If Books Could Kill - The 48 Laws of Power

00:00:00.000 uh so i'm gonna send you the sirens in park slope this is gonna be a fucking problem all episode 0.99

00:00:06.600 isn't it welcome to new york the big apple keep in something about you being in new york for this 0.98

00:00:11.880 episode that way we get weirdos in our mentions being like but you're still doing it on zoom

00:00:16.000 this is what is so fucking fascinating to me is like i i started god there's like a starter's 0.71

00:00:21.440 pistol going on outside oh so no that that is a um there's construction near you i'm i'm like 0.77

00:00:26.880 two blocks from a apartment building going up that is some sort of construction site

00:00:32.520 flintstones horn within limits of course wait sorry there's a siren outside there's sirens a

00:00:38.520 lot in new york has anyone talked about this no one has no there's noises in new york this is why

00:00:42.260 every brooklyn based podcast just has sirens and sometimes you're like oh they they should have 0.97

00:00:47.380 waited for the fire truck to pass no you can't there's no way to do it and so there's a fucking 0.98

00:00:53.780 helicopter. I love Micah Hobbs experiencing New York in real time. I can't. I'm never coming back. 0.98

00:01:14.020 So I have noticed that most of our episodes only get good when we start talking about the book.

00:01:18.360 So I'm going to dive pretty quickly into this book. Peter, do you know anything about the 48

00:01:23.380 laws of power? I've heard of the book, but I don't really know anything about it. My

00:01:26.980 high level memory of this is that this is like lessons that this author learned from like

00:01:34.420 observing powerful people about how to acquire power or something like that. I think you're

00:01:38.600 basing that on the title. I think you know the title and you're extrapolating. That is possible.

00:01:42.700 You're like, I think there's 48. How many are there? Early in this podcast, I used to

00:01:46.960 at least look up the wikipedia of the books you were doing and then i was like no you have to be

00:01:52.680 fresh this is my whole thing and now you do nothing and now i do nothing and now i do nothing

00:01:58.020 and this is what you get so the 48 laws of power is by a guy named robert green who we will talk

00:02:03.040 about later it is published in 1998 as usual it's basically impossible to get decent numbers on how

00:02:09.100 many copies this book actually sold but the number you usually hear is between one and two million

00:02:14.140 copies. It seems to have spread mostly through word of mouth among like CEO types, but then it

00:02:22.180 made its way to hip hop. So there are lyrics in Jay-Z and Kanye West songs referring specifically

00:02:30.260 to this book. Oh, hell yeah. And you are going to wrap them for us right now. Yeah, that's the rest

00:02:34.840 of the episode. It's just a series of couplets. It also says on the Wikipedia entry that Drake

00:02:39.180 is developing a series called the 48 Laws of Power, but it also says that he's developing

00:02:44.240 it for Quibi. So I don't know if that Wikipedia just hasn't been updated in a while. And then

00:02:49.480 according to the author, it's now been read by Fidel Castro, among other like heads of state.

00:02:56.280 And this book doesn't really show up on the sort of best business books ever, like most

00:03:02.180 influential self-help books. It doesn't really show up on those lists, but it does show up on

00:03:06.080 a lot of lists about the best self-help advice for men oh okay so this really bounces around

00:03:13.340 the sort of polite version of the men's rights activist world this this is seen as a kind of

00:03:20.660 bible for like how to be a man okay in the world that's an interesting framing because now i'm

00:03:26.180 picturing like 70 year old fidel castro being like how do i be a man in this world wearing a

00:03:31.940 Fedora, doing magic tricks at the other end of the bar in LA. Okay, so this is the first paragraph

00:03:37.360 of the book. The feeling of having no power over people and events is generally unbearable to us.

00:03:43.760 When we feel helpless, we feel miserable. No one wants less power. Everyone wants more.

00:03:50.100 In the world today, however, it is dangerous to seem too power hungry, to be overt with your

00:03:56.140 power moves. We have to seem fair and decent, so we need to be subtle, congenial yet cunning,

00:04:03.380 democratic yet devious. It's a real problem. Yeah. We all want power, but we can't just be

00:04:08.440 like telling people, hello, I would like more power. I immediately don't relate, I have to say.

00:04:12.580 Yeah, I struggled. There are many situations where I want less power. I also am a little

00:04:16.780 concerned that he seems to be portraying power as he defines it as somehow conflicting with fairness

00:04:24.720 and decency he says we have to seem fair and decent right off the bat he's like you know how 0.99

00:04:30.760 we're all big pieces of shit yeah i think one of the tensions that showed up for me literally like 0.98

00:04:35.640 within words of starting this book was like where in modern life are people engaged in power 1.00

00:04:42.600 struggles like this right yes there's office politics like you know we we all kind of exist

00:04:47.320 within hierarchies that like on some level you have to do a little bit of like strategery yeah

00:04:51.440 You know, there's various other things of like maybe you want to be the president of the PTA or like you want to coach your kid's little league team and somebody else wants to as well.

00:04:59.520 And you got to, you know, kind of lobby a little bit.

00:05:02.100 But like he makes explicit reference throughout the book and especially in the intro to like the French court, how there were all these people like around the king. 0.97

00:05:11.140 And you had to suck up to the king, but you couldn't like make it obvious that you were sucking up.

00:05:16.180 And you had to beat the other like courtiers and kind of scheme and backstab and do all this kind of stuff like this, this sort of Game of Thrones conception of, you know, human societies. 0.94

00:05:26.080 And I just don't see it.

00:05:27.600 This was immediately conjuring up Game of Thrones to me.

00:05:30.160 So I'm glad you said it because there's something weird about a framing where our everyday lives are a struggle for power.

00:05:36.760 If you read that paragraph and it resonates with you, you're probably conceptualizing your life as like this elaborate realpolitik.

00:05:44.940 Yeah. And you're actually living out a fantasy just by reading this.

00:05:49.480 Right. This this reminds me of a lot of like the watch marketing and things that are pitched at men.

00:05:54.980 OK, so we're going straight into personal attacks.

00:05:59.480 Chosen deliberately, Peter. It's like, you know, you're hiking mountains and you're out in the elements and you're like on a sailboat in the middle of the night trying to survive and whatever.

00:06:07.120 And you need this watch because you're such an extreme person.

00:06:09.600 Right. Maybe I should have said Patagonia or something. But it's like it's selling you this fantasy of your life is like much more exciting than it is. Right. Most of the people who drive SUVs are not like busting sand dunes in the middle of nowhere and going over streams.

00:06:23.820 Man, you're you keep preempting me. I was like, I mean, as soon as you were talking about this, I was thinking about those commercials of SUVs out in the desert. Yeah. An authentic SUV commercial is like you pulling into a Texaco.

00:06:37.180 This book could have been called Think Like a Straight Man, and now I do. That's what you're

00:06:41.760 picking up on. When you said Think Like a Straight Man, now I have a, made me think of

00:06:45.280 that Steve Harvey book, and now I have like, act like a gay boy, think like a straight man.

00:06:51.800 That's going to be the title of our book when we finally do one, Peter,

00:06:54.480 because our powers combined. Okay, so here is the end of the intro. He is laying out what the book

00:07:00.060 offers and kind of how it is going to work, what this book is going to contain.

00:07:03.760 Consider the 48 Laws of Power a kind of handbook on the arts of indirection.

00:07:09.780 The laws are based on the writings of men and women who have studied and mastered the game of power.

00:07:14.940 These writings span a period of more than 3,000 years and were created in civilizations as disparate as ancient China and Renaissance Italy.

00:07:24.260 Yet they share common threads and themes, together hinting at an essence of power that has yet to be fully articulated.

00:07:32.180 3,000 years.

00:07:32.820 The 48 laws of power are the distillation of this accumulated wisdom gathered from the writings of the most illustrious strategists, statesmen, courtiers, seducers, and con artists in history.

00:07:47.340 Who would you listen to if you were trying to figure out how to coach the Little League team?

00:07:51.320 Oh, my God. The con artist thing.

00:07:53.120 I know.

00:07:53.940 Right away, he's like, I've learned these things from con artists, and now I'm teaching them to you.

00:07:58.580 I should also mention, this is a spoiler, but when he says statesman, he exclusively

00:08:03.520 means dictators.

00:08:04.680 He never refers to like Winston Churchill or anybody in this.

00:08:08.340 It's like Mao, like over and over again. 0.99

00:08:11.620 And like Julius Caesar and shit. 0.99

00:08:13.520 Right. 0.99

00:08:13.700 We're not talking about the Secretary of the Treasury here.

