Robert Greene 48 Laws of Power on BETWEEN THE LINES

today on between the lines the ultimate lesson for those who watch power want power or want to arm themselves against power when we meet my guest Robert Greene I'm very Kubrick Robert and his book the 48 laws of power gives readers all the tools they need to understand what power is all about how to use that information to benefit themselves I'm a writer today because I was a reader when I was 11 years old and it was really good me you do not need to prove your state of happiness very good most of these speeches were much as a months in preparation characters the girls were seekers of truth in the store even fit involve a lot of Quran engagement we're locked out what the feeling of having no power over people and events is generally unbearable to most of us when we feel helpless we feel miserable no one wants less power everyone wants more Robert Greene with his book the 48 laws of power will give you the ability to gain observe or defend against power and in turn empower yourself Robert welcome to the show when we spoke earlier I told you this is the first book in the history of between the lines that I read on my own that a publicist did not submit to me and it's a been published number of years ago and I only have usually the new publications on and what happened was was I was talking to a friend Nelson Davis and I always talked with him he's a dear friend of mine and I always quote from the book and he says you know you always quote from the book why don't you have him on ice oh because I never have anybody on that's not it because I know him so I am so honored this is a this is history in the making and I want to start because as the way I introduced you and I took a little bit out of the book that says the feeling of having no power over people and events is generally unbearable to us everyone wants more power correct that's what is the impetus for this book yes basically I think that you know there are many ways to explain what makes a human being a human being it's the there were rational creatures that we have an opposable thumb etc and I thought that there was something a little more and elemental that there's something in our animal nature that isn't quite gotten added a lot of these books that are written about power and who we are and just in my own personal experience and in my wide-ranging reading of history I just noticed this trend that everybody wants power and power isn't it's generally seen in the sort of ugly light of you want power you want to you know become president you want to become take over other countries but it's not that and it's very funny you should say that that was my son's first concern he says dad this seems like an awfully harsh book and in fact one of the lines I was going to even say there is that that sort of devious part of power that is a little unsettling for the human being yes and I maintain that in our country and our culture in particular there's a lot of kind of negativity and guilt around the whole phenomena of power but I I think that and in other cultures particularly places if you've ever lived in a country like Italy or France they're much more of you know straightforward about the whole thing and there isn't this guilt about it but the thing is everybody wants that feeling of control that you have some power over the people around you in the sense that if you talk to them that you can at least persuade them with your ideas that you can get them to do what you want that you have just a feeling of control in your life and the sense that you can't control anything that you have no influence over the people around you you have no influence over your your wife your kids your boss your colleagues is so miserable that it will turn you will turn you into almost like a monster basically and that a person who is happy with themselves and feeling comfortable with this knowledge that they want power is actually in the long run a better person to be around isn't that funny because misery and unhappiness is truly the root of all evil you're very right so when you feel a little bit more in control you're empowered you feel a little bit better about yourself and therefore affect people around you in a more positive way well there's the famous quote that power absolute power corrupts absolutely that people quote a lot but then Malcolm X came out with the with the quote that having no power corrupts even more absolutely so the sense of feeling like you have no power no control is actually more corrupting in the long run you know you mentioned Malcolm X Tubman I'd like to just give a little bit of the construction of the book because it's done in a very unique way first there is the law itself all 48 of them are laid out the book and we will get to some of my favorite in a moment then it is followed by a term you call judgment which I I defined as sort of the definition of the law although the way the law plays itself out then you come into the transgression of the law which is what happens when you don't follow this law and what you use throughout the book both in the transgression and the next part the observance is historical references right you go in and you give examples from history to almost the present but it's at least till the 40s 50s even did you go to the 60s I don't think so but World War 2 you hit a little bit there as well and then you go to the interpretation of the law and you have this subject called the keys to power this is sort of the summation practical usage of the law like you said this is not just people who want to climb to become president or assess the power but how can you in your everyday life utilize this to benefit yourself and those around you right and then finally you have these marvelous quotes in red they form on the outsides of the pages they form the borders they form sometimes in the middle of it so you really keep getting reinforced over and over again so you almost don't have to study the book it almost naturally studies itself as you read it uh-huh yes I sort of see it as kind of like a poison like a vapor is poison that you sort of the book at the more you read it you don't have the ideas kind of get under your skin that you don't have to literally understand and reread and reread an idea that months later you will have internalized the ideas just by reading the quotes and the whole way it's structured so yeah and become depending on how you think certain things will reinforce the idea a little bit more than others maybe it's the history if you don't like to read history maybe it is the quote maybe it's just your key to the power right so I found you can you can benefit and absorb in in any direction yes before we get into the actual laws I want to just go over