Robert Greene’s Speech at Yale Posted on December 3, 2010 by Robert Greene Below is the transcript of a speech Robert did at Yale in October along with the Q&A that followed. For those of you who would prefer to listen to an mp3 of the speech, you can do that here. here. Host: Welcome everybody. So, it’s a pleasure to have all of you here, and a particular pleasure to welcome our honored guest, Robert Greene. He is, well, y ou are all here, so I think you probably know a lot about his books, his writings. I’ll state just a few words. He has trained in classical literature. And then had a very shifting career for some early period of his post-college life. And then settled in to write a series of extremely fascinating books that draw on the classical training and readings that he did. The books t hat the lives and writings of a number of the major figures. He’s written about power, about seduction, about war. With that background, of course, it is not surprising that he also made a wonderful connection with the hip-hop crowd. He became a guru of them for a while. He set up a collaboration with them. We were talking beforehand, it is clear t hat he enjoyed that collaboration. And it is not bad to be a guru, from what he said. But, it also achieved some of his other aims about who he was hoping to help empower. I thought what we would do is, after we give him a big applause for welcome, I will ask him to say a bit about himself and what he is working on, and then we will open it up for questions. But, why don’t we start with giving him a nice, warm welcome.
Robert: Is it better if I stand or if I sit? Or what is the protocol? Host: Whatever is comfortable.
Robert: Okay. Host: It is informal. You’re welcome to sit.
Robert: Well, I come from Los Angeles. I was actually born in Los Angeles. And I don’t mean to disparage California, or Los Angeles, particularly, or any of the people from there. But I will say that the IQ levels in a place like that are generally a little bit lower than what I find here. So, I’m actually a little bit intimidated by all of these very smart people here. So, I’m a little bit nervous. I hope you understand. Basically, I started writing back in 1996. I’ve been writing my whole life. But I met somebody, we were in Italy together at the same time, working on a project, and it was a really awful Machiavellian environment, in Italy, if you can imagine that. And all of these terrible political games were being played. And we were just miserable and depressed. This was actually 1995. He was a book packager and he asked me if I had any ideas for books. And all of this pain that I had been through in the work world with all of these political, conniving figures, it just came up out of me. It was a beautiful day in Venice, Italy, and I sort http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 1 of 36
of improvised this idea for a book, and he loved it. He basically paid me to live while I wrote “The 48 Laws of Power”. And that’s where it started. For 15 to 16 years, I’ve had this weird position in life t hat I don’t know how many other people have had where I have been able to devote all of my attention to studying what I consider to be the most powerful, charismatic, successful, Machiavellian characters in history and contemporary figures, like, 50. I may not be good at many things. I can’t build things with my hands or anything like that. But I have this one expertise why some people excel, why some people are superior in the political game or in their creativity or whatever it is. In figuring out what I wanted to talk to you about today, I was talking with Casper, who I want to thank for helping to organize this. There is sort of a philosophy that all of these figures that I’ve studied share. And I am often asked, or people say, “I want to become powerful. What’s the secret to it?” I don’t believe in that t hat kind of glib four sentence or one book answer about how to be powerful. But there is an attitude attit ude towards life, a way of looking at things, a way of thinking that all of these t hese people that I have been studying they all share this way of looking at the world. It is what I call radical realism. And the reason I call it radical is, realism has this idea of just understanding the world and it sort of has a cynical, sometimes an edge to it. I want the idea of really, deeply understanding what life is about, how people operate in this world. And not only being realistic and understanding it, but accepting in a very deep way that t his is what the world is like and actually loving it and embracing it and working with reality. All of these figures from 50 Cent and Napoleon Bonaparte to Cleopatra to John F. Kennedy, I believe they all share this kind of attitude. So, I am going to talk, hopefully not too long, because I really want to get to your questions, and I encourage you to barrage me with all kinds of difficult questions. I want to tal k about three aspects of this attitude. The first is, what I call, Machiavellian realism or the Machiavellian reality. The second is existential reality, what it really means to be a human being. The third is what I call aesthetic realism. My idea is that to the degree that you accept these realities in life, you are going to be successful and powerful. And to the degree that you deny them and you avoid them and you hate them and you are miserable m iserable about them and you try and run awa y, you are not going to have success in life. So, the first one, as I said, is what I call our Machiavellian reality. There is a concept that lately fascinates me that I have been using for my next book. It is a term called Machiavellian intelligence. And it is something that came about in the sixties and seventies, where various scientists, people studying the brain, they are trying to understand why is it that the human brain is so much larger than anything a nything else we have in nature? How did this happen? Why did our brains develop in this way so rapidly and become so much more complex than any other animal on the planet? And they basically went back to t o primates. Unless you believe in creationism, our ancestors. Basically, primates are the other animal t hat have this exceptionally large brain. A brain that http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 2 of 36
of improvised this idea for a book, and he loved it. He basically paid me to live while I wrote “The 48 Laws of Power”. And that’s where it started. For 15 to 16 years, I’ve had this weird position in life t hat I don’t know how many other people have had where I have been able to devote all of my attention to studying what I consider to be the most powerful, charismatic, successful, Machiavellian characters in history and contemporary figures, like, 50. I may not be good at many things. I can’t build things with my hands or anything like that. But I have this one expertise why some people excel, why some people are superior in the political game or in their creativity or whatever it is. In figuring out what I wanted to talk to you about today, I was talking with Casper, who I want to thank for helping to organize this. There is sort of a philosophy that all of these figures that I’ve studied share. And I am often asked, or people say, “I want to become powerful. What’s the secret to it?” I don’t believe in that t hat kind of glib four sentence or one book answer about how to be powerful. But there is an attitude attit ude towards life, a way of looking at things, a way of thinking that all of these t hese people that I have been studying they all share this way of looking at the world. It is what I call radical realism. And the reason I call it radical is, realism has this idea of just understanding the world and it sort of has a cynical, sometimes an edge to it. I want the idea of really, deeply understanding what life is about, how people operate in this world. And not only being realistic and understanding it, but accepting in a very deep way that t his is what the world is like and actually loving it and embracing it and working with reality. All of these figures from 50 Cent and Napoleon Bonaparte to Cleopatra to John F. Kennedy, I believe they all share this kind of attitude. So, I am going to talk, hopefully not too long, because I really want to get to your questions, and I encourage you to barrage me with all kinds of difficult questions. I want to tal k about three aspects of this attitude. The first is, what I call, Machiavellian realism or the Machiavellian reality. The second is existential reality, what it really means to be a human being. The third is what I call aesthetic realism. My idea is that to the degree that you accept these realities in life, you are going to be successful and powerful. And to the degree that you deny them and you avoid them and you hate them and you are miserable m iserable about them and you try and run awa y, you are not going to have success in life. So, the first one, as I said, is what I call our Machiavellian reality. There is a concept that lately fascinates me that I have been using for my next book. It is a term called Machiavellian intelligence. And it is something that came about in the sixties and seventies, where various scientists, people studying the brain, they are trying to understand why is it that the human brain is so much larger than anything a nything else we have in nature? How did this happen? Why did our brains develop in this way so rapidly and become so much more complex than any other animal on the planet? And they basically went back to t o primates. Unless you believe in creationism, our ancestors. Basically, primates are the other animal t hat have this exceptionally large brain. A brain that http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 2 of 36
seems to be in excess e xcess of their needs. To explain why our brains developed in this way, they looked at primates, and they came up with a really fascinating theory called Machiavellian intelligence. The gist of it is the following. What makes primates different from any other a nimal is that they live in very complex c omplex social environments. There are other animals, like wolves, etc., that live in packs, that have hierarchies, the alpha male, etc. But primates, and I’m talking about chimps, baboons, orangutans, that whole group, have a much deeper, a much more complex social organization. They have rituals of grooming, where they groom each other for hours upon hours during the day, forming all kinds of friendships and alliances. They remember these friendships and these alliances over the space of 10, 20 years. The other thing that primates have that is so bizarre and interesting is that they a re the only animal we know that practice deception and games of manipulation among each other. There is no other animal on the planet that we can say that about. So, they label primates as the Machiavellian creature, the Machiavellian animal. They have shown c olonies of monkeys, for instance, in Puerto Rico, where they do a lot of studies, incredible games of manipulation that are going on among these little, small communities. One of the discoveries that they have ha ve in looking at these primates is that tha t they possess a power that is known as the theory of mind. Now I don’t know if you are familiar with this concept. But, basically, it is the idea that only humans or primates have a concept where I can think about, perhaps, what is going on in your mind right now. Most animals can only judge another creature based on its outward behavior about what t hey are doing, about the threat that they, perhaps, represent. But a human and a primate has the capacity to actually, literally l iterally imagine, and I am pointing to you, because I am thinking about you right there. What is it exactly that is going on in your brain right now? What are you thinking? What are you thinking right now? Now they have discovered that primates actually possess this theory of m ind. It is related to something called mirror neurons. I am not going to get too technical with you here. I am a m not a neuroscientist myself. But, basically, mirror neurons is this fascinating phenomenon where if I pick up this telephone, my cell phone, they can look on a map of my brain and see that certain neurons are firing when I actually pick up this phone. If I watch him pick up the phone, the same neurons are firing. It is called mirror neurons. So, basically, this allows me to learn by imitation. I can experience what you a re doing with picking up that phone as if I, almost, myself, were feeling that. This allows humans and primates to understand and to put themselves in the mind of another person. This allows for all kinds of complicated social behavior. It allows for us to be empathetic creatures, to cooperate. But it also allows for very deep levels of deception, manipulation, con games, whatever you want to call it. Because the moment I know what you are thinking or I can imagine what your intentions are, I can strategize. I can play all kinds of games. I can try to distract you, deceive you, etc. So they have shown that monkeys, for instance, possess these mirror neurons. That chimpanzees possess this ability of theory of mind. And from all of this stems all of this incredible Machiavellian behavior. So the theory, to bring t his all back to it, of Machiavellian http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 3 of 36
intelligence is that the reason primate brains developed so rapidly is in dealing with thi s very complicated social environment. An animal normally is only dealing with its physical environment. But primates are dealing with their social environment. And it is in dealing with the social problems and dealing with fellow chimpanzees and what they are thinking t hat the brain had to develop very rapidly in a very small period of time. Primates started evolving, modern primates as we know them, 40 million years ago. Some six million years ago, we humans diverged from that. And we have the first, what are known as homo erectus. And our earliest ancestors have this inheritance in them. This Machiavellian intelligence. We formed larger and larger groupings. We were t he first animal that actually hunted big game. And in creating, being able to hunt something like that, involved all kinds of complicated organization. So if you map out very rapidly, and I’m skipping over millions of years of history, and a historian would be very offended with how I a m doing this, but you would see an incredible increase in this social complexity over millions of years leading up to a modern era where a person who is raised as a human being in our environment is not simply dealing with a group of 20 people and having to figure out how to navigate in that world. But you are talking about people, us, who have to deal with thousands of thousands of people living in communities, in our workplace, in politics, in government, in business. All of the deep levels of manipulation, deception, cooperation, that whole element that goes into what is known as Machiavellian intelligence. So, through this concept, the idea is that we humans, the reason why we have evolved so rapidly, why we are so clever, why we are so smart is that we are inherently social creatures. That you can’t divorce the games that we have to play, what we have to learn in how to get along with other people, you can’t divorce that from our other forms of intelligence. This is very much who we are. We are, by our nature, the Machiavellian animal. It is 40 million years of evolution starting from primates back then to who we are now. There is no way to deny that. There is no way to, in the course of 20 years or 80 years, to evolve beyond it. It is who we are. So, this is my definition of that first basic reality, what I call our social reality, or the Machiavellian reality. Now, there is nobody out there who really talks about this. There are not many books written about it. There is nobody here at Yale teaching a class on how to be Machiavellian in the world or how to handle that kind of environment, at least as far as I know. When you enter the real world, you are suddenly blindsided by this whole realm that e xists. It is like our dirty little secret. People will talk about their sex lives. You’ll get Dr. Ruth here, we’ll go through all of that. But nobody talks about all of these power games that are constantly going on in the world. So, I just wanted to interject into this idea my own personal story. When I got out of college and I suddenly was confronted with this real world. I had graduated, as he mentioned, with a classical background. I was immersed in studying philosophy and literature and languages. And so when I started working, essentially in magazines, I worked at Esquire magazine and a few others. I had no idea of how things operated in the real world, and I was very much shocked by all of the egos and the http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 4 of 36
