Trump Is the Greatest At One Law Of Power — And It Could Destroy Him - Robert Greene

26:25He was going, but man, I marched through Sicily. I marched through Italy. I defeated the Nazis here and there. What difference does it make? Well, no, even in warfare, he got sidelined because he wasn't playing the political game in entertainment, in law, in business, in government, in sports. I can give you examples because I deal with a lot of athletes and managers and coaches who come to me with their problems. This goes through sports. It goes through everything. It's a theme through everything. So you two, I love the fact that you collaborate, but I can guarantee if you brought a third person in that you were working with, all of a sudden sort of egos and political games will start emerging.

27:04Maybe not, but probably, because that is human nature.

27:09Francis Foster:And I think it's also maybe a question of scale. I think I remember reading something, I don't remember the name of this concept, but once a business gets beyond a certain number of team members, that's when people start caring more about their position in the hierarchy than the mission, which is why maybe it's good to keep things small where that collaborative attitude is possible. Yeah, definitely, definitely. I mean, obviously, the larger the group, the more the politics arrive, the more egos that are involved. But even among two people, even in a couple, a married couple, power games are being played.

27:46Oh, yeah. Well, thank God we're not married. You know, people feel like, well, you know, I'm having to do all the chores and you're not doing so much. I don't feel like I have as much power in this relationship. So you put two people together, it doesn't have to be a thousand. You're going to get these egos clashing because that's who we are. And it's fascinating talking about power because I love Greek myths and I love Shakespeare and a lot of Shakespeare's plays are about the lust for power and how ultimately it destroys you, you think about Macbeth, for example. At what point does the desire for power ultimately become self-sabotaging?

28:32Well, you know, a lot of the laws that I talked about in the book are about knowing your limits. Like, so law 47, I believe, is in victory, know when to stop, right? So you can go too far. And when it becomes the fact, look, power is, we're a social animal. It's a people's game, right? If you offend too many people, if you make so many enemies, it's going to come back and hurt you in the end. You're not going to get very far, right? So if you have this attitude where I'm going to screw everybody around me, I'm just going to manipulate them, I'm going to control them, I'm going to push them around, you can get away with it for a while while you have power.

29:12But the moment that power starts to diminish, we see this in history all of the time, you know, suddenly people turn against you. You know, it caused the French Revolution, for God's sake. You know, when people smell that a powerful person who's been evil and pushing people around is now in a slightly weakened position, oh my God, they all turn into lines and they pounce on you because they hate you, right? You can go too far. So power is a game of getting people on your side, and they don't even realize why they're on your side, right? That's the seduction part of the game. But if you're pushing everyone around, and, you know, we're seeing this in American politics right now, right?

29:55I mean, Donald Trump is screwing all of these other leaders. Look what he's doing to European leaders and NATO. He's humiliating them. And now he's asking them to help him out in this war with Iran, and they're giving him the finger, obviously, in their own way, because, look, you know, you've offended us, you've humiliated us, you want our help, you're not going to get it. And so power is a game of using your allies, of creating as many allies as possible. You can go just, if you go so far where you alienate everybody around you, then the game will turn against you. It's delicate. It's a delicate game.

30:33It's a great point because you look at Trump and his greatest weapon, I think, is his sense of humor. His sense of humor? His sense of humor is that whenever he's in... Never heard that before. Yeah. Whenever he's in a position where it looks like he's on the back foot, he's very sharp with a quick comeback. He makes people laugh. Laughter resets the room. People momentarily lose where they are. And then he can pivot out of it. Yeah. And the Humor is great. The problem is with humor is that invariably there needs to be a victim. So whilst it can appeal to your base, it can also antagonize the victim of your punchline.

31:13And it's really interesting to see that dynamic. What do you make of that, the use of humor, and particularly when it comes to power and being powerful? well um what's important so a huge motivating factor among the human animal is envy our brains operate through comparison that's how the human brain operates we take in information and we compare it to other pieces of information and we go this is what this means it's a machine our minds are machines for comparing things right and we do the same with other people we're constantly comparing ourselves to others, right? Does that person have more power?

