 1: into a completely secular society? And his the word he
Speaker 1: uses his permeability. So in the past people were much
Speaker 1: more permeable to outside influences. It was also kind of
Speaker 1: a frightening thing as well, right, where you were much
Speaker 1: more open to what other people said, to their world,
Speaker 1: to the natural forces around you. And as we've evolved,
Speaker 1: we've become more and more closed. We want to control that,
Speaker 1: we want to retreat to our inner citadel. So you
Speaker 1: know what, Scott, I've kind of forgotten the original question.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's because that title anxious is staring me in
Speaker 1: the face. What was your original question? It's so probably
Speaker 1: and as somebody somebody who suffers from anxiety, and it's like,
Speaker 1: whoa anxious? I don't know if I want to read
Speaker 1: that book. It's making me anxious. Maybe that's part of
Speaker 1: the markets. It's right under our books. I really should
Speaker 1: remove that. I'm going to this one of the original questions.
Speaker 1: Did I ever have that? Okay? My original question was
Speaker 1: how Tenny tips for integrating the two, but integrating the
Speaker 1: dark side with our really healthy motivations for work, not
Speaker 1: our egoistic motivations, but our I say, the kind that
Speaker 1: we really really should have. Yeah. Well, you know, so
Speaker 1: if you're feeling like you have a lot of aggressive impulses,
Speaker 1: that you're a very ambitious person, you could channel that
Speaker 1: into hurting other people, into pushing them around, to getting
Speaker 1: a position of power in which you control them and
Speaker 1: you intimidate them, and you feed your own ego, and
Speaker 1: I'm saying, take that that energy, because the dark side
Speaker 1: contains more energy, I'm afraid than the light side, because
Speaker 1: it's so repressed, because it has this kind of primal
Speaker 1: animal aspect of it. It contains a lot of energy
Speaker 1: and a lot of creative energy. You know, all of
Speaker 1: some of our best artists that we appreciate know how
Speaker 1: to channel that dark side and know how to express
Speaker 1: it to some degree. You know, Like I was talking
Speaker 1: earlier about Malcolm X, his ability to express the dark
Speaker 1: side of how African Americans were feeling was a great
Speaker 1: part of his care charisma that he could express what
Speaker 1: other people were feeling but would never dare to say. Right,
Speaker 1: that's one way of channeling your dark side, right and
Speaker 1: instead of instead of like pushing people around, just kind
Speaker 1: of creating something in your work, in your business or
Speaker 1: whatever that's superior, you know, to put all that ambition
Speaker 1: and drive and energy into creating something very productive and
Speaker 1: beautiful and getting outside of yourself and channeling that energy
Speaker 1: instead of inward into something outward a project or other people.
Speaker 1: I think that's what I meant. Yeah, that makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense. So tell me about your new book,
Speaker 1: Their upcoming book, The Law of the Sublime is that
Speaker 1: still the working title of it. It is the working title,
Speaker 1: and it's I think there's a lot of similarity to
Speaker 1: your book, which very excited to get a copy of.
Speaker 1: But you know, what I'm trying to explain in The
Speaker 1: Sublime is I'm trying to resurrect a concept that was
Speaker 1: very popular in the late eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: the sublime has become a word that doesn't have much
Speaker 1: meaning anymore, or is used you know, that was a
Speaker 1: sublime meal that we had, or it's used by people
Speaker 1: in the art world in a very kind of cloistered
Speaker 1: way that doesn't have much relevance to our day to
Speaker 1: day life. And I'm trying to bring it back down
Speaker 1: to earth. And the kind of the metaphor that I
Speaker 1: use is that to be a human means to live
Speaker 1: inside of a kind of a circle, and that circle
Speaker 1: is these are the behaviors, these are the codes and
Speaker 1: conventions that being a sociable human being we have to
Speaker 1: abide by. And every culture has that limiting circle, so
Speaker 1: they had it in ancient Egypt. It isn't the same
Speaker 1: as what we have now. The codes have changed. What
Speaker 1: behavior is allowed has changed, but the circle remains the same, right,
Speaker 1: And it's like, it's not just how we're supposed to behave,
Speaker 1: but it's certain thoughts that we have. This is how
Speaker 1: our culture ingrains in us, certain ways of thinking, certain values,
Speaker 1: certain opinions. And what lies beyond that circle, just on
Speaker 1: the other side to me is what I define as
Speaker 1: the realm of the sublime, because by our nature we
Speaker 1: humans don't like limits. We want to explore things. We're
Speaker 1: fascinated by what is taboo or what is not is
Speaker 1: not where we're supposed to go. And so that realm
Speaker 1: of thoughts and feelings and emotions and experiences that go
Speaker 1: beyond that limited circle, they fascinate us because they represent
Speaker 1: a realm of thinking and acting that is freer, that
Speaker 1: isn't so limited, and it's something deep down inside. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a way of transcending that circle, you know,
Speaker 1: to use the word on your title there and so
Speaker 1: the ultimate. So the word sublime from the Latin means
Speaker 1: up to the threshold. Limit meaning is the Latin word
Speaker 1: for a threshold, up to the limit. Up to the threshold,
Speaker 1: it's like a door that you're coming up to its
Speaker 1: threshold and you're looking at the other side. And the
Speaker 1: ultimate form of looking on the other side, in which
Speaker 1: the word sublime was originally associated with, is death itself.