insecurities and the game playing and the political stuff. It really kind of disturbed me a nd it upset me. I can remember when I was about 26 or 27 years old one particular job that was kind of the turning point in my life. I am not going to tell you which job this was. I don’t want you Googling it and figuring out who I’m talking about. But, basically, the j ob was that I had to find stories that would then be put into either film or a magazine, whatever. But I was basically judged on how many good stories I found. So in this job, I thought, I am a very competitive person, and I was doing better than anybody else there. I was finding more stories that ended up getting produced, because I felt that’s the point. You are trying to produce. You are trying to get work done. Isn’t that the most important thing? Isn’t that why we are all here? Suddenly I found that my superior, this woman, who’s name I won’t mention, made it very clear that she wasn’t happy with me. That something was wrong. I was doing something wrong and I couldn’t figure out what it was. So going on what I was mentioning, that theory of mind, this power that we have, I sort of put myself in her shoes. And I’m thinking, what i s it that I’m doing that is displeasing her? I am clearly producing. And I figured out, well, maybe it is because I’m not involving her in what I’m doing, in my ideas. I need to run them by her. I need to make and involve her more so she feels like she is a part of the research that I am doing. So I would go into her office and I would tell her where my ideas were coming. I was trying to engage with her, figuring that was the problem. Well, that didn’t seem to work. She was still clearly unhappy with me. Maybe didn’t like me. So, I thought, going further, well, maybe I’m not being friendly enough with her. Maybe I need to be nice to her. Maybe I need to go in and not talk about work, but just talk, be nice and talk like a human being. Okay. So that was strategy number two. I started doing that. Still didn’t have any effect. She still seemed really cold and kind of mean. I figured, all right. She just hates me. That’s just life. Not everybody can love you. That’s just it. I mean, what the hell? I’ll just do my job. Then one day we are having a meeting in which we are discussing our ideas, and she suddenly interrupts. She says, “‘Robert. You have an attitude problem.” “What?” “You’re not listening to people here.” “I’m listening.” But, I mean, I produce. I do my work. You are going to judge me about how wide my eyes are open and how I’m listening to people? She goes, “No. You have a problem here.” “I’m sorry. I don’t think I do.” Anyway, over the course of the next few weeks she just started kind of torturing me about this idea that I had an attitude. And, of course, naturally, I developed an attitude. I started resenting her. And a couple of weeks l ater, I quit, because I just hated it. I probably quit a week before they were going to fire me anyway. And I went home, and over the course of several weeks, I thought really deeply about it. What happened here? What did I do wrong? I mean, she just didn’t like me? I think I’m a likable person. I figured, I came to this conclusion. I had violated a law of power 12 years before I ever wrote the book. Law number one: Never outshine the master. I had gone into this environment thinking that what mattered was doing a great job and showing how talented I was. But, in doing that, I had made this woman, my superior, insecure that maybe I was after http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 5 of 36
her job or that maybe I was better than she was. And I would make her look bad because the great ideas were coming from me and not from her. I had violated law number one. And when you violate law number one, you are going to suffer for it, because you are touching on a person’s ego and their insecurities. That is the worst thing you can do, and that is what had happened. So in reflecting over this, it was kind of a turning point in my life. And I said, “I’m never going to let this happen again. I’m never going to get emotional.” Because that it what happened. I basically reacted emotionally to her torturing me and developed an attitude. I’m never going to let that happen again. I don’t care. I’m a writer. I don’t care about these jobs that I get. I am just going to become a master observer of the game of power. I am going to watch these people as if they were mice in a laboratory, with some distance. I developed a motto. A motto that I still use to this day, and that motto is, “It’s all material.” Everything that happens is material. Material for a book. Material for a novel, for a screenplay. I want to be the master observer of this world. This suddenly allowed me, now, to not only observe the power games going on in the many different kinds of jobs that I’ve had. And I can tell you, I’ve had jobs from working in journalism. I worked in a detective agency. I worked for a music producer. I worked for film. Everything possible. In having this distance and looking at the world like this, suddenly I had power. I wasn’t emotionally involved. I had some distance, and I could deal with things. From that, I developed “The 48 Laws of Power,” when I was finally given the opportunity to write the book. What I decided in “The 48 Laws,” and it’s a very much a part of me, is that this is the reality that we must all deal with. That we are social creatures. That we live in environments where there are all kinds of complicated networks. We are, in a way, defined by how we handle these environments, this reality. There are three types of people in this world in dealing with this social reality. There are, what I call, the deniers, the people who deny this reality exi sts. They almost want to pretend that we are descended from angels and not from primates. That what I am talking about here is cynical. It doesn’t really exist. It doesn’t happen. Among these deniers, you will find two t ypes. You will find people who are genuinely disturbed by the politicking aspect of human nature. They don’t want any kind of job in which they have to do that. You will find that they are slowly marginalized. They can be happy that way. They are never going to assume a position of great responsibility because it involves all of this. The other branch of the deniers are the people that are the passive-aggressors. I would classify this woman who had tortured me as a kind of a classic passive-aggressor. People who consciously don’t want to admit that there is any kind of manipulation involved, but unconsciously are playing all kinds of games. In my books, I often describe the many different kinds, the trickiest kind of person to deal with, the passive-aggressors. The second type of person besides the deniers are those who love this Machiavellian part of our nature and revel in it and are master manipulators, and con artists, and connivers and are http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 6 of 36
very aggressive. They have no problem handling this part. In fact, t hey love it. This type of person, which usually you will find one or two in an office or in an environment. They can get pretty far, but eventually they are tripped up in life because they are too Machiavellian. They don’t understand that there is the other side to that whole idea of theory of mind and the mirror neurons, which is empathy and cooperation and seducing people and getting them to work with you. They are too much involved with themselves and their own ego and they love manipulating until they go too far and they have a fall in life. There is a wall. They can never get past it. The third type is what I am calling the radical realist. It is what I am proposing that you adopt. And it goes as follows. This is our nature. This is how we evolved over millions of years. There is no point in denying it. It is who we are. And not only am I not going to deny it, I am going to accept that this is the human being as it has evolved over all of this time. In fact, I love it. It’s fine. There is nothing wrong with the fact that in this world people are playing political games. There is nothing wrong with the fact that there are seducers and con artists and it is going on all the time. It is just reality. It is just the world as it is. Stop fighting it. Just accept it. Within that accepting of it, it is not that you love it and want to go out in the world and play all of these nasty games. It is that you understand they exist. If, occasionally, you have to do them, fine. That’s okay within reason. If it is often other people are practicing them against you, which you will find a lot in your life, once you leave the confines of Yale, that’s okay. You understand the laws of power. You understand what people are up to, and they can’t necessarily hurt you. In accepting this reality and in dealing with it and studying human nature and this aspect of what I call Machiavellian intelligence, suddenly with that attitude, with that mentality, you have all kinds of power and freedom. Ever since I wrote my books, and they’ve been published, I do all kinds of consulting work with business leaders, political figures, artists, very powerful people. Most of them are absolutely brilliant. They are brilliant at the technical side of their business. They have figured out how to make a lot of money. They have figured out how to maybe win elections or how to create a kind of music, etc., and market it. But they inevitably come to me for advice because they have a blind spot. They don’t understand the human nature, the political games that are going on. They don’t understand why somebody who they groomed as a successor, who they brought off the streets and helped and gave money to and developed is suddenly turning against them and betraying them in a very overt manner. It is because they have spent their whole lives studying the technical side of their field, a nd they haven’t spent any time observing other people. They haven’t spent any time understanding human nature and why some people have egos and how that kind of ego will operate in an environment like an office. This is the part of the game that trips up most people. All I am trying to say is that in accepting it and in studying it and opening your eyes to this reality, you are going to suddenly find yourself 5hat there is a whole other realm of life that you are not observing, that you are http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 7 of 36
not paying attention to. If you pay attention to it, suddenly the whole power game, the whole dynamic will alter in your favor. The second reality I want to talk about is in context of my work with 50 Cent. A few years ago, I was contacted by 50, Curtis Jackson, out of the blue. He was a big fan of “The 48 Laws of Power.” I had known that there was something going on in the hip-hop world. Jay-Z had been quoting the book and Nas had quoted one of the songs and lyrics. So, something was happening. But 50 wanted to meet me. I had no idea, but I was excited by that. So we met. We kind of hit it off in a very weird way. You can’t imagine two people from two more different backgrounds in the world than he and I. But there was something about us that really clicked. We decided based on this to do a book together. I decided after meeting him and spending some time with him that this guy is really different. Now I live in Los Angeles. I’m not somebody who is generally star struck. I am not really interested in celebrities. They bore me. They don’t interest me. So it wasn’t a celebrity thing. There was something about him that w as really interesting. He is really different. He had a kind of calmness. He had charisma, power. He had power. So I wanted to figure out what made him different. Why is he like this? Maybe we could learn something from him and I would express that in the book. We would spend a long time talking about his life. And in talking about his life, I began to see a pattern. I don’t know how familiar you are with this. But at the age of about nine years old, he started hustling on the streets in south side Queens, dealing drugs. He did that because he realized that school was a complete dead end for somebody from his background. That only suckers went into school. The schools were really bad. They led to really bad jobs. The only people he could see in the hood that had power were the hustlers. So he was going to become a great hustler. Nine years old is kind of early to start hustling, but that’s what he did. So he was sitting there hustling on the streets. Soon he discovered that hustling wasn’t what he thought it was. It was actually quite boring. Day after day at 6:00 in the morning, you had to stand on the street corner. Nothing would happen. You just had to think about whatever. You had no books, nothing to read. No music. Nothing to listen to. Just waiting for people to buy your drugs. It was so boring, and it wasn’t glamorous at all. And on top of that, it was a trap. Hustlers don’t get out of their life. Most of them die, very few of them live past the age of 25, or they are in prison for most of their lives. To think that you are going to succeed in hustling is an illusion. There is a limit to it. So, I am going to get out. And about at the age of 15, which is also a bit precocious, he decided he was going to get out of hustling and he was going to become the only other thing he could think you could become, which was a rapper. So now he started learning how to rap, and he met Jam Master Jay and he apprenticed with him. He started getting reasonably successful. He had record labels interested in hi m. Then he realized that this was yet another kind of trap. The trap was that the record label owned you and they would develop artists very quickly and then get rid of them as soon as they were not so hot anymore. So you usually have a couple of years of power and success, and then it all faded and you were miserable and then you went back to drugs or dealing or whatever.