31:57Why is she making more money than me? Why does he have more respect than me? Constantly, I have it, everybody has it, it's natural, right? Okay, so when you're a powerful person, people envy you, they envy your power. Having a sense of humor, a self-deprecating sense of humor is very powerful because it kind of can lessen that envy that people have. And I mentioned in my Power Book and other books of figures like that who had that kind of self-deprecating humor. Abraham Lincoln was a sort of a master of it. It makes you human. You can make fun of yourself. The problem is Donald Trump never makes fun of himself.

32:41His humor is at the expense of other people, right? And that can wear on others. It can appeal to those who have that kind of slight cruel streak to them, to those who hate all the wokeness. And I can understand that a bit as well. But he never makes fun of himself. And that is a different kind of humor. It's always at the expense of other people. And I think eventually that can wear very thin. And when you look at Trump, do you think that he's a man who uses these laws of power effectively, or is somebody who is ultimately setting himself up for a fall? Well, I don't have a crystal ball. I'm not Nostradamus.

33:28I don't know what's going to happen in the next few years. But I know that he has a very powerful character flaw, and the character flaw is going to constantly get in his way. So he's absolutely brilliant at one law of power. It's the source of all of his power. And I can't think of anybody in history who's ever been better at it. Court attention at all costs. Law number six, right? I remember years ago, not years ago, eight years ago or so, I was traveling. I think I was in Singapore. Everybody was talking about Donald Trump. Everyone around the world is obsessed with him. I'm obsessed with him.

34:10He's in my head all of the time, right? Right? He courts attention at all costs. He's brilliant at that. He knows how to turn everything that looks like a negative into some kind of marketing and publicity thing. He knows he's very, very good at the attention game, not just at getting attention, but how to use that attention to his advantage. Okay? That has brought him a lot of power. But there is a limit to that, because that isn't enough, that isn't power by itself, right? And so one of the most important things in the power game, as I say, it's a delicate game, is the ability to think ahead, plan all the way to the end, which is law, sorry, 28 or something like that.

34:59Plan all the way to the end. Think not just this move, this immediate move, but two, three, four, five moves in advance, like you do in chess. if you're a good chess player, your 10 moves ahead further than your opponent is, right? Okay, it's an extremely important part of power because it means you see the longer vision. And when things start interrupting your vision, when all kinds of circumstances arise that you hadn't expected, you know how to deal with it because, oh, this is my end game. And if this occurs, well, I go attack a little bit in this direction, but eventually I have to head here.

35:37It gives you strength. It gives you this kind of anchor in life, right? This is a man, because of his character, because of his ego, because of his extreme narcissism, I'm not trying to be political here because I think everybody sees his incredible narcissism, right? He can't get out of the moment. He can't get out of how people are reacting against him. He can't get out of his rage, his resentment, his anger, his bitterness, and see the bigger picture. If he came into power in 2025 and he moderated some of the things that he ended up doing, right? If he was more attentive to the larger picture, that his power base, he brought in Latinos, Black people, people who weren't part of the Republican base ever before.

36:27If he moderated, if he was smart, if he could think ahead, he would be doing really well right now. Now, he'd be very popular. Unfortunately, he would be, right? But he can't think that far ahead. You can only think in immediate terms. This person insulted me. Well, I have to humiliate him. I have to try and sue him and get him put in prison, right? He can't see the larger picture. And that is a very, very limiting factor in power. I don't know. He's like a cat with nine lives. He keeps escaping things. And you think he's done. He's finished. he pops out of another bag and he's fine. I think that eventually it's going to catch up with him.

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38:42Francis Foster:I want to come back to something you said at the beginning, because I think it ties potentially with politics as well, which is you mentioned that when people feel like they have no power there is a whole swath of negative behaviors that they can exhibit um and we see on both sides i would argue the political spectrum people who feel like they have no power uh burning things down you know burning things down metaphorically speaking wanting to tear down the certain things about the society they live in What happens when people feel at the individual level, but also the collective level, that they don't have the power that they want or should?