00:08:15.700 No, exactly.

00:08:16.880 But then I think this is an important thing to know about this book is that this book,

00:08:20.660 the copy that I have is 478 pages long.

00:08:24.340 Oh my God.

00:08:25.000 It is the opposite of filler.

00:08:26.980 I've never seen this.

00:08:27.820 The actual chapters are like very dense, like historical anecdotes.

00:08:31.620 Like that's most of the book is these like long historical anecdotes.

00:08:34.820 But then also the margins are also filled with like Swahili fable, quotes from philosophers 0.98

00:08:42.100 and shit. 0.97

00:08:42.600 So it's just like this black brick of words shining in your face for like a month on end. 1.00

00:08:49.040 Like this was the experience of reading the book for me.

00:08:50.820 God, that is hellish.

00:08:51.740 I mean, I will say the one thing that's great about the books that we do is that they have

00:08:56.360 so much filler that you can sort of mentally skip over i know and how many times have we said this

00:09:01.960 that like these books so often present themselves as the sort of like inheritors of this ancient

00:09:09.740 wisdom yeah yeah how alexander the great's conquest can teach you how to get that promotion

00:09:15.860 instead of josh i before we get into like the sort of patterns that the book is doing i i want to talk

00:09:22.120 about how this book works. So one thing that I will say for him is that he's a very structured

00:09:28.340 thinker. These aren't just like a series of kind of random rants. Every law is broken up into like

00:09:35.220 very clear sections. For example, law one is never outshine the master. And after each law,

00:09:44.420 he gives a sort of basic premise of this law. So he calls it the judgment, right? And so he says,

00:09:49.980 always make those above you feel comfortably superior in your desire to please and impress

00:09:55.500 them. Do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite.

00:09:59.880 Inspire fear and insecurity. Make your masters look more brilliant than they are and you will

00:10:04.520 attain the heights of power. So that's what he's like about to lay out, right? And then he has

00:10:09.960 these historical sections, which he calls observance of the law or transgression of the

00:10:16.000 law. So for this one, he uses Galileo, who didn't quite invent, but like massively modified and

00:10:23.660 improved the telescope. And when he looks up at the sky, he finds four moons of Jupiter. And no

00:10:32.620 one had ever seen these before. And it was like a whole big fucking deal because people thought 0.89

00:10:35.780 that everything rotated around the earth. But here are these things rotating around Jupiter. 0.93

00:10:38.400 It's like a massive deal. And his patrons are the Medici.

00:10:43.980 I didn't even know Patreon was around back then.

00:10:47.460 They're at the $10 tier, so they get the bonus moons.

00:10:50.780 And so he decides to name the four moons after his like four Medici backers.

00:10:59.060 He kind of goes out of his way to basically imply that like the very heavens are like recognizing the brilliance of the Medici.

00:11:07.080 It's like, well, there's four of you and there's four of them.

00:11:09.460 And it's a much longer anecdote.

00:11:11.720 note. So you've done this show before, Peter, you know, you know how these books work. I've just

00:11:17.160 told you a historical example. What am I going to tell you now, Peter? Presumably that some of the

00:11:22.640 facts contained within that example are incorrect in important ways. That's, that's what I'm

00:11:29.400 anticipating. Perhaps I'm going to say the funniest outcome is that that's not who the moons are

00:11:34.460 named after. I feel like you're, there's a clever Hans thing going on, right? I feel like you're

00:11:38.980 picking up on the fact that the by far the biggest twist of the episode is that this story about

00:11:46.180 galileo is like roughly true and basically all of the anecdotes in this book are true like i fact

00:11:53.200 checked them i was like okay here's the part where i go googling around about galileo and

00:11:56.760 i find out there's bullshit no they're real i mean as a researcher as a researcher for this

00:12:01.040 podcast that is the worst yeah i know like now what do i do you're like one of these has to be 0.99

00:12:04.720 fucking made up that this is my whole career you're destroying now we just have to talk about 0.91

00:12:08.960 the content of the book i just learn things about historical figures jesus christ i love that this 0.99

00:12:14.940 is the only author we've done so far that has integrity yeah clearly a sociopath but he has

00:12:19.920 integrity after all of the historical examples he then gets to something called the keys to power

00:12:24.740 where he lays out like the little lesson like what are the themes we're pulling out of this

00:12:28.180 and i'm not going to read it but in this one it's basically like galileo was good at sucking up to

00:12:32.540 people who are essentially his bosses and so like be good at sucking up to your bosses yeah which 0.93

00:12:36.880 ultimately is like fairly good advice i think if you're gonna do like office politics and shit 0.85

00:12:41.200 like figuring out okay what does my boss want right what what does he want from his boss and

00:12:45.640 like how can i help give that to him it's like that's kind of reasonable no it's totally reasonable

00:12:49.260 it it's just that the like the framing of it is like here's what galileo did yeah what he's really

00:12:56.440 talking about is like the head of regional sales get him coffee sometimes or whatever like that

00:13:01.880 That's how it translates to like a normal human being's life.

00:13:04.620 So then he also does a weird thing.

00:13:06.180 So at the end of every chapter, after he's laid out the lesson, he then has a section

00:13:09.920 called reversal, where it's like, well, sometimes this law doesn't apply.

00:13:13.600 So in this one, he says, you can't worry about upsetting every person you come across, but

00:13:18.120 you must be selectively cruel.

00:13:20.380 If your superior is a falling star, there is nothing to fear from outshining them.

00:13:24.500 Do not be merciful.

00:13:25.640 Your master has no such scruples in his own cold-blooded climb to the top.

00:13:29.440 Okay. So, I mean, I guess you could say that there's like a kernel of decent advice in here,

00:13:33.340 right? If your boss is unfavored within the organization that you work for, like,

00:13:37.380 yeah, maybe don't be like, oh, I'm Jeff's guy. Like when you think of Jeff, think of me.

00:13:40.900 It seems so far like you could rewrite this book with all of the same lessons,

00:13:45.940 tone down like the language and framing, and it would just be called like,

00:13:50.800 how to get a 15% raise at your job. But then also, I mean, one of our kind of central critiques of

00:13:56.920 these self-help books is that they give these overall rules of like you should do this but

00:14:02.420 then obviously there's there's numerous situations where they don't apply right you can't actually

00:14:06.740 give people meaningful advice unless you know the specifics of their situation should i break up with

00:14:10.900 my boyfriend sometimes you should sometimes you shouldn't kind of depends on what your boyfriend

00:14:14.340 is like there's no there's no like generalized advice about this kind of stuff but it's so

00:14:20.700 amazing to me that he just seems to realize that right he's like always suck up to your boss but

00:14:25.400 sometimes you shouldn't suck up to your boss yeah i'm still kind of impressed though that he's

00:14:29.400 so rigorous like all all the anecdotes appear to be like more or less correct yeah he's hedging

00:14:36.180 so that he doesn't get like too aggressive in his prescriptions yeah i can't wait for this to get

00:14:41.560 weirdly sexist or whatever's about to happen oh peter i set you up so perfectly i was like i'm

00:14:45.800 gonna make peter think that this is chill we're gonna cover the next 46 laws of power in parts

00:14:51.480 two through 24, the next two years of your books could kill. 0.91

00:14:57.580 So we're not obviously going to read all of the fucking 48 laws to like this extent. I just wanted 0.97

00:15:03.600 to get like the structure of the book down. From now on, what we're just going to talk about is

00:15:07.400 like the patterns of the book. Like all of these books, it's unbelievably repetitive. So at a

00:15:12.860 certain point, you're just like, ah, okay, that goes in this bucket. Like I was just basically

00:15:15.940 dewey decimaling the rest of the book. Shocking that he did not identify 48 distinct non-overlapping

00:15:21.700 laws of power. They're either repetitive or contradictory. The first pattern that we are

00:15:28.320 going to dive into is utterly sociopathic advice backed by irrelevant anecdotes. Hell yeah. So I'm

00:15:35.780 going to send you the first couple paragraphs of law two, never put too much trust in friends,

00:15:43.020 learn how to use enemies.

00:15:45.540 You often do not know your friends as well as you imagine.

00:15:48.800 Friends often agree on things in order to avoid an argument.

00:15:53.040 They cover up their unpleasant qualities so as not to offend each other.

00:15:57.520 They laugh extra hard at each other's jokes.

00:16:00.020 Don't trust it.

00:16:00.600 Since honesty rarely strengthens friendship, you may never know how a friend truly feels.

00:16:06.020 No honesty.

00:16:06.820 He's never had a friend, right?