http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 8 of 36
It was almost worse than being a hustler, being a rapper. To have power in that world was extremely difficult. And he got fed up with it. He decided to leave it. He decided he was going to go back into hustling. He went back into hustling. This is when he was about 18, maybe 19, I don’t remember exactly. That is when he got shot. I’m sure you all know the story. From a beef that was going on, an old beef, somebody came up to him while he was sitting in the backseat of a car and shot nine times a few feet away from him. One of the bullets went right through his mouth. He miraculously survived that. It was coming out of that experience that he had his own turning point in life. He determined after that that he was not going to give up. He was not going to get depressed. He was not going to go back into hustling. He was going to launch his music career, but he was going to do it all on his own, all by himself. He was going to launch a mixed tape campaign on the streets of New York like no one had ever seen before. Because he didn’t have a record label, he was going to be able to be as nasty and violent and tell all kinds of stories, the reality of the streets, because there was nobody there who was going to censor him and say, “‘We can’t get that on the radio. We don’t want you to say this or that.” “Fuck all that. I’m going to say exactly what I want. And I’m going to put it out on these mixed tapes. I am going to create a hard sound that is going to kind of reflect the violence that I have known my whole life, and I am going to do everything myself. I am going to package it. I am going to do my own artwork. I am going to mix it myself. I am going to have a group of people around me, but I am not going to depend on any record labels.” He did that with such energy and such drive and such love for it that after two years of this campaign, Eminem got one of his mixed ta pes and thought this was the greatest thing he had ever heard. He signed 50 to his record label at Interscope. And then the rest is history. When I was looking at this, the pattern that I saw was that this was somebody that refused to be dependent on other people. He refused to go for the usual traps in life, in this case, hustling on the streets or being a rapper with a good label. He was supremely realistic. He saw through all the bullshit that the world put at you, and he saw this is where the power lies in life. I am going to go towards it. I was thinking, why would somebody like this be so realistic, so pragmatic and so sharp in his thinking, when a lot of his peers were not like that? A lot of his peers got totally seduced by the idea of becoming a great hustler. I determined it is because of his very unusual background. 50 never knew his father. To this day he doesn’t know who his father was. His mother was killed, murdered when he was eight years old. He lived with his grandparents, but basically he was alone. He had no peers. He had no adult supervision. He was basically thrown out onto the streets of Queens with nobody. Nothing. No protection. No parental support. But on the other hand, which we would almost assume is a very negative thing, on the other hand he had nobody telling him who he should be, what he should do, what defines him. He had to do everything himself. He had to decide who he was, who he wanted to be, without the usual crutches that most of us have. And I decided, I determined that in fact, this reality of his, this, what I call his existential reality, that he was basically alone in the world and had to http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 9 of 36
do things for himself and define who he wanted to be, that is actually the reality of each and every one of us. But we are not aware of it. We have the illusion that parents, that friends, that all of our support network is going to help us out in the end, that we can define ourselves through other people, by conforming to a group, by being like other people, by doing what other people tell us to do. But that is actually the illusion. That is actually the con game that goes on. The truth is, you are essentially alone in life. You were born alone and you are going to die alone. And although you have these networks of support and they are real and you do have parents, on the other hand, it is really up to you to define who you are and what you want in life. What 50 had, and what most really powerful people have in life is a sense that they are unique, that there is something very different about them. And to the extent that you bring out your uniqueness in life, that you become more of an individual, that you bring more of your individuality into play, the more power you are going to have. By refusing to be a hustler like everybody else, by refusing to be the typical rapper on a label, by going out there and saying, “I don’t care about all that. I am going to create the music that reflects my reality,” he stood out from everybody else, and he gained power. Now I talked about this once a few months ago. I was invited to Stanford University to give a little talk. And I was explaining this idea of uniqueness. Essentially saying that each and every human being that is ever born, there is never going to be another you, ever, in the history of the universe. It is an actually remarkable thought that your DNA will never be repeated. Ever in the past. Ever in the future. It is completely different. Y ou and your experiences in your life, there will never be anybody else like you, and that you are truly born as an individual, but that you are spending your life running away from it. I gave this talk, and it was a group of people that I don’t think were very receptive to this talk. Afterwards, this Italian woman came up to me and she said, “You know Robert, you are talking about an individual. It is so American. It is so American. This whole thing about the cowboys and Ronald Reagan and being an individual, that is not how we are in Europe. That is not how we are. For us, these things aren’t important. It is just so American.” And then she proceeded to tell me about her grandfather, who was a truck driver in Italy and how he loved his life as a truck driver and he was happy as that. And she said, “What’s wrong with that? Why can’t people just accept that that’s what their role in life is? Why do you have to be always striving for something else?” My answer to her, which I will abbreviate, was basically, first of all, how do you know that your grandfather was happy as a truck driver? Usually, people when they are in their twenties or a little bit younger have a dream about life, an ambition. They want something. Maybe he settled for being a truck driver and maybe he accepted it. But how do you know deep down inside that that was really what he wanted? You are assuming something. But even, let’s just pretend that he was happy being a truck driver. You are talking about the 1950s. You are living in a Rossellini neo-realistic movie from the 1950s, in which people had a union and there was communism and left wing acti vity. Being a truck driver meant something else that it doesn’t mean anymore.
http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 10 of 36
That truck driver in Italy in the year 2010 is dealing with a globalized environment, the withering away of the welfare state, and is facing all kinds of conflicts and problems. And they are not happy. They are not necessarily happy. The world as we are evolving right now is becoming completely different from the world of 50 or 60 years ago, where someone like my father would work for one company his whole life and felt protected by them. That is gone. You no longer can depend on anybody and any job or your boss protecting you. We are al l dealing with a world that is so much more insecure, where we have to learn these self-reliant skills, where putting out our individuality is the only way we are going to get power in this world. That you are dealing with an environment that is long gone. Whether that is good or bad, I don’t know. The reality that we are all facing is that we are left on our own and we have to develop these self-reliant skills and we have to not be afraid of expressing our individuality. In the book that I’m writing now, I can talk about it later, if you’d like, I’m interviewing eight of the most eminent people in the world today in different fields In neuroscience, in architecture, in music. All of them are inherently non-conformists. All of them are inherently bucking the trend and taking their field in a completely novel direction by bringing out more of that uniqueness that I was talking about. I have realized that I have come a little bit longer than I wanted to do on this subject. So I am not even going to get to my third reality, because I want to give you enough time to ask questions. But I wanted to give you an idea of this overall philosophy that brings all of my books together. Chapter one in “The 50th Law”, if you’ve read it, goes very deeply into the subject of realism, and I am going to be going deeper into it in my next book. But I have kind of hit my own wall here. So I want to open this now to your questions. Host: I think there will be plenty of questions. Let’s see some and we also have, since Casper sent out a page before, there is even some anonymous questions. We may get to them. Why don’t we take . . . Audience Member: All right. You sort of wound up talking about happiness. Would you say that you are happy?
Robert: Me? Me personally? Well, it is a weird thing of language to have a word like happiness. When your reality in the day is f or three minutes you are happy and then for three minutes you are anxious. Then you get a phone call. Happiness never lasts for three days, I’m happy. You know? But overall, I’m very lucky and very blessed with my lifestyle in being able to write these books. So if I had to say am I happier than I was? Yes, I’m much happier than I was before I had a success as a writer. Audience Member: So I have to ask. You know how to control men and do you know how to control women, God bless you. But . . .
Robert: I don’t know about the latter. Audience Member: But what makes the good life? http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 11 of 36
Robert: The good life? Audience Member: Is it power?
Robert: Yes, because with power comes a degree of freedom. Now, everybody is an individual. Some people like a position of dependence, and they feel happiest when there is somebody taking care of them. But, ultimately, I’m not happy with that because I know that that person will eventually withdraw their support. That unless this is someone who I am going to live with my whole life, that’s a different question, that eventually I am going to be left alone. And that dependency, that love or happiness that came from someone else, I can’t really 100 percent depend on it. I want to be able to have it depend on something that comes from within. Even to love somebody, even if you are going to live with them, is almost a skill that you have to develop, and it has to come from within. And the only thing that is of value is something that you develop yourself through your life experiences, through maybe some hard times where you learn how to seduce. You learn how to compromise. You learn how to be in a relationship and how to love. And then once you have that skill or whatever you want to call it, then nobody can take it away from you and you have power and you have freedom and a degree of happiness. I don’t know if I answered your question. Audience Member: But what would be the intrinsic goodness be? What is your intrinsic end of the power?
Robert: Well, there is no end. Because we die and what can I say? That is the absurd human condition that we have. You can accumulate millions, all the money in the world and all the beautiful women and then it’s gone at some point. So I don’t know what your question would be. Audience Member: Those people that opt out of your system, can they not keep happiness because they don’t have that liberty.
Robert: Well, I think that it is hard to gauge, and you can’t put a number on it. But I think people who are depressed are often depressed because they have no control over their lives. They have no control over their destiny. They feel helpless. They feel like at work they might lose their job any moment now. It’s a terrible feeling. They feel that their children aren’t listening to them. The man or woman that they want to have a relationship with isn’t listening to them. That sense of helplessness, to me, is the worst feeling in the world. Obviously there is a quote you’ve all heard of. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Malcolm X had a comeback to that line that I like a lot more. He said, absolute powerlessness corrupts even more than that. I’m not quoting it correctly. But the sense of being powerless is much worse, more debilitating on the human spirit, than the few people who are corrupted by having power. I still don’t know if I’ve answered your question. Host: Well I wonder whether part of your question is, what do you use the power for? Is power the end that you are searching for? Or are there things you actually care about trying to use, to make sense to bother to have power for?
