Steven Pressfield: The War of Art | Lex Fridman Podcast #102
the following is a conversation with Steven Pressfield author of several powerful nonfiction and historical fiction books including the war of art a book that had a big impact on my life and the life of millions of people whose passion is to create an art science business sport and everywhere else I highly recommend it and others of his books on this topic including turning pro do the work nobody wants to read your shit and the Warrior Ethos also his books gets a fire about the Spartans and the Battle of Thermopylae the Lionsgate tides of war and others are some of the best historical fiction novels ever written some of you know I don't shy away from taking on a big difficult challenge one of the hardest for me for millions of others is the discipline of staring and an empty page every day pushing on to think deeply to create despite the millions of excuses that fill the head in his work steven has articulated this struggle better than anyone I've ever read quick summary of the ads to 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out from the App Store or Google Play and use the code let's podcast you get $10 and cash up will also donate $10 the first an organization that is helping advanced robotics and STEM education for young people around the world and now here's my conversation with Steven Pressfield modern society many ways dreams of creating universal peace and yet war has molded civilization as we know it throughout his history so let's start at the high philosophically ville if you could imagine a world without war how would that world be different perhaps put another way well purpose has war served why do we fight I think we're basically the same creatures internally that we were in the cave right in tribal society back for however many you know hundreds of thousands millions of years which means that we're in our the dynamic in our mind is that kind of an us-versus-them dynamic where our tribe is the people and everybody else are whatever you know and I don't see that I don't think that's changed one iota over the over the centuries it's just a question of how how one might sublimate that that urge to compete you're a martial artist you know that you know a great part of your day I'm sure is dedicated to reaching that place of you know of total commitments and in the face of competition in the face of adversity at cetera et cetera which is I think natural and great for the human race on an individual basis so the the hope that I have if there is any hope personally I don't think the human race is gonna be around very long but would be in in sports or in other kind of sublimated activities where people can act out their need for conquest or aggression or so forth but at the same time relate to their opponents as human beings that when the game is over you know you embrace your competitors stuff like that so you think war was inevitable it's a it's a part of human nature as opposed to a force a creative force in society that serve the benefit well I'm sure it has benefited you know spreading cultures and mixing cultures and stuff like that but I think the the urge to conquest if you think about Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar Napoleon or anybody like that or any even individual or if we even think about one of the plants that we're looking at right outside I mean if you let a particular plant have its way it would take over reading on the whole hillside and certainly in the days of Alexander the Great let's say there were who knows over looking over the face of the earth hundreds of little kingdoms China Japan you know Asia Europe wherever and every prince that grew up dreamt of conquering his neighbor and conquering a neighbor after that that seems to be a universal human imperative at least in the male of the species so where is this the realization of that imperative I think so so you've written about Spartans in the Battle of Thermopylae about Alexander the Great about the six-day war in 67 in Israel against Egypt Jordan Syria what war not just out of those but in general do you think has been most transformative for the world well he's a great questions Lex ah easy ones right I mean I wish I knew more about the Mongols because I certainly from what I've what little I know I think that was a very their conquests was a very transformative bringing cultures you know you know horrible bloody way together but gosh what's then the most transformative maybe the Roman conquest you know establishing the Roman Empire and bringing that culture maybe Alexander the Great's Wars that you know United East and West at least for a minute it's a building of empire do you have a sense so there's Wars I mean the six-day war is not about building empires it's about deep how deeply held religious cultural conflict and holding the line holding the border and then there is conquests like the Mongols that what is it some large percentage of the population is a descendant of Genghis Khan believed right so that has transformative effects in that in World War two I mean personally and my family and so on the transformative effects let me ask you this Lex why are you what are you trying to get at with these questions what is this kind of the theme that you're you're aiming here well I talked to Eric Weiss that and he said everything is great about war except the killing and there's a romantic notion of war certainly this romantic notion of being a warrior but there's a romantic notion of war that somehow there's a creative force to it that because we fight out of that fighting comes culture comes music and art and more and more desire to create with the societies that win and to me war is not just hey I have a stick and I want your land it's some kind of it like it has echoes of the the creative force that makes humans unique to other animals like Wars you you it can't be just four people or 10 people or 100 people you have to have thousands of people agreeing usually thousands or more for something so deeply that you would be willing to risk your own life and there's a romantic notion to that and because you've written so well and passionate about some of these I wanted to see because I don't have any answers I wanted to untangle that if there is a reason we fight that's more than just anger and hate and wanting to conquer well let me take it from a completely different side I don't think that I in writing about war am really that interested in war per se I'm more interested in the metaphor I think for me I'm really writing about my own internal war and and the war against myself and