Speaker 1: Death is the ultimate limit, right, So to peer through
Speaker 1: that door and to experience death in some way while
Speaker 1: you're still alive is the ultimate sublime experience. So if
Speaker 1: you've ever read the literature on people who've had near
Speaker 1: death experiences, it totally transforms. They're never the same. I had,
Speaker 1: on a minor scale, my own near death experience three
Speaker 1: years ago when I came very close to dying and
Speaker 1: I was in a coma, you know. So I understand
Speaker 1: that now in a very real, visceral level, right. So
Speaker 1: I describing in the book like fifteen different facets of
Speaker 1: that sublime experience. I talk about the cosmos and understanding
Speaker 1: the insanity of how this universe even evolved and what
Speaker 1: science reveals to us, and how just knowing that should
Speaker 1: explode your everyday experience. I talk about evolution of life
Speaker 1: and how the fact that Scott Barry Kaufman and Robert
Speaker 1: Green are now communicating through this form as two human
Speaker 1: beings in twenty twenty one is the most outrageous, outlandish
Speaker 1: the odds against this happening are so astronomical, But how
Speaker 1: often do I think of that? And do we think
Speaker 1: of that? And I go through the link, the causal link,
Speaker 1: going back to the first moment that life sparked, which
Speaker 1: was against the odds and all the bottlenecks and evolution,
Speaker 1: which could have made things go completely differently so that
Speaker 1: human beings would have never evolved, such as the extinction
Speaker 1: of the dinosaurs by a freak meteor that hit our planet.
Speaker 1: Such as how humans nearly went extinct eighty thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: on and on and on, your parents' meeting, how unlikely
Speaker 1: that was. Multiply that by seventy thousand generations of other
Speaker 1: seventy thousand unlikely meetings. So you, being Scott Barry Kaufman,
Speaker 1: is almost too, is almost incomprehensible that you even exist
Speaker 1: as you are. Right. So that's a sublime thought to
Speaker 1: go into, just really the reality of our existing in
Speaker 1: this world as it is as we look at it today.
Speaker 1: And then I go into, as I said, pagan religions,
Speaker 1: I go into childhood and how to recreate childhood feelings
Speaker 1: because children are very susceptible to the sublime, how the
Speaker 1: human brain is a sublime instrument on around these different
Speaker 1: facets that are like little doors around that circle that
Speaker 1: open up into worlds that we don't really think about,
Speaker 1: but that are incredibly off inspiring and give us a
Speaker 1: taste of what Maslow called peak experiences. And the final
Speaker 1: thing I'll say about the book is, I'm trying not
Speaker 1: to make it just an academic discourse on the sublime
Speaker 1: point of it is, I want this to be a
Speaker 1: part of your daily reality, so the optimal world is experienced.
Speaker 1: I want this to be a part of your experience,
Speaker 1: not an intellectual way, but in an emotional way. And
Speaker 1: so a lot of the book is about almost exercises
Speaker 1: and ways you can can access this sublimity in your
Speaker 1: daily consciousness. And now I'll shut up, no cracking me out.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. I actually I can't. I can't wait to
Speaker 1: read it. I can't wait to read the book. I'll know,
Speaker 1: I know I'll learn a lot from it as you'll
Speaker 1: read and transcend Maslow. Towards the end of his life,
Speaker 1: he had a heart attack a couple of years before
Speaker 1: he eventually had his fatal heart attack, and he called
Speaker 1: it those last couple years of his life, the post
Speaker 1: mortem life. And he said, if everyone could have a
Speaker 1: post mortem life where they they have a near death,
Speaker 1: the kind of death kind of experience, and then continue
Speaker 1: to live, that would that then they could access higher
Speaker 1: levels of transcendence than they ever known imaginable. And another
Speaker 1: thing that I think, yeah, is that expressed in a book,
Speaker 1: in a particular book that I should read. It's in
Speaker 1: my book because it's transcribed from lectures he gave towards
Speaker 1: the end of his life. So this is unpublished, unpublished stuff.
