Post: #1

I know members of this forum have read and discussed a whole bunch of works from various authors however, I felt that there should be an official thread for a particular author: Robert Greene.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Robert Greene, he has written the following books:

- 48 Laws of Power
-The Art of Seduction
- 33 Strategies of War
- The 50th Law
-Mastery
- Laws of Human Nature (unreleased/still being written)

The reason I made this thread is because I want there to be a place where people who have read his books can discuss the various principles and strategies outlined in his books. So for example, if you've read the 48 laws of power, you can discuss what was your favorite law and discuss ways on how to utilize them in the real world. You can also give your personal opinion on what you think about his stuff and what you hope to see in his next book etc. Make sure to mention which book or books of his you've read.

Post: #2

I have the books on my to-read list.

I read a bit of them and so far I like the guy's "poetic" style of writing a lot better than the vanilla self-help books.

Post: #3

Have all of them but have only read 48 Laws of Power so far, read it twice but still need to read it again. So much info in this book.. I tend to read thru dense books not paying attention.

Well explained though, I love the way he writes. Very well explained and researched.

Post: #4

Robert Greene's books are, in my opinion, must-reads for anyone on this forum. I've read 48 Laws of Power and Art of Seduction, and I'm about a third of the way through 33 Strategies of War. Some people complain that he takes forever to make a point and his books are nothing but historical anecdotes, but for me the anecdotes are the best part. They're all interesting, and more importantly they illustrate the point that the game hasn't changed since the dawn of man. From power to sex to war, just about everything we could possibly learn about human nature has already been discovered, forgotten, and rediscovered a million times.

Post: #5

As a preface, I'm taking a Devil's Advocate position here, so, if you really like the book and don't feel up to having a net debate on what amounts to a personal opinion, skip my post.

The only one of Greene's books I've read is The 48 Laws of Power, but looking up summaries of the others more or less confirms they're written along the same lines for the most part.

First, an epic digression:

I've read a lot of books about writing novels. And perhaps the most common form of how-to book about writing is where the author comes up with a variation on the standard model of three-act structure, character progression, and theme as a filter for the work, and then goes on to suggest that this, their model, is the one that works. They then proceed to look at a handful of bestselling books and demonstrate how their variant of the standard novel structure is present in that book, thus proving that their variant is the key to success.

Reading this sort of book is hilarious when you get through enough of these sorts of books and see each variant model often applied to the same bestseller book. The Godfather in particular has been analysed through many of these models. It gets to the point where it's like watching two solipsists arguing with each other about whose universe actually exists. It's only when you read what Mario Puzo himself said about the novel -- like Hemingway, he had only a few and simple aphorisms for the writing of novels -- that you realise Puzo was churning out what he thought of at the time as a potboiler, cheap-arse novel which he hardly researched (certainly not to the point of sitting down with Mafia Dons, as is the common myth) and sure as fuck wasn't following any of the models any of these how-to novels set out.

(It's doubly amusing when the author himself can't even cite his examples properly. I have seen so many how-to authors misstate the sequence of events of the climax of Empire Strikes Back it makes me wonder whether anybody actually still watches the film. For future reference, the line is not "Luke, I am your father." The sequence is:
Darth Vader: Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father.
Luke: He told me enough! He told me you killed him.
Darth Vader: No. I am your father.)

Similar can be said about Harper Lee with To Kill a Mockingbird. At one of her very infrequent lectures about the book -- John T. Reed talks about attending it -- she was pestered with the question that there must have been some thematic significance to all the evil characters having the names of Civil War generals. Lee testily replied "Those characters were all white trash. All the white trash in the South are named after Civil War generals." The room went silent ... while, as John T. Reed puts it, every guy in the room thought about his friends named Robert E. and similar.

You can find equivalent, chuckleworthy encounters from a lot of mainstream (not literary) authors when they get asked by an academic about the theme of their books only for the academic to be embarrassingly told "No, that's actually got nothing to do with what I was getting at. I was just trying to write a good story that would sell. I was not trying to say fuck all about the imagination of man by having Joe light a cigarette in the alleyway, the character was just nervous as fuck and lit up to get a burst of nicotine in him before he went to try and get in Wanda's pants."