against my own resistance my own negativity all of those things that are that spirituality would would be the opposite of so so I'm not really an expert on war it's not like talking to Jim mattis or to you know Victor Davis Hanson or whatever to me the human being we are spiritual beings in a physical envelope and there's a automatic terrible tension within that and and which creates a war inside ourselves so the outer the outer war when I when I think about the Israeli army standing up to you know whatever 10 to 1 odds or whatever it was that is a metaphor to me of the fight we were fighting inside ourselves it for me the six-day war was as you know my feeling was it was about a return from exile it was sort of the culmination of the reestablishment of the State of Israel which had never really been completed because the holiest places of the Jewish people were in the hands of their enemies so now on the other hand Alexander the Great's conquests I think were a whole other different scenario where the metaphor was that Alexander's father Philip I think created the first nation capital and nation and he created a sort of a pathway for these guys who were mountain men and basically barbarians Macedonians and Crete by creating this army and this dream of conquering the world which Alexander took to the you know really enacted he gave them a way of rising out of themselves of transcending themselves not just individually but as a people so that would go along with what you're saying Lex of a certain creativity to it but but again that's not for whatever I'm just realizing this as I'm answering this that's not really what's interesting to me about these stories and the Spartans to what was a hole at Thermopylae that was a whole other kind of metaphor of war that was a sort of a willingly going to one's own death for a greater cause just like to me the Spartans at Thermopylae enacted as a group what Jesus Christ enacted as an individual a sacrifice of their lives for the greater for the greater good I don't know if that answers your question but that's how I that's how I see it I do feel like you know I get invited to speak to Marine Corps groups and things like that all the time and I decline because I don't really feel like I'm a spokesman for the warrior class or anything like that it's not that's not what's interesting about it to me but didn't you just say with Wars a metaphor that we're all essentially in various ways warriors if we think of it in terms of Union archetypes and think of our life as at least as some as males and the earliest archetypes that kick in are the youth and the wanderer and the student and that kind of thing and then at some point around age 15 to 20 whatever the warrior archetype kicks in and we want to play football I want to do martial arts we want to join the Special Forces we want to hang out with our buddies that's our great bond we want to test ourselves against adversity and so on and so forth but at some point that archetype we move beyond that archetype and we become fathers and and teachers and so on and so forth and then there are many archetypes beyond that towards the end so I'm I'm interested in the warrior archetype but not to the be-all and end-all of everything else you know there's a in in my book the virtues of war I have you read that there's a character named telamon who's actually it's a long story but when he's with Alexander's army and when they arrive in India he becomes fascinated by the gymnast fists the fuckers the naked wise men the the Yogi's and he says to Alexander that these guys are our warriors beyond what we are even though they do nothing because they are inside their own selves you know all day long if we if we go to the Six Day War you write about in Lionsgate you write about the six-day war in Israel I think of the wars you've written about it's the one we're still in many ways in the midst of today yes so what is it the core of that conflict and the israeli-palestinian conflict I mean today it's the israeli-palestinian conflict but it's uh echoes of the same conflict in that part of the world with Israel what is in your sense the nature of that conflict what can we learn about society and human nature from that conflict that is one of the hottest conflicts that still goes on today well when I was working on the Lionsgate about the six-day war I wrote in the in the introduction that this was not going to be a multi-sided story I was taking it entirely I'm a Jew I identify with the Israeli people I was gonna see it entirely from their side so that's probably not what you're asking but to me the six-day war and that whole you know it's it's a piece of land that's holy to at least three religions and probably more and from the Jewish point of view it's where the State of Israel it's where David founded Jerusalem it's all whether twelve tribes were etc.etc Moses came and brought the people so to to me the the the six-day war was about as I said a return from exile from diaspora after 2,000 years now obviously from the Palestinian point of view or the Saudi Arabian point of view or whatever as it's a whole other scenario the religion is at the core of this conflict in some ways the religious beliefs religion and racial / ethnic tribal identity I mean what is a Jew is a Jew somebody that believes in the religion or is it somebody of a certain race that who that race arose in a certain place same thing as a Muslim what is a Muslim and they believe in you know Muhammad or whatever or did they arise in a certain place and a certain ethnicity because if we landed from Mars we couldn't tell a Jew from a Palestinian could we you know just looking at them you could easily mix them and you'd never know and the the specifics of the faith is not necessarily the thing that defines no person I don't think so the be like many are secular Jew living in Israel and still have a strong bond only definitely in fact almost all of the Jews the fighters that I spoke to from the six-day war were secular and it really was not you know a religious thing with them as much as it was a national thing so having spent time in Israel how's the world where military conflict is directly felt as opposed to maybe if we look at the US was distant and far away how is that world different how are the people different it's very different as you know yeah I've never been to Israel actually we haven't even felt it ah well you should definitely go I mean here in the United States where when like there's an incident like Charlottesville comes up you know where people are chanting Jews will not replace us blah blah blah the impulse and the Jewish