Although I'm an optimistic person, when I observe human beings, I can't help but feel a sense of... jaundice. Folks at coffee shops look like they just woke up. Depressed looking executives on lunch breaks. People check cell phones, even though there's clearly no new messages. I have an older brother who still lives at home at 40 and refuses to pay rent or contribute in any way. After finishing Robert Greene's "Mastery", I can't help but wonder how this opus will have a ripple effect on our world - and if it's too late. Will people realize that the time they save not having to hunt for food can be utilized to maximize themselves?
It doesn't just come down to my brother, but people who "do" things in life. I know many people that work, and then, to paraphrase "Fight Club", "buy shit they don't need". I know people that hate their jobs and then go home and watch TV until they go to sleep - then go back to work. Not judging this. They just seem unsatisfied with this scenario. "Mastery" makes it clear we are a world that mostly consumes. We don't give back. Much. We are like a body that eats and rarely shits. Generally, when a person can't shit anymore, that's bad.
What Robert Greene writes is nothing new. People may even say, I already know all this stuff. But that isn't Greene's gift. He has become a master of organizing what we know and making it simple. Digestible. In "Mastery", he discusses how the brain is an instrument that connects things. The older you get, the more experience you have, the more your brain connects. If you love baseball, classical music and Thai food, your brain will find a way to connect all three of these things - and see their relation. That bowl of pho tasted like Mozart's Requiem and felt like a home run, and so on. That is what our future is depended on. The ability to connect everything we know and not see them as separate, but as whole.
My hope is that - if this book has a positive impact in our world - it will help us "connect everything" and evolve us into the super beings we can be. Take the energy people place on religion, for instance. As a person who is not religious, it's very clear that religions are pretty identical. The idea that people could be slaughtering each other for worshipping the same thing is tragic and laughable. Can you imagine how far would we be if we could conquer something like that?
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