39:21Well, you can't deal with that feeling, right? It's unbearable. So you're going to try and get power some way that you can. On the individual level, you'll find people play, and I talked about this in the book, negative power games. they'll become passive aggressive. That happens a lot in individual, in relationships, where one person doesn't feel like they have the power, but they don't feel strong enough to directly attack or deal with the person. They become indirect. They become passive aggressive. We're British. You don't have to explain that to us. Okay. National pastor. Yeah. Sorry. Well, Americans can be very passive.

40:06Yeah, you're true. You're right. Okay, so when you feel like you have no power, you'll turn, won't be aggressive, you'll be passive aggressive, right? On a collective level, I mean, we can see countries around the world that have felt disrespected and screwed and feel like they've been humiliated on the world stage. and it creates a kind of a similar dynamic to the passive aggressiveness. Well, we're going to get back at you some way. You know, you can't control this completely. And, you know, even to some degree, I mean, this is maybe a horrible way to put it, but like with Iran right now, you know, they obviously don't have the power that the United States military has, but they can certainly be very passive aggressive.

41:00I mean, it's not really passive, but they can be very indirect. When you're weak, this is the whole origin of guerrilla warfare and terrorism, right? And guerrilla warfare is one of the most powerful strategies ever invented in military history. It's one side that has no power, but they use their lack of power to torment and torture the other side. And they don't, as the phrase goes, the weaker side doesn't have to win, they just have to survive. And so, you know, they'll play games like that. But if you don't have power, you're going to find it somehow, some way, in some manner. You're going to do whatever you can to change that dynamic.

41:45Francis Foster:Well, it's interesting you mention the the geopolitical side of it, because I would argue from direct experience in Russia and also from history that I know that whipping up or at least addressing, and those both can be true, the sense of loss or resentment or grievance, envy that people have and channeling that is a very powerful tool. I mean, in Russia right now, the narrative is, you know, the evil Americans took advantage of us in the 90s, and we have to secure our board, take control of our neighborhood, etc. Hitler likewise whipped that up. It's a very powerful tool for political leaders to achieve their objectives, isn't it?

42:34Yeah, yeah, very much so. I mean, it's definitely what Putin is doing with Russia right now. and, you know, but in the end, you know, I don't know how successful that is because you can, it's kind of like you're riding a tiger. You're creating so much anger and resentment. Can you control it? You know, where is it? Are you in control of it or is it leading you around? You know, appealing to people's basest emotions is a very, very powerful political weapon, right? But it can hurt you and it can bite back and hurt you in the end because you can't really control it, you know? So, but I see what you're saying and it is, and the sense of a country feeling that kind of grievance is an incredibly powerful, motivating factor.

43:31And I see that around the world right now, you know, we're living through a very chaotic moment in history. I read a lot of history. I don't know a lot of things about this world, but I do read a lot of history. And it's a very strange moment. It's one of those transitional moments where the world, the paradigms are shifting. What we used to believe in doesn't seem to work anymore, right? And it makes people go crazy. I feel like sometimes I was on a bike ride the other day and I was thinking, sometimes I feel like I'm living in an insane asylum. Like people are literally going mad. And I include myself in that.

44:13I don't separate myself in that. And so when people feel like they have no control, mostly over their pocketbook, which is happening a lot now, but also a sense of the future, my values, what matters, they go a little bit crazy. and it creates incredible space for demagogues to use that kind of confusion, to use that sense of powerlessness to whip people up into a frenzy, to get control of them. And it's a very dangerous time because you're seeing a steering towards authoritarianism all around the globe. and what's going on here? Why is this happening now? It happened in the 1920s and the 30s.

45:05It seems to be happening now. And I think there's this overall sense that people feel like we're losing control over their own lives, over the lives, the future of their country, their children. It's a very strange, dark moment, I think.

45:19Francis Foster:And to your point, this is something you see across Europe, across the political spectrum, by the way. You see populist left parties rising very quickly and populist right parties. Where are the populist left parties? Well, the party with the biggest momentum in the UK right now is the Green Party. That's right. Yeah. And also, it's not just about political parties. It's also now increasingly about influencers. If you start a YouTube channel in Britain now talking about how you've been screwed by the rich and the billionaires and taxed the rich and all of this, you're going to do extremely well because there is ample ground for that sentiment, which is rising very quickly.

