(To reaffirm the resolution. I, Pro, am arguing that Robert Greene is not a guru on strategy and leadership. Therefore, a sham.)
(Robert Greene presents himself as a guru on strategy and leadership.)
The focus of the debate on whether he is or isn’t. Pro, of course, argues he is not.
This is the description on which I shall base my characterization of him on.
Robert Greene has critiqued self-help books in the past for being misguided because they focus too much on positivity.
This has led to him creating works like his most famous book, 48 Laws of Power. The book is referred to as "The Psychopath's Bible," and is considered so evil that it's banned in a lot of prisons.
So I'll begin my first three major contentions.
l. His books preach deception and manipulation as a default strategy.
Law 33 Summary: “Discover Each Man's Thumbscrew”
Once you discover what a person's weakness is and cater to it, you can use the person to your own advantage as “what people cannot control, you can control for them” (499). You can find out a person's weakness by listening and observing carefully.
Law #14: Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy. Collecting information through spying is essential to wielding power.
According to Law 24 of the 48 Laws of Power, to thrive in whatever court or environment you're playing for power in, learn the rules and know how to manipulate them. Even in modern times, a skilled courtier or functionary who can successfully navigate and thrive in the world of power has great power himself.
Dale Carnegie and Sun Tzu know how to use deception as a weapon, but the 48 Laws of Power naturally assumes that everyone is the enemy, which is counterproductive as it will perpetuate a state of insecurity that a person must maintain a constant level of awareness to not being taken advantage of.
The better option would be to create sincere friendships with people and stay true to yourself. Authenticity will attract people who are drawn to you for you and not some crafted image they conceptualized of you. It is possible to gain power through following social norms while being an honest person without losing your integrity in the process or taking advantage of other people.
ll. Robert Greene considers himself a realist.
This label often means 'cynic,' but is a way of suppressing a person's negative biases against people in general, as a way to maintain credibility.
"I'm not who people expect me to be," says Greene, an earnest, thoughtful 53-year-old with a somewhat tense smile. "I'm not Henry Kissinger." In conversation at his London publisher's office, as in his books, he always has an apt quotation to hand. "Charles de Gaulle said, I realised that when people met me they were expecting to meet Charles de Gaulle. I had to learn to be the man inside the quotes. But generally I prefer to be myself. I don't have to pretend to be this mastermind."
Greene doesn't think he's evil, obviously, but nor does he consider himself particularly good. He says he's just a realist. "I believe I described a reality that no other book tried to describe," he says. "I went to an extreme for literary purposes because I felt all the self-help books out there were so gooey and Pollyanna-ish and nauseating. It was making me angry."
Even if The 48 Laws of Power can be read as a bastard's handbook, he wrote it to demystify the dirty tricks of the executives he encountered during a dispiriting period as a Hollywood screenwriter. "I felt like a child exposing what the parents are up to and laughing at it," he says. "Opening the curtain and letting people see the Wizard of Oz."
lll. Lack of evidence.
His methods only work in theory and have never actually been tested or demonstrated to work. While there may have been historical examples used as references, this is anecdotal evidence at best and is therefore unreliable.
Robert Greene has not applied these methods or demonstrated that they work, so it raises the question, how trustworthy are his claims?
He turns down a lot of consultancy work because he is only drawn to people with interesting life stories, whether Charney (he's on American Apparel's board of directors), 50 Cent (they collaborated on 2009's The 50th Law) or Barack Obama. He is now working with labour organisers in Latin America, and his liberal politics disappoint some of his fans in the business world, who expect him to be a champion of the ruthless go-getter.
"I'm a huge Obama supporter," he says. "Romney is satan to me. The great thing about America is that you can come from the worst circumstances and become something remarkable. It's Jay-Z and 50 Cent and Obama and my Jewish ancestors – that's the America we want to celebrate. Not the vulture capitalist. These morons like Mitt Romney, they produce nothing. Republicans are feeding off fairytales and that's what did them in this year and hopefully will keep doing them in for ever, because they're a lot of scoundrels."
WHY WOULD YOU TITLE IT THAT WAY IF YOU WERE SAYING HE ISN'T A SHAM???????
"The focus of the debate on whether he is or isn’t. Pro, of course, argues he is not."
you troll