The Exchanges

Q a ton of views, likes, shares, and you subscribe. So that I can have him back because I have about 452 other questions for him. So if you have questions for Robert too, put them down below. I promise you next time we'll go even deeper. Without further ado, the one, the only Robert Greene. Do you think best when you write or when you speak or when you read?

A Um, wow. I mean, uh, when I'm reading, I'm, I'm doing a lot of thinking, and I have a very active way of reading. I, uh, I take notes, and I write in the book, in the margins of the book, and if I don't like a book, which happens every now and then, I'm, like, crossing everything out, and I'm writing F you on the margins. I argue, and I talk with the book as I write it, but, um, you know, uh, when I'm talking, um, sometimes, um, I don't feel like I'm bringing my ideas as clearly as I'd like to. So I really think best through the form of writing, but, um, I've always handwritten my first drafts. Um, now I can only handwrite because I can't type. I used to be a very fast typist. Now I can't because of my stroke. So, um, I handwrite, and there's something about, because You know, you're, you're younger. People who are younger, they don't even know what handwriting is anymore. It's like something that, you know, from, from thousands of years ago, as far as they're concerned. But when you handwrite, there's a different feeling than when you type. There's more of a direct connection between the hand and the brain than the computer. So, I feel like when I'm writing, I'm kind of scratching on the page something that's in my ear that I'm hearing. It's, Getting a little bit hard to describe right now, but I'm actually going through that as I'm writing this chapter at home, which I'll be …

AI assessment note: “So I really think best through the form of writing”

Q is this the best you can do? Lorde rewrote and polished and finally resubmitted and came back with the same curt question, and after drafting it one more time, once again getting the same question from Kissinger, the Lorde snapped, damn it, yes, it's the best I can do, to which Kissinger replied, fine, then I guess I'll read it this time. What, what are you imparting with that story?

A Well, um, sometimes the best kind of communication isn't necessarily direct. So if I tell you exactly what I want, Cody, in some report or anything, you might Get a little bit rebellious. You might go, hmm, I thought I'd written it perfectly, you know. If I tell you exactly what to do, you're gonna be just mimicking me or something. But if you signal to somebody else that what they wrote may not be quite right, it makes them think, right? Instead if I just criticize directly and they get all emotional and all upset, and you say something directly about what you didn't like, if you just say, is that the best you can do? It makes the other person go, hmm, no, maybe I can make it better, right? It's a form of communication that's very powerful, and I'm very interested in that because we're people who are too verbal. We tell people exactly what we think, exactly what we want. We give instructions to people, but if you can be clever, and you can kind of indicate, and you can kind of send them in a certain direction, it's a much more powerful form of communication. Kissinger was kind of a master of that.

AI assessment note: “sometimes the best kind of communication isn't necessarily direct”

Q Yeah. This is from your Twitter. What do you think about this line? What do you think is meant by that? To win you have to play the power game better than the villains.

A Well, um, so I'm not sure, because it's, it's not exactly something I've ever written, but what I think the person who wrote that is trying to say, my social media guy, whom I'm gonna have to talk to after this, um, what I think I'm trying to say is, You out there are probably a little bit naive as most of us are like I was, right? And there are other people out there who aren't as ethical as you are. They play the game differently, right? They're not so concerned with the rules. They bend the rules and you obey the rules, right? And they have the advantage over you because they're willing to do more than you're willing to do. You have to learn a little bit about their game. You have to play a little bit about what they're doing. You have to play a little bit of hardball back at them, and you have to do it better, because what a lot, what's wrong with a lot of villains are, is they're actually not as smart as you think. They're operating on emotion. They're pushing people around. They're powerful. They think they're so great. They're egotistical. They're grandiose. They think that they can't do no wrong. You need to be strategic in dealing with people, Who are manipulative. If you can be strategic, then you have the upper hand, right? Because I don't think a lot of times villains aren't as strategic as you think. I think that's what I meant.

AI assessment note: “what I think I'm trying to say is, You out there are probably”

Q What are you obsessing on currently? Like what is in that mind of yours today?