45:59Francis Foster:And likewise, on the right, you know, and by the way, both of these can be somewhat true. Inequality is a problem. On the right, of course, mass immigration, the way that we've had in Britain, bothers a hell of a lot of people, as I think it does probably in your country, although it's different here. And those are things that are creating these, on both sides, a rising populist tide, I think. And that speaks very much to what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I mean, you know, if you feel like, you know, I was in France. I have a kind of a long love affair with France. I'm sorry to say that.

46:41Yeah. I love England.

46:42Francis Foster:Now we're disappointed. End the interview. I lived there and I studied the language and all that. But I remember I was there about 12 years ago and I was going through Paris and I'm actually somebody who's very open to immigrants and to their plight, but I was thinking, France is in trouble because they're losing a sense of their identity and a country like that has a very, very powerful sense of identity. identity because it's a country that's actually a feudalism that's kind of disguised as a nation. And people like de Gaulle had to struggle to create this kind of national unity around Joan of Arc and around these various myths and Louis XIV and on and on Napoleon, etc.

47:35Very powerful myths of identity of this is who the French are. And I could sense that there was something very dangerous going on because they were going to lose that sense of who they were with all of the immigrants that were pouring in at this time. And I can empathize with that to a point where, you know, you have this sense of what your country is and you're losing that, right? So it creates an opening for some ugly kind of politics, I'm afraid. And when we're talking about people who live in these countries where things aren't as good as they used to be, things feel under the decline socially, economically, what we're talking about and what I feel in the UK is demoralization.

48:26And when people are demoralized, that's a very, very dangerous space for a populist to be in. yeah yeah i mean what are you referring to in particular particularly for instance in the uk where people feel that things are getting worse and they're not going to get any better and we're on a current downward trajectory and if you look at the economics of the situation that would bear it out if you look at it culturally societally it would bear it out again i think once you hit that that's when people become incredibly vulnerable yeah well it speaks

49:00Francis Foster:to your point, doesn't it, about when people don't feel that they have the power, and particularly in the UK, a lot of people feel that voting a certain way, and even electing parties that say they will deal with certain problems, doesn't actually produce the results. And I imagine, based on your analysis, that would be, like Francis says, quite a dangerous place to be, right? Yeah, I mean, you know, politicians don't really control as much as they think they control, And as much as Donald Trump rails against globalism and wants to go back, it is an interconnected planet. And you don't have control over forces.

49:41You know, you see in the war going on right now how this is rippling across, particularly across Asia. And who knows in a few months or years the kind of dynamic, the kind of problems that is going to set off in countries where the populace feels so diminished in their power that all kinds of rebellions. History is weird because what's happening in the moment, you don't know, you don't see the seeds of the kind of ugliness or bad things that could be happening in a year or two years from now. And a simple thing like cutting off oil and making the price of oil go up has a rippling effect that can create a revolution in some Eastern Asian country that then triggers a world war or something.

50:29I mean, I'm being apocalyptic here. But you don't know these little effects. And political leaders, as I said, it was kind of like riding a tiger. They feel like I can get to power using all of this resentment and grievance and anger and bitterness, but I can't control it because I can't really deliver what I'm promising I'm going to deliver. you know um so yeah it's very dangerous game do you think that for instance if a politician came out and actually said look there are things that i can control or that we can control there are things that we simply cannot control yeah as a result of that this is the the path that we're going to plot would that be more appealing to people or do people what people actually desire deep down is a strong man to come in and go, I'm going to sort it out.

51:24This is what's going to happen. Yeah. I mean, we've talked earlier about social media and part of the problem that's going on is people think in very simplistic terms. Things are delivered in a way like there's no nuance anymore. It's just this way or it's that way kind of thing. So if a political leader came about now who was very realistic and very honest, you know, Biden was a little bit like that and he got chewed apart. He got decimated. He wasn't very effective, but he was trying to be honest and say, this is what I can do. This is what I can't do. I don't think people want to hear that right now.