some of the general principles that you line out and the first one is the most important of these skills and powers the crucial foundation is the ability to master your emotions that goes that's not even a law in itself that is in the preface to the laws of power yes basically the power game requires a degree of mastery over yourself that's sort of like the the building block that you must work with that if you have no self-control you're it's hopeless the whole power game is hopeless none of these laws will mean anything to you because every time you get yourself into a situation you will react emotionally anger you'll you'll be upset you'll be envious or whatever and all of these emotional responses are extremely dangerous in the power game now that doesn't mean at home or with your wife or whatever that you have to be completely emotionless I'm talking about the power game I'm talking about in the office or out in the social world you have to have a degree of control over your emotions it's it's just like the law number one as you say you know what what follows that and it's very interesting I look at this as part history book pot self-help book because it does both simultaneously and yet there are certain things that actually contradict some self-help books but yet I found very useful I want to discuss them with you two in particular one is distance yourself from the present moment now I've had ROM das on and everyone being here living in the now that's the classic thing so when I read that distance yourself from the present moment I said I must talk to him about that and the other was examine what has grievously held you back because so many self-help books tell you not to overanalyze and I don't think you mean overanalyze but you really do mean to critically look back on what you've done in the past and yet I got the impression you mean not to be judgmental when you do it right right this you're not you're not criticizing yourself there's this notion I'm writing about this right now in my new book on war and strategy the notion that you that permeates my books is that you are responsible for the things that happen in your life you're the agent of what is good and what is bad and when something bad happens to you your natural tendency will be to look out in the world and blame this person blame your mother your father your wife your boss but in fact there's always a kernel of yourself that is to blame for what happened and so the process that's involved in this that I talk about in the book is you look at yourself and you examine how perhaps something you did something you said something in your planning was wrong and that that was what caused this problem and that should be a liberating thing because what that means is you have power you're not dependent on on mommy or daddy or boss or whomever - to please you to make you to bring you what you want you are the one responsible for it so when you're looking at yourself and analyzing yourself it's not with this heaviness of oh my gosh I'm just such an awful person I hate myself it's with a lightness it's like I can change this I can go at this I won't make the same mistake before I will look at my past and reassess it and see that I did this - at this one critical crossroad in life I made this mistake I will not make it again and I think that should not be a heaviness it's a kind of a light feeling well you know you say even you you give us as permission because you say that there is nothing natural about power so it would in turn imply you'd almost have to make those mistakes to discover that yourself yes mistakes are completely healthy and completely good and if you're not making mistakes you're never going to grow if you're so caught up in the present moment you have no perspective on life you're always always reacting to what other people give you and I have the metaphor in this book of the gods and Mount Olympus who have perfect vision of the future and everything that happens around them and that mortals have none of this were so trapped in the present moment we have no perspective am I saying the right thing am i doing the right thing I don't know and then in the ancient Greek world there was a character like Odysseus or the great statesman Pericles who was a step between the human and the gods these were people who had a degree what the Greeks called prudence they were able to distance themselves from themselves and look at the future and look what was going around them with a dispassionate eye and that to me is sort of the ultimate that's sort of the ideal that we should be a I think the key word and I have to mention it because I see so many times is that dispassionate eye because when you do look at the past or the future with that emotional eye attached to it that's when you can sometimes get what we'll call depressed literally so if you don't do that am i right you need to distance yourself from yourself you know in a very strange way I mean to go outside of my book there's a very great poet Robinson California poet and his whole school of thought was the objectivism getting outside of yourself looking at nature looking at the world around you and becoming absorbed in this beautiful world around you is actually a lot healthier than being constantly locked in yourself in the moat and your own emotions there's another one and again we haven't even I love this about about this book is I haven't even gotten into law one yet so and I'm by the way I won't go in order and we're never going to cover all 48 I'll let the viewers know that right away sure this line here because and I think you give example an example of it over and over again in the book and that is half your mastery of power comes from what you do not owe them very very important yes what you don't do out of realizing it'll cost you too much and what do I mean by costs I don't mean money I mean time I mean your emotional entanglement and something that's not worth it on and on but most importantly time you realize before you do something it's not worth it I'm not going to get embroiled in this fight that other another person's trying to suck me into I'm not going to get emotional and react to what this person does and the most powerful people in the world are those who know what not to do it's a very powerful tool let's go in to journalize and the only two I will tell the viewers I won't miss because I find this uniquely interesting I don't believe that there is an order of what makes one person more powerful in xlviii in other words it doesn't start with the most important and end with the least important but I do find that usually the first one and the last one are a little different because a lot of work had to go into deciding which one am i putting first and which one