00:16:08.340 This man lives in John Gray's cave with him.

00:16:12.780 just never come out. I'm very upset by this. Like, sir, you need therapy so bad, dude.

00:16:18.700 We're already at you need therapy. Well, not to, Peter. So fast.

00:16:22.440 Not to. Oh, God. Be wary of friends, but hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a

00:16:30.240 friend because he has more to prove. In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies.

00:16:36.700 If you have no enemies, find a way to make them. Go make enemies, Peter. You can just write that

00:16:41.920 first paragraph about your friends and then show them that then they'll be your enemies

00:16:45.260 i just i'm sorry i don't mean to circle back to the friend stuff but i'm just so upset that he

00:16:50.400 doesn't seem to understand that these are all like nice elements of a friendship people who

00:16:54.940 know you people who like you right friends often agree on things in order to avoid an argument

00:16:59.140 first of all i don't even know that that's true but like your friends being like well i don't

00:17:04.980 really agree with what michael just said but like i know michael we don't need to fight about this

00:17:10.640 that's like a normal and good quality of a friendship and also to say that honesty

00:17:16.580 rarely strengthens friendship don't tell people stuff it's it's not just like oh

00:17:21.400 does this guy have friends it's also like has he like read a book where there are friends

00:17:26.360 just as a sociological phenomenon right has he googled have you like seen a movie where two

00:17:32.840 people have a have a friendship if you watch goodwill hunting there's actually a speech that

00:17:37.560 Ben Affleck gives. What's funny about this chapter is that like the actual advice that he gives is

00:17:44.220 just like, if you need to do business stuff, don't hire your friends. That's, that's good advice,

00:17:48.580 but not because your friends are like evil and scheming. I know, but it's like, he expresses it

00:17:53.620 in like the most sociopathic way possible. But what we're diving into, Peter, you're, you're,

00:17:59.220 you're seeing this, like this kind of general rule of like, friends are bad, right? And you're like,

00:18:03.400 okay, what example is he going to give, right? 0.98

00:18:05.980 Because every law has these fucking anecdotes in it, right? 0.98

00:18:08.240 And they have these like fables and shit on like the margins. 0.99

00:18:11.100 Is it just going to be like Caesar? 0.86

00:18:12.540 No, this is, so he illustrates this with a fable.

00:18:15.340 Okay.

00:18:15.560 It's a little bit long, but to me, it's important to like really revel in this story and like

00:18:19.960 get the full picture.

00:18:21.100 Actually, why don't I send it to you?

00:18:22.620 So this is like, he says like African proverb or something.

00:18:25.680 I don't know where he's pulling this from.

00:18:26.960 Africa.

00:18:28.180 A snake chased by hunters asked a farmer to save its life.

00:18:32.320 To hide it from its pursuers, the farmer squatted and let the snake crawl into his belly.

00:18:37.120 But when the danger had passed and the farmer asked the snake to come out, the snake refused.

00:18:42.140 It was warm and safe inside.

00:18:44.900 On his way home, the man saw a heron and whispered what had happened.

00:18:48.900 The heron told him to squat and strain to eject the snake.

00:18:52.260 When the snake stuck its head out, the heron caught it, pulled it out, and killed it.

00:18:56.140 The farmer was worried that the snake's poison might still be inside him,

00:18:59.760 and the heron told him that the cure for snake poison was to cook and eat six white fowl.

00:19:05.680 You're a white fowl, said the farmer.

00:19:07.420 He grabbed the heron, put it in a bag, and carried it home, 0.98

00:19:10.640 where he hung it up while he told his wife what had happened.

00:19:14.180 I'm surprised at you, said the wife.

00:19:16.060 The bird does you a kindness, rids you of the evil in your belly,

00:19:19.080 saves your life, yet you catch it and talk of killing it.

00:19:22.380 She immediately released the heron, and it flew away.

00:19:24.880 But on its way, it gouged out her eyes.

00:19:27.600 What is the lesson here?

00:19:29.040 what i don't even understand the ostensible theoretical reason for the bird gouging out

00:19:35.900 the wife's eyes exactly she's the good one in the story it's literally like if you try to be nice

00:19:41.080 it will backfire because the person you were nice to will take advantage of you possibly 0.99

00:19:47.040 attack and try to kill you what the fuck is this also what was this snake's plan for the next 0.99

00:19:52.480 several days we're then we're gonna do one more of these peter okay in law three conceal your 1.00

00:19:58.740 intentions, he says, most people are open books. They say what they feel, blurt out their opinions

00:20:04.400 at every opportunity, and constantly reveal their plans and intentions. Many believe that by being

00:20:09.240 honest and open, they are winning people's hearts and showing their good nature. They are greatly

00:20:13.740 deluded. Honesty is actually a blunt instrument, which bloodies more than it cuts. Your honesty

00:20:19.000 is likely to offend people. It is much more prudent to tailor your words, telling people what they

00:20:23.720 want to hear rather than the coarse and ugly truth of what you feel or think. During the War of the

00:20:28.880 Spanish Succession in 1711, the Duke of Marlborough, head of the English army, wanted to destroy a key

00:20:34.720 French fort because it protected a vital thoroughfare. Yet he knew that if he destroyed it, the French

00:20:39.760 would realize what he wanted. Instead, he merely captured the fort and garrisoned it with some of 0.83

00:20:44.980 his troops, making it appear as if he wanted it for some purpose of his own. The French attacked

00:20:49.860 the fort and the duke let them recapture it once they had it back though they destroyed it figuring

00:20:54.960 that the duke had wanted it for some important reason now that the fort was gone the road was 0.97

00:20:59.420 unprotected and marlborough could easily march into france what the fuck is that's not like it 0.89

00:21:04.920 conceal your intentions is really really good advice if you are in the midst of medieval warfare 0.96

00:21:13.340 the ability of that to translate to my everyday life where most of my interactions are with 1.00

00:21:19.460 the kebab guy i just don't see it like what what does this even get me like in the workplace

00:21:25.800 context this is what is so fascinating to me is like after a while the anecdotes get very repetitive

00:21:31.780 it's like ancient china the roman empire ancient greece he has a bunch of stories of nikola tesla

00:21:39.460 like a ton of stories about nikola tesla he has a bunch of like uh louis the 14th like french court

00:21:46.340 pre-revolution france things sure he does not have i'm not exaggerating a single anecdote in

00:21:52.840 this entire book from an office he'll give you this like little aphorism of like conceal your

00:21:58.160 intentions or something and then the next paragraph will be like in 252 the emperor

00:22:03.780 so-and-so of china wanted to conquer the general something something and you're like 0.98

00:22:08.100 why am i hearing this i'm just picturing jay-z reading this shit 0.92

00:22:12.740 that's why he has so many lyrics about the duke of marlboro a huge percentage of this book 0.98

00:22:22.460 is basically just like unbelievably sociopathic advice right law seven let others do the work

00:22:28.960 for you but always take the credit no doubt law 12 use selective honesty and generosity

00:22:34.660 to disarm your victim he uses the word victim throughout which i think is weird

00:22:39.200 in that law victim is like like your friend right or like the my co-worker who didn't get the

00:22:47.900 promotion and i did right in law 14 pose as a friend work as a spy he has this whole thing

00:22:54.840 about like crush your enemies completely and again you're just like robert i work at quiznos

00:22:59.540 i don't have like enemies i'm trying to think of where this would apply the most

00:23:03.100 and maybe it's like if you're like a cabinet member or something he actually uses a ton of

00:23:08.740 examples from henry kissinger yeah and like yeah if you're the secretary of state and you're dealing

00:23:13.080 with like weird conniving other heads of state and like you kind of are in some way engaged

00:23:18.000 in some of these like power battles right then like yeah some of the stuff is useful conceal

00:23:22.720 your intentions right like you you've sort of like literally dedicated your life to the pursuit

00:23:28.540 of power right you're not coming into contact day to day with people who you're just trying to like

00:23:34.400 build fulfilling relationships with right if you're living henry kissinger's life you are a 0.60

00:23:40.220 sociopath and you have chosen the life of a sociopath you know so i before we get to the

00:23:45.800 other categories of information this book contains i just want to talk a little bit about like the

00:23:49.560 specific kind of sociopathy that he's promoting here so in the intro he says genuinely innocent

00:23:58.040 people may still be playing for power and are often horribly effective at the game since they

00:24:03.200 are not hindered by reflection. Once again, those who make a show or display of innocence are the

00:24:08.660 least innocent of all. You can recognize these supposed non-players by the way they flaunt

00:24:13.540 their moral qualities, their piety, their exquisite sense of justice. But since all of us hunger for

00:24:18.940 power, and almost all of our actions are aimed at acquiring it, the non-players are merely throwing

00:24:24.180 dust in our eyes, distracting us from their power plays with their air of moral superiority.