52:07They want to hear easy, simple solutions. I mean, if you look at the global stage right now, it's startling. It's really startling because 70 years ago, you would see leaders and parties that would stay in power for decades, sometimes through corruption, I don't deny. But there was a consistency, right? And now it's like it's turning over by the month, practically. You said the Green Party. Well, three months ago, it was Farage and I forgot the name of his party. The Reform. The Reform Party, you know. And in three months, it's going to be some other party. The volatility is out of this roof. And that's why I said there's a kind of madness going on in the world, a kind of madness where people's opinions are shifting so quickly like that.

52:58There's no anchor. There's nothing kind of holding it all together where this politician, I believe, can solve my problems. I'm willing to wait. I'm willing to be patient with him or her and give him or her three years, four years to figure out, oh, that can't happen. I don't know if this is how relevant this is, but I was on the board of directors of a publicly traded company, American Apparel, which no longer exists. and I saw up front how the business world operates and it was startling to me. So this was a company that was probably expanding way too fast, right? And of course, it went public and that's when I was brought onto the board of directors, okay?

53:51And I was seeing, I was foreseeing long-term problems. He had created, Dove Charney, he created this brand that was all about sexiness for young women based on the 80s, kind of the 80s aesthetic, you know, the kind of short workout, you know, short sort of thing. And I was thinking, there's a shift going on in people's taste. This is 2009 or so. I feel like in a couple years, it's not going to be the aesthetic. It's not going to be the ethos anymore of young women, because that's who they, company was appealing to. And I was trying to tell the director there, I was thinking, we've got to make a shift in the brand.

54:34You've got to be more forward thinking. But the pressures of Wall Street and the quarterly report were so powerful that you could not think long term. You could not project six months in advance because you had to make a quarterly report that showed Wall Street that you were making, that you were growing, right? That was the growth, right, new markets, we're getting market share. And if you did that, then you'd get more money coming in. But you couldn't raise your head this much above the moment to think in advance. That's the business world that we live now in the United States, and it's very, I think it's creating a lot of problems.

55:13Francis Foster:Если хочешь по -настоящему понять язык, нужно слушать, как говорят живые люди, а не читать учебники. If you understood that, good, but I'm gonna repeat myself. If you didn't, here's what I said. If you want to actually understand the language, you need to hear how people speak it, not work through textbooks. I grew up speaking Russian, and what makes a language stick isn't grammar drills, it's immersion. The rhythm of how people actually talk, the slang, the way a sentence lands in a real conversation rather than on a printed page. That's the whole logic behind Lingopi. It's a language learning platform built around watching real TV shows and films in your target language.

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56:21Francis Foster:That's learn.lingopi.com slash trigonometry. It's interesting you say that because there's people who've offered to invest in our show and like help. And it's not really ever appealed to us because we know that if that happens, we no longer can have the conversations we want. We have to have the conversations that are going to get views. And then that would ruin the whole thing that we do because it works because it's authentic. And if you try and create something fake, then you get more clicks. But then the people who actually watch the show in the beginning don't want to watch it anymore. And we'd hate our job as well.

56:58Francis Foster:But I can see how that would affect a business to the point where it's no longer actually fulfilling its mission. It's now just trying to make money and making bad decisions and then goes out of business. Yeah. Is your point. Yeah. Yeah. If I would advise you guys, I would say, stay small. You know, when he started this business, I'm talking about American Apparel, he had one store here in Los Angeles when I first met him. Right. And, and then it got like 10 stores and 20 stores, but it was solid. It had a, it had, you know, I could see the point of it, right? By the time he expanded to 300 stores around the world, it lost its meaning.

57:40It lost its brand. It lost what it was. And then forget it. You're never going to get it back, you know?

57:46Francis Foster:It's interesting as well. Something you mentioned, I just remember Desmond Morris, who is a writer, who's, I've read a lot. Naked Ape, Human Zoo, and a bunch of others. But one One of the things you talked about is the length of women's skirts goes up, so the skirts get longer when economic times are bad. So 2009 would have been exactly the right time to pivot to longer rather than shorter. Yeah, it was right after the financial crisis. Does it help in a society where power is shared? So for instance, part of the problem with our society is that it's become ever more secular. So we don't, there's a lot of us who are not religious.

