The Philosophy of Life

I've been a student of philosophy for my whole life and some of my favorites perhaps my favorite about is Friedrich mea but I also am a student of schopenhauer of makavelli of Marcus aelius of Mona of various other even 20 Century philosophers and I've talked about them in many many interviews and kind of brought out the aspects of their philosophies that have had the greatest influence on my life and thinking so here is a compilation of the many times that I have discussed these particular philosophers and how they intersect my own work Marcus AR said when two people are fighting in the boxing ring and they're going at each they're clawing and hitting each other the one person who gets hit doesn't go you're a bad person I don't like you why did you hit me you know something is wrong with you no you realize that's just part of of the game well The Game of Life are people are going to hit you they're going to claw you they're going to scratch you they're going to bite you it's just the part of life and instead of taking everything personally you have to see that it's like a gladiator battle and that some people are bad some people are good some people are not are in between but stop taking everything personally and try to learn from it so if you make a mistake what you want to do if you have failure in life something didn't go right you want to have the be the ability to look Inward and say what did I do wrong and you know a lot of people can't don't have that inner strength but if you want to be successful if you want to get ahead in this world if you're tired of not having any kind of movement or advancing in in in your career you have to develop the skill you have to be able to look at yourself as if you were somebody else as from the outside and say Here's how I could improve here's what I did wrong the last time I did it that connects to the thing that you and I I made together which is the am morati coin yes which is the idea the it's also a n phrase of of sort of loving everything that happens to you not resenting it not fighting against it not carrying around a grudge or a burden but sort of embracing it and finding the good in it yeah where does that fit in with our human nature it doesn't fit in because it's not natural to us our natural frame our natural starting position position is when something bad happens why me to feel sort of a grievance to feel that things aren't fair to feel that other people aren't giving you what you want or what you deserve we start from a position of feeling kind of sorry for ourselves right we deserve more than what we're getting and so a lot of what I'm talking about in this book is overcoming some of these natural elements in human nature and turning them around and using them for another purpose another way and and a morati is very powerful in that you train yourself to accept everything that happens it's sort of a banality to say that things happen for a reason but there's some truth to it for n it was this is life life involves pain life involves adversity you're going to die one day and it's not going to be pleasant your friends and family members they're going to die one day and it's not going to be pleasant you're going to have failure in life people are going to hurt you but that is life that's what it is so to resist that to be angry about that means to not love life itself makavelli has that quote so that if you expect everybody to be good in this world you're in you're in a lot of trouble you know what are you going to do when you deal with people who aren't good but yeah you have to be willing to get your hands dirty so let's say a classic example like your you're there's a cause that's very important to you like the climate or you know Justice in America you know racial Justice in America all very important issues that we all most of us believe in you know if you you have to be willing to get down and dirty here because you're playing with politics you're playing with people who are going to resist you're playing with major corporations who are going to bust your balls who are going to be incredibly manipulative and downright evil in co-opting your good idea and and kind of you know neutralizing it so if you're going to be Pol if you want to create something if you want to actually um have results you have to be willing to get a little dirty and you have to get be willing to be strategic you have to understand that the other side might not be playing by the same rules that you're playing with character is is what is the core of a person something they can't control something that comes from deep within and it causes people to have patterns of behavior and you want want to find people who have a strong character to associate with as opposed to a weak character and what a strong character is is people who who are adaptable who are fluid who can admit that they are wrong who can learn from their experience who can take criticism who can work with other people so one of the parts of this book is I want you to focus not on people's Charming exterior on their funny words on their wit on their Charisma and instead focus on that deep inner quality that core that character because that's who they really are your character is creating what happens to you in life there's the famous quote of the ancient Greek philosopher heraclitus character is fate for n it was this is life life involves pain life involves adversity you're going to die one day