am i putting last the rest I think you can just mix them around so I want to hit the number one never outshine the master and what made this an interesting law for me is when you think of power you almost think that the person is the master who has the power right okay so I when you read this though what I in fact I had this discussion with my wife yesterday when I was trying to come to terms with that concept the first thing that popped in my mind was the Bob Dylan song everybody's got to serve somebody right and that's the essence I got out of this on the way to power and by the way it really could even be the transcendent transcendental power even that you are serving it really means definitely am i right it really means do not outshine the master whoever it might be everyone has a master I mean even the George W Bush the president of the most powerful country in the world he serves the American public and if he doesn't do the right things he's going to be voted out of office everybody has a master so and the thing is is that the essence of that law is and the reason I started it off that way is it's the most common mistake that people make in the world it's the most common power mistake I have made this mistake actually on several occasions and everybody I talk to has made the mistake and what it basically boils down to is the following you're in let's say a work situation and you want to please your boss your master whomever that is and you work really hard and you show him or her that you're capable of all of these great things you be right an extra special report blah blah blah and then in the end you find out that you're your boss or whomever is actually a little bit cold to you doesn't isn't actually impressed and what has happened is you've gone too far you've made the boss feel insecure made them feel like you're better than him or her that actually people like you more than they like the master and so you have to be very careful that the first things you should do in such a situation is actually to make your your boss your master whomever feel comfortable that you're not after their position that you recognize that they are above you a lot of these things we're talking about in here seem like well you're discussing something in the 17th century this is we're in a democratic world we don't have masters in such a set and that's I think the problem a lot of people have is we may look so modern in 21st century but certain basic things haven't changed and the person that you are working for is just like a cesare borgia is just like louis xiv they have the same insecurities that have existed for hundreds of years and you have to not make them feel insecure but make them feel good about themselves in fact you say that that's this is the one law that a lot of people have a big problem with you because inadvertently as you said by trying to do the best you can yes for the person you're serving you make them feel uncomfortable that's a very unique twist in in this particular law yes by the way you have I want to tell the viewers too for every law you have a reversal some don't and I want to want to hit on those as as we go in fact the next one I want to hit on has no reversal I like those for the most part I don't know why I was more attracted to the laws that have no reversal now so much depends on reputation guard it with your life and again in fact you even stated there is no possible reversal for that one right well the the gist of that is that we are creatures that judge other people by their appearances so for instance I don't know who Barry Kubrick is inside I don't know what who you are I've just met you I don't know what makes you tick or whatever so I have to judge you by what I see by the way you dress by the people you surround yourself with by just what I the appearances and because I judge by the appearances something like a reputation is a critical component so if for instance before coming on the show I know that Barry Kubrick has this reputation for being absolutely a brilliant interviewer who asks these kinds of questions etc your reputation precedes you and it's kind of this powerful thing so even before I come on the show I'm sort of impressed with you I know who you are and that changes the whole dynamic because that reputation is like your pedestal of power it's what people see when you're walking out in public it's how people judge you and if you don't protect it and if you do something that will make them think oh he's not actually such a such a good interviewer he's not actually such a powerful person it's a devastating thing because once your reputation is ruined it's very hard to build it back up oh there's no doubt and like you said it really does make an introduction for you basically and it is it was funny I when I the person turned me on to this book was a wonderful woman named Sandra nahan and when I got the book I was joking with my wife and I said that he Lou I failed all of these laws of power I doubt I could but it was very funny the one that I starred when that happened and as I said the book has been out for a while was always say less necessary and I know that that was something that I had to take control of because I know I even joke with my own bosses here the joke was always not only do I gild the lily I'll gild the gilded Lily and you have to be very cautious of that well as an interviewer though you have to be able to talk a little bit maybe that's what the reversal on this one will come in of course but it's but still it's not saying more than you have to say to get to where you need to go I could have almost started the book with that law because it's also that's the second biggest mistake that people make I'm going in order here from my own mistakes I mean when we've all had the feeling you go on a job interview and you're nervous and you just talk and talk and talk and in the process of talking you say something that's probably stupid you probably say something that's going to offend the person you don't really know but you just have this feeling I talk too much and so what you have to do is you have to get control of your tongue and you have to learn that in any situation of course when you're in the house you can relax a little bit but in any kind of situation in the in the world you you have to basically be aware of yourself be aware how other people are perceiving you and the person who in let's say in a meeting in an all in a work situation the person who talks too much seems weak seems like they have no control over themselves and the person who talks less has a more kind of powerful appearance or a powerful persona so we said earlier you have to control your emotions well if you can't control your tongue and your propensity to always talk