In short:
(1) It's easy to make up reasons or principles for things post facto and say they explain past events
(2) The reasons for events are often nothing like what you expect when you talk to the people involved in them, and they're often for startlingly different reasons than you think.

But I digress.

Let's leave aside the scholarly objection that Greene pulls out isolated examples and uses them to claim a greater principle at work (which is the logical fallacy of Inappropriate Generalisation, or proof by example). The book is filled with it, and this is the most common complaint.

The next complaint I'd have is: by what expertise or example from his own life does Greene claim the ability to write about this stuff? Donald Trump's The Art of the Deal at least can be read on the basis that Trump has the experience to back his claims: he has not just talked the talk, he has walked the walk and that direct experience is what he speaks about in his book. What is Robert Greene's pertinent life experience? By Wikipedia:

Quote:Before becoming an author, Greene estimates that he worked 80 jobs, including as a construction worker, translator, magazine editor, and Hollywood movie writer. In 1995, Greene worked as a writer at Fabrica, an art and media school in Italy, and met a book packager named Joost Elffers. Greene pitched a book about power to Elffers and wrote a treatment which eventually became The 48 Laws of Power. He would note this as the turning point of his life.

His university qualification is in classical studies. But do you regard a university-trained guy who had 80 jobs before he turned to writing as well-travelled, or as a dilettante who was no fucking good at anything he turned his hand to until he starting writing? (To be fair, any number of writers do say there's nothing else they could do because writing was the only thing they were good at.) Additionally, has he ridden to the heights of fame and success by practicing the principles he preaches?

Why, in short, should you believe a guy who espouses self-help principles if he doesn't use them himself?

The next thing is that it would appear the book is, by Greene's own admission, hyperbole. In an interview with the Guardian, he said:

Quote:I believe I described a reality that no other book tried to describe… 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.”

Fair enough that he gets mad at self-help books out there: so do I. Most of them are shit rolled in glitter and generally regurgitating classical or Renaissance thought on life and success. But there seems a certain level of hypocrisy here: he hates self-help books, so he wrote one that goes completely the other way. I see self-help books as resting on something of a continuum: at one end are books like Brian Tracy's work on self-discipline -- which focuses on internal transformation and internal character to the exception of almost all else -- and at the other end are books like this which focus on the manipulation of others in order to gain success.

Why do so? Why not write a parody of a self-help book? Why not join a skeptics' society, or become an investigative journalist ripping up people like James Redfield et. al.?

The third element is a personal one on my behalf, and it is something of a philosophical objection. In terms of a rough worldview, I tend to resonate closer to the Brian Tracy or John T. Reed view of the world: to a large extent, the world runs on trust. Where it's low -- particularly trust of government institutions -- you also find third world countries and Islamic shitholes (often at the same time.) Where trust is high -- by reason of an independent rule of law, though not solely so -- you have a world where atoms are split and premature babies saved and riches for a vast majority of the population.

I see this sort of book as advancing the other, cynical end of the spectrum. It makes us more cynical about people, it destroys a part of the soul, it proposes a fairly immoral way of looking at the world and at people for the benefit of material ends only. This way of seeing the world might be good for the bank balance, but someone following these principles to the letter is going to wind up a hollowed-out personality.

I personally cannot see the reason for such a book and think it retards civilisation, not advancing it. It advocates form over substance, and I would have thought the manosphere was much more interested in advancing substance and seeing through form. Can you read it for a sort of catalogue of how assholes behave? Maybe: but as said, its principles are derived from isolated incidents and I see little proffered in the book for how to avoid such schemes or such people. As a whole, the book leaves you with a deeper cynicism about people in general. I'm not certain this is necessarily a good thing - especially when the world if not our movement is crying out for more people who can be trusted, who will stand up for principles and are morally courageous.

I am not surprised when I read who finds the book personally inspirational: rappers, Jay-Z, 50 Cent, Kanye West, and allegedly Hollywood film producers. In short, the appearance-is-everything crowd. The book is, at best, a survival guide in places where there are no objective measures of performance. These are not places that masculine men in my view ought to be frequenting; they are the demesnes of women for the most part, women being creatures of appearance above all.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #6

For me, the most memorable part of Art Of Seduction was his discussion of Marlene Dietrich.