00:24:29.900 Oh, this is this is just what Republicans believe. You see it all the time in the language they use when they talk about virtue signaling, for example, which, you know, I think you can say is a real thing.

00:24:44.500 But they are obsessed with the idea that progressives who talk about morality and, you know, doing the right thing, et cetera, are faking it.

00:24:54.280 And in fact, they have these devious plans.

00:24:57.140 Right.

00:24:57.300 And that's because they accept this framing of the world where everyone is scheming out

00:25:03.700 for power, out for themselves.

00:25:05.840 You read a paragraph like this and the conclusion might as well be like, and this is why we

00:25:09.660 need more police on the street.

00:25:11.620 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:25:12.980 It's like either play the Game of Thrones or get Littlefinger blasted.

00:25:17.380 This is what he's laying out.

00:25:18.660 I like how you did your own spin on an already perfectly sufficient line from Game of Thrones.

00:25:23.360 when you play the game of thrones you live or you die okay you could have just said that

00:25:28.000 but no you said finger blasted on blue sky the other day and i was like i don't

00:25:33.120 know when i have heard that term other than like eighth grade and like right now

00:25:37.320 this is what i get for doing a podcast with a straight man it is because the last time the

00:25:44.600 last time i heard it was like a month ago okay me and the boys talking

00:25:48.700 i did actually look this up because i i was silly i i was really struck by this too of like this is

00:25:57.460 a worldview that i do not recognize at all everything is this battle for power and even

00:26:03.580 people who are acting kind right evidence that they're trying to manipulate me right i started

00:26:07.900 looking around and there is an actual concept in psychology called zero sum ideology and this is

00:26:14.780 basically the idea that every single interaction between two people has to have a winner and a

00:26:20.560 loser. Okay. Which is actually relatively widespread in the population. You can read

00:26:24.500 people these scenarios of like Dave put his car on Craigslist and then like Jessica bought the car

00:26:31.040 and then you ask me like okay who won the interaction? I'd be like oh Dave won the

00:26:34.500 interaction. There's no reason to think of this as like one person won and the other person got

00:26:39.680 cucked in that exchange. It's just like two people engaging in a mutually beneficial activity.

00:26:44.780 But there's obviously a spectrum.

00:26:47.500 And so on the sort of extreme cuck end where I am of this, there are people who have what's called zero-sum aversion where people will actively avoid situations that are just objectively zero-sum, right?

00:26:59.480 If I win a tennis game, you lose a tennis game.

00:27:01.940 And so people like me who are super conflict-averse just like don't really like playing tennis or like doing those kinds of competitive activities with friends.

00:27:08.480 But then on the other end of the spectrum, there's people who have what's called social dominance orientation.

00:27:14.180 that physically like cannot see situations as win-win yeah you can explain to them like in

00:27:21.460 very clear terms like both people benefited from this interaction and they'll be like no he won

00:27:27.400 so it's like this idea that like you can't look for win-win scenarios because you don't think

00:27:34.080 that they exist well you know a little peek behind the curtain for listeners but you were

00:27:38.900 recently at my wedding. And I just want to ask you, who do you think won?

00:27:46.320 The world, because there's one fewer single straight man in the world walking around.

00:27:51.160 Everybody won.

00:27:52.340 No, I look, I, I told my wife right afterwards, I was like, I think I won this one.

00:27:58.240 This entire episode is a subtweet of you here. This is an intervention. This is why I do any

00:28:02.600 of the books.

00:28:03.000 I think that everyone knows people like this to some degree or like they have some version of this, right?

00:28:09.880 Yeah.

00:28:10.100 I don't mind competitive stuff with my friends, but there are people who in the workplace, in personal relationships, etc., just cannot tolerate the idea of someone else doing well.

00:28:21.280 And just to give an example of where this stuff might lead, I think that a lot of these mindsets sort of feed into things like incel culture, where these guys create an adversarial relationship with women in their minds, right?

00:28:37.200 They can't help but view women as their enemies, even though they are fundamentally trying to connect with them.

00:28:44.140 This is actually kind of where I was going with this, because they've measured this in various countries and across time periods, etc.

00:28:50.460 And typically what you find in society is that zero-sum thinking is more common among majority groups. 0.67

00:28:57.940 So like white people, men, depending on the country, Christians are more likely to engage in zero-sum thinking. 0.58

00:29:03.120 Basically, this is one of the major things that prevents policies that would increase equality because people like physically cannot process the idea of more equality as not taking something away from them. 0.81

00:29:18.420 So there's actual studies on this where they give people like scenarios.

00:29:21.240 They're like, okay, Latinos are less likely to get home loans than white people.

00:29:24.760 So like the mayor is going to pass a policy that like promotes home loans for Latinos.

00:29:29.860 This will not affect white people.

00:29:32.380 And then like the survey question is like, will this affect white people?

00:29:35.720 And survey respondents are like, oh yeah.

00:29:37.920 Big time.

00:29:38.940 Like even like in black and white, you're like, this will like, this is a fake scenario.

00:29:43.400 I have defined that this will not affect the in-group. 0.98

00:29:46.900 and be like, oh yeah, I'm going to get fucked by this. So much kind of political debate takes place 0.95

00:29:50.780 on the sort of implementation of policies or these specifics. But it's like when your

00:29:54.740 understanding of society at this most basic level is just that

00:29:58.760 no one can get anything without me losing something.

00:30:03.060 It's very difficult to argue with somebody like that because it's like such a base belief

00:30:06.820 and something that I think people are relatively reluctant to like articulate or even kind of

00:30:10.940 know that that's their belief. Right. I don't think that there are a lot of people that would

00:30:15.260 frame their politics as being driven by that it's just something that is sort of you know behind

00:30:21.700 the scenes in their brain which is why i always sort of circle back to a lot of conservative

00:30:26.520 thinking being like brain chemistry as much as it is like a coherent ideology and this is part of

00:30:35.600 that you know they they won't let you say it on tv but what republicans have is a case of the bad 0.94

00:30:42.600 brain their brain their brains work no good and the pc police won't let me say it on the radio

00:30:52.120 but that's true but your podcast co-host will this is the importance of independent media you

00:30:56.400 you can't hear this anywhere else so we're now going to go back into the book so we've talked

00:31:00.420 about how most of it is sociopathic advice and these weird irrelevant anecdotes the other main

00:31:06.900 pattern. Like we're now down to like the, the, the remaining like 25% of the book. Most of it

00:31:13.100 is just sociopathy and weird anecdotes. The rest of it is just like straight up bad advice. So

00:31:20.540 I'm going to send you the opening anecdote of law six court attention at all costs.

00:31:26.440 Oh my God. Thank you.

00:31:27.700 It is the story of PT Barnum opening like his first museum where people could come. And he was,

00:31:34.260 He was basically trying to get them to attend his new museum through, like, marketing efforts.

00:31:38.820 Got it.

00:31:39.100 So here's this.

00:31:40.560 Barnum would put a band of musicians on a balcony overlooking the street beneath a huge banner proclaiming,

00:31:47.180 Free music for the millions.

00:31:49.360 What generosity, New Yorkers thought, and they flocked to hear the free concerts.

00:31:53.660 But Barnum took pains to hire the worst musicians he could find,

00:31:57.320 and soon after the band struck up, people would hurry to buy tickets to the museum

00:32:01.840 where they would be out of earshot of the band's noise

00:32:05.080 and of the booing of the crowd.

00:32:08.980 So, like, you should be obnoxious to people

00:32:11.920 so they go to your museum, I guess?

00:32:13.820 Who would flee into a museum?

00:32:16.560 By the same guy who's providing the music?

00:32:19.260 Right, by the guy who just proved to you

00:32:21.280 that he cannot entertain you.

00:32:23.040 That's why our main feed episodes

00:32:24.140 are just two hours of the sound of a baby crying

00:32:26.280 so that people seek refuge in our bonus episodes.

00:32:29.800 What I often do is go to the hip parts of Brooklyn and just blast an air horn, thus

00:32:36.540 driving people to podcasts, and they will eventually find if books could kill.

00:32:41.740 So then after this deranged, like kind of funny, but like not clearly relevant anecdote,

00:32:48.680 he then says, this is the advice that we're pulling from this.