Robert: Well, it’s interesting. http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 12 of 36
Host: I’m not sure if that’s your question, but that’s mine.
Robert: No, I didn’t, that’s my fault, I didn’t understand. Well, let’s say, I could talk a bout myself. The pleasure that comes for me is in writing a book and in writing the book well, in spending a lot of time getting it right and understanding the real world as i t is, the power game, the seduction game, whatever, and then creating a book that goes out in the real world. Half the game of life is doing something that you love and e ngaging with it deeply. It is your study. It is your field. It is whatever you produce. But t hat is only half of it. Because if you don’t understand the social part, then the book that I write, if I don’t know how to deal with people, and I don’t understand human nature, and I can’t market my book, and my editor hates me, and my agent doesn’t know how to work with me, I could love my book. But it won’t get out there. It won’t get published. It won’t have success. And I won’t be happy. The end in life is doing your work that you love and feeling satisfaction. But my experience is that a lot of people in this world are talented, and they don’t succeed because they don’t understand that there is this other side of life the power game, the Machiavellian game. They fail at it. They might be a great painter, a great musician, a great business idea. But we are never going to hear of them because they don’t understand this. To answer your question, the end is the satisfaction that you get with your work. For me. But that can only come with a larger understanding of the social component. Host: That is interesting because you succeeded in a way, with these goals, because you were powerless. At least in the vignette that you gave that was your own experience. You couldn’t accomplish what you wanted to.
Robert: Right. Host: That started getting you to think about how do you accomplish it?
Robert: That’s right. Host: That has now put you where you feel like you have accomplished it, which is right. For you, somehow that experience with this extreme powerlessness . . .
Robert: Right. Host: . . . that became the focus of your book.
Robert: Yeah. Host: And what you cared about getting.
Robert: And not to compare myself to 50, because I can’t. But it was the same thing with him. When he was shot, he was very depressed. Nearly died. He was sitting in bed. He can’t talk anymore. He can’t sing anymore. He can’t go back to the streets hustling, because they are going to kill him. The record label dropped him. He experienced extreme powerlessness. And out of that he analyzed what it was that he needed to do and then he re-emerged. So maybe there is something to what you are saying. http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 13 of 36
Audience Member: You said earlier that it’s only when we step out of Yale that we will see this other dark, the other side and beneath all this Machiavellian strategy. But we will be stepping out into society. Yale is a society. Now why is it different? Like you say, here is a place where there is no need for that. And you are blinded
Robert: At a university, let’s say your goal, more or less, is to graduate with a very high GPA, as high as possible and land a really great job, perhaps, out of this. To get those high grades, do you need to have Machiavellian skills? U sually not. Usually, I mean, professors can be, they are not immune to favoritism, to being emotional. So there is a degree of seduction and charm going on. You could charm your professor perhaps. But more or less, you are being graded on what you’ve accomplished. That’s how life should be, and I wish it were that way. I wish talent and getting answers right and doing a great essay, I wish that was the whole component. That would be a beautiful world if it could be like that. But it is not how it operates. All I am saying is, the element of ego and gamesmanship and politicking, how much does that enter into your goal of success at the university? I don’t think it is as much, nearly as much, as one experiences in the real world. In fact, the university, and I could be wrong here, but, in fact, it tends to breed the opposite idea, which i s why I think so many people suffer in life. It breeds the idea that just doing a good job and getting the good grades and succeeding is what will translate into power in the world. And actually, learning that that is not the case 100 percent can be quite traumatic. I don’t know. Audience Member: Is it not interesting that a Yale graduate could go out and be involved in positions of power, as you might call it.
Robert: How do you mean? Audience Member: After graduation, as I said, those people involve in society and they are doing well because of the character of the education that they got over here.
Robert: Well, the education is extremely valuable, and I don’t mean to devalue it at all. It is extremely valuable. The skills that you learn, t he analytical skills, the knowledge that you gain will be very valuable. But it is just part of it. And maybe your connections at Yale and the degree, it’s has a lot of weight to it. It can lead to a good job. But then you are on your own. Your interpersonal, political skills were not developed at Yale. There is a university called CalArts in California. I have friends who have gone there. Very interesting place. It was a school that was formed in the sixties, essentially, and basically it is an arts school. They discerned that the a rt world, there is no more political, c rabby, competitive, mean-spirited world than the art world. Because what makes a great work of art or film is very subjective. So there is a lot of politicking. And they created this university to literally train their students to be good at that. They created this thing where you had to learn how to deal with your professors and deal with the politicking and talk about your work in a way that would charm and seduce. And actually develop the kind of political skills that you are going to need when you later go into the art world. That is kind of a unique thing for a university, and a very interesting idea.
http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 14 of 36
Audience Member: You talk about the importance of expressing individuality. What if following your own ideals means that you have to separate yourself from t he crowd. Which one would you say is more important? Is it being unique or being able to mix?
Robert: Well, they don’t necessarily have to be mutually exclusive. And I didn’t get to go into my idea in as much depth as I would like to. I don’t mean that the moment you graduate Yale, you dye your hair green and you start doing something really wild because that is just who you are. That’s ridiculous. And it is often not really who you are. It is just because you are trying to rebel and be different. It is more subtle than that. For instance, we all have to serve an apprenticeship in life. So once you graduate Yale, you are going to go w ork for some high powered law firm or Wall Street or wherever you go. I don’t know. You are not going to have the luxury of suddenly not fitting in and being so weird and different. You are not going to last very long if you do that. You have to be able to take your time and fit into the culture that’s created and find your place in it. But the problem is that that ends up becoming the end in life. You end up becoming a kind of person that only knows how to fit in, hat only knows how to fit into that particular culture. And if you do that long enough, and now you are there and you are 30 years old and that is the only thing you have ever learned to do, you are afraid to step away from that. You are afraid to express something unique about yourself. You have to, when you are in your apprenticeship, in those first years working at that high powered firm, you have to be constantly waiting for that moment when you are going to do something different. You have to cultivate your own individuality, your own self-reliant skills. People who now, particularly in business, who are successful, are creating really unique kinds of business. There are new models being created every day. You are having to think about, that is the end game in life. I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to create my own business. You can do that from within a large corporation, that apprenticeship phase, while you are learning about the world and you are preparing for that moment when you are going to step out on your own. But all I am saying is if you end up becoming the kind of person that only knows how to fit into a corporate culture, that is going to be the end of it. That is as far as you are ever going to go. And if that is what you want, then that’s fine. But power lies in a slightly different direction. Host: So let me ask one of the written in questions, and then maybe we’ll have time for two more after that. People talk about the importance of charm and charisma. How can these traits be defined? And do you have to be born with them? And I assume implied in the latter question is what do I have to do to get it? How do I learn to be charming and charismatic? Or can I?
Robert: The answer to your question is you have to read “The Art of Seduction” because I explain and describe nine types of seducers in the world. One of them is the charmer, and one of them is the charismatic. They are different people. They are different types. Usually charmers are not charismatic. Usually charismatics are not necessarily charmers. They are almost not the same. Charismatics are people who have a tremendous need to get love from the world. They don’t want love from one person. They want it from an audience. They often come from http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 15 of 36
backgrounds that are a little bad. They didn’t have happy childhoods. So, to sublimate this need for affection and love, they turn to a large group. They become charismatic on a political, on a global level. They become a Mahatma Gandhi, a John F. Kennedy. All charismatics are burning with a mission, with a n idea that makes their whole face light up, their eyes light up with this idea that they want to convey to people. And the sense of being alive with this inner fire is what people feel this charisma. Seduction is a non-verbal language, which is why, I know “The Art of Seduction” is written with words. But it is a language that is non-verbal. You can’t tell people you are charismatic. You can’t communicate it outwardly. They have to feel it in an animal way. In the book, I say some people are born with charisma because they come from bad backgrounds. Like Marilyn Monroe, who was an orphan. You are not necessarily from that background, but you can learn the idea. Your inner conviction is what people feel. They see i t in your hands, in your eyes. 50 has charisma. I’ve watched him. Everybody feels it around him. You have to have that inner conviction. Your whole body has to be alive with it or you are not going to have charisma. You can learn to a degree, but there is a limit unless you are born that way. Charm is a whole, more possible realm f or everyone. Charm is knowing how to please other people. There is a famous quote about a woman who said, this is about Gladstone and Disraeli, two British politicians of the 19th century who were rivals. And she said, “Sitting next to Gladstone, I thought he was the most brilliant man in the world. Sitting next to Disraeli, I thought I was the most brilliant woman in the world.” That’s the charmer. The charmer is somebody who knows how to make the other person feel great about themself. It is a really important social skill. It means not t hinking about yourself but imagining what the other person wants to hear. What their weakness is. What they need, validation. You have to be outer directed. And it is very important and very powerful and anybody can learn it. And I talk about it in the book. Seducers are not born, they are made. You may not end up becoming Cleopatra, but you can go halfway or a quarter of the way. I’m sorry, did you want to ask another anonymous question? Audience Member: Audience Member: You mentioned entrepreneurs. And I also heard from a lot of entrepreneurs that they say that in order to be wildly successful, you have to be prepared to wildly fail.
Robert: Yeah. Audience Member: And does that fit into your paradigm of maintaining power?
Robert: Very much so. I’ll be looking at a lot about that in my next book. All of the most creative people are experimenters who have many failures. Einstein, who I have been reading a lot about, he said, “I measured my success by how full my wastebasket was. How many ideas I threw away meant that I was on the right track. If my wastebasket was empty, I wasn’t being creative.”
http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 16 of 36
You are going to be measured by your failures, and the reason is we learn by doing. You can’t learn how to run a business, you can’t learn how to have success by reading a book. I’m afraid I’m dissuading all of you from buying my books. But, ultimately, a book has a limit. It is your own experience in doing things where you learn, “Oh, this is what connected with my audience. Oh, this is what got that guy interested in my idea.” And so you have to go out there and not be afraid of trying things. Starting a business. They have shown entrepreneurs that, I don’t know the number, but it was like 95 percent of them, their first ventures fail. And the ones who are successful go on to a second and a third one and a fourth one. They are called serial entrepreneurs. So you have to not be afraid of failure. You have to be the kind of person that tries things out and learn from your experiences. If you are afraid of that, it is going to be very difficult to gain the real world knowledge that you need in order to have success. So it is very important. Audience Member: You talk a lot about personal characteristics like charisma, aggressiveness, etc. But, you know, 50 Cent wouldn’t have been able to sell that mixed tape if the environment wasn’t ready for it. And there is that French minister who survived from the French Revolution all the way through Napoleon and after.
Robert: Oh, Fouchet? Audience Member: Yeah, Fouchet. Just the ebbs and flows and trends. What do you t hink about, aside from personal charisma and characteristics at all, about the natural way that opportunities and political opinions sway with the times?