He said she cultivated the aura of a blank slate that you could project your desires onto. She could literally be everything to every man watching her movies.

That's probably downplaying the effort that Von Sternberg put into lighting her (he created a personal lighting scheme just for her). Still, the idea is very powerful.

Art Of Seduction red-pilled me to the fact that women can be very powerful and manipulative, and have had access to those tools forever. Contrary to the "women had it so hard until 1960" bullshit we are spoon fed in public school.

Post: #7

(04-03-2016 12:01 AM)Paracelsus Wrote:  I see this sort of book as advancing the other, cynical end of the spectrum. It makes us more cynical about people, it destroys a part of the soul, it proposes a fairly immoral way of looking at the world and at people for the benefit of material ends only. This way of seeing the world might be good for the bank balance, but someone following these principles to the letter is going to wind up a hollowed-out personality.

And it's also all completely true.

Your complaint about this book seems to run contrary to the theme here of accepting the truth and using it to better yourself. You're complaining that Greene is painting an unwholesome picture of human relations, but you aren't explaining whatsoever which part of that picture is false. Not one single idea from his books did you point at an explain why it is wrong. Very telling.

This is akin to people white-knighting and throwing abuse at the manosphere for addressing the less wholesome aspects of female behaviour. Without regard for the fact that its all completely true. Meeting the truth with anger, not falsification.

Greene doesn't need to have applied the laws he speaks of for them to be true, especially because he's using thorough historical examples. To say that is like saying the work of a historian on ancient Greek warfare isn't legitimate because he's never stood in a phalanx. It's a ridiculous assertion. All he did was group together prior historical knowledge about humans into a group of patterns, which he called "laws of power". You only need to have "walked the walk" if you're espousing something new; if you're reminding people of something old you merely need to be historically accurate (the historical figures already "walked the walk" for you).

All you did is attack his character. Classic "shooting the messenger" stuff and frankly a non-criticism of his work. More like a grumble. "Can't he just pretend we're all angels!?".

His books imbue a healthy distrust. Trust is not granted by right. Trust is earned and built. Thousands of men have been thrown to the wind by blind trust, and it's a terrible sentiment to just think they should continue to do so. Whilst the sociopaths fully exploit this knowledge, everyone else should just trust? Where is this stuff coming from?

48 laws etc is like nukes and mutually-assured destruction. Not possessing nukes increases your risks of foreign aggression, and does not decrease aggression overall. Likewise with human nature. You need to understand it to effectively defend yourself from the sociopaths. This criticism of yours reads just like anti-gun criticism. Just because I don't read 48 laws doesn't mean sociopaths aren't going to use these tactics against me in the corporate workplace etc. They certainly do, and they certainly will, all the time. And the joke will be on me for saying "oh no those people don't really exist, and Greene is immoral!" whilst I suffer their domination defenselessly.

Post: #8

(04-03-2016 05:21 AM)Phoenix Wrote:  

(04-03-2016 12:01 AM)Paracelsus Wrote:  I see this sort of book as advancing the other, cynical end of the spectrum. It makes us more cynical about people, it destroys a part of the soul, it proposes a fairly immoral way of looking at the world and at people for the benefit of material ends only. This way of seeing the world might be good for the bank balance, but someone following these principles to the letter is going to wind up a hollowed-out personality.

And it's also all completely true.

Do you mean true as in historically accurate, or true as in being an observation on human nature that you happen to agree with?

I can cite the reference if you like, but Greene himself tells us he took an extreme point of view in writing the book as a reaction to the self-help books he was getting sick of. That is, he was engaging in hyperbole.

The book itself is historically inaccurate and drastically oversimplifies many such instances. I'm not going to sit here and go through the entire book, but if you'll permit me a little "dishonest in small things, dishonest in large": the quote he ascribes to Louis XIV – L’État, c’est moi, "I am the State." Louis never said that. The expression was conceived by his opponents to make him seem egotistical - same as how they ascribe misogynistic statements to Donald Trump which he never actually said.