00:32:51.860 He says, at the beginning of your rise to the top, spend all your energy on attracting

00:32:56.840 attention.

00:32:57.400 most importantly the quality of the attention is irrelevant what no i don't i i think if you're

00:33:03.620 like an intern at a company and you want to get a promotion you you do need positive attention

00:33:07.940 running and running into like the board of directors meeting and like doing a hear ye hear

00:33:12.460 ye i don't even understand what quality of attention means actually but all right never 0.98

00:33:17.460 mind this is stupid i can't this is making me we're already spinning our wheels this is making 0.96

00:33:22.520 me mad. It's making me mad. So that was law six. In law 14, pose as a friend, work as a spy. He's 1.00

00:33:29.340 talking about how like sort of elder statesman, he loves this political advisor to Napoleon named

00:33:34.960 Talleyrand. He has 29 anecdotes featuring this Talleyrand guy. And apparently in these sort of

00:33:40.500 cocktail party diplomatic conversations, he would constantly be like spying on people to try to get

00:33:45.080 intel on them, which honestly is like a thing that people do in like the diplomatic world. So

00:33:49.060 fine, whatever. But also not what you should be doing at work happy hours. He says,

00:33:54.460 a trick to try in spying comes from La Roche Foucault, who wrote,

00:33:58.580 sincerity is found in very few men and is often the cleverest of ruses. One is sincere in order

00:34:04.340 to draw out the confidence and secrets of the other. By pretending to bear your heart to another

00:34:09.680 person, you make them more likely to reveal their own secrets. Give them a false confession and they

00:34:15.540 will give you a real one another trick was identified by the philosopher arthur schopenhauer

00:34:20.540 who suggested vehemently contradicting people you're in conversation with as a way of irritating

00:34:25.960 them stirring them up so they lose some of the control over their words in their emotional

00:34:30.680 reaction they will reveal all kinds of truths about themselves truths you can later use against 0.99

00:34:35.860 them what so make up shit to confess to people like i'm addicted to coke oh you're also addicted 0.98

00:34:40.680 to coke haha now i know you're addicted to coke yeah well that one at least makes like has like 0.99

00:34:45.380 an internal coherence but the other one is just like get someone mad and they will start confessing 0.70

00:34:51.540 things somehow be super fucking irritating to the point where someone blows up at you 0.70

00:34:56.660 and they're like ha ha now i know what makes you blow up in the course of blowing up they're like 1.00

00:35:01.220 you piece of shit i'm addicted to cocaine oh no 1.00

00:35:05.160 oh god i can't i can't keep doing this peter but there's there's one more 1.00

00:35:10.940 this is the perfect like triptych of anecdotes this is from law 20 do not commit to anyone

00:35:16.900 oh he has a bunch of like weird sort of quasi dating advice just after i got married he says

00:35:21.940 when picasso after early years of poverty had become the most successful artist in the world

00:35:26.840 he did not commit himself to this dealer or that dealer instead he appeared to have no interest in

00:35:32.480 their services this technique drove them wild and as they fought over him his prices only rose

00:35:38.220 So Picasso, when Henry Kissinger, a US Secretary of State, wanted to reach detente with the Soviet

00:35:44.960 Union, he made no concessions or conciliatory gestures, but courted China instead. So use the

00:35:51.580 rules on the Soviet Union. He then refers to the author of this Talleyrand biography that he uses

00:35:58.860 a million episodes from. He says, this tactic has a parallel in seduction. When you want to seduce

00:36:04.500 a woman's then fell advises court her sister first rule number 46 bring a black light

00:36:10.740 this goes to your one book theory peter it's all one book baby because it's ultimately 0.94

00:36:17.360 fucking dating advice there's no you can't get like a straight guy writing 500 pages about the 0.99

00:36:24.280 laws of power without him being like here's some here's some tips for getting pussy too fyi don't 1.00

00:36:29.960 text back yeah and also fucking someone's sister is not a great way to fuck them even if you don't 0.99

00:36:35.720 think it's morally repugnant it's just like this is bad advice if it works you have successfully 0.99

00:36:41.980 seduced a very unwell person who needs who needs therapy so badly right like if if someone is like

00:36:50.580 that vulnerable i know insecurity then they're definitely the kind of person where you can just

00:36:55.440 do the lint trick too right you don't have to go through you don't have to go the whole sister 0.74

00:36:59.540 route so this after all this shit i'm sort of like halfway through the book now and i'm like 0.95

00:37:05.120 okay who is this fucking guy like who's this author right his name is robert green he hasn't 0.97

00:37:10.240 really done anything else if you google him it's like he's one of these people that sort of rode 0.98

00:37:13.600 this book to like a bunch of other books that's weird i thought he would have risen to the top

00:37:17.720 of the global order by now using these sick laws of power i i do want to say there are two very

00:37:24.700 interesting things about the author of this book. The first, and this is, I think, unique on this

00:37:29.520 show, is that he's an actual subject matter expert. Okay. He grows up in LA. He grows up in

00:37:34.180 like a seemingly middle-class family. And then he goes to the University of Wisconsin-Madison

00:37:39.940 and graduates with like a classics degree. And he speaks five languages. What the fuck? He like

00:37:44.580 actually knows all this like Greek mythology and shit. And when he speaks about like the Roman 0.95

00:37:49.000 empire and stuff, he does actually seem to be drawing on some like legitimate expertise. I'm

00:37:53.980 sorry, but like what a waste of a life. You, you, you, you learn five languages and you're like, 0.99

00:37:58.800 I'm going to write a book about power for the boys. There's also something really funny about

00:38:04.520 how this book comes about. Like no one ever talks about these books as basically like

00:38:08.540 as artifacts of marketing, right? You're, you're coming up with a title and a cover and that's why

00:38:12.900 like 95% of people buy it. It's not really the text of the book. So he basically graduates with

00:38:18.140 this classics degree in 1980. And then he like bounces around. He says he has 80 jobs over the

00:38:24.540 course of the next like 10 or 12 years. He eventually moves to Hollywood and tries to

00:38:29.160 make it as a screenwriter. And like he has zero IMDb credits other than the Quibi series.

00:38:34.620 So it doesn't seem that that like hit for him. This is the Ben Shapiro arc. He somehow gets

00:38:39.060 this fellowship in Italy. I think Italian is one of the languages that he speaks. And he basically

00:38:43.320 meets a book marketer, this guy that like does coffee table books named Juiced Elfers, who was

00:38:49.880 actually listed in some printings as a co-author of this book. And then he says that like the

00:38:55.060 genesis of this book was that he's like telling this book marketer guy, he's like, I've been

00:38:58.540 trying to write a biography of Julius Caesar for the last like five years, but like, I just can't

00:39:03.820 really, I don't know if it's like a motivation thing or he can't really get the framing or

00:39:07.000 whatever but like that just isn't working this julius caesar biography and then my theory is

00:39:13.280 like between the lines this guy who's like a book marketer is like why don't you just put together 0.95

00:39:19.140 all your greek and roman shit into like a fake ass self-help book your julius caesar biography 0.99

00:39:24.240 isn't coming together what if i propose to you doing something much dumber would you like that 0.99

00:39:31.360 So the second interesting thing about Robert Greene, I cannot fucking believe this, is that he actually has good politics. 0.61

00:39:40.300 So I'm going to send you an excerpt from an interview that he gave to The Guardian in 2012.

00:39:44.780 He is now working with labor organizers in Latin America, and his liberal politics disappoints some of his fans in the business world who expect him to be a champion of the ruthless go-getter.

00:39:55.300 I'm a huge Obama supporter, he says. 0.68

00:39:57.820 Romney is Satan to me.

00:39:59.160 the great thing about america is that you can come from the worst circumstances and become 0.90

00:40:03.300 something remarkable it's jay-z and 50 cent and obama and my jewish ancestors that's the america 0.99

00:40:09.780 we want to celebrate not the vulture capitalist these morons like mitt romney they produce 0.99

00:40:15.280 nothing republicans are feeding off fairy tales and that's what did them in this year and hopefully 0.99

00:40:20.940 we'll keep doing them in forever because there are a lot of scoundrels i forgive him you know what

00:40:26.020 It's basically impossible to square this with the book.

00:40:29.760 It's fascinating.

00:40:30.540 Is it the same guy?

00:40:32.000 Like I Googled, like I forgot to put in his birth date and it's the wrong Robert Green.

00:40:35.420 No, but you know it's the right one because he's talking about Jay-Z and 50 Cent who presumably he knows of their existence because they talked about his book, right?

00:40:43.000 No, he wrote, he co-wrote a book with 50 Cent called The 50th Law.

