Name: Robert Greene | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #503
Uploaded: 2024-05-17T03:06:10.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Robert Greene | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #503' from Theo Von on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-05-17. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Robert Greene | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #503' from Theo Von on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-05-17. Transcript available.

Robert Greene | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #503

I have some new tour dates to tell you about.
We've added a third show in London on June 16th at the Eventim Apollo.
We also have shows in New York City on May 31.
Belfast in the UK on June 6th.
That's an added show.
June 7th is sold out.
Idaho Falls, we've added a show on June 27th.
Salt Lake City, Utah on June 30th and Las Vegas, Nevada on July 5th and 6th at
Resorts World Las Vegas.
Get all your tickets at TheoVaughn.com slash T-O-U-R.
And if tickets are too expensive, just wait.
We'll come back around.
Make sure you buy them through our link and not off of a secondary site.
Thank you guys so much for your support.
Today's guest is one of the best-selling authors of the last 20 years.
You may know him from his books, The 48 Laws of Power and Mastery, as well as
The Art of Seduction, and more books.
We're going to talk about relationships, human interaction.
We cover a lot of ground, and I'm grateful to talk with Mr. Robert Green.
Shine that light on me.
I'll sit and tell you my stories.
Shine on me.
And I will find a song I've been singing.
I'm going to stay.
Thank you so much, man.
You're very welcome.
Please, that's really, really nice of you.
My pleasure.
That's a wonderful gift to have 48 Laws of Power right there.
Yeah.
Yeah, thanks for coming.
Nice to meet you.
Very nice to meet you.
Yeah.
Oh, thanks.
Same.
Yeah.
Thank you for all the inspiration.
Yeah.
I thank you for taking the time to think and write down your thoughts and
things that make
you feel something or things that you feel are worth sharing with the world.
Yeah.
Well, it's been what I've been doing for 26, 28 years now.
Hopefully, I can keep going for another 10, 20 years.
Yeah.
Unless the government puts a word limit on people.
Or it's like it canceled for some reason.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
I think we would...
Sometimes I wish the government would put a word limit.
Oh, sure.
On a lot of people.
Yeah.
God, yeah.
Because then you'd have to...
That would be wonderful.
You'd have to really articulate.
You mean for books or just in talking?
Maybe only in talking.
Because books...
Because books, it's more of a choice.
People can go to choose to look in it and read it.
But talking, it's like, yeah, you only...
You got like a...
You got a thousand words a day.
Of course, some people would have more, some people would have less if they're
really obnoxious
or irritating.
Yeah.
We'd cut it down to like 200 words a day.
Yeah.
Maybe your neighbors vote on how many you have or there's...
Yeah.
But yeah, I think it would be great.
Then if you're...
Yeah.
Like, especially like if a guy's...
Like, a lot of guys would be like, hey, guys, come over to the house today.
You know, Marjorie only has four words left this month.
That'd be wonderful.
Yeah.
So the good times over here, you know, we're going to be able to do whatever we
want.
Well, the ancient Greeks had this thing called Ostraki, where they would put on
little clay
tablets, fragments of a clay pot.
You could write down the name of somebody that you wanted to banish from the
city.
Yes.
And then every year they would collect that and they would banish the person
who got the
most votes because it was inevitably the most obnoxious person in the whole
city.
Can you imagine how wonderful that would be if we had something like that?
I would love that.
Well, you would think if we get to vote people forward, we should be able to
also vote people...
Off the island.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, that would be so wonderful.
And it could even start in your own home, you know?
With your kids.
I mean, okay.
I think it's up to the...
I mean, it would be quite a topic for family discussion.
Oh, here it is right here.
Ostracism.
That's what the word ostracism comes from.
Well, it's pretty cool.
They got that.
Yeah.
It was an Athenian democratic procedure in which any citizen could be expelled
from the city-state
of Athens for 10 years.
So you get a chance to get it together.
While some instances clearly expressed popular anger at the citizen, ostracism
was often used
preemptively.
It was used as a way of neutralizing someone thought to be a threat to the
state or a potential
tyrant.
Though in many cases, popular opinion often informed the expulsion.
Wow.
Wow.
That's pretty cool.
They put that up there.
Broken pottery.
Yeah, that's what I'd say.
Shards were used.
Served as a kind of scrap paper.
Yeah.
Wow.
That'd be exciting.
Yeah, it would.
It would, yeah.
Let's bring it back.
Yeah, let's bring it back, huh?
Be a movement.
Yeah, you've written so much, man.
The 48 Laws of Power, Mastery are the books that I've absorbed the most of,
which is so
nice to have this.
This is so cool, man.
I really lit up when you gave me that.
Thank you.
And a lot of what we talk about on this show for a lot of young men and women
is purpose,
you know, and what it means to have purpose and how to find purpose.
And you talk a lot about that in Mastery, about purpose.
Do you think that everyone has purpose?
Well, it's a difficult question to answer.
I mean, I believe that everyone, the way I look at it is, you, Theo, were born
with a
DNA that will never be replicated in the past or in the future.
It's a unique marker of you, right?
So genetically, there is something different about you, weird, odd, gray,
whatever you want
to put it, okay?
And it's like something that's planted at your birth.
It's what makes you different from everybody else.
It's even what makes you different from your parents, right?
I mean, you do inherit their genetics, but it's always different, okay?
And so that's like a seed at your birth.