community is to think about how can we reach out to the other side you know how can how can we show them that we are human beings like they are and show them that we care for them at cetera et cetera that's the sort of distant from war from if you're in Israel and you know like if you and I were we're Israeli citizens right now you would be a fighter pilot or a tank commander or whatever you know you would not just be as you know working at MIT or whatever and I would be in the Army too and so from their point of view they say all those people who hate us can I curse on this court this thing that fuck them will kill them kill you know if they dare to cross the line and that's they're a whole different point of view to me it's actually a healthier point of view you think so yeah there's no so let me ask the hard question is well maybe it's an impossible questions how do we resolve that conflict in Israel and in Israel or anywhere anywhere where the instinct is to reach out in us and say a few and in the people yeah here's my here's I think that the only way that two warring sides or two sides that are opposed to one another can ever really come together is when there's mutual respect we get to some more water when there's mutual respect and and and as and they can see each other as equals and theirs and when there's mutual fear you know where where one side says we don't dare cross a line with this other side and the other side says the same thing I think then you can kind of reach across that thing and say okay they will stay here you stay here we'll we'll mingle in cultural ways in will have interchange you know winter marriage dah dah dah but as soon as one side has no power as the Jewish people have had no power throughout the Diaspora forever right then it's just a human nature you can see it in Trump and what he does to any vulnerable minority right um it's it's and he's not alone I'm not blaming chemo alone that's human nature so I do think that that idea of like fuck you if you cross the line will kill you it's really a good way is it's a good place to start from because now you can sit down on opposite sides of the table and say you know what do we have in common how can we we want to raise our children you want to raise your children how can we do this in a way that's that we're not hurting each other so you kind of said that he to arrive at a ballot some kind of balance of power yet you haven't spoken to the fact that there is deeply rooted hatred of the other so is there no way to alleviate that hatred or is that I mean what what role does love but hatred can go away I really do I mean if you look at even even now that I haven't seen this in person but they say that the Saudis and the Israelis are collaborating on certain things you know by their mutual fear of or antagonism to Iran I do think that even really long long long standing hatreds and animosities thousands of years old can can go away under the right circumstances in uh on what timescale I mean that for instance I don't know that somebody thinking people have to die do generations have to die and pass away and new generations come up with less hate or can a single individual learn to not hate I think a single individual can learn to not hate because it certainly doesn't seem to over thousands of years doesn't seem to work you know we keep thinking that that's going to happen but I think it's we're in a real spiritual realm here when you're talking about that you're in a realm of you know Buddha Jesus whatever something like that that we're a you know a a true change of soul it happens but I do think that's possible so what do you think is the future of warfare especially with what many people see is the expansion of the military industrial conflict to what do you I know you're not a military historian I'm asking more as a metaphor uh-huh and we'll do you see us as people continuing to fight you know it's a really great question likes because because I think now with social media TV movies all of these things that create empathy across cultures it becomes harder and harder I think I think to totally demonize the other the way it was in previous Wars I also think I don't really see an appetite for people wanting to go to war these days I and in a way I don't know if that's good or bad it's like everybody's so fat and lazy and so concerned with how many clicks they're getting that you know whereas I know at the start of World War one that both the younger generations were eager to go to war you know I think it was it was it was insane but it was that sort of warrior archetype that we were talking about before that that generational testosterone arrows thing wears nowadays I don't know I mean it's hard to say there's not gonna be another war because there always are but it's sort of hard to imagine people getting off their ass these days to do anything well it's funny that you mention social media as the place for empathy sure but it's in a sense that's the place for for war or death from hatred and and perhaps the positive aspects of hatred on social media is that it's somewhat less harmful than murder and so it kind of dissipates sort of the hate folds you get the hate out at yeah and uh you know it'll s yeah on a daily basis and thereby never boils up to a point where you want to kill it's also a really weird thing that's going on I don't know if anybody really understands like with videogames where kids are acting out these incredible horror things right but you know that if they cut their finger they would like freak out I know and and I also don't think that many of the people that are hateful on social media if they were face to face with the horse and they wouldn't so there's a sort of a to to mental spheres happening at the same time and I don't know how that maps that out military how that actually Maps the military yeah yeah it's like when you uni United States have a draft for example what how the populace will respond different than they did in previous generation yeah I think they certainly would yeah another question not sure if you thought about it but I work on building artificial intelligence systems in our community many people worried about AI being used in war so automating the killing process the with with with drones and in general is being used more and more I should recuse myself on that when I really haven't thought about haven't thought about it I'd rather ask you are you thinking well it's interesting I mean because it's so fundamentally different from if you look at the Battle of Thermopylae it means just if we talk about the different scene a gun and a sword I'll tell