I think the book's a good deal of confirmational bias for people who want to view the world cynically. But it remains one viewpoint on the world, among many. It is not providing us with great truths of human nature.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #9

I first heard about him through this podcast, it's an interesting interview.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKeXa_z14Ho

I've yet to read any of his books but I plan to soon.

Post: #10

(04-03-2016 06:21 AM)Paracelsus Wrote:  Do you mean true as in historically accurate, or true as in being an observation on human nature that you happen to agree with?

I can cite the reference if you like, but Greene himself tells us he took an extreme point of view in writing the book as a reaction to the self-help books he was getting sick of. That is, he was engaging in hyperbole.

The book itself is historically inaccurate and drastically oversimplifies many such instances. I'm not going to sit here and go through the entire book, but if you'll permit me a little "dishonest in small things, dishonest in large": the quote he ascribes to Louis XIV – L’État, c’est moi, "I am the State." Louis never said that. The expression was conceived by his opponents to make him seem egotistical - same as how they ascribe misogynistic statements to Donald Trump which he never actually said.

I think the book's a good deal of confirmational bias for people who want to view the world cynically. But it remains one viewpoint on the world, among many. It is not providing us with great truths of human nature.

It's consistent with what I've observed in politics, interpersonal relations, the corporate environment, pretty much everywhere. For that reason it sits in place of "true", until I read your book about how everyone is inherently trustworthy and nice, and find that to better match the world around me. Which it won't. Again, you haven't refuted any of the laws he presented, merely grumbled that they don't sound nice.

There is no direct evidence either way whether Louis 14th said "I am the state". Not many tape recorders running back then. Either way, it was basically true (he's the textbook standard of the absolute monarch), and Thomas Carlyle (who was a monarchist) wrote that he said it in his respected book "The French Revolution, A History". Nitpicking like this again indicates a lack of ability to refute the concepts of the book, by attacking his credibility rather than submitting any replacement concepts.

Hyperbole is just part of making stories more interesting and digestible. You could argue that Aesop's fables were far worse hyperbole (since the stories weren't even real), but they are very easy to understand and they match human nature. Your position that Greene wrote a load of cynical nonsense that he doesn't even believe and that doesn't match human nature, is just untenable. So many of the rules are consistent with what we've all observed, or other rules we know about, that it's clearly insightful and not subversive.
[I started a short list of examples here, but they're all so obviously true I couldn't bother continuing]

I'm also interested to know who's providing us with the "great truths of human nature" then.

Post: #11

So far I've read the 48 laws of power and the 50th law. Both were excellent.

The books are similar in content but the 48 laws is more for corporate workers, while the 50th law is for entrepreneurs. The 50th law is also an easier read.

Post: #12

I have read 48 Laws of Power. This books really need to be studied.
Reading this book and applying it, are two different things.

It is time for me to reread this one.

Post: #13

Robert Green´s note taking system. This is how he reads and gather the information for his books.

This is Ryan Holiday explaining how it´s done. Robert Greene is his mentor.

Note taking system

How to read and use a note taking system

I done this for the last 6 months, and the system is amazing. It´s the perfect way to read and gather knowledge.

Post: #14

(04-03-2016 07:35 AM)Phoenix Wrote:  I'm also interested to know who's providing us with the "great truths of human nature" then.

You, sir, have obviously failed to read the Little Dark Codex.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #15

(04-03-2016 06:21 AM)Paracelsus Wrote:  

(04-03-2016 05:21 AM)Phoenix Wrote:  

(04-03-2016 12:01 AM)Paracelsus Wrote:  I see this sort of book as advancing the other, cynical end of the spectrum. It makes us more cynical about people, it destroys a part of the soul, it proposes a fairly immoral way of looking at the world and at people for the benefit of material ends only. This way of seeing the world might be good for the bank balance, but someone following these principles to the letter is going to wind up a hollowed-out personality.

And it's also all completely true.

Do you mean true as in historically accurate, or true as in being an observation on human nature that you happen to agree with?

I can cite the reference if you like, but Greene himself tells us he took an extreme point of view in writing the book as a reaction to the self-help books he was getting sick of. That is, he was engaging in hyperbole.

