THE LAWS OF HUMAN NATURE by Robert Greene

Chapter 1 “Master Your Emotional Self”                                 

Selective Summary:

Robert Greene cites Pericles of ancient Greece as an exemplary politician that had foresight and the ability to control emotions. If only the citizens of Athens had listened to Pericles and heeded his advice, they would have been spared the disastrous results of continually waging wars against Sparta, he notes. Then, Greene mentions the financial crisis of 2008 as a case example of recent herd irrationality of Americans. He further contends that even though people attribute the causes of their failures to outside sources, they fail to recognize that their true causes lie within themselves, i.e., their irrationality. This irrationality is something biologically hardwired in our brain and we cannot do away with it completely. Nevertheless, there are ways to put our emotions under control. Greene provides particular types of biases and suggests that our recognition of these biases will help us avoid becoming the helpless victims of our emotions.

Commentary:

This chapter can be considered to be an extension/elaboration of the following quote from the preface of the 48 LAWS OF POWER (hereinafter, “LOP”):

“Related to mastering your emotions is the ability to distance yourself from the present moment and think objectively about the past and future. Like Janus, the double-faced Roman deity and guardian of all gates and doorways, you must be able to look in both directions at once, the better to handle danger from wherever it comes. Such is the face you must create for yourself-one face looking continuously to the future and the other to the past.”

The 33 STRATEGIES OF WAR (hereinafter, “SOW”) provides a similar principle. In the SOW, Greene encourages his readers to favor Athena, the goddess of wisdom, over Ares, the god of war. This view is in harmony with ancient Chinese philosopher Laozi who argued that a sage should “know the masculine but maintain the feminine.”

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Chapter 2 “Transform Self-love into Empathy”

Selective Summary:

Greene explains the concept of a “functional narcissist” who may be self-absorbed like most of the normal people in the world but can direct their attention outwards based on their inner resiliency.  Then, Greene also introduces the idea of a “healthy narcissist” who takes little offense at insults. They are able to not make too big a deal out of criticisms that may infuriate other types of narcissists. Greene also notes that today’s technologies are making it increasingly difficult for the youth to avoid self-absorption and cultivate empathic attitudes. While discussing the need to develop empathic skills, Greene encourages readers to avoid forming “attribution bias” against others. Greene’s notion is that while it is easy for us to forgive our own mistakes by attributing them to circumstances we hardly do the same for others and instead blame their personality rather than their circumstances. A more empathic person would give the “same benefit of the doubt as you give yourself.” Under the section titled “Four Examples of Narcissistic Types,” Greene mentions Joseph Stalin as an example of a complete control narcissist. Stalin had great emphatic skills and people were naturally attracted to him. On the surface, Stalin was congenial and modest. In fact, Stalin deeply absorbed himself in the attitudes of others because he had to precisely understand what types of people they were – for example, whether they were his potential enemies to be rid of.

I enjoyed Greene’s recent book, THE LAWS OF HUMAN NATURE (hereinafter, “LOHN”). I was happy to read his new writing because before the release of this recent work I had only been dwelling on the same contents of his previous books. I became a big fan of Robert Greene after I read his “50th Law” when I was at college – which I would say became a turning point in my life. I even bought an Amor Fati medallion designed under his name.

My overall impression of the LOHN is that while it is an impressive book that provides an insightful look into the dark sides of human nature along with rich historical anecdotes, the book did not quite live up to my personal anticipation. It is a good book in that it provides comprehensive details regarding human nature, but the lessons in the book are not particularly new when compared with his previous writings or other papers of psychology.

The LOHN does not have that allure of the calmly stated explicit enunciations of power lessons in the 48 Laws of Power. Nor does it convey the spirit of an underdog that willfully denies social categorization and asserts himself in a creative way as in the 50th Law.

Particularly in its last chapters, the LOHN appears to frequently reiterate some of the same points that might have been obvious to his original reader base. This book will be a wonderful guide to beginners into Robert Greene; however, it does not provide anything totally new to his existing fan base. I do not mean to say that this book is not worth buying for those that are familiar with Robert Greene. The book does provide many interesting stories and examples. For example, I could not read the chapter on the Russian writer Anton Chekhov without tears in my eyes. The bonus writing on Robert Oppenheimer was an interesting read, too. But my honest view is that the LOHN is not on a par with his previous masterpieces such as the 48 LOP or the 50th Law, where readers are often astonished to discover the razor-sharp descriptions of the malicious atmosphere of power struggles in the workplace or the empowering messages that deeply resonated with outsiders that are often shunned away from based on social conventions.

Aside from my general impression of the book, I would like to also write down some of the questions I had while reading it.