Robert: Well, it’s a good question because a lot of people will say, they will look at a Clinton or a Barack Obama and they’ll say, “What makes them so brilliant or how do they succeed in an election?” A lot of it, a good degree is luck. You come on the world stage at the right time. So there is always a degree of luck in anybody’s success. I met this man in Italy. If I hadn’t met him in 1995, I still might be slaving away in some cubicle in Hollywood and you would never have heard of me. I had the luck to meet this man. But the difference is everybody has luck. Everybody, something happens to you. It is just what do you do with it? Are you the kind of person that recognizes the opportunity? When Barack Obama was first deciding to run for presidency, it happened to be a lucky moment. This was probably the only moment where he c ould have won an election given his background. But he was the one that recognized this was the moment and I am going to seize it, when everybody was telling him, “You are not ready to run. You need to wait four more years.” And he said, “No. I see this is the opportunity.” So what separates people in life are, a good thing will happen to you and you let it pass. You know? If you are an opportunist, which I talk about in “The 50th Law,” you recognize that opportunity has come, and you work like a f iend in order to make it happen. When this man gave me an opportunity to write “The 48 Laws of Power,” I worked night and day, my birthday, Christmas, 365 days a year until 1:00 in the morning. I was not going to let go of my one opportunity in life. And that is, to me, what separates people who take an opportunity like that and others who let it slip by. http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 17 of 36
Host: So let me make a comment and then get your reactions and then I think we’ll finish up. I know when I first started looking at some of what you wrote, and hearing you today, it would be easy to take much of what you say as instructions for how to use other people. How to get them to do your bidding. And there is clearly a way in which a bunch of the laws are written, that way. That is a very instrumental view of other people. How do I turn them into a means for me to accomplish something? Also, though, mixed into, as you have talked and as we talked earlier, there had a sense that some of what you are really interested in is something that say, some of the psychologists here and our provost here have studied, which is emotional intelligence. How do I understand how other people think and what moves them? And what their emotional state is. And how my actions will interact with theirs. And that having some honed emotional intelligence might put me in a position to be able to accomplish things that I want but also be attuned to what they want. And not necessarily treat them as minions, but treat them as their own independent entities. So I was wondering how you think about those tensions?
Robert: Yeah. It becomes tricky, because if you are thinking about them deeply and their own needs, where is the distinction for them becoming a means to it? What are you trying to accomplish? If you are trying to, for instance, forge a political organization where people are all on the same page with a sense of mission and you need to be sensitive to the kinds of people that will join your group, and you are aware of their own needs and the fact that they are an individual. But, on the other hand, you are bringing them into the group and you have a mission you are trying to accomplish. What separates them from being a means or an instrument and also being attuned to their individuality and what their separateness is? Why does it have to be mutually exclusive? Host: I don’t know that they are. Robert: Oh, okay. Host: I don’t know that they are. But I do think that the focus on what’s that other person’s interest and what would really matter to that person and how might we both be able to accomplish what we both care about? To get our goals in alignment. We go back to where you ran to, the difficulty that you talked about.
Robert: Right. Host: The boss who was squashing you. Was there another way than just to say, “Well, never outshine my boss.” But to think, well, I shouldn’t outshine her. How do I bring her over?’
Robert: Yes. Host: But then it aligns with we both want to create these stories.
Robert: In the book, “The 48 Laws of Power,” I talk about how you do not outshine people and get them. But then it gets very Machiavellian. It is a good point because people mistake my books for being purely about how to use people. And it is all kind of selfish. But, particularly in “The Art of Seduction,” I make the point that you a re not going to get far unless you are the kind of person that knows how to think inside the other person’s mind. http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 18 of 36
And that requires a totally different kind of personality. Where you have to not be so selfabsorbed. Where you can think inside of other people and what their interests are and what is going to appeal to them. That is the secret to being successful as a politician or a businessperson or in any kind of relationship. And I go as deeply into that as I can. But not many people recognize that, because they only see t he element of using other people for what you want. Host: Yeah. Well, that is what I was aware of.
Robert: Right. Host: You do have that component, but it may not be the most visible.
Robert: Yeah. Host: I wanted to thank you very much.
Robert: Oh, thank you very much. Thank you. 5
The Descent Of Power: An Interpretation of the Global Economic Crisis Pt VIII Posted on May 28, 2010 by Robert Greene In closing, I wanted to tell you about a dream I had a couple of months ago–I mean the kind of dream you have in your sleep. I dreamt that it was the year 2070 and that I was walking on the crowded streets of some city. People seemed oddly happy and there was a feeling of lightness in the air, as if something had really changed in the world and we had figured out a better way to live. What was most strange about this dream was that in the midst of it I was conscious of thinking back to the year 2010, so long a go. For some reason it occurred to me that that moment in time was some kind of turning point. That was when things began to right themselves, I told myself, but few people saw or understood this. If only we could have realized back then what was happening, where we were headed. How sad. In the middle of this strange thought, I woke up. The dream and its intense mood stayed with me for quite some time. It made me think–this is clearly how it is in history. People never appreciate the moment they are living in. We can look back at all of the tumultuous, exciting periods in history with an air of nostalgia, but it’s an illusion. Those in that moment have no such perspective and no such appreciation. If only we could now have that perspective and realize that we are living through one of the great transformational moments and that the old is finally dying away. I leave you with that thought. Thank you. You can read all of The Descent of Power as an ebook .
8
http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 19 of 36
The Descent Of Power: An Interpretation of the Global Economic Crisis Pt VII Posted on May 25, 2010 by Robert Greene The 33 Strategies of War Now, as I was writing about Napoleon Bonaparte for my book , in 2003 and 2004, I became intrigued by a company that seemed to exemplify–in an almost uncanny way–the Napoleonic model I have just outlined. That company was Google. I initiated an informal study–gathering as much material and contacts within the company as possible. And as I went deeper into this subject, I saw more and more connections– confirming my idea that there is a pattern to periods of change and revolution. The following is the gist of my analysis:
Like Napoleon, the two founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, came from a radically different background than your average CEO. They were scientists at Stanford, their field being statistics and probability. In founding Google in the l ate 1990s, based around their innovations in the field of search engines, they came to several important conclusions: the Internet is going to radically alter the business environment. The world is entering a new era– the Information Age. They wanted their company to reflect these changes and the historic fatality I’ve been talking about. They needed to create their own business and organizational model. And so they studied in depth how other businesses operated, particularly in technology, to see if there were lessons to be learned. Most of these companies, like Microsoft, had intense layers of bureaucracy. They would have a giant staff of software engineers to create new products. But before such products could be launched, they had to be integrated with everything else, and they had to be a s close to perfect as possible. Once the product was ready, large-scale sales and marketing teams would go into action, making sure they saturated the public. If these companies were creating any kind of content, there was an editorial staff. To keep this all running smoothly, they had to have a very large management staff. To roll out any new product would take years, as this machinery was slow and lumbering. All of the different departments and layers of bureaucracy had to be brought into the process. By the time the product came out, competitors had already appeared, but it was too late to adapt to what was evolving. The sheer size of the company made it difficult to maintain close ties to the public; better to make perfect products and sell them hard than respond to public feedback. Everything was geared towards market domination–using vast resources and muscle to maintain that. All of this bureaucracy created small power bases from within the company, increasing the political games being played and adding to the slowness. A company like IBM once dominated the computer field, but completely lost ground in the 1980s, mostly because it did not believe in the personal computer. There were some from within the company that thought differently, but they could not get their voices heard or influence the entrenched culture. All of the resources that IBM had were useless in the face of such rigidity–proving that structure, strategy and ideas are more important than money and t echnology. (In war, a similar example would be the Blitzkrieg of 1941: the French had superior equipment and technology, but their http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 20 of 36
ideas on how to use them were completely outmoded and they collapsed in the face of a superior strategy.) To Page and Brin, a company in this new environment had to be lean and fast, able to stay ahead of the innovation cycle and adapt quickly to trends. They had to build a new kind of structure. This governed most of their key organizational decisions. They would not produce any content; Google would serve as a platform for others to create or move content, enhancing the flow of information. They would have no editorial staff. To make money, they would sell advertising space, but all of this would be automated. Customers would buy through a self-serve platform. This allowed Google to have a m inimal sales staff. Any kind of feedback or data on advertising sales could flow directly and immediately to anyone within the company–there were no bottlenecks from within to slow down the flow of information. Google would have a relatively small staff of engineers. They would hire the best but keep the numbers down. They predicated this all on their philosophy of release often, release early. They would not spend months perfecting their latest product–in fact they would release it in a beta version and let the customers help improve it with their feedback. This meant no marketing or sales team to push the new product. This would also help them to develop close ties to their client base and make people feel involved in the process. As a result of all this, the company would need far fewer managers to keep Google running. As far as possible, employees would be self-managed. It is this remarkable lightness of Google that has allowed them to move, adapt and expand at such a rapid rate. It is the foundation of their power, as it was for Napoleon. To ignore this simple truth is to ignore a fundamental principle of strategy. In addition, Google created a completely different culture, to reflect the historic fatality I had mentioned in the beginning. The company was broken down into small units that could be self-managed. They created the 20% rule: all employees must devote 20% of their time to creating something of their own–a pet project, an innovative idea that could later fit into Google or if not, could be taken elsewhere. Periodically small teams of peers would review these projects and critique them. It became possible to rise fast within the company and make a fortune. The culture was centered around the idea that Google was the spearhead of a revolution: this was the company that was going to give the world access to information, to news, to everything going on in the world, opening things up and allowing people to make what they wanted with it. This sense of being part of a cause created an extremely motivated workforce that does not need to be policed by teams of managers. A degree of chaos is allowed for and even encouraged. With such an organization in place, Google could practice a kind of maneuver warfare. Most companies focus on dominating a particular position in the marketplace, like armies that marched to meet the enemy at a set point. This is old style warfare and business–linear and predictable. In the new environment what matters i s putting your company in a position in which it can quickly adapt to the latest trend and get a toehold there before others. To do so, you have to be built for that.
http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 21 of 36
As a company that focused on primarily having a search engine as its center, Google could quickly move to other areas–Gmail or Google News, et al–all with the aim of creating a kind of operating system for the Internet. If some new trend appears on the horizon, they are ready to pounce and exploit it. For instance, they saw great potential for YouTube, tried to produce their own version of it and when that failed, they simply bought YouTube. This kind of fluidity is rare in business and devastatingly powerful. As opposed to past models, Google does not invent something they think is clever and then figure out how to market it to the masses, with all of the time and money that requires. They work on what is already there–the demand that is palpable. As opposed to the t raditional business practice as it evolved in the era of mass consumption, their ideal is to create less and less distance between themselves and their customers. I focus on Google because to me they are the most radical version of a new business model that has succeeded on a large scale. I could also bring in other companies that have experimented as well and had success. A c ompany like Zara, which has adapted brilliantly to the new environment, has based its model on the speed with which it can produce items that respond to the latest trends, giving consumers a much wider choice. The company is structured in a similar loose fashion to Google. There are many other examples as well on smaller scales all around the world. As the tsunami of the global meltdown is receding, these are the companies that are poised to take over. I do not mean to imply that Google is infallible and already we see signs of their limitations. Like Napoleon, they could slowly morph into the e nemy, into a slightly more mobile version of Microsoft. This was merely to point out the radical departure they made in the initial structure of the company and the power t hat brought them. If they are smart, they c ould dominate the scene for years to come, but nothing is certain. This then is the point that we have reached. What is reall y changing in the world is not technology, or the globalization of capital, but t he relationships between people–relationships that were once hierarchical and based on the force of authority. This has been radically flattened. What matters most now are the connections between people, the interdependencies and networks that can be formed and the unimpeded flow of information. Any kind of obstruction to that flow will be seen as something from the past, someone or some group trying to halt the course of an historic fatality. We are in the midst of a countercurrent. As the new is flowing in, the tide of the old is still there. We see signs of this decrepitude everywhere. Looking at large businesses with their big marketing campaigns, often tied around celebrities, we are simply seeing dinosaurs making a lot of noise before they disappear. The signs of this old order clinging to power are everywhere, and it will be quite a spectacle to see them become extinct in the years to come. Without grasping this wider perspective of what is happening in the world, the crest of a change that began millennia ago but greatly acc elerated by the advent of the Information Age, nothing you do will have any kind of lasting effect or power. Stay tuned for the next installment, or read The Descent of Power as an ebook .