00:40:46.640 You're really making me wonder what the 49th Law is.

00:40:49.560 But then what is interesting to me is he also has the same blind spot that we see in so many of the authors where he doesn't seem to think that he's doing anything to promote this worldview.

00:40:59.860 So in the Guardian interview, it says Green states that he doesn't try to follow all of his advice. 0.88

00:41:05.660 Anybody who did, he says, would be a horrible, ugly person to be around. 1.00

00:41:09.640 Why do these authors keep doing this shit? 1.00

00:41:11.800 I do genuinely find this fascinating. 0.99

00:41:13.360 I listened to a bunch of podcast interviews with him where he talks about like he believes

00:41:19.860 in climate change.

00:41:20.960 After 2016, he started going on TV to talk about Trump and be like, this guy is not applying

00:41:26.640 my rules.

00:41:28.900 I'm sorry, but is there anyone who's doing this better?

00:41:32.160 Seriously.

00:41:33.140 Is there anyone who's more tightly adhering to the 48 laws of power than Donald Trump?

00:41:39.340 Come on.

00:41:39.740 But then to me, the core of his blind spot is this thing where he says, oh, I'm not telling you to do anything.

00:41:47.220 I'm just telling you how the world works, right?

00:41:49.520 If you look back at what he said in the intro of like, oh, the lessons from 3,000 years of history, it's like he mentions like great statesmen and also seducers and con artists.

00:42:02.000 Right.

00:42:02.200 What he means by power is manipulation, right?

00:42:05.940 He doesn't think that there's any power in being honest or in being right, right, right.

00:42:11.260 And he never uses anecdotes from, I mean, these are cliched example, but like Martin

00:42:15.680 Luther King, Gandhi, I don't know, Florence Nightingale.

00:42:18.880 He does have a couple of anecdotes about FDR, but only the anecdotes where FDR had to like

00:42:25.320 lie and scheme to get his way.

00:42:28.100 Like he's not interested in the kind of power that comes from just like honesty and charisma.

00:42:35.200 I don't I don't get this.

00:42:36.740 I assume that the reason we see this from these authors is basically their inability to admit to themselves that like their sort of primary output into this world, the thing that they're known the most for is sort of evil.

00:42:51.140 Yeah.

00:42:51.320 And so instead they have to imagine that it wasn't quite as bad as people are saying that it was.

00:42:57.320 I also think another very important element of his blind spot is he's never actually had power.

00:43:04.480 OK, one of the interesting things that he says in various interviews is that one of the inspirations for the book was trying to be a Hollywood screenwriter.

00:43:13.880 And some of the laws that he's coming up with are like the way that he was treated by Hollywood executives.

00:43:20.920 Right. This thing of like blaming people when something goes wrong, never letting people know your intentions.

00:43:26.980 What he's doing is he's looking at the ways that he was treated when he didn't have any power.

00:43:33.640 and he is projecting this necessity onto them you must behave like this right but that's not

00:43:40.920 actually true what he's basically doing is playing out his bitterness and resentment and hurt at the

00:43:46.380 way that he was treated when he was at the bottom of the ladder i really like how this his sort of

00:43:52.640 arc is just like a great himboification he's like this this brilliant you know historian

00:44:00.040 knows multiple languages and then he's like no i'm gonna i'm gonna write a self-help book 0.68

00:44:06.880 get rich and dumb yeah he just he wanted to like be on a beach just trying to get laid or something 0.63

00:44:13.400 and he had never done that he was yeah he was too much of a nerd so i i'm proud of him his next book 0.99

00:44:19.980 is called the art of seduction oh fuck yes dude okay why does this keep happening because remember 0.82

00:44:24.920 the tim ferris book his next book also had like long uh digressions about seduction it's so 0.99

00:44:32.600 fucking weird these guys are like just getting like book tour pussy after their first book hits 0.97

00:44:37.200 and then they're like you know what you know what i'm gonna write a whole book about this 1.00

00:44:42.340 yeah it's like uh they go on these book tours and every journalist like but have you had sex

00:44:46.260 and they're like actually actually yes so to get back to the book the third pattern in the 48 laws

00:44:52.500 that I want to talk about is these weird flashes of insight that are immediately used for evil.

00:45:02.520 So law 27 is play on people's need to believe to create a cult-like following.

00:45:09.920 And he gives all these steps of like how to create a cult. So here's the opening.

00:45:15.820 To create a cult, you must first attract attention. This you should do not through

00:45:20.040 actions, which are too clear and readable, but through words, which are hazy and deceptive.

00:45:24.600 Your initial speeches, conversations, and interviews must include two elements. On the

00:45:30.080 one hand, the promise of something great and transformative, and on the other, a total

00:45:34.740 vagueness. To make your vagueness attractive, use words of great resonance but cloudy meaning,

00:45:41.040 words full of heat and enthusiasm. Fancy titles for simple things are helpful, as are the use

00:45:47.080 of numbers and the creation of new words for vague concepts. All of these create the impression

00:45:52.940 of specialized knowledge, giving you a veneer of profundity. He's telling you how to write an

00:45:57.960 airport book. Yeah. This is like the new trend in our latest books where they just explain how to

00:46:05.760 do the scam that they're doing to you right now. Fancy titles for simple things. Right. The use of

00:46:12.560 numbers it's like he's doing 10 000 hours he's doing victimology he's doing he's doing our show

00:46:17.860 i do feel like reading him and tim ferris has made me realize that a lot of these guys are in fact

00:46:25.380 doing this hyper consciously and i think that they don't perceive it like that entirely i think that

00:46:32.880 when he's giving this advice he's like yeah here's cool tips on building a cult-like following

00:46:39.180 He doesn't really realize that what he's doing is confessing.

00:46:44.740 I also want to talk about the way that this book is specifically pitched to men.

00:46:49.600 I did some interesting reading on sort of like the self-help marketplace and how most

00:46:55.440 self-help advice for women is about interpersonal relationships.

00:46:59.600 And a lot of it is about like health and wellness type stuff.

00:47:02.720 Whereas self-help advice to men is almost exclusively along these lines.

00:47:07.520 It's like how to amass power or how to make money.

00:47:10.080 Basically, it's like they're both kind of doing the thing of like, here's how to attain

00:47:13.700 status in the society that we have.

00:47:15.440 But men and women are judged differently on what status is.

00:47:18.160 So there's a super fascinating law in this book that is law 33, discover each man's

00:47:26.720 thumbscrew.

00:47:28.020 The basic idea is that you should always be looking around yourself at like the weaknesses

00:47:32.500 people have.

00:47:33.280 Like what are their deepest desires?

00:47:35.080 What are their impulses they can't control?

00:47:37.180 Okay.

00:47:37.660 So they have little titles.

00:47:39.340 He says,

00:47:40.080 Find the helpless child.

00:47:41.960 Most weaknesses begin in childhood,

00:47:43.900 before the self builds up compensatory defenses.

00:47:46.840 Perhaps the child was pampered or indulged in a particular area,

00:47:49.960 or perhaps a certain emotional need went unfulfilled.

00:47:52.960 As he or she grows older,

00:47:54.380 the indulgence or the deficiency may be buried but never disappears.

00:47:58.200 He then says,

00:47:59.360 Fill the void.

00:48:00.880 The two main emotional voids to fill are insecurity and unhappiness. 0.71

00:48:04.880 The insecure are suckers for any kind of social validation.

00:48:08.440 As for the chronically unhappy, look for the roots of their unhappiness.

00:48:12.380 So like Jeff, the, you know, head of sales in the Northeast returns home for Thanksgiving.

00:48:17.640 But there I am having coffee with his mother asking about his childhood.

00:48:22.280 What were his weaknesses as a child?

00:48:24.500 There is a point in like all of these books where like I start to become sad.

00:48:28.060 And I think this was the point for me because a lot of what he's describing are like the

00:48:33.700 skills of friendship, right?

00:48:36.200 You ask somebody about their childhood, you know, what challenges they face throughout

00:48:39.980 their life.

00:48:40.820 What are the relationships that are important to them?

00:48:42.940 What are their impulses and their habits?

00:48:44.660 Like what are the things that make them laugh and make them sad?

00:48:47.040 Like, you know, which kinds of desires do they struggle to control?