1. On page 189, Greene advises that we should avoid getting “lost in trivia”; that is, we should discard petty details and have an overall mental picture of the “forest.” However, one of the messages of the 50th Law is that one should learn from Napoleon who was a genius in absorbing details and making the most out of them. The point I would like to make is that it is difficult to decide based on the new book and the previous books how one can separate important details from the other trivial ones.

Readers may reasonably conclude that the case of Napoleon simply serves as a reminder of an exceptional talent for organization and command on a battlefield. Not everybody can be a Napoleon. If you say that one should be able to absorb all the relevant details of a battlefield as Napoleon does but should also be cautious not to fall into the trap of checking every single one of them, this is not a particularly useful message because one cannot tell which to choose between this and that.

Come to think of it. How can you not say that King Philip II of Spain – who is mentioned as a failure on page 189 – wanted to be a “Napoleon” on his part? If King Philip II had successfully defeated Queen Elizabeth of England, his story would have been put very much differently by Greene. It is easy to draw a particular lesson from a successful life story in hindsight but very difficult to predict beforehand whether a person with a particular talent will achieve success.

If Greene provided through the book a detailed analysis of the genius of Napoleon and how an ordinary person can take steps to achieve it, I personally would have been more satisfied (MASTERY has no mention on this issue, either).  If Napoleon’s genius can simply be explained away on the ground of his genetics, that Greene’s self-help manual on this issue would not be able to provide any substantial help.

2. On pages 252 and 253, Greene notes that Alexander and Julius Caesar were very self-confident and even considered themselves to be descendants of gods. Greene states that while the readers do not have to “indulge in such grandiose thoughts,” they can encourage themselves to have faith in their self-importance and this will protect them when they are under attack from opponents. I am not certain whether a personal belief that one is destined for something great will help him remember truthfully the lesson “Ego is the Enemy” – as phrased by Greene’s pupil, Ryan Holiday. In addition, when his belief is at some point about to be breached by reality, what is he going to make of it? This type of self-importance cannot help him become less of a toxic narcissist.

3. I cannot recall the specific chapter where Greene mentions this, but somewhere in the book he roughly says that men tend to blame circumstances while women don’t. I am not sure whether this is true. From my experience, women blame a lot – more than men do. (Of course, this view of mine is disputable, and I do not intend to make any sexist claim.) I think Greene had “Athena” in mind when he made that point. In the 33 Strategies of War, Greene says we should worship Athena and not Ares.

4. The LOHN emphasizes patience while the 50th Law asserts that one should take action “before you are ready.” In the LOHN, various historical instances of stock market bubbles are cited as examples of our irrationality. On the other hand, the 50th Law blames the hesitant part of our nature and espouses nihil timendum est. Of course, I can understand the particular contexts that Greene was implicitly referring to when discussing both patience and boldness. However, sometimes, it would be extremely difficult to not be swayed by overwhelming public opinion, as can be seen in the case of Newton who lost substantially in his investments. It would be difficult to assume that an ambitious businessman like 50 cent would have hesitated to buy the stocks of the South Sea Company. There seems to be a fine line between when to be patient and when to be bold, and the determining factor of success often seems to be an exogenous factor such as luck rather than someone’s character of patience or boldness.

5. Note the following excerpt from the 50th Law:

“All kinds of statistics and studies can be trotted out to support this argument, but in the end this concept is merely a product of our times and the emphasis on passive freedom. It chooses to focus on circumstance and environment, as if the exceptionally free actions of a Frederick Douglass could also be explained by his physiology or the luck he had in learning to read. In the end, such a philosophy wants to deny the essential freedom we all possess to make a decision independent of outside forces. It wants to diminish individuality—we are just products of a social process, they imply. Understand: at any moment you could kick this philosophy and its ideas into the trashcan by doing something irrational and unexpected, contrary to what you have done in the past, an act not possibly explained by your upbringing or nervous system. What prevents you from taking such action is not mommy, daddy, or society, but your own fears. You are essentially free to move beyond any limits others have set for you, to re-create yourself as thoroughly as you wish”

In the LOHN, Greene states:

“First, we come into this world with certain genetic inclinations – toward hostility, greed, empathy, or kindness. We can notice these differences, for instance, in the case of the Chekhov children, who all had to respond to the same physical punishments of the father. At a very early age Anton revealed a more ironic attitude, prone to laughing at the world and seeing things with some detachment. This made it easier for him to reassess his father once he was on his own. The other children lacked this ability to distance themselves and were more easily enmeshed in the father’s brutality. This would seem to indicate something in the way Anton’s brain was wired.”

I would like to personally ask Greene if the above excerpt of the LOHN marks a shift from the view stated in the 50th Law.

For more analysis of Robert Greene’s books, you can visit my blog at: http://taoprep.blogspot.com