0 http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 22 of 36
The Descent Of Power: An Interpretation of the Global Economic Crisis Pt VI Posted on May 22, 2010 by Robert Greene Napoleon came to power in one of the most chaotic moments in history–the French Revolution. The French people had overthrown a monarchy that had existed for hundreds of years and established a new kind of political order. But because it was so new, nobody quite understood what it all meant. The Revolution led to terror and swings of reaction and more revolution, until in 1796, a turning point had been reached. France’s numerous enemies, lead by the Austrians, were threatening to invade the country and reestablish the old monarchy. The fighting had grown particularly intense in Italy. If the Austrians and their allies were able to overrun the French in Italy, they would pour into France from the South and the Revolution would be over. The campaign in Italy was going badly for the French and so in desperation, they named the 26-year-old Napoleon Bonaparte, former artillery lieutenant, commander of all French forces fighting in Italy. Through some bold maneuvering and some innovative strategies Napoleon was able to save France from disaster, but barely. As a result of hi s success he was named commander in chief of the French army. After the Italian campaign, Napoleon did some reflecting. He felt there was a better way to wage war; he needed a new kind of army or organizational principle. Napoleon began by analyzing the way his e nemies waged war and their organizational model. Essentially, a typical general would have at his command an army of a certain size and configuration. To make this army more mobile a general could break it up into groups, but what he might gain in flexibility he would lose in control. How could a general continue to direct and monitor the battle, if his army was divided and scattered? This would al so violate the key military principle of keeping one’s forces concentrated. Control then was more important than mobility, so he would keep this army together. The general would stay in the back of the advancing forces and command the battle from this safe position. Those in front, the scouts and vanguards, might see something unexpected as the enemy approached, but before they could get the army to adjust to these changes, they would have to pass messages to the general in the back, who would then relay his response to the front, all of which took a lot of time. In addition, this massive force had to be fed a nd for this purpose large wagons–led by horses and oxen–would accompany the army, slowing it down. In times of bad weather, which were frequent, these supply wagons would come to a complete halt. Because of all this, armies advanced slowly, both sides tending to march to a point where they would meet in battle. Once there, some clever maneuvering and superior firepower could decide the issue. This form of warfare was completely linear and predictable. Although armies at the turn of the 19th century might look modern, with the latest rifles and artillery, they were fighting according to a model that was ancient. This was essentially the way wars had been fought since Alexander the Great. It was out of fear that generals adhered to this rigid system. War is inherently chaotic and such a system offered the maximum in control.
http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 23 of 36
Napoleon had once compared these generals to Marie Antoinette. What he meant was the following: the Queen had lived through a period of incredible turmoil in France–famine, widespread discontent among the peasants and bourgeoisie, the dissemination of dangerous ideas in the press, etc. To handle all of this, Marie Antoinette employed a strategy: she increased the distance between herself and the French pe ople so as to control what she saw and heard. She imagined that the turmoil was in fact rather superficial. After all, the French monarchy had been through a lot, and this t oo would pass. Its prestige and authority could never really be challenged. Why lose your head over such momentary fluctuations? And so she held on to these beliefs all the way to the bitter end. These generals operated in a similar way. They looked to the past, instead of examining the present. They increased their distance from the common soldier and the shifting realities of war. They held on to the old organizational principle as if it were magical. Ultimately such faith in a timeless power structure or model is a form of magical thinking–your belief system overrides reality. Napoleon was different from these leaders. He was much younger. He had grown up with the revolution–rising from the bottom of the military, which had now been fashioned into a kind of citizens’ army. He was deeply aware of the great changes in the world–social, political, technological. He was aware that this altered the psychology of warfare–the French army was fighting for the sake of the revolution, for the sake of an idea. It was a whole new culture and social dynamic. War had to catch up with these changes; it had to become fast and fluid, to fit the times. In military terms, speed is a force multiplier. It brings momentum and surprise into the battlefield–with speed, an army of 25,000 could have the force of 100,000. In order to have such power, however, Napoleon would have to reconstruct his army from the ground up. And it is at this point that Napoleon made one of the greatest discoveries in the history of warfare–namely that structure is strategy. The structure of your group, of your army, is what gives it speed and mobility, creates its tone, rhythm and way of action. If you structure it in a dense, bureaucratic and ad-hoc way, you will have a slow, lumbering army, no matter what you try to make them do. You have to be willing to accept a degree of chaos. You have to let go. The fluidity you gain will more than compensate for any momentary loss of control. After much analysis, Napoleon decided upon the following: He would break his army up into smaller divisions, ranging in size from 20,000 to 80,000. Each of these divisions would be led by a field marshal, who would be inculcated in Napoleon’s philosophy of war and in what he wanted in a particular campaign, but these marshals would be allowed to make their own decisions based on what they saw on the battlefield. They would fight in the front of the lines instead of safely in the back, so they could react in real time. This would be replicated all the way down the line. Lieutenants and sergeants could make decisions for their units based on what they saw, as long as it fit into the overall mission of the division. Napoleon understood very well the new social order and what motivated the common soldier. He enjoyed he freedom from within the army structure, the chance to prove himself, to show initiative. Napoleon would build into the structure of this army the chance for the lowest soldier to rise to the top, based on merit and bravery, a novel concept at the time. Furthermore, they would all be fighting for an idea–to spread the revolution to the rest of Europe. http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 24 of 36
Napoleon added one small technical detail that revealed his way of thinking: his soldiers would now carry their supplies in carefully designed backpacks, each individual responsible for keeping his supplies in order. These were the components of the new army–smaller, more mobile units; no supply wagons to slow them down; important decisions that could be made by leaders in the moment; soldiers who were more intensely motivated and engaged in the struggle. It was a force that was considerably faster and more fluid than any other army in Europe. With such a weapon Napoleon could evolve a new strategy, what is known as maneuver warfare. Instead of advancing his troops along a single line, he could throw his five or ten divisions at the enemy in scattered patterns, and they would decide t o advance depending on how the enemy reacted. In this way, he recaptured the initiative. He could adjust faster than the enemy and destroy its willpower by making it impossible to foresee his maneuvers. As you can imagine, with such an army Napoleon dominated the scene for ten years in a way that no other military force has done in history. But there is a second chapter to this story. For the next ten years, from 1806 to 1816, we see a steady decline in his powers. He starts to believe that his success comes from his magical personality and genius, as opposed to the strategies he had invented. He creates his own aristocracy and distances himself from the revolutionary ideals. He begins to slow down with age, and to fight wars the way his enemies had fought them. He believes in overwhelming the enemy with size and firepower, instead of mobility. All of this leads to his tragic campaign in Russia in 1812 and his final defeat at Waterloo in 1816. In essence he had morphed into a kind of Marie Antoinette himself, holding on to the power he had, believing in the magic of his authority and growing increasingly arrogant. This then is the pattern and the lesson we can learn from any revolutionary period in history: you are either a Marie Antoinette or a Napoleon Bonaparte. One or the other spirit tends to dominate your decision-making process. If you are a Marie Antoinette, you manage t o convince yourself that nothing is really changing in the world. You concern yourself with the present, with the pleasures at hand. You t rust in the power and privileges you have had in the past. All of this will continue, you tell yourself. In essence, you manage to keep your distance from the events around you. You live in your bubble. Hard times or adversity only strengthen this bubble. If you’re a Napoleon Bonaparte, you move in the opposite direction–towards the change coming from the bottom up, towards reality. You want more contact with the world, no matter how chaotic and challenging that might be, because power lies in moving in that direction and exploiting the moment. The following are the two most critical strategic principles that you must adhere to in times of change: first, speed is of the essence. You need to be able to adapt quickly to events. To do so, your group must be organized to allow for such fluidity. This means creating a structure that is looser and that leaves room for initiative from within. Your brilliant strategies will mean nothing in such times if your organization is bureaucratic and hierarchical. Second, you must unite this group around an idea, a reason for fighting or advancing, beyond money. You are creating a culture where you are harnessing the creativity and energy of your soldiers. The old is finally dying out and leaving space for something youthful and new. You are riding this tide, this historic fatality as it sweeps the globe. In conjunction with these principles, you must be continually vigilant that any kind of success does not slowly transform you into a Marie Antoinette. http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 25 of 36
Stay tuned for the next installment, or read The Descent of Power as an ebook .