The book itself is historically inaccurate and drastically oversimplifies many such instances. I'm not going to sit here and go through the entire book, but if you'll permit me a little "dishonest in small things, dishonest in large": the quote he ascribes to Louis XIV – L’État, c’est moi, "I am the State." Louis never said that. The expression was conceived by his opponents to make him seem egotistical - same as how they ascribe misogynistic statements to Donald Trump which he never actually said.

I think the book's a good deal of confirmational bias for people who want to view the world cynically. But it remains one viewpoint on the world, among many. It is not providing us with great truths of human nature.

I'd say if nothing else it's definitely helpful as a way to understand the mindset of antisocial individuals who really do think like that, and use it for your own protection if nothing else.

My belief is that pretty much every human action is made up of "tactics" but this is neither bad nor good, it's what the end goal is that makes it bad or good.

And it's still miles above the "be yourself and you'll meet a nice girl and live happily ever after" or "go to school, get good grades get married, have kids" schmaltz that passes as "advice".

Post: #16

(04-03-2016 02:46 PM)Мортен Wrote:  Robert Green´s note taking system. This is how he reads and gather the information for his books.

This is Ryan Holiday explaining how it´s done. Robert Greene is his mentor.

Note taking system

How to read and use a note taking system

I done this for the last 6 months, and the system is amazing. It´s the perfect way to read and gather knowledge.

MopTeH I found a lot of value in the links you provided. Thank you. +1 rep

Post: #17

Greene's War and Power books absolutely changed my life when I first read them as an idealistic 23 year old making his first steps into the business world.

I re-read them both every year.

his only poor effort is the Mastery one which I could never really get into for some reason.

Post: #18

I highly recommend The 50th Law. It's all about overcoming fear. 50 Cent has an incredible story.

-His mom was shot and killed when he was 9 years old.
-He never knew his father.
-Signed a record deal with colombia records and shortly after that was shot 9 times by an assassin.
-Colombia dropped him from the label because they thought he was too dangerous.
-Learned everything he could about producing music and marketing while he was with colombia records.
-Recruited local dealers and friends to help him share his music in the hood.
-Became an underground sensation with his mixtapes with the knowledge from colombia.
-Finally gets signed by Eminem
-Goes to a grocery store and sees that water is selling for 2-3 dollars a bottle, so he comes up with Vitamin Water and makes over 100 million.

The guy's incredible, a true hustler. And he really stuck with his motto of "Get rich or die tryin"

Post: #19

What I find most interesting about 50 Cent was that music was never a passion of his. He just did it for the money so he could escape the drug game. He's a true hustler and businessman.

Post: #20

"Always say less than necessary" and "Use absence to increase respect and honor" are the two laws from the 48 that resounded most with me. It's not like you need to read his book to learn of these, but I think they're important rules to follow..

I read this book at the end of college before joining the corporate world - I think half of the laws are to cunty in nature to be applied in real business, but they were still a fun read. The other half are tried and true.

Post: #21

(04-03-2016 07:35 AM)Phoenix Wrote:  

(04-03-2016 06:21 AM)Paracelsus Wrote:  Do you mean true as in historically accurate, or true as in being an observation on human nature that you happen to agree with?

I can cite the reference if you like, but Greene himself tells us he took an extreme point of view in writing the book as a reaction to the self-help books he was getting sick of. That is, he was engaging in hyperbole.

The book itself is historically inaccurate and drastically oversimplifies many such instances. I'm not going to sit here and go through the entire book, but if you'll permit me a little "dishonest in small things, dishonest in large": the quote he ascribes to Louis XIV – L’État, c’est moi, "I am the State." Louis never said that. The expression was conceived by his opponents to make him seem egotistical - same as how they ascribe misogynistic statements to Donald Trump which he never actually said.

I think the book's a good deal of confirmational bias for people who want to view the world cynically. But it remains one viewpoint on the world, among many. It is not providing us with great truths of human nature.

It's consistent with what I've observed in politics, interpersonal relations, the corporate environment, pretty much everywhere. For that reason it sits in place of "true", until I read your book about how everyone is inherently trustworthy and nice, and find that to better match the world around me. Which it won't. Again, you haven't refuted any of the laws he presented, merely grumbled that they don't sound nice.