and it's not going to be pleasant your friends and family members they're going to die one day and it's not going to be pleasant you're going to have failure in life people are going to hurt you but that is life that's what it is so to resist that to be angry about that means to not love life itself there's a a quote um this French philosopher Baron de Mones a political philosopher from the 18th century that I kind of like and it goes as follows we have three educations in our life the first is from our parents the second is from our school Masters and the third is from the world and the third education contradicts all that we learn from the first two and basically what it means is you go and you learn all of these skills and all these very important things in University but essentially the years that follow what I'm going to call your apprenticeship requires a different way of thinking the the rules are completely different it's not the same in fact many of the things that you learn and many of the habits that you learn early in your life are actually the wrong kinds of things that you that are going to help you that you need in this path towards Mastery that I'm drawing schopenhauer has this quote that if you're walking down the street and you hit your foot against a rock you don't go get angry at the Rock people are rocks in your way sometimes right and I don't mean that to to depersonalize them I mean in the sense that they are who they are they have their own nature and that nature isn't yours and it's going to clash with you sometimes and that is just what it means to be a human being an adult in in the world today in any world so are you going to be like complaining and blaming the fact that it is a boxing ring are you going to complain that people have a nature where they have an ego where they're full of Envy where they're passive aggressive and then in the in the sour in the in the process of complaining you're putting yourself at a continual disadvantage because you're draining yourself with all these useless emotions and you're not playing proper defense against them because you're all consumed with kind of personalizing the situation or are you going to have some distance and be like a boxer in a ring and be smart and intelligent about it you know and I just think it's a brilliant metaphor for life it's a brilliant metaphor for being in control and for accepting the fact that some people play a little bit dirty some people are going to hit you it's going to hurt but you don't whine and complain you just figure out how are you going to defend yourself better well it's actually a phrase from n he he says we feel Shan Freud really we should feel mitf Freud means Joy Shan Freud means pain in Joy getting joy in other people's pain m fra means Joy with mid meaning with and it means when other people have something good that happens to them you feel their Joy so it's very unnatural if somebody comes to you with good news your immediate reaction is oh it's I'm a little bit uncomfortable why not me yeah why you or maybe you're just lucky or you know you don't really deserve that you know you may not be honest with yourself but that often happens can you train yourself to actually feel the joy that other people feel when something good happens to them it kind of opens up your your whole mind your whole Spirit Well you know who one of the great stoics of the 20th century was no Alfred Hitchcock he had a plan for everything so directing a film if if you've known other people who've done it is an extremely stressful job it's like directing an army into a campaign because problems are arising that you cannot anticipate there's all this pressure there's all this money you've got insane egos of actors producers Etc and so it's like it's a constant Adrenaline Rush going through you can't control your emotions so Hitchcock people would look at him on the set and he'd be falling asleep in the director's chair he'd look like Buddha his eyes were closed why because he prepared for everything he anticipated everything that was going to happen right and so by the time the film came he was completely bored because he knew he he was able to control every as aspect of the production I talk in this book a lot about toxic people and I have a quote in there from schopenhauer saying that we think that evil people walk around with horns on their head or that fools have cap and bells but people who are toxic are Masters at disguising it they've learned since they were three years old to present a normal saintly front to the world envious people and there are envious people out there don't go announcing themselves that they're envious they become your friend in order to wound you they they they ingratiate themselves out of a secret desire to find a way to punish you

Channel: Robert Greene

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Keywords: robert greene, robert greene books, robert greene 48 laws of power, robert greene laws of human nature, robert greene mastery, robert greene interview, philosopher, philosophy, youtube, friedrich nietzsche, friedrich nietzsche philosophy, niccolo machiavelli philosophy, niccolo machiavelli, marcus aurelius, stoicism, the daily stoic, stoic, stoic philosophy, montaigne, amor fati, heraclitus, leonardo da vinci, alfred hitchcock, knowledge, learning, learn, wisdom, strategy, war

Id: L1_wcaOdxoo

Length: 11min 13sec (673 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 28 2023