3
The Descent Of Power: An Interpretation of the Global Economic Crisis Pt V Posted on May 18, 2010 by Robert Greene Now, I know that this is not the usual way that people discuss what is currently taking place in the world. Instead, we hear much about the banking industry, the corruption within it, and its preying upon helpless consumers; the new trading technology that makes it harder to think and act for the long-term; the collusion of government in this scheme, and the lack of regulation; on and on. All of these factors are real; they contain elements of truth. But they are not the source of the underlying disturbance. The reality, what is really going on underneath, is that we are currently experiencing a change as profound as any in history. After the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century a nd the Mass Production revolution of the 20th, with its emphasis on standardization and marketing, we are now, finally, entering the Information Age. This means a flattening of power structures, more fluidity and chaos, an accelerated pace of innovation. This represents a fundamental change for which w e are not prepared. When we face situations that are novel, we tend to react in one of several ways. We try to deny the reality. We hold on even more firmly to the past and how things were done. We interpret events according to how we want to see them. Or, we do the opposite–we succumb to all of the chaos and confusion, believing that all of the old rules can be tossed out and that anything goes. We try this and we try that, never with much thought or calculation. Both responses are reactive and emotional. They do not represent an attempt to actually come to terms with the changes going on and work to exploit them in a rational manner. To really gain power, there is only one way to orient ourselves in such turbulent t imes–by adopting a different way of thinking, what I prefer to call “strategy in depth.” I differentiate this from the normal idea of strategy, which is so often confused with merely planning and thinking ahead. Strategy in depth is a mental discipline that can take years to acquire. To give you an idea of what I mean by this, I like to employ the following metaphor: business, or life, is a kind of battlefield. On the ground, fighting the daily battles to make your business competitive and to keep your army advancing together can get quite confusing. Sometimes those on your side act more li ke enemies or obstructers. There is a lot of smoke, sudden shifts in the battle and chaos. On the ground, you have no real perspective of what is really going on. You are constantly reacting to this or to that. If you were able to stand on a ladder and elevate your perspective some ten feet, suddenly you would have a different idea about what is happening. You would see some patterns to the fighting. You thought you were advancing but in fact you seem to be retreating. There’s more going on than you had imagined. If you were able to somehow elevate to a hundred feet, what you saw at ten feet would now prove to be an illusion. You would realize that the battles you are fighting today are not really http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 26 of 36
worth your attention, because on the horizon something much worse is taking shape. Your sense of a pattern to the battle would now be more accurate than before, and your strategies more rational and effective. If somehow you could raise your perspective to a mountaintop you would have the clarity of the gods on Mount Olympus, seeing far and wide. What you had seen at a hundred feet elevation would prove to have been somewhat inaccurate or piecemeal. People who remain on the ground operate in what I call tactical hell. They are constantly reacting to what others bring and this creates a kind of constant wave effect–each reverberation of an action/reaction keeps you locked in this mode, your emotions continually buffeted by this back and forth. You might think you are being rational, but you are far from it. The view from ten feet is better, but still rather hellish. You can delude yourself that you have real perspective, when you are simply seeing a small piece of the puzzle. The higher you go, the more you enter the realm of strategy, which requires depth of thinking and true perspective. In normal times, it is quite difficult to elevate your perspective–it is simply unnatural for the human animal to not react, to not get caught up in the moment. In times of confusion and change like ours, this process is made that m uch harder. Add to that the incredible distractions that new technology has inserted into our lives and i t can become almost impossible. In such circumstances, we tend to take pieces of information from the media, which inundates us with all kinds of snapshots of the moment, and elevate them into some kind of trend; we give these pieces disproportionate weight and act on them without a sense of real direction or depth. This confusion tends to perpetuate itself as more and more people are locked in this tactical hell. To be a strategist in depth in this era, you must work at acquiring several skills. First and primary is the ability to control your own emotions that tend to cloud your sense of judgment. What matters is not your ego or appearing right or being admired, but winning. To win you must be realistic and see things as they are. From this base of inner balance, you study history and its many lessons; you immerse yourself in the present and t he trends that are taking shape. You encompass in your considerations not merely the battle in front of you, but the larger war, the cultural and social factors–everything. You understand what is happening, the historic moment we are living through. Once you reach the proper elevation, you can then make rational decisions–moving with calibrated boldness or biding your time. In times of great change it might seem that there are no patterns to discern in the present and nothing to be learned from history. After all, events are unprecedented. But this is an illusion born out of our confusion. There have been other periods in hi story of comparable change and turmoil. In looking at them in depth we can see certain patterns–why most people succumb to the chaos but a few manage to rise to the top. Those who succeed generally follow the same simple path and adhere to a few basic strategic principles that are particularly relevant to revolutionary times. To give you an idea what I am talking about, I want to take you inside the mind of the man whom I consider to be the greatest strategist who ever lived–Napoleon Bonaparte. Stay tuned for the next installment, or read The Descent of Power as an ebook .
1 http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 27 of 36
The Descent Of Power: An Interpretation of the Global Economic Crisis Pt IV Posted on May 15, 2010 by Robert Greene Now at the same time that this wave was building something else was going on, something rather strange. We have gone through two economic bubbles in a very short period of time. Economic bubbles generally occur for two reasons. The first and the one that most people focus on is that businesses are generally flush with cash, have money to burn. They are looking for something new to invest in, some novel source of super capital. It is a feeling in the air–vast amounts of money can be made in some new way. The competition heats up. Someone hits upon something that promises fast money and in fact yields a substantial return; it gains momentum. The profit t hat is produced has little to do with real economic forces, but rather w ith human psychology–greed, the contagion of emotions, exuberance that comes from something fast and easy. Money is poured into things that have no real value apart from what people imagine is there and once real economic forces come into play, the bubble is burst and it all collapses. Another aspect of bubbles, one that is generally less discussed, is that they tend to prefigure or occur in periods of transition. People sense that something is going on; a significant shift is occurring in how business is done. They are more likely to believe that all of the old rules of investing and building value are a thing of the past and that anything goes. And so in such transitional periods people are much more susceptible to the psychology of a bubble and the exuberance it breeds. The fact that we went through two bubbles, one succeeding the other in a matter of a few short years is an undeniable sign of something stirring from below–a sign of change and systemic instability. The first bubble was in tech stocks and its affect was relatively mild. But the second bubble (in finance and housing) burst at a moment when the wave that had been building since the 90s had finally gained sufficient momentum. These two forces–deep social changes and the economic bubble–converged at a moment in time to create a kind of tsunami. The old order that had been clinging to power and resisting what had been stirring from below was finally swept away in a cycle in capitalism known as Creative Destruction. As this tsunami is just now beginning to recede, what we see in its wake is an altered landscape that at first glance seems like devastation. Businesses that had been dependent on times of prosperity, that created products that had no deep c onnection to consumers and needed a lot of marketing to be sold, these are wiped out by the tsunami, never to return. Large companies that had used their size as tremendous leverage in the marketplace find that it is difficult to adapt; they are dependent on their scale of mass. They are like dinosaurs–big and lumbering, they will continue to make noise but they are doomed to disappear within a decade or two. Other companies, however, which had foreseen the tremendous shift going on and had structured their business accordingly, they are poised to not only survive the tsunami, but t o thrive. I am referring to a company like Google, which I will talk about later on, but there other examples as well. Last and most important, with all the destruction that i s going on, http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 28 of 36
there is finally space for new businesses to spring up, based on a model that fits the times. A thousand flowers can now bloom. Stay tuned for the next installment, or read The Descent of Power as an ebook .
4
The Descent Of Power: An Interpretation of the Global Economic Crisis Pt III Posted on May 12, 2010 by Robert Greene Now, in the 1990s something else came int o being that sped this process along even further. And this was more like warp speed, a sudden acceleration into the future. I am talking about the Internet, or more specifically the world-wide web as it evolved in the early 1990s. The web suddenly provided people three new types of power that had tremendous appeal. First, it gave us access to all kinds of information, without the need for newspapers or traditional forms of media. We could bypass those centers that controlled the f low. We could communicate with likeminded people and share information rapidly and directly with one another. Second, it gave us the power to purchase items straight from the source, cutting out t he middleman. This would tend to lower prices, but more importantly it greatly increased our choices. We could shop from any place around the world, finding precisely what we needed or wanted. Third, we could express our opinions on any subject that mattered to us and find some kind of audience. We could review the products that we had purchased and gain some power as consumers. Or we could voice our opinions on political matters a nd find others that shared them. What interests me here is not the technology, but how it changes our relationship to power and authority, altering in so many ways the social dynamic–how people interact with one another. In this instance, the Internet is flattening out relationships that were once hierarchical and funneled through various centers. This tends to eat away a t the prestige and authority of traditional sources of information such as newspapers, or expert opinions. It calls into question the need for so many middlemen in the world, and reveals the dubious source of their power. Take for instance the availability of digital music files and iTunes. When this began to spread it altered our relationship to music itself. We could pirate it on the internet or if so inclined, purchased this music directly and quickly. We could easily share these f iles. Now it became possible to accumulate a vast library of music and store it the way we wanted to, making us in some ways creatively involved in the process. We no longer had to purchase an entire album, which would often contain songs that were there just to fill space. This created a massive problem for the record i ndustry; they went into panic mode. It essentially destroyed their business model in which they were the sole powers that marketed, distributed and sold this music. This model was based on their ability to dominate the flow of http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 29 of 36
money, and seduce artists into accepting their role a s vassals to the industry, to be discarded when they were no longer so hot. Record executives tried desperately to hold back these changes, but once the genie was let out of the bottle it was too late. Who was going to go back to the old way of purchasing music? The aura of their authority and power had been shattered. We could chart the same course for the mainstream media. It is interesting to note that this great dissolving of these power centers was preceded by an intense concentration of their power. This is almost a physical law that we have seen before in history, but the subject for another night. I compare these changes that the web was producing in society in the late 90s a nd onwards to a small wave that was forming far out in the ocean, slowly gaining volume and force as it spread. Stay tuned for the next installment, or read The Descent of Power as an ebook .
