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Why Does Robert Greene Call Humans Sublime?

Robert Greene says humans are sublime because they can uncover what is not human. Reading the paper, he hit a claim that intelligent life on Earth took almost 4 billion years, which is why other intelligent life would be so hard to meet, and that some longer-lived planets might have it. He could not recall the details. A second piece, on a bird fossil from the dinosaur era found in China and on flying reptiles that were not dinosaurs, hit him the same way. Science, he says, can change how a person looks at life by showing how close the experiment came to never happening.

He does not treat humans as something to escape. Science, as he describes it, is hundreds of thousands of papers by people sunk in details, and he calls that work a sublime phenomenon. He remembers the early internet, in the early 2000s, as a realm of freedom: a person in Thailand who cared about Nietzsche and John Coltrane, and a conversation about why. He says it felt like a giant human brain. The same internet later turned very ugly and very dark. The best of being human and a much worse capacity are both in the record.

Transcript

Access the Sublime & Live Your Best Life | Robert Greene ·

Huberman Lab

More from this episode

  1. What Is Robert Greene's Law of the Sublime?Robert Greene says the Law of the Sublime is about how a day feels, not about success, power, or dealing with other people.
  2. What Did Robert Greene Notice the Day After His Stroke?Robert Greene says that the day after his stroke, a hospital window looked as if he had just been born.
  3. How Did a Fall Change Michael Murphy's Vision?Andrew Huberman says a recent blackout and fall altered how Michael Murphy sees the world.
  4. What Is Gurdjieff's Self-remembering?Robert Greene describes Gurdjieff's self-remembering as looking deeply at a moment and telling yourself you are remembering it and will remember it.
  5. Why Does Time Feel Different Near Death?Andrew Huberman says dying changes how time feels: the frame rate of attention shifts, and the tiniest details in space and time come forward.
  6. What Happens to Time in a Near-death Experience?Robert Greene says that in the death process the brain is dying too, and constructions such as time, vision, and the self start to dissolve, so time is much…
  7. How Did an Octopus Change a Diver's Sense of Time?Robert Greene says six or eight months with a female octopus altered a free diver's whole concept of time, because the diver was living in her time and time…
  8. What Animals Did Andrew Huberman Keep in San Diego?Andrew Huberman kept several octopuses and, before them, many cuttlefish in his lab in San Diego. He thinks the lab had 40 cuttlefish at one point.
  9. Why Does a Short Attention Span Make People Easier to Influence?Robert Greene says a splintered attention span makes people easier to influence. He asks whose interest the programming serves.
  10. Why Did Robert Greene Handwrite His Book?Robert Greene handwrote the entire book because he could not type. His left hand was still kind of frozen, so every page had to be written by hand.
  11. Why Does Filming a Mountain Climb Block the Experience?Robert Greene says filming a mountain climb blocks the experience, because looking through a camera and navigating the route means the climber never…
  12. How Do You Get Inside a Piece of Music?Robert Greene says following the notes, the logic, and the progression is how he enters music, and the result is a sublime experience.
  13. How Do You Find Your Life's Task?Robert Greene says a life's task shows up as a childhood moment that sparked excitement on its own, not because a parent assigned it.
  14. Why Did Robert Greene Never Last at a Job?Robert Greene never lasted more than 11 months at any single job, because he hated working for other people, and writing books was the only profession where…
  15. How Did a Stroke Change the Way Robert Greene Sees the World?Robert Greene says his stroke made him more emotional and less able to control the feeling.
  16. Is a Transcendent Experience Only for Rich People?Robert Greene says a transcendent experience is not reserved for rich people, and he can bring it down to daily life, including for people who live in small…
  17. Why Is Love the Ultimate Human Experience?Robert Greene calls love the ultimate human experience because physical attraction to someone turns into something spiritual.
  18. Why Is Falling in Love an Act of Rebellion?Robert Greene says loving a person and letting go of all defenses is a form of rebellion against the ugliness in the world.
  19. Why Does Hating the Opposite Sex Mean Hating Yourself?Robert Greene holds that seeing the opposite sex as the enemy is fear of your own self.
  20. Why Does Losing Religion Make People Feel Insane?Robert Greene says a deep sense of spirituality, of something larger than you that lives inside you, that you are part of, and that guides your life, is lost…
  21. Can Robert Greene Write Another Long Book?Robert Greene cannot write another long book. He is heading into his late 60s and does not have the energy.
  22. Why Does Robert Greene Want to Write Fiction?Robert Greene is toying with writing fiction because what he wants to express about a dangerous world is more suited to fiction than nonfiction.

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