One of the perverse parts of human nature is that we always desire what we don’t have. We look on the other side of the fence—the grass is always greener, the neighbor has a better car, their children are better behaved.
We’re always desiring what other people have. We think what we don’t have is better. That’s the nature of desire. When we actually attain something, it’s not such a great feeling. The importance of desire is to always be pursuing something, something outside of ourselves. We want what is unfamiliar, what is exotic, what we’ve never had in our lives before. We want what is transgressive, what is the taboo, what other people don’t have, what is new or fresh. You have to create that object of desire—in whatever you’re creating in life. You have to give people the feeling that there’s something a little bit taboo and transgressive about it, which was what I did with The 48 Laws of Power. When you pick up that book, you feel like you’re doing something a little bit dirty and nasty. You want to create the feeling that what you are offering is not something familiar.
Daily Law: When a person or an object is familiar, we have a bit of disdain. But when it’s distant and alluring and mysterious and something out there that we don’t have—that sparks our desire. That’s the key to any sort of marketing or soft sell.
Robert Greene in conversation at Live Talks Los Angeles, February 11, 2019
We humans cannot avoid trying to influence others. Everything we say or do is examined and interpreted by others for clues as to our intentions. As social animals we cannot avoid constantly playing the game, whether we are conscious of this or not. Most people do not want to expend the effort that goes into thinking about others and figuring out a strategic entry past their defenses. They are lazy. They want to simply be themselves, speak honestly, or do nothing, and justify this to themselves as stemming from some great moral choice. Since the game is unavoidable, better to be skillful at it than in denial or merely improvising in the moment. In the end, being good at influence is actually more socially beneficial than the moral stance.
Becoming proficient at persuasion requires that we immerse ourselves in the perspective of others, exercising our empathy. The month of August will teach you the maneuvers and strategies that will instruct you on how to create a spell, break down people’s resistance, give movement and force to your persuasion, and induce surrender in your target.
I’m often asked why I talk to the reader through stories.
I’m very focused on the reader. I’m always thinking when I’m writing, how are they going to absorb this information? There’s a problem that psychologists have noted. If you’re a teacher, you assume that your students have the same knowledge you have. This makes them bad teachers. I know that my readers don’t necessarily know what I’m talking about. If I’m talking about Carl Jung, for instance, and I just throw out jargon, the reader is not going to get it. So I have to make it understandable to the average person.
In The Art of Seduction, I talk about how telling a story lowers people’s resistance. Stories make the mind open up.
From the time we’re kids—being carried by our parents or playing peek-aboo— the sense of not knowing what comes next is very deeply ingrained in human psychology.
So if I tell a story about Rockefeller to illustrate aggression, I know that as the reader is being pulled into this story, they don’t know where I’m going, or who the aggressor is in this story, or the lesson that I’m trying to derive. So they’re going to want to read. They’re going to want to go further and further and further. I’ve tricked them into coming to page eight. Whereas if I immediately hit them with Jung and this or that study and some sociology jargon, their minds close off. They’re falling asleep.
That’s the mistake 98 percent of people who write books out there make.
They don’t think about the reader. They assume that the reader is as interested in the material as they are. You have to seduce the reader. You have to persuade them that what you have to say is worth the time. That’s why I tell stories.
People make the same mistake in the social realm, in trying to persuade or influence others. If you want someone to do you’re bidding, to help you, to finance your film or whatever it is—if you come at it only thinking about what you want or deserve, it has no effect. But if you think in terms of how they think, the stories they want to hear, what will please them, what will interest them—the game changes. You have the power to influence them.
Just as I have the power to influence the reader when I start thinking about what the reader wants, you have the power to influence people when you start thinking about what they want.