6
The Descent Of Power: An Interpretation of the Global Economic Crisis Pt II Posted on May 6, 2010 by Robert Greene In anthropology there is a concept known as historic fatality. What this means is that occasionally there emerges a certain idea, a certain way of doing things that is so immensely seductive to human beings that eventually it spreads around the globe and forever changes our way of life. One of the greatest examples of this would have to be agriculture. It was centered on a simple idea–instead of constantly searching for new food sources, humans could raise their own food in settled locations. As this took root in several places, it led to the formation of villages, towns, cities, city-states, entire civilizations. With this came all kinds of institutions such as civic government, social organization, warfare, culture on a new level. It created the concept of surplus and leisure time. Slowly, sometimes by force, it conquered the world. Mostly it conquered because it contained an idea that was deeply seductive to human nature–a desire for settlement, for roots, for consistency and familiarity. Once it came into being, it was fated to spread everywhere. Now, in The 48 Laws I lay out what I consider to be another historic fatality–the evolution of power from something heavily concentrated, to something more and more diluted. I l ike to imagine this as kind of a mathematical equation. Let us imagine a tribe of some 1000 people in some place in ancient times. We could say this tribe had a certain amount of power, based on its wealth and resources. The majority of this power, the control over it, was in the hands of one man–the ruler, the king. He might, in this case, depend on a small cadre of people to assist him, but he largely determined the roles they could play. Let us say, with success and prosperity, this tribe grew to a size of some 10,000. Now, such supreme concentration was too difficult. The ruler would have to bring in others–advisors, generals, high priests. He could keep this number relatively limited a nd the percentage of http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 30 of 36
power was mostly in his hands, but now ever so slightly diluted. If this town evolved into a city of some 100,000, suddenly there came a qualitative change. The complexity of ruling such numbers grew exponentially. Power at this moment had to be genuinely distributed in order to maintain a sense of control. Now there were teams of ministers, the m ilitary, the growing aristocracy and its court. To service this administration, bureaucracies had to evolve. Power remained concentrated, but with a different scale of distribution. We can make three generalizations at this point. When a group of people is given power, i t forms a power center. This means, for instance, that a team of military leaders tends to think in two directions–how to promote the interests of the ruler, while also advancing its own agenda. Things now become political, as their interests will clash with other power centers. The ruler must now manage this growing complexity. The power environment becomes increasingly dangerous. Second, once people have been given power on this level, they do not want to give it back or return to an older way of governing. They work to keep what they have a nd extend their power base. And finally, once power becomes diluted and divided this way, it tends to keep on dividing, like a split atom. More and more people must be brought in t o keep the whole functioning. And so over the course of centuries, power slowly became less and less concentrated. Two events in history sped this process along. First, after the Middle Ages, the birth of modern capitalism and a merchant society. This meant the emergence of a middle class and new power centers in business that began to wield more and more influence. The second were the great political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries, creating a new power center among the citizens of that state. To a lesser degree we could talk of modern media as another power center that came to prominence in the 20th century, which in turn acted to dissolve and dilute previous concentrations of influence. We could look now to a country like the United States in the present, and see an almost extreme point of development–networks of hundreds of power centers crisscrossing each other: from within political parties, for instance, all kinds of niche groups, pushing their own agendas, making governance almost impossible. Of course there remain concentrations of power and wealth i n the world today. But on the other hand, there is no denying the remarkable evolution and dilution of power from that time millennia ago when it was mostly in the hands of one man. From this position in the present we can project into the future a period of even greater dilution, as more and more people around the globe feel the right and necessity to have more control over their lives. In 100 or 200 years we can imagine a point of complete division. This is not so much about particular political or economic systems, but rather about something deep within human nature. The need to have such power has an inexorable appeal to us. Once the process began it cannot be stopped until it reaches its logical conclusion. It is because of this that we can talk of this division of power as a great historic fatality, perhaps on the level of agriculture or even greater in my opinion for its far-reaching ramifications. Stay tuned for the next installment, or read The Descent of Power as an ebook .
7 http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 31 of 36
The Descent of Power: An Interpretation of the Global Economic Crisis Pt I Posted on May 3, 2010 by Robert Greene The following is an amalgamation of two talks I gave recently: the first at the Emirates Festival of Literature in Dubai, and the second at the American Chamber of Commerce in Singapore. Both of these talks were geared for a business audience. I plan on posting in eight digestible installments or you can read the entire thing in the form of an ebook .
The subject that I am going to talk about this evening is the state of the world as I see it, what is really going on–not what the newspapers report, not the conventional wisdom. But before I get to that, I want to give you some context about my perspective, my way of thinking and where it comes from. In 1996 I began work on my first book, The 48 Laws of Power. The book had a simple premise: every human being has an innate desire for power. What I mean by power is the ability to control to some degree the events around us–to be able to influence people, move them in our direction, direct our career path and protect ourselves from those who are malicious. It also means having some control over our own destructive impulses. When we exercise such control, we feel energized and confident. When we experience the opposite– helpless in the face of circumstance–we become miserable and prone to all kinds of irrational behavior. To gain power, we try almost anything, but we are never quite sure of what really works. The problem in writing such a book, as I saw it then, was the massive amount of confusion surrounding the subject. Few people like to admit they are motivated by ambition or a hunger for power. That seems too ugly. If somehow they at tain some success in life it is because of their goodness or talent, never because of any maneuvering or political gamesmanship. Many people are masters at passive aggression–disguising their grabs at power behind a benign or smiling façade. All of this moralizing and denial creates a great deal of fog. To pierce this fog and get at the reality, I devised a method that has served me well in all of my subsequent writings: I would ignore people’s words and justifications; instead, I would study their actions. To show what is timeless and universal in this hunger for power, I would look at the most illustrious people in history–all periods, all cultures–and ruthlessly dissect their successes and failures. In doing this research, I discovered patterns, which turned into laws, 48 of them. When you observe these laws, good things happen to you; when you transgress them, you c ourt disaster. These laws apply as much to Louis XIV as to Bill Gates. They represent the physical reality of what happens in the world, not the deceptive appearances that people like to present. The book came out in 1998, and slowly it gained some momentum. Around three years after the publication, I began to be sought out by people in various lines of work who wanted advice. Some of them were quite powerful in their fields. At first, I was somewhat intimidated, as I have no real solid background in business or a degree in psychology and I had not personally attained the heights of power. But soon it became clear to me that these people did not want help in technical matters or cared about my credentials. Their weakness was dealing with the political side of human nature, how to handle all of the maneuverings http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 32 of 36
that I describe in The 48 Laws. They were confused. I saw that my advice could be very useful and that the ideas I had discussed in the first book were more than relevant to their experiences. As I acquired more and more of these consulting relationships, I began to gain access to the inner workings of many important businesses. I saw a pattern in the problems that many executives were facing, and over the years my ideas on this coalesced into the following theory: we are in the midst of one of those great transitional moments in history in which the old ways of operating and thinking are finally dying off. Something new is trying to emerge. All of this makes people confused and uncertain; it is infecting everyone unconsciously. I saw signs of this struggle in business, but also in politics–particularly in the Obama campaign. In the middle of these speculations, the global economy crashed and this only confirmed what I had been thinking. I want to talk to you tonight about these countercurrents of the old and t he new, what is really going on under the surface creating the turmoil that we are experiencing. As with the subject of power, I’m not satisfied with how people are describing these events. There is too much politicizing and too little perspective. The human being handles change with difficulty. It makes us hold on to the past or become overwhelmed by the apparent chaos. It makes us even more emotional. People who live through revolutionary moments generally have little notion as to what is going on. In this particular case, our lack of understanding makes it very difficult for us to exploit the tremendous changes and opportunities that are germinating at this moment. What I want to do tonight is to broaden our viewpoint and provide a different way of looking at this strange new world we have entered. Clearing up some of our confusion can help make our actions more effective. To accomplish this reversal of perspective, I will be bringing in many ideas, examples from history and so on, but all with the purpose of explaining the present moment, so bear with me. Stay tuned for the next installment, or read The Descent of Power as an ebook .
2
The 50th Law (chapter headings) Posted on October 29, 2009 by Robert Greene Chapter 1 See Things for What They Are – Intense Realism
Reality can be rather harsh. Your days are numbered. It takes constant effort to carve a pl ace for yourself in this ruthlessly competitive world and hold on to it. People can be treacherous. They bring endless battles into your life. Your task is to resist the temptation to wish it were all different; instead you must fearlessly accept these circumstances, even embrace them. By focusing your attention on what is going on around you, you will gain a sharp appreciation for what makes some people advance and others fall behind. By seeing through people’s http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 33 of 36
manipulations, you can turn them around. The firmer your grasp on reality, the more power you will have to alter it for your purposes. Chapter 2 Make Everything Your Own – Self-Reliance
When you work for others, you are at their mercy. They own your work; they own you. Your creative spirit is squashed. What keeps you in such positions is a fear of having to sink or swim on your own. Instead you should have a greater fear of what will happen to you if you remain dependent on others for power. Your goal in every ma neuver in life must be ownership, working the corner for yourself. When it is yours, it is yours to lose – you are more motivated, more creative, more alive. The ultimate power in life is to be completely self-reliant, completely yourself. Chapter 3 Turn Shit into Sugar – Opportunism
Every negative situation contains the possibility for something positive, an opportunity. It is how you look at it that matters. Your lack of resources can be an advantage, forcing you to be more inventive with the little that you have. Losing a battle can allow you to frame yourself as the sympathetic underdog. Do not let fears make you wait for a better moment or become conservative. If there are circumstances you cannot control, make the best of them. It is the ultimate alchemy to transform all such negatives into advantages and power. Chapter 4 Keep Moving – Calculated Momentum
In the present there is constant change and so much we cannot control. If you try to micromanage it all, you lose even greater control in the long run. The a nswer is to let go and move with the chaos that presents itself to you – from within it, you will find endless opportunities that elude most people. Don’t give others the c hance to pin you down; keep moving and changing your appearances to fit the environment. If you enc ounter walls or boundaries, slip around them. Do not let anything disrupt your flow. Chapter 5 Know When to Be Bad – Aggression
You will always find yourself among the aggressive and the passive-aggressive who seek to harm you in some way. You must get over any general fears you have of confronting people or you will find it extremely difficult to assert yourself in the face of those who are more cunning and ruthless. Before it is too late you must master the art of knowing when and how to be bad – using deception, manipulation and outright force at the appropriate moments. Everyone operates with a flexible morality when it comes to their self-interest – you are simply making this more conscious and effective. Chapter 6 http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 34 of 36
Lead from the Front – Authority
In any group, the person on top consciously or unconsciously sets the tone. If lea ders are fearful, hesitant to take any risks, or overly c oncerned for their ego and reputation, then this invariably filters its way through the entire group and makes effective action impossible. Complaining and haranguing people to work harder has a counterproductive effect. You must adopt the opposite style: imbue your troops with the proper spirit through your actions, not words. They see you working harder than anyone, holding yourself to the highest standards, taking risks with confidence, and making tough decisions. This inspires and binds the group together. In these democratic times, you must practice what you preach. Chapter 7 Know Your Environment from the Inside Out – Connection
Most people think first of what they want to express or make, then find the audience for their idea. You must work the opposite angle, thinking first of the public. You need to keep your focus on their changing needs, the trends that are washing through them. beginning with their demand, you create the appropriate supply. Do not be afraid of people’s criticisms – without such feedback your work will be too personal and delusional. You must maintain as close a relationship to your environment as possible, getting an inside “feel” for what is happening around you. Never lose touch with your base. Chapter 8 Respect the Process – Mastery
The fools in life want things fast and easy – money, success, attention. Boredom is their great enemy and fear. Whatever they manage to get slips through their hands as fast as it comes in. You, on the other hand, want to outlast your rivals. You are building the foundation for something that can continue to expand. To make this happen, you will have to serve an apprenticeship. You must learn early on to endure the hours of practice and drudgery, knowing that in the end all of that time will translate into a higher pleasure – mastery of a craft and of yourself. Your goal is to reach the ultimate skill level – an intuitive feel for what must come next. Chapter 9 Push Beyond Your Limits – Self-Belief
Your sense of who you are will determine your actions and what you end up getting in life. If you see your reach as limited, that you are mostly helpless in the face of so many difficulties, that it is best to keep your ambitions low, then you will receive the little that you expect. knowing this dynamic, you must train yourself for the opposite – ask for more, aim high, and believe that you are destined for something great. Your sense of self-worth comes from you alone – never the opinion of others. With a rising confidence in your abilities, you will take risks that will increase your chances of success. People follow those who know where they are going, so cultivate an air of certainty and boldness. Chapter 10 http://powerseductionandwar.com/
Page 35 of 36