58:27There's a lot of us who don't believe in God. And as a result of that, we, instead of looking maybe to the church or to the mosque or whatever it may be, we now look only to our political leaders. That's a very good point. You're a Catholic, right? I was raised Catholic. It never leaves you. The guilt is always there. I'm Jewish, so I know this. Yeah, I mean, my new book that I finished the last chapter a month ago, and I'm almost finished with the introduction, so I'm almost there. It'll be out in November. It's kind of dealing with that because we humans have a spiritual side to us. We have a hunger for something larger that aren't just our egos, than just making money, than just surviving.

59:17We need to feel connected to something larger. It's part of our nature. And in my book, I explain where that comes from. And that never goes away. I don't care how sophisticated we are. I don't care if it's 3 ,000 years in advance, and we're all like Borgs, we're part cyborgs, et cetera. It's still a part of human nature. It isn't going away. And so organized religion was sort of the main source of that for centuries, right? And it kind of became dead in a way. It wasn't really connected to people's authentic experience anymore, particularly as we became technologically so sophisticated. It seemed like something kind of superstitious, something from the past.

1:00:03And also, it wasn't appealing to our lived experience. I remember as a child going to the synagogue, right? And it's just like, what does this have to do with my life here in Los Angeles? It's the 60s. And people are going nuts in the streets and the Vietnam War and sex and everything. And here there's these prayers. It had no connection to my life as a child and to my world. So I couldn't understand organized religion. But people still have this need. They still have this hunger. They still are looking for some kind of meaning. They want to connect to something bigger than just their egos, right?

1:00:43And there's nothing out there that's supplying that, I think. And you find, because of that, a lot of people are going into these sort of niche spiritual worlds that at least feel a little more direct and part of their everyday life, but aren't connected to anything larger, any kind of movement. And so it shifts. Now it's, I'm interested in this little form of Buddhism. Then in six months, it'll be, you know, I'll be getting drug therapy. And then in six months, it'll be something else, right? So there's nothing kind of solid. And it's an emptiness that people feel. And so the book that I wrote was trying to deal with that kind of emptiness and how you as an individual or we as a collective can find our way back to finding this kind of higher meaning in our life.

1:01:38But, yeah. So carry on. I don't know. I was saying, but it also speaks to a kind of... We were having a conversation, Constantine and the rest of the team, last night, literally about this topic. It speaks to a kind of arrogance, doesn't it? Particularly in the West, that somehow we superseded religion. We don't need it anymore because we're so smart. We have this amazing technology. It's stupidity. I mean, I'm reading quotes from Albert Einstein, you know, probably the most brilliant scientist of our era. and he believed in what he called cosmic religion. And he said, mysticism is as much a part of the arts as it is of the sciences.

1:02:18And if you can't feel awe in front of this universe that we have, then you might as well be dead, right? So you can mix science, technology, and sophisticated thinking and 21st century thinking with something spiritual. You can, it can be done. But the idea that everything has to be rational, everything has to be data, algorithms, you know, program, etc. It's just creating deadness in people. It's making them insane because that's not how the human animal is. We need something else. So yes, it is very arrogant to believe they can just get rid of religion. Sorry to say, but Nazism was a religion.

1:03:04Chinese communism and what Mao had was a religion. Stalin is a religion without religion, but it was still based on that kind of form. That's what happens when you get rid completely of things that meant so much to people. Absolutely, because we respect science, we respect data, we respect all of those things. Those things are highly important. But let's be very real about it. If you've had a diagnosis, a terrible diagnosis, let's say you've staged four cancer, data and science are not going to keep you warm at night. There's going to be something else that we're going to reach towards. And that transcends intelligence around everything.

1:03:44We need something else. And, you know, I had a stroke about eight years ago. That's why my hand is like this and why I can't walk very well. I came this close to dying, right? And I didn't have a near-death experience, but it was close to something like that. And it shook me up. It changed me. And so in my book that I'm writing, the last chapter is about death and people who had near-death experiences. And there was this theme of, I was diagnosed with stage four cancer, as you mentioned. I have only three months to live. I've never felt more alive than in these three months. I don't have to think about social media.