you're just as hopeless as if you can't control your emotions when asking for help appeal to people's self-interest that's the law but what I thought the most interesting line was do not confuse your needs with theirs and again I sense when people are striving for something that has got to be another one of those common mistakes you are thinking about what you want what you desire what you may even know is so right and yet if you confuse that with what the needs of those who you're going to you have a big problem in power well everybody operates by self-interest and I don't mean by that a negative comment I think that that's just the truth and I think if you recognize the truth it's a lot better and so I operate by what's in my own self-interest and everybody else around me does so when you want to get something from someone you need their help you need them we're always in need of help you need to be do a favor for you whatever it is your first step has to be either detach yourself get a become calm don't think of what you need and what you want first think of what is how they're operating what's inside their head it's just in a critical step that permeates everything you do in this game knowing what the other person wants getting inside their skin thinking inside of them and and what will appeal to their self-interest I'm going to those again without reversals so that I can make sure I at least cover those and we'll try to come back to some others re-create yourself right there is again no reversal do not accept the roles that society voice upon you you have the ability to be the master of your own image one of the most empowering laws in the book right it should be basically we talked about that feeling of having no control and how miserable it is relay related to that is the feeling that I'm trapped in this role in life that is not of my own choosing people see me as a writer or a secretary or whatever and it's not what I want to be and that's how everybody judges me and you feel trapped and you have no power or control the opposite of that is this feeling that you can be whatever you want you can recreate yourself you can suddenly have a different persona you can change your personality by the way one of the actual other laws is you can act like the king already so in a sense I found those two working together you can recreate yourself and the other law was be royal already so maybe that's what you need to recreate yourself into completely um you know the power game is all about psychology it's not about money it's not about who you can push around it's all about psychology and it begins in how you think of yourself the one that I thought captured my attention was do not go past the mark you aimed for because in that victory is when you can start to gain problems that you weren't expecting you know I did a lot of research for this book and the theme would repeat itself over and over and over and over again throughout history of the ruler the country the empire that became drunk on its own success and didn't know when to stop it's almost inhuman to know when to stop and the thing is is that the theme I'm talking about is that sometimes success is the worst thing that can happen to you because you don't you suddenly lose a sense of of what it is that actually happened that led to your success sometimes it's luck sometimes it's something that you did but you're not really aware of what you did and you only think of your success and you get drunk on it and you go and you keep doing more and more and more and and you it ends up in a disaster and so there's an expression that the Japanese have it but it's in all cultures the moment you have success or victory that's the time to step back calm down reassess where you are and in fact could solid eight and not go ahead because you're headed towards a disaster otherwise Robert I said that I will make sure I say the first law yes and the last law and I want to end with the last law assume formlessness what was interesting about this law was that as you say accept the fact that nothing is certain and no law is fixed what I liked about this is and by the way formlessness as you say does not mean to be amorphous it doesn't mean that you don't have structure or sense definitely it means that in a sense well you joke about it but you you sort of can't take it too seriously right right is that's in a nutshell I don't know how else to describe it but that's what it was you haven't poked fun of yourself you even sell us not to what is the word too much respect for other people's wisdom will make you depreciate your own that's what this last one's about yes I mean Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of my favorite writers and in his essay on self-reliance he's basically telling that you you have to basically rely on your own wisdom and be alive to your own circumstances and strategizing and doing what's necessary for you and not if you sit there and just read books and listen to what other people tell you you're hopeless because you'll never be able to think on your own and so the formlessness is the fact that you're fluid within life the most powerful people have a fluidity and as they get older they don't get rigid they retain their youthful fluidity and they're able to move with the times change their ideas change and with that it's a psychological game more than anything else and you with that you retain your youthfulness and your ability to play the power game well Robert I'm not throwing this one out I'm going to keep it I thank you so much I think for you wisdom sir and thank you for joining us today now before Robert leaves I would like to leave you with these final words by Robert himself from the 48 laws of power learning to adapt to each new circumstance means seeing events through your own eyes and often as Robert just said ignoring the advice that people constantly peddle your way it means that ultimately you must throw out the laws that others preach and the books they write to tell you what to do I'm Barry Kim read through your own eyes you must see and if it means you must throw out the laws that others preach and the books they write please give them a read between the lines before you do and you'll be amazed at the power you can reach thank you Robert if you would like a videotape of an episode we'd like to become a member of our book club just drop us an email at berry Kubrick at aol.com

Channel: Barry Kibrick

Views: 431,354

Keywords: Robert Greene (Author), The 48 Laws Of Power (Book), power, barry kibrick, Between The Lines (Award-Winning Work), Public Broadcasting Service (TV Network), mastery, full episode, classic tv, Television (Invention)

Id: SJE3w04zdwk

Length: 28min 34sec (1714 seconds)

Published: Sat May 16 2015