00:48:51.060 I keep thinking of like how straight men like need advice like this really bad of just like

00:48:57.380 the importance of intimate relationships, right? And a lot of it is this kind of stuff. Ask people

00:49:01.980 about their values. Spend time with people. And he's giving you all these skills, but he's giving

00:49:07.820 them to you in this like sociopathic fucking way of you should like form like a little file folder 0.98

00:49:14.160 on everybody. Learn about your friend's childhood so that you can leverage it against him. 0.99

00:49:20.240 Exactly. You're just like, be interested in people. The one of the only other like laws in

00:49:25.480 this book that is like actually useful is like number law five i think it's like your reputation

00:49:30.260 matters guard it with your life and it's like the easiest way to have a good reputation is just to

00:49:35.440 be like nice to people and work hard yeah what does that even what does that even mean like sue 0.91

00:49:39.720 people who say mean shit the uh the anecdote that he uses there is about how pt barnum like 0.80

00:49:43.860 destroyed somebody else's reputation because he didn't have one so he's like if if you don't have 0.99

00:49:50.860 a good reputation like destroy somebody else's because they'll have to defend themselves so

00:49:55.300 vociferously that people will be like why is he defending himself so much this book is so

00:50:00.100 sociopathic it feels that like i don't think it could turn anyone into a sociopath so much as

00:50:06.680 only a sociopath could benefit from it right yeah yeah yeah yeah and those people aren't reading it

00:50:11.100 anyway so it's this weird like it exists in this weird like nether place those are the ceos that

00:50:15.640 like were upset that he's a democrat i feel like you can tell that i've been reading this book by

00:50:20.000 how I've manipulated you into saying exactly what I need you to, to transition into my next

00:50:24.380 little sections, Peter? To be fair, it's not the hardest thing to do.

00:50:30.940 Feed me a little crumbs around, Peter, make it political. Then I can talk about political stuff.

00:50:35.540 The final thing that I want to talk about in this book, because the whole time I was reading it,

00:50:40.060 I was just like, look, this advice is so deranged that like, I don't think anybody can do this.

00:50:46.040 Maybe this is my own inherent optimism about the world, but, like, I don't think people have the wherewithal to run their lives like this, never showing their emotions, constantly, like, scheming, gathering intel on the people around them.

00:50:59.340 I think people like to think that they're doing this, especially men, like, like to be told that they're playing this, like, complicated chess game all the time.

00:51:07.240 But underneath it all, people want to be loved.

00:51:09.880 People want to love other people.

00:51:11.220 People want to form community.

00:51:12.220 I don't actually think that the advice here is all that corrosive because, like, people aren't capable of doing it.

00:51:18.880 But I do think what is corrosive about this is the worldview underneath it.

00:51:23.380 Right.

00:51:23.680 So the example that I want to talk about, this is one of the most interesting examples in the book.

00:51:30.360 Have you ever heard Peter of Joe Orton and Kenneth Hallowell?

00:51:34.560 No.

00:51:35.020 So this is a story that he tells in Law 46, Never Appear Too Perfect.

00:51:41.920 These are two men who meet in a London acting school in the early 1950s.

00:51:48.360 They eventually start dating.

00:51:49.880 They become lovers.

00:51:50.880 They move in with each other.

00:51:52.760 They're both in acting school, but they decide relatively early that like,

00:51:56.340 oh, we're not that good at acting.

00:51:57.620 So they start writing plays together.

00:52:00.000 And they get a couple things in like London West End things,

00:52:02.440 but they're sort of like the equivalent of like off, off, off, off Broadway.

00:52:05.160 Like nothing is really happening.

00:52:07.240 And for a while they're living on Kenneth's trust fund,

00:52:10.800 but eventually that dries up. They start doing this weird thing where they start defacing

00:52:16.600 library books as a kind of like performance art thing. Eventually they get caught and they're

00:52:23.080 sent away to prison for six months. As they're imprisoned apart, Joe starts writing plays by

00:52:29.160 himself. And once they get out of jail, they move back in together. Joe's plays start becoming

00:52:35.740 really popular. As this is happening, Kenneth starts to feel envious and sad. Like he feels

00:52:42.760 like most people at parties are kind of going up to Joe and wanting to hear what Joe thinks about

00:52:47.440 things. He just sort of feels like an also ran. And Joe also starts cheating on him. He's like

00:52:52.600 going to like parks, sort of cottaging Kevin Spacey type stuff. And so this is the final

00:52:58.080 paragraph of this anecdote in Robert Greene's book. He says, Kenneth outwardly seemed as happy

00:53:03.540 as Joe. Inwardly, though, he was seething. Two months later, in the early morning of August 10th,

00:53:08.780 1967, Kenneth Halliwell bludgeoned Joe Orton to death with repeated blows of a hammer to the head.

00:53:15.240 He then took 21 sleeping pills and died himself, leaving behind a note that said,

00:53:19.680 if you read Orton's diary, all will be explained. This is a really fucking sad story. There's so 0.99

00:53:26.040 many lessons that you could take out of this. Robert Greene's lesson is, only a minority can 0.99

00:53:32.540 succeed at the game of life. And that minority inevitably arouses the envy of those around them. 0.98

00:53:38.440 Once success happens your way, however, the people to fear the most are those in your own circle,

00:53:43.560 the friends and acquaintances you have left behind. Feelings of inferiority gnaw at them.

00:53:47.660 The thought of your success only heightens their feelings of stagnation. Envy, which the

00:53:52.440 philosopher Kierkegaard called unhappy admiration, takes hold. Miserable. I'm like, I wanted to

00:53:57.880 fucking cry reading this it's like a really sad story that is true i mean he lays out the facts 0.96

00:54:04.600 accurately and then he pulls the most fucking psychopathic lesson from it don't be successful 0.99

00:54:10.800 or like don't you can be successful but don't be in love with someone at the same time yeah 0.98

00:54:15.900 one of the obvious truths of being a human being is that like you end up being hurt the most by

00:54:21.500 the people closest to you yeah some people think that the lesson of that is not to trust the people

00:54:28.520 closest to you yeah as opposed to like you know when you bring someone into your life those are

00:54:35.820 sort of the wages right you you get the the the highs and the lows and it's very weird to look

00:54:43.340 at a situation like that which is basically like an extreme version of that lesson yeah and think

00:54:49.180 that the real the real problem there is that like they were too close like he let he let him get too 0.98

00:54:56.920 close yeah so stupid he specifically says like people will give you words of affirmation as like 1.00

00:55:02.960 a way of twisting the knife like as a way of declaring their envy for you it's just so stupid 1.00

00:55:08.520 i do i mean pardon an episode of like some earnestness on our like shit posting little 0.98

00:55:15.520 podcast, but like we've spoken on most of the episodes about like the experience of reading 0.52

00:55:20.500 these books. Reading this book sucked. Like it sucked. I've had a rough couple of months. 0.98

00:55:25.900 I have like my hand stuff. I've had some like personal stuff going on and like reading this

00:55:31.400 worldview, like this just cancerous way of looking at the world, just like made me feel bad. Like

00:55:38.440 spending time with this guy felt bad. It was very weird to be reading this at the same time that I

00:55:43.800 was reading this really lovely collection of kelly link short stories which are these sort of

00:55:48.240 modern day fables and they're all about like kind of like love transcending time they're all very

00:55:53.220 like childlike and lovely and she has this really beautiful story in there about like a guy going to

00:55:59.220 hell to rescue his lover from like the queen of the damned it's really good and one of the phrases

00:56:04.060 that he keeps coming back to is our love will build a paradise it's just such a lovely way to

00:56:12.080 think about the world the way that emotional states can create societies and can create 0.99

00:56:18.980 communities yeah love can build a paradise and like this stuff can just build a fucking trash 0.98

00:56:25.220 can and this is why the sort of like criticism of more like hippie-dippie progressive types 0.97

00:56:31.300 as naive always rings hollow to me yeah because like what kind of life are you trying to live

00:56:37.940 Like, are you trying to live one that is built around love and trust and sometimes you don't

00:56:44.860 quite succeed?

00:56:46.920 Are you trying to build one that is based around mistrust, hatred, an adversarial stance

00:56:56.340 towards everyone and everything in your life?

00:56:58.980 If you try to do that, you will succeed.

00:57:01.040 But what are you going to find at the end of it?

00:57:02.940 Exactly.