There is no direct evidence either way whether Louis 14th said "I am the state". Not many tape recorders running back then. Either way, it was basically true (he's the textbook standard of the absolute monarch), and Thomas Carlyle (who was a monarchist) wrote that he said it in his respected book "The French Revolution, A History". Nitpicking like this again indicates a lack of ability to refute the concepts of the book, by attacking his credibility rather than submitting any replacement concepts.

Hyperbole is just part of making stories more interesting and digestible. You could argue that Aesop's fables were far worse hyperbole (since the stories weren't even real), but they are very easy to understand and they match human nature. Your position that Greene wrote a load of cynical nonsense that he doesn't even believe and that doesn't match human nature, is just untenable. So many of the rules are consistent with what we've all observed, or other rules we know about, that it's clearly insightful and not subversive.
[I started a short list of examples here, but they're all so obviously true I couldn't bother continuing]

I'm also interested to know who's providing us with the "great truths of human nature" then.

I think there's likely a lot of truth to them, even on a subconscious level.

Technically all social interaction is a form of "manipulation", good or bad in intent.

Even when people sanctimoniously decry "manipulation", by doing so they are literally trying to "manipulate" others into thinking "manipulation is bad".

On the flip side I'd say going through life with a paranoid mindset that everyone close to you is just waiting to stab you in the back at any chance you get is probably an unhealthy way of looking at relationships, unless one is in the mafia or the North Korean state.

But honestly any view that requires actual critical thought and situational awareness beats out any day over the "hearts, butterflies, unicorns" way of looking at the world which requires people to just wear blinders.

So I agree with you overall. I'm not an expert on the fine line between "evil" manipulation and mere day to day social influence, but the ones I usually see cry the hardest about "manipulation" are people in the "nice guy" or "white knight camp".

(And it's these same guys who don't think that buying girls stuff to 'get laid' or brown nosing their wives isn't a type of 'manipulation').

Post: #22

I stop reading Robert Greene's material few years ago, I used to be a big fan of his work but not anymore.

I found the relationships I was creating with people were not being substantial or meaningful, I always had a trick up in my sleeve or I would expect them to have one. I like more who I am now, I don't play games with people, I just do me, you cross me, I cross you, I don't like you, I don't fuck with you.

I enjoyed reading Paracelsus and Phoenix comments about the guy, it's good to see both sides of the coin and they are both reasonable.

Post: #23

Very amusing that in spite of Paracelsus being unable to defend his position, it got highly liked, and he got triple-repped simply for having it. And no-one who liked and repped for it was willing or able to defend it themselves. Very laughable. I hate this to sound salty, but it's just so weak. "We really like what he said, and the fact it's false is irrelevant". I didn't expect to see that here. If we're going to be rewarded for conjuring up some fanciful but indefensible position, just because it comforts us, it is going to encourage more of such farce. Any of you who liked that post or repped on it are welcome to provide what he could not: an explanation as to any laws in the book actually being false in the real world.

And to be clear, I don't care less about the book itself, just this weak unbecoming of a man attitude of the truth doesn't matter, and we should support pleasant fictions in place. Clear cut "blue pill".

Brb, penning my "Devil's advocate: Australian girls are actually misunderstood, highly feminine and intelligent waif-like creatures who are unfairly criticized".

Post: #24

delete

Post: #25

(04-06-2016 12:11 AM)Phoenix Wrote:  Very amusing that in spite of Paracelsus being unable to defend his position, it got highly liked, and he got triple-repped simply for having it. And no-one who liked and repped for it was willing or able to defend it themselves. Very laughable. I hate this to sound salty, but it's just so weak. "We really like what he said, and the fact it's false is irrelevant". I didn't expect to see that here. If we're going to be rewarded for conjuring up some fanciful but indefensible position, just because it comforts us, it is going to encourage more of such farce. Any of you who liked that post or repped on it are welcome to provide what he could not: an explanation as to any laws in the book actually being false in the real world.

And to be clear, I don't care less about the book itself, just this weak unbecoming of a man attitude of the truth doesn't matter, and we should support pleasant fictions in place. Clear cut "blue pill".

