NOTES ON ROBERT GREENE'S "MASTERY": PART THREE

To paraphrase Bruce Willis in Shane Black's "The Last Boyscout":  nobody likes you, everybody hates you, you're going to lose.  That is human experience, in a nutshell.  YOU'RE GOING TO FAIL.  YOU'RE GOING TO BE STEPPED ON.   Can you take this wretchedness and recycle it into power.  In "Mastery", Robert Greene insists YES, you absolutely can, and "The Master" uses historical and contemporary examples of how the best representations of who we are - Mozart, Edison, Einstein - have done precisely this.  Transformed their own personal ass kicking into mastery of themselves.  It's not genes.  It's not something you're born with.  It's your will, your mind and your very existence that can take you to the promised land of your own genius.  That is "Mastery".

Greene's taut grasp of history is not the only reason why he is the perfect authority.  He lived it.  The man once fancied himself a screenwriter, venturing into the passive aggressive forest of back stabbing and cruelty called Hollywood.  The experience was discouraging.  People were more concerned with their egos and making money than telling a good story - and once you were in there, you started thinking like them.  Instead of collapsing into a sad existence or suicide, Greene harnessed this ugly experience into a historical study of human behavior called "The 48 Laws of Power."  He sometimes cried while he wrote it.  It was therapeutic for him - and for the rest of the world.  The book was cataclysmic.  It became a must read for any inhabitants of planet Earth.  Greene turned his discouraging experience in the film industry into a pamphlet on human behavior.  But Greene did not stop there, delving deeper with the Freudianly profound "The Art of Seduction," then, an analysis in Napoleonic thinking, "The 33 Strategies of War."  With rapper, entrepreneur 50 Cent, Greene co-wrote "The 50th Law," a pamphlet on conquering the paralyzing fear that rules most of our lives.  And now he drops "Mastery".  A road map to your own genius.

Days from its release, this book is Greene's crescendo, a punctuation of human life.  We spend so much of it confused, disappointed, and scared.  Greene says, there's no reason to fear anything or to envy anyone.  Your existence is your own unique thing, and you have the ability to transform your story into a great one...