If you cultivate that seed, if you cultivate your uniqueness, it gives you a
purpose in life.
It's why you are unique.
You can look at it as if somebody or it's just nature intended it to be this
way, but it's what makes you, you.
It's your energy.
It's your character.
It's your weirdness.
It's your sense of humor.
It's what draws you to certain things, what you hate about certain things.
It's you, if you listen to that, it's like a voice inside of your head, instead
of listening
to all the other bullshit that's around you, what your parents are saying, what
your teachers
are saying, what your friends are saying.
If you listen to that voice clearly, it directs you.
It gives you a purpose.
Now, I'm saying everybody has that potential, but quite clearly, not everybody.
In fact, few people actually go that far.
So if you see somebody out there in the public eye, yourself or others, who's
reached a level
of fame and success, you can say that there's nobody else like them out there.
They're unique.
They're one of a kind, right?
You can say that about a Steve Jobs.
You can say that about Elon Musk.
You can say that about political figures, et cetera, et cetera.
Yeah.
Richard Simmons, Mr. T.
Yeah.
Okay.
50 Cent, somebody I've worked with.
There's only one person like them.
That's because they found their uniqueness and they brought it out and they
cultivated it.
They're not afraid of it.
And that's what gives them their purpose.
A lot of people are afraid of being different.
That's one of the worst things that can happen to you.
Yeah.
Because it's what makes you different that is what makes you powerful.
So to answer your question in my long-winded way, everybody has a purpose, but
not everybody
follows it.
Not everybody connects to it.
Yeah.
I guess there's a lot of fear in it, huh?
Because you're going to be different.
You're going to have to choose to...
People are going to look at you.
The eyes of the tribe are going to turn towards you.
Yeah.
If you try to step out into a different march than the group.
Yeah.
You know, sometimes I would see like...
Yeah.
Sometimes I...
You ever be like on a floor somewhere and you just see one ant by itself?
Yeah.
And you're like, this guy is a gangster.
Well, they're called scout ants.
I mean, I wish they were gangsters, but what they're doing is they're looking
for food or
something and they're signaling to the army, hey guys, here's where it's
happening.
Let's follow me.
Oh, damn.
Yeah.
I thought they were dudes that were like, you know what?
I'm going to do something different.
Well, that would be the more interesting interpretation.
So it's not that some people don't have a purpose.
It's just that some people are able to hear a voice inside of them that directs
them more
towards their purpose.
Yeah.
I mean, so what is it?
I call it in mastery, I call it a primal inclination.
So we see that in certain people.
So at a very, very young age, and I maintain it happens to everybody, but you
forget about
it.
So you look at like Albert Einstein.
He was like four years old and his father gave him a compass and he was like
mesmerized
by it because it meant that there was some kind of force out there that was
moving the
needle of the compass, an invisible force.
For a child, that was an overwhelming thought that there's something out there
in the universe
that is moving something, but you can't see it.
It had a lasting influence on his whole way of science and wanting to discover
these unseen
forces.
Tiger Woods, when he was like two years old, his father would be hitting golf
balls in the
garage and the, and he would be going, the little baby tiger would be going
crazy.
Like, I got to do this.
He was so enamored with just, just the, the physicality of it.
He had to do it.
I could go on and on and on with athletes, with dancers, with writers.
I mean, I, I'm not putting myself on their level, but I had a relationship when
I was
six years old or so to words, words just mesmerized me.
I couldn't believe that there was a word that meant something.
I was entranced by the sound of it, by the look of it, et cetera.
Yeah.
Well, even just to think that a bunch of letters would get together and party
like that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Cause I remember like first they taught us letters and I was like, okay, but
then the
word showed up and I was like, oh, okay.
They're in gangs.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, it's, there's some real turf wars out here.
Um, yeah, I guess, so I guess the, the best way for a parent then to probably
help, help
associate their child or give them the best opportunity to find or to bring
their purpose
to a boil would be to present them with more options.
Do you feel like, like, is that kind of what you're saying?
Well, yes and no.
I mean, um, parents try to do too much sometimes.
So children are more interesting.
They're more powerful.
They're more, they're smarter than we think they are.
We give, we don't give them enough credit.
So they find their ways to the things that excite them and interest them.
What you're looking for in your child is that spark, that look in their eye of
excitement.
They can't control it.
I'm so excited by this.
I have to do it.
Yeah.
It can be physical activity.
It could be music.
It could be math.
It could be technology.
It could be objects and their colors.
When they have that excitement, lean into it.
Don't try and tell them, oh, I don't know.
You can't make a living doing that.
You want to be a rock and roll star.
You'll never make a living.
You got to go become a lawyer.
Cut that crap out.
Let them go into their, into their lane of excitement.
Encourage it because that is a sign of what I'm talking about.
That purpose that you were born with.
Is there, is there like certain ways or times or moments that you would create
for yourself or that you would suggest people create for themselves to try and
hear that, that voice of purpose?
Well, it's a very interesting question.
And it's a very difficult one because I get a lot of people writing to me
saying, you know, Robert, I hear what you said.
I've read your book, but I have no idea.
I can't hear it anymore.
Right?
Right.
Because there's still a lot of guys who are young adolescents and middle-aged
and who are like, I still don't know what my purpose is.
Yeah.
Well, so when you're younger, there's hope.
Like when you're 16, you'll find it, man.
And I, an