Brb, penning my "Devil's advocate: Australian girls are actually misunderstood, highly feminine and intelligent waif-like creatures who are unfairly criticized".

Haven't read the books in full yet so I may revise my opinions but there are some good arguments against the views.

-

*The notion of people being only motivated by material gains is highly controversial; it's a view usually associated with atheism, but fails to explain a lot of human behaviors.

Plus if one takes the materialist philosophical view that life is meaningless except for material gains, then by that logic a Navy Seal who risks his life for a modest salary is a "fool", while individuals like Paris Hilton or Miley Cyrus are more enviable simply because they "earn more money".

*Just because a view is "comforting" doesn't automatically make it wrong; this is a fallacy.

Plus the view that material gains alone are the only "purpose" of life could also be comforting to people who have material stuff but don't have much else in the way of respect or worth; a seedy informercial guru for example who made a killing but is pretty much hated and considered useless by everyone else; immaterial things such as genuine respect or sense of value in life may likewise be motivations beyond material gains alone.

-

*Many successful individuals have argued that they have some deeper love for what they do than material gain alone; Steve Jobs for example argued that anyone who didn't love what they did would be crazy to do what he did.

*Even other Manosphere bloggers like Aaron Clarey argued that people "don't need" and endless supply of "money or power" to be happy; his view apparently was more along the lines of Epicurus, who argued that learning to enjoy the simple things in life was more important than "having tons of stuff" just for the sake of having it, unless the person has a genuine passion in what they do.

Likewise many people who have a strictly sociopathic mindset about everything they do in life are not successful; while lately there is a media trend to glamorize the Nietzschean ubermensch/social Darwinist view of the world (in TV shows like Game of Thrones for example), many people who are simply "out for themselves at the expense of others" wind up in prison (Bernie Madoff, or small time thugs for example).

Nietzsche himself eventually lost his mind, and spent much time living with his female relatives rather than living a successful lifestyle, making his credibility on the subject debatable.

*It's arguable that viewing everyone in one's life as a potential foe who is ultimately only interested in their immediate material gain is psychologically unhealthy, unless they actually live a lifestyle where they can't trust anyone, such as a member of a gang or a totalitarian state; such a mindset could foster paranoia.

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*Individuals who have espoused these ideas have contradicted themselves (such as Ragnar Redbeard and the LeVeyan Church of Statan which copied his works), Redbeard (who wrote "Might is Right") for example argued that people are only motivated by money and power, but at the same time considered soldiers and war heros to be admirable.

As mentioned above though it's very debatable that soldiers and war heroes are only motivated by money and power or that said things alone bring satisfaction (the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae for example could have easily defected and joined the Persian empire),

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*Other individuals with measurable success have argued different points of view; ex. Dale Carnegie who became very wealthy argued essentially the opposite; that learning to be genuinely friendly and interested in people is the best way to become successful rather than viewing everyone as a potential enemy, so who is right?

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*Greene's backstory leaves a lot to be desired; apparently not a whole lot is known about who he was before he authored his books. Likewise one of his "proteges" (Ryan Holiday) claims he dropped out of college, and studied under Robert Greene, and this is how he "learned" to create a successful media career.

However he doesn't provide much detail and this seems like it could merely have been an attempt to promote Greene's books; Holiday could have simply been born into a prominent family or had rich connections (such as Tucker Max); the alleged story of him being a "nobody", meeting Greene, and then magically "becoming successful" sounds very shady, almost like a Kevin Trudeau infomercial pitch.

For all one knows Greene could have simply been a friend of Holiday or someone else with media connections, and had them promote his books for him rather than actually using the "laws" to achieve success.

This is the case in many infomercial scams and "pyramid schemes" for example, in which the pitchman has actually made more money from selling the books than from actually following the advice in the books.

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As far as the books themselves go, I believe understanding the techniques has its merit, but the notion that simply "memorizing these laws" is all one needs to know about humans and how they think in order to succeed leaves me with a lot of doubt.

My view's the opposite of the "blue pill" for the record, I believe that learning techniques of interaction has a lot of merit, and fact is this is regularly done in many professions, such as law enforcement, advertizement, politics, etc. But I definitely have a lot of doubts about the atheist/nihilist way of looking at the world.