1:04:27I don't have to think about my admission. I don't have to think about all these other little problems. suddenly the world opens up to me and I'm thinking about what really matters, about what really life is about, right? Because no amount of technology is going to keep me alive and even if it does, I'm still going to have, the cancer will come back. And so you're forced to think about what really matters to you and that's what death can do for you, you know? And so, So, you know, we're taking away things that really matter to human beings, and we're paying a price for it. And so we have to find a way back to some of these things that our ancestors understood about the human animal and how we need an anchor in our lives.

1:05:16Francis Foster:What's interesting is you see, both in this country and in many other countries now, Now, actually, religious attendance of church, at least, or other religions, is on the rise slowly, particularly among young people. So it may be happening voluntarily, which is how you'd hope it happens, really, I guess. Rob, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for coming. And what is your book called? And you mentioned it comes out in November. When will people be able to pre-order it? I don't know when they'll be able to pre-order. Probably fairly soon, like within a month or two. I think it's been announced.

1:05:48It'll be out in November. And the title? It's called The Law of the Sublime. The book is about the sublime. And the idea is, when we, as a human animal, as a social creature, we live with certain conventions and limits and codes that tell us, this is how we're supposed to think, this is how we're supposed to live, this is how we're supposed to behave. And the sublime are experiences that lie outside that circle that kind of expand our consciousness. And I say that there's a lot of things going on in science that should naturally do this, like the nature of human consciousness, like the origin of the universe and the origin of life, and all these amazing discoveries going that should be expanding our minds outside this circle.

1:06:38And as the mind expands, you naturally feel this kind of awe, this kind of cosmic sense that was once a part of religion. But at the same time that science is expanding this and we should be going, whoa, whoa, social media is doing this to us. The mind is getting narrower, narrower, narrower. What is she having for breakfast? You know, what, you know, all these sort of trivial banal things that we're worried about, right? And so I'm trying to explode all of that and get you back into thinking about what lies outside that circle. And that's what I call the sublime.

1:07:15Francis Foster:We'll put the link in the description if it's available when this episode comes out. Before we ask you questions from our supporters, the final question we ask all our guests is what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be? Before Robert answers a final question at the end of the interview, make sure to head over to our substat. The link is in the description where you'll be able to see this. If you had to add new or amend existing laws from the 48, what changes would you make? Critiques of your book have suggested you're teaching people to be coldly manipulative. What do you say?

1:07:46Francis Foster:What's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be? Well, about my book, I guess. We just did. You know, because I hate to say it, but But because of my stroke, I had to, I can't type. So I had to handwrite this entire book. Wow. And that means handwriting it, then doing it in another notebook and editing it in another notebook, then editing it in another, then editing it in editing, and then finally dictating it right into the computer and then trying to edit it with one hand. and then I couldn't take a walk if I needed to clear my mind, right? I'm sort of trapped in my office and I'm somebody who loves exercise, loves hiking, being out in the world.

1:08:39And whenever my other books, I felt blocked, I would go on an amazing hike and all these ideas would come to me. I was trapped in this world and I couldn't, I had to handwrite everything. And yet the book is about the sublime. I had to feel it. How am I going to feel it when I'm like a bird in a cage? I had to overcome all of these things in my head and in my body. And so it took me seven years to write this book, almost seven years. I don't care if it doesn't sell a single copy. I've never been, felt more pride in myself that I overcame all of this. And there were difficult moments where I was like crying, like I can't do it.

1:09:22It's not working, but I did it. And it's a sense of achievement that I've never had before. So I don't know that maybe that's something I just wanted to share.

1:09:32Francis Foster:That's awesome, man. Yeah. That's really special. Well, thank you for coming to, uh, coming here and talking to us about it. Uh, head on over to triggerpod.co.uk where we ask Robert your questions. Don't forget to click the link in the description of this episode to grab the special CyberGhost VPN discount. It's completely risk-free, so check it out today. Do you see parallels with historical movements, such as communism, in using constructed claims of victimhood and moral arguments to gain legitimacy and consolidate power?

1:10:16We'll be right back.