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Lucio Buffalmano is a sociologist and global authority on power dynamics and men’s self-development.
He founded ThePowerMoves in 2016 to help good men win—without becoming as*holes.
Today, TPM is the #1 site for mastering power, strategies, and winning at life.
https://thepowermoves.com/
Lucio Buffalmano is a sociologist and global authority on power dynamics and men’s self-development.
He founded ThePowerMoves in 2016 to help good men win—without becoming as*holes.
Today, TPM is the #1 site for mastering power, strategies, and winning at life.
https://thepowermoves.com/
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LearningTranscript
00:00Robert Greene is an author with great intuition, but average experience and no empirical evidence.
00:06Let's review. First off, I love Robert Greene, I read all his books, I enjoyed all of them,
00:12and one of them is also in our TPM recommended books list, so overall thumbs up for Robert
00:18Greene. Now let's go a little bit more in details, including the not so positive sides.
00:23Let's start with what on TPM we call the three pillars of knowledge and mastery,
00:28and what, in my opinion, allows you to really teach skills at a high level. So you need the
00:34three pillars, which are one, your experience, two, science and empirical evidence, and three
00:40is basically your mind. It's your analytical skills, your critical thinking skills,
00:45your ability to connect the dots. Robert Greene is great at the mental level, at thinking,
00:52especially the intuition side. He's got a very, very strong feel for power and power dynamics.
00:59On the other hand, he's got only average experience. So experience, like all the other
01:03pillars, has many sub-components. One of them is second-hand experience, and there Robert Greene
01:09is very good because second-hand experience benefits a lot from your intuition and your
01:14critical thinking. What do I mean? Like if you can read a book or see other people's lives,
01:20even an interview, or talk to other people, if you have a lot of intuition, you can take their
01:27experience, analyze what they share to draw lessons learned, guidelines, pitfalls that people may fall
01:35into, and ideally also to put it into your system that allows you then to make sense of the world,
01:41to adopt great strategies and techniques, and to teach them. So thanks to his intuition, where
01:47Robert Greene went all through those history books, he could indeed increase his experience
01:53in a way, his second-hand experience. Now where he fails a little bit more is in his first-hand
01:58experience. What do I mean by that? Well, he talks, for example, a lot about power, of course, that's
02:04what he's famous for. But then you gotta wonder, did he use that in his life to achieve a good life
02:12or to achieve his goals? And that's a little bit doubtful, to be honest. Even brags that before he
02:17hit it big with the 48 laws of power, he had a string of menial jobs all over the world.
02:22MJ DeMarco is a fantastic author, and he talks about the paradox of practice. The paradox of
02:28practice is this. You teach something, maybe you're even good at teaching, but you haven't
02:34used them in your life to achieve the success that you are promising to your readers and customers
02:40and buyers. The example that he uses, and a very typical and common one these days, is for people to
02:45teach entrepreneurship. And to do that, they show that they made a lot of money. However, the way
02:51that they made a lot of money, the few of them that made a lot of money, by the way, they did it by
02:56teaching others how to make money. So they didn't use their own teaching in their own lives, which
03:01means it's not really proven, is it? That's the paradox of practice. And to me, Robert Greene
03:07falls into that big time. For example, many of his power principles apply to work. And bro, before
03:16you started writing books, you had a string of menial jobs. You didn't advance in any of these
03:21jobs. And something else that he talks a lot about, he's got a whole book about it, is seduction. And
03:29yeah, you know what I'm going to say. It doesn't strike me as a player. Now, of course, he says
03:35that he's not interested in seduction in the sense of picking up women or sleeping with women.
03:40And I partially agree. Seduction and picking up or sleeping with women aren't exactly the same.
03:46You can sleep with some women without them being really into you or without seducing them.
03:51And you can seduce minds without sleeping with a woman. Absolutely. However, there is a strong
03:58overlap there. And can you really learn seduction from a guy who hasn't seduced in his real life
04:05a number of women? And let's talk straight. Would you learn seduction, especially if you're
04:10interested in dating, from a guy who hasn't been dating a lot and having had much successful dating
04:18and shall we speak straight, also having slept with a healthy number of women? Personally, I find
04:24it doubtful. So again, another example of paradox of practice from all his books that he read,
04:30he derived a bunch of guidelines and one of them is the bold move. Can you talk about bold moves
04:38if you haven't done a number of bold moves in your life? Yes, you can, because he's got such
04:44a great intuition and he can learn and you can still learn from a guy with such a high intuition
04:48like him. But if you haven't done it many times in your life, you are missing. Especially if you
04:54want to apply those laws and principles in your life, you need somebody who has done it in his
05:01life a number of times, because he can give you more practical advice and better advice that
05:06applies in real life. Speaking of applying in real life, I think this is also a major criticism
05:13and it's that it doesn't have systems. Take for example his most famous law,
05:18don't outshine the master. Fantastic, that is such a great general principle.
05:23However, if I want to advance fast at work, how can I do it? Don't outshine the master doesn't
05:32give you the tools to advance at work. To me that's what's missing, the framework and the how-to.
05:38When talking about science, Robert Greene often says that he's done such crazy research for his
05:44books, but for a guy like me, I always have to wonder what kind of research have you done? You
05:50read a bunch of history books and when you're talking about psychology, it's always the usual
05:56names Adler, Freud and the omnipresent Jung. These are not scientists. Mind you, they are geniuses.
06:05Freud is a genius, but with the genius that he put out, he also put out a bunch of bullshit and
06:12it's completely unproven and actually it's even worse than that. What has been tested from Freud,
06:18a lot of it has not been proven to hold up in empirical evidence. So when I read his analysis
06:25based on Jung or Freud, to me it's like, yeah, blah, blah, blah. That's philosophy bro, opinions
06:32and conjectures. And yes, philosophy is great, but personally, I don't want to learn from
06:37philosophers. I'm interested in what works in the real world, what helps me and my customers and
06:44readers achieve goals. And authors such as Jung are severely limited for that. One last con for
06:51me is that recently it seems like he has become a little bit more politically correct, almost
06:56virtue signaling, I will say. I've only seen one video from his YouTube channel, so he may be the
07:01exception. Anyway, in that video he was talking about what it means to be masculine and high power
07:07and it was obvious that he was referring to some Red Pillars authors, including a famous one that
07:13we don't like too much on TPM, but he didn't make the name and he was criticizing him and
07:18Red Pillars in general, saying that real masculine men were secure in their masculinity, they have a
07:24deep respect for women and, ah man, come on, they feel such bullshit. It's one of those things that
07:31it's nice to say, it's nice to think, it's nice if it were true, but is it true? No, it's not true.
07:37So I hope it's the exception and that's only for him talking on his YouTube channel. For his books,
07:44he is much better and much more of a realist. We can talk about it next time when we will review
07:48the 40 Laws of Power. Now let's summarize. Robert Greene, overall, thumbs up as usual. We talk more
07:54about criticism here and things that are missing rather than the good things that are there.
07:59Overall, he's got such great intuition that I love him. I learned from his book quite a bit and coming
08:05from me that I'm so critical and I read so much, including a lot from scientists, that's a very
08:10good thing to say. And if he writes another book, I'll read it, which is a huge compliment for me
08:16again, because I don't read mainstream books anymore. So yes, great Robert Greene. Be aware of
08:22these important limitations that were mentioned and you will do great learning from a guy like
08:27Robert Greene. Keep rocking. See you. Ciao, ciao. See you.