Robert Greene grew up in a Jewish household in Los Angeles. He began his undergraduate degree at the University of California, Berkeley, and finished at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he studied classical studies.
Greene always dreamed of being a writer and worked an estimated 80 other jobs before achieving any success. In his early writing days, he worked in Hollywood where he began to first notice and think about the importance of power.
According to him, body language, facial expressions, and behavior are much more reliable sources of truthful information than words. Behavior-particularly how to understand and use people’s weaknesses to achieve your goals-is what Robert Greene writes about it in his debut book The 48 Laws of Power. This book, just like his five others, draws upon famous historical figures to illustrate the conventions of human behaviour that he describes. Greene’s works on human behavior have influenced the ways that governments, militaries, and corporations conceptualize and use power and seduction to make decisions and influence populations.
Power is amoral-it is neither good nor evil. This is the idea behind his first book, The 48 Laws of Power, which offers readers the opportunity to de-villainize power and repair their complex relationship to it. The next step is understanding the 48 rules of gaining and maintaining power in a workplace or other social setting.
For Greene, this idea came from a lifetime of reading history books. While working in Hollywood, Greene noticed parallels between today’s powerful elite and historical figures such as Alexander the Great and Thomas Edison. Greene began compiling information on the similarities he noticed, eventually distilling them into his 48 laws. The idea that power is amoral teaches us that we should not resent those who are power-hungry, nor should we condemn ourselves when we remain powerless. We can, in fact, conceptualize power as something natural that everyone can attain through artful tactics, and thus learn to behave in ways that inflate our own.
For example, if your boss waltzes into a meeting you’re running and interrupts you to interrogate you in front of your team of staff, you may suddenly feel small and powerless. If you see your coworker vying for a promotion by sucking up to the boss, you may feel resentful because you believe you deserve that promotion but lack the chutzpah of your pushy coworker. In both these instances, according to Greene, power is not your enemy-your relationship to it is. Instead of getting angry, you must work on your relationship to power by using the 48 laws to attain power tactfully.
The book is said to be used as a Bible by career-driven people looking for power in the workplace. That being said, the book has also stirred controversy, as some readers criticize Greene for promoting manipulative and deceptive ways of achieving success. According to Greene, however, manipulation and deception are an inevitable part of human nature, and understanding that is an important step on the ladder of success.
Seduction is a skill, and its artful execution can prove more important in a relationship than compatibility or chemistry. When courting a love interest, many people look to factors such as compatibility or chemistry. Greene’s idea that the practice of artful seduction is just as or more important as chemistry affects how people may change their behavior when trying to attract a romantic partner.
Greene came at his idea from mere observation of humanity over the course of his life. He even uses himself as his own subject, admitting that he used these tactics to attract his current partner, Anna Biller. The nine types of “seducers” he exposes are a product of his observations of relationship proceedings throughout his lifetime, and he characterizes himself as one of the nine.
There are two main ideas behind the importance of seduction: the first is that if you are aware of how to seduce someone, you can use your knowledge to achieve your romantic goals. The second, and the flip side of the first, is that if you are aware of how seduction occurs, you can be on guard and avoid falling prey to others’ use of the tactics.
Like the “bad boy” character you see on TV, emotionally unavailable partners are often master manipulators and smooth seductors. Some women are too often attracted to these types of people: think of someone proclaiming, Greene preaches the importance of being aware of the art of seduction, so that you can stop yourself before falling prey to these charming seducers, and choose someone better off for you in the long run.
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