Speaker 1: I went through all of his oh, his personal diaries,
Speaker 1: his personal diaries, his and and also another idea a
Speaker 1: lot of people are not aware of that. I think
Speaker 1: you'll really deeply resonate with his idea of he's the
Speaker 1: Plateau experience, he said, and he realized during this post
Speaker 1: mortem life that the peak experience is not where it's at.
Speaker 1: He said, it's the plateaux experience. It's like lounging in
Speaker 1: heaven but not getting so excited about it, seeing the
Speaker 1: miraculous in the every day. He said, you know what,
Speaker 1: that's better than the peak I've been talking about before. Well,
Speaker 1: he describes that in his book Peak Experiences. In that
Speaker 1: book itself where he contrasts the plateau with the peak experience,
Speaker 1: and he kind of, I think, if I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: he kind of compares it to like a meditative state
Speaker 1: that Zen Buddhists would have where they kind of are
Speaker 1: able to live that kind of peak experience is on
Speaker 1: the sort of level plane throughout their life and they
Speaker 1: experience it day by day to day. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've been writing about how the sublime is in our
Speaker 1: everyday life. You don't have to. The weird thing is Scott.
Speaker 1: When I originally decided to write the book, which was
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago, I had wanted to write this book.
Speaker 1: I had this image in my mind that I would
Speaker 1: be jetting all parts of the around the planet, having
Speaker 1: these sublime experiences. I would go to Tierra del Fuego
Speaker 1: and Antarctica. I would swim with dolphins in the Caribbean.
Speaker 1: I would have and then I had my you know,
Speaker 1: then finally I got dive sidetracked by other projects. And
Speaker 1: now after my own near death experience, I decided going
Speaker 1: to write the book on Sublime. But now because of
Speaker 1: my physical limitations, I can't fly anywhere. I can barely
Speaker 1: even take a walk outside my front door, so I
Speaker 1: can't do what I originally did, So I personally have
Speaker 1: to find the sublime in order to write about it
Speaker 1: in just looking out my window and just going, you know,
Speaker 1: in my car and seeing certain things, just interacting with
Speaker 1: my girlfriend or my cat. You know, I have to
Speaker 1: suck it out of every flower that comes in my way,
Speaker 1: get that nectar in the smallest thing, because it's the
Speaker 1: only avenue I have. And so in writing the book,
Speaker 1: I'm going to make it clear to the reader that
Speaker 1: you don't have to go climb out Everest literally to
Speaker 1: have a peak experience. It's there around you and everything
Speaker 1: that surrounds you. Love that, and you know, just to conclude,
Speaker 1: your writings really do instill this sense of wonder and
Speaker 1: peak experience in the reader. So I hope you writing
Speaker 1: the books can can help give you that experience as
Speaker 1: well from time to time. It does. Thank you so much,
Speaker 1: Robert for Oh good, no, no no, that's it, good good.
Speaker 1: Thanks Robert for being on the podcast today. It is
Speaker 1: so great to chat with you again, and good luck
Speaker 1: on your new book. Yeah, and please send me the
Speaker 1: link to send me the book and send me the
Speaker 1: link to Anxious, because I'm going to have to read
Speaker 1: that book. At least I'm going to put it on
Speaker 1: my book. I got it for my podcast, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to have everybody to have to look at that.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it. Okay, I'll send you
Speaker 1: both book books Anxious. No, thanks, Robert, It's been a pleasure. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you very much, Scott. I really enjoyed it. I
Speaker 1: enjoyed it too. Thanks for listening to this episode of
Speaker 1: The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some
Speaker 1: way to something you heard, I encourage you to join
Speaker 1: in the discussion at thusycology podcast dot com. We're on
Speaker 1: our YouTube page, The Psychology Podcast. We also put up
Speaker 1: some videos of some episodes on our YouTube page as well,
Speaker 1: so you'll want to check that out. Thanks for being
Speaker 1: such a great supporter of the show, and tune in
Speaker 1: next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.