A Well, um, I'm, I'm finishing a chapter. It's a book about the sublime, which is, um, you know, I had a stroke, and I had a, a near-death experience. I came very close to dying. Uh, somebody basically saved my life. My wife did. Um, And I, I maintain that that kind of experience changes you, changes how you look at life. The things that you took for granted, you no longer take for granted. And so when I look at the world, when I'm being alive, just being alive as I am right now, it's actually a very strange feeling to be alive, because I came very close to death. And it made me realize that despite all the horrible things that are going on in the world, it's actually incredibly insane That we humans are at this moment in history that in the course of 30,000 years, we went from being, you know, uh, whatever we were to, to having all this incredible power. We are these insane animals. This consciousness that we have is this unbelievable gift. We have this brains that are by far the most complex organisms in the universe. Scientists, scientists have demonstrated that. But we're not aware of any of these things. We take it all for granted, and it's a book that's trying to open your eyes up to all of the sublime aspects of just being alive, of the history of the cosmos, of ancient history, of what it was like when we were children, of how our brains are formed, about our relationship…

AI assessment note: “I'm finishing a chapter. It's a book about the sublime”

Q For a long time. It's funny because you also have a line that's like, never whine, never complain, never try to justify yourself. And it seems like you live that a bit too. What does that mean? Why do you tell people that never whine, never complain, never justify yourself?

A Because it's so senseless. Nothing, there's nothing to complain about. Everything happens for a purpose. Yeah, in the moment when, when somebody, somebody does something irritating, My first instinct is to complain and even whine a little bit, but then I calm down and I go, it's not important. It doesn't matter. You don't need to complain about this. In fact, there's something good about it. So this morning, to give you an example, I'm meditating, right? I meditate every morning. That helps me a lot. And, um, there's noise going on that's kind of interrupting my thoughts. God, Dammit, I want to yell at that person. And I'm meditating. How can you have a thought like that when you're meditating? And then it makes me go, no, Robert, it's just a noise. Just think of it as birds singing. Calm down. Don't, don't be upset. It's actually training you to not get upset. So the bad things that happen to you are training you to not take them so seriously or to find a way to use them. Nothing is ever really bad. People often ask me in these interviews, If you were 20 years old, and you knew what was gonna happen to your life, would you go back and tell yourself something, and do something differently than the way you did it? You know, or do you have any regrets, Robert? I have no regrets. I wouldn't change anything, because everything happened for a purpose. Everything lined itself up for …

AI assessment note: “Because it's so senseless. Nothing, there's nothing to complain about.”

Q think Do you think that those who are, maybe how they would be labeled today, narcissists, or sociopaths, or dark triad, are they the type of people that understand this undercurrent of humanity better than a normal person? A quote unquote, I don't even know what a normal person is. But do the darker aspects or avatars of human nature, do they understand these laws more than a normal person?

A That, I made that comment earlier, that there, that some of that five percent may be people who are, who are what you're, you're talking about. I don't think all of them are. I don't think everybody who's really good at power and has a good feel for it has these dark qualities. It's a mix of things. But, um, there's a very famous, there's not a famous, there's a man, uh, who's quite well known on the internet about 15 years ago, I don't know where he is now, named Sam Vackman. I don't know if you've heard of him. Sam Vackman, He admitted that he was an incredible narcissist, a very dangerous, dark narcissist who manipulated people terribly, and he came to a point where he saw this about himself, and he realized he can't control it. This is who I am, but I'm going to educate everybody about what narcissism is, and he's very brilliant, and his self-analysis is extremely accurate, but the thing is, he's very rare. So people who are like this, they don't think that they're narcissists. They don't think that they're evil. They don't think that what they're doing is manipulative, or they're even operating by laws. These are just things that come naturally to them. So, you know, that makes it easier for them to, to do the things that they do, right? So, um, You know, and so not all of us, I don't want to imply that in doing this book, you're going to turn into a narcissist. You're goi…

AI assessment note: “They don't think that what they're doing is manipulative, or they're even operating by laws.”