00:57:03.680 And it's very important to me in all of the books that we cover, but especially in this

00:57:07.540 one, that even like as a philosophical matter, I don't like to think like this. But also as an

00:57:13.980 empirical matter, it's not fucking true that the world is like this. So for this, I read a really 0.53

00:57:21.440 good book by Rebecca Solnit called A Paradise Built in Hell, which is all about disaster

00:57:26.960 sociology. People study large scale disasters and like the kinds of human networks that form

00:57:32.420 when basically all of the structures of society fall away, right? There's no power, there's no

00:57:36.540 water. What happens? The vision of the world that this book lays out is that we live in this like

00:57:41.960 Hobbesian world where without all of the structures of society, we're all just immediately going to

00:57:47.880 start like clawing at each other and like trampling and murdering each other. And it's like, there's 0.95

00:57:51.960 this wave of cruelty. I don't like the word Hobbesian because that's my dad. So I was thinking

00:57:57.120 about like a hungry, hungry hippos world, right? Where there's just like a finite number of little

00:58:02.060 marbles and we're all banging at our little hippo. I mean, Lord of the Flies is right there, but

00:58:05.560 Hungry, hungry hippos.

00:58:06.420 Okay.

00:58:06.700 Mine is better.

00:58:07.700 And so what you find in actual disasters, in the world when something terrible happens,

00:58:13.540 it's like a lot of kindness, right? 0.95

00:58:15.780 We've all seen this in blackouts.

00:58:17.300 Even in like the dreaded like New York City where crime runs rampant or whatever.

00:58:21.340 As soon as there's a blackout, people are checking on their neighbors. 1.00

00:58:23.960 They're going to older folks.

00:58:25.360 They're checking on their disabled neighbors.

00:58:26.880 People are checking in on each other.

00:58:28.300 We just saw this in COVID.

00:58:30.700 I mean, it's all been totally wiped away now.

00:58:33.260 But the early days of COVID, it's like we knew that the fatality rate of COVID is not super duper high, but it attacks the old and the vulnerable.

00:58:43.760 And our entire society was totally willing to like shut down to save those people. 0.94

00:58:48.940 And, you know, you remember after 9-11, like the whole fucking country was donating blood. 0.98

00:58:52.840 Not the best example to use with an Iranian American, but I hear you. 1.00

00:58:56.480 I hear you. 0.98

00:58:57.100 Okay, fair.

00:58:57.560 In the disaster sociology work, there is this kind of trajectory where early in disasters, when you let humans form networks, they mostly create networks of kindness.

00:59:09.700 Like they're bringing things to people, they're checking in on each other.

00:59:11.740 But then what happens after a couple days, a couple weeks is something that the sociologists call elite panic, where basically the fear among elites and people in power that there is going to be unrest ends up causing unrest.

00:59:26.040 The most obvious example of this is Katrina, where, you know, in the early days after Katrina, everybody was watching on the news, you know, hundreds of people drove down to like try to get water and supplies to people.

00:59:35.460 People brought their boats, right?

00:59:36.580 There's this huge display of solidarity. 0.99

00:59:38.760 And then after a couple days go by, you start getting these reports of like the Superdome shit of like there was this rumor that like babies were being raped in the Superdome, which is just obvious bullshit. 0.98

00:59:50.920 And, you know, all this footage of like looters and stuff. 1.00

00:59:54.380 And then what you have is elites like losing their fucking minds. And after a couple of days, the National Guard was pulled off of search and rescue and on to like looting prevention. Like they were protecting stores when people were still like stranded in their houses. And I'm going to send you a little excerpt from the book about Katrina specifically. 0.99

01:00:15.540 on september 3rd new york times columnist maureen doubt summed up the popular viewpoint that new

01:00:22.020 orleans was quote a snake pit of anarchy death looting raping marauding thugs suffering innocence

01:00:29.380 a shattered infrastructure a gutted police force insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent

01:00:35.480 government planning by that time there were supposed to be hundreds of murder victims corpses

01:00:39.660 in the Superdome, stories of child rape were rampant, and armed gangs were allegedly marauding

01:00:45.880 through the streets of the city. There were even rumors of cannibalism. The rumors were right about

01:00:51.500 one thing. There were gangs in the Superdome, if gang is the right word for inner city men who grew

01:00:56.320 up together and hang out together. Denise Moore, whose home literally collapsed around her and

01:01:00.780 ended up at the Superdome, said that the gang members, quote, got together, figured out who had

01:01:05.740 guns and decided that they were going to make sure that no women were getting raped and that

01:01:09.720 nobody was hurting babies. They started looting on St. Charles and Napoleon. There was a rite aid

01:01:14.500 there and you would think they would be stealing stuff, fun stuff or whatever, because it's a free

01:01:19.440 city according to them, right? But they were taking juice for the babies, water and beer for

01:01:23.740 the older people, food, raincoats so they could all be seen by each other. She compared them to

01:01:29.060 Robin Hood. We were trapped like animals, but I saw the greatest humanity I'd ever seen from the

01:01:33.300 most unlikely places and like you don't want to be naive right yeah people take advantage of chaos

01:01:38.880 like humans are humans right but empirically those kinds of actions are really isolated and

01:01:46.280 we've seen this over and over again and yet these myths persist to this day there's never been a

01:01:52.400 confirmed murder or rape in the superdome so those rumors were just fully rumors what's amazing now

01:01:58.180 looking back is that those rumors were spread by fema officials right fema officials were the ones

01:02:03.520 saying there's 200 bodies turns out there were only six bodies and all of them died of natural

01:02:07.680 causes we also had there were 11 police shootings during the aftermath of katrina there were cities

01:02:15.500 outside of new orleans where people essentially formed militias and they were so afraid of this

01:02:20.580 like loosed horde of rioters coming right that they murdered a bunch of people there's this town

01:02:26.340 where 11 black people were killed by like mostly white residents, like just carrying around their 0.93

01:02:31.980 own guns. The thing to sort of realize about like this worldview and these myths is that

01:02:38.800 they're self-fulfilling prophecies, right? If people in power start to be worried about these

01:02:45.000 like animalistic hordes, they're going to treat people like animalistic hordes and you're going

01:02:49.960 to get these kinds of clashes. The kinds of myths that he is promoting in this book also

01:02:55.960 create a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think everybody is a fucking schemer, you're going to 0.99

01:03:00.620 treat them all like schemers. It's the opposite of our love will build a paradise, right? You're 0.99

01:03:05.500 creating this ugly world by thinking it's already ugly. I think that this mindset fosters this

01:03:12.340 almost like uniquely American phenomenon, which is that a lot of people view the world so

01:03:18.700 adversarially, that they are willing to forego helping people as long as that ensures that they

01:03:27.880 can't be taken advantage of in some way. You see this with stuff as simple as student loan

01:03:33.680 forgiveness, right? Sure, it'll help a lot of people who have student loan debt and need the

01:03:41.300 help, but what about the people who don't need the help, who are financially doing fine and could

01:03:47.100 pay it off, right? People talk about it in the welfare context. Yes, of course, there are a lot

01:03:52.160 of people who need financial assistance, but there are also a lot of people who might take

01:03:58.680 advantage of that system who don't need it, right? And so let's hold off lest we allow those people

01:04:04.580 to take advantage of us. If you imagine that those people are a large chunk of the population,

01:04:10.220 that there are tons of people who are out there with this sort of kill or be killed mindset,

01:04:15.400 then you might think that that's a good argument against welfare payments, right?

01:04:19.880 It's just a bleak way to view the world.

01:04:22.780 And the only upside that I can see is that if Jay-Z never read this book,

01:04:27.820 we might not have ever gotten lemonade.

01:04:32.520 The domino meme with Robert Greene going to Italy in 1996 and then we get lemonade.

01:04:41.260 And was it worth it?

01:04:43.000 I do want to end with, these aren't quite the last three paragraphs of the book, but like they're close.

01:04:48.820 This is from Law 48, Assume Formlessness, which by the end of the book, he's just like saying stuff.

01:04:54.760 This is something about like never let people know what you think, whatever, whatever.

01:04:58.920 So he says, learning to adapt to each new circumstance means seeing events through your own eyes and often ignoring the advice that people constantly peddle your way.

01:05:08.760 It means that ultimately, you must throw out the laws that others preach and the books they write to tell you what to do.

01:05:14.900 Dely too much on other people's ideas, and you end up taking a form not of your own making.

01:05:19.560 Be brutal with the past, especially your own, and have no respect for the philosophies that are foisted on you from outside. 0.68

01:05:26.320 This is within a book that's giving me fucking 48 little tips for how to be powerful at Quiznos. 0.99

01:05:33.360 So ultimately, don't read this fucking book and don't listen to me. 0.99

01:05:37.360 Yeah, I'm glad he ends on a strong note. 0.99

01:05:40.020 I can't disagree.

01:05:41.660 If you criticize the book, it's just proof you didn't read the end of it.

If Books Could Kill - November 02, 2023

The 48 Laws of Power

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