you one Atlanta coat there was a Spartan King I don't know which one it was but at one point they showed him a new invention and it could launch a bolt that would you know kill someone at a range of 200 yards and the king wept and said alas valor is no more was there a point of view of war it was highly ritualized as you know and the the the code of honor was that you were not supposed to be able to kill another person unless you yourself were an equal danger of being killed and any other way of doing that even bow and arrow was considered less than manly and less than honorable and maybe we should go back to that because at least it makes the stakes real and true and not that we could not not that's the point you were in the Marine Corps so if we talk about the real the bloody conflicts you've written about many of them so let me ask a personal question have you sort of as writing and in general have you thought about what it takes to kill a person if you yourself could do it yeah well not about it yeah and how that would make you feel of course one never knows I certainly I have not been in combat I haven't killed anybody but I would imagine in the real world that it would change you utterly forever because you can't help but identify with a person that you've just killed and it's another human being and I mean I have a hard time killing a spider so I would imagine that it's something that warriors understand and nobody else understands and he's spoken with many how I mean you've spoken with people who seem military combat oh yeah in Israel what have they been able to articulate the the experience of killing it's this sort of just what I said I mean I'm even thinking of one pilot that I interviewed over there who you know was strafing a tank in his Mustang and saw and at really low altitude and you know saw what his bullets did to the guy and could see his face and everything like that which is even you know one remove or more removes from an infantryman when an infantryman does and he said that that same thing that I said that it just changes you and you can never say it they never look at the world or look at anything the same way again and when that happened that scale the thousands the thousands of hundred yeah that changes entire societies that's what we've seen well at least it but the problem is it doesn't change the politicians back home right how important is mortality finiteness the the fact that this thing ends to the creative process so killing in war really emphasizes that but in general the fact that this thing ends gee it does it does shit and I was serious no do you think about your own mortality do you meditate on your own mortality when you think about the work you do other great question Lex actually I'm 75 and I just was having I had breakfast in New York a few months ago with a friend of mine who spiked my exact same age and I said to him I said Nick do you ever think about mortality and he said every fucking minute every day and I was kind of relieved to hear that because I do I do too but I actually I always have I think and I think you know the fact of mortality is kind of gives meaning to life you know I think that's why we want to create that's why we want to make a mark of some kind or and the other aspect of it is what's on the other side of that mortality I'm a believer in previous lives so I I sort of and I the question I've never been able to answer among many many others just like why are we even here right why are we in the flesh you know I sort of I like to believe that God or some force is we're on some kind of journey but I'm not sure why why we were put in this world where the ground rules are if you think about animal life that you cannot live from one day to the next without killing and eating some other form of life and what a demented thing yeah you know why couldn't we just have a solar panel on our head and you know be friends with everybody so I sort of I don't get what that was all about but that's sort of the big issue I have you read the earners Becker's denial of death for example is that Ernest Becker is a philosopher that said that the death that the fear of death is really the primary driver of everything we do so Freud had what the right I would agree with that so did you you've always thought about your even your own mortality yes definitely and can you elaborate on the the reincarnation aspect what you were talking about like that we kind of what's your sense that we had previous lies in what have you thought concretely or is it a lot of it kind of as no I thought can concretely about really I mean it's very clear when you see children young kids or even dogs and cats that they come into the world with personalities you know and three kids and a family are going to become completely different and completely their own person and and and that person that they are doesn't change over life and I you know there's one of the things that I did in my book the artist journey is that there were certain things where I tracked or just listed in order like all of Bruce Springsteen's albums or all of Philip Roth's books you know kind of a body of work throughout over you know a period of 30 40 50 years you know and you can see that there's a theme running through all of those things that it's completely unique to that person nobody else could have written Philip Roth's books or Bruce Springsteen songs and you can even see sort of a destiny there so I asked myself well where did that come from what it's it seems to be a continuation of something that was that happened before and that will lead to something else because it's not starting from scratch it seems like there's a a calling a destiny in there already this gets back to the Meuse and all that kind of thing so yeah it's almost like the there's this let's call it a God it's passing it's almost like sampling parts of a previous human that has lived and putting that those into the new one sampling this is probably a pretty good work that taking some of the good boy you can't take all the good parts because the bad parts is what makes the person right let's say taking all together okay this is humans only does it pass around from animals in your view is they I don't know that's above my pay grade I don't know so okay see you talk about the muse as the source of ideas maybe since you've gotten a few glimpses of her in your writing tell me let me what is it possible for you to tell me about about her where does she reside what does she look like I mean you can look at in many different ways right the Greeks did it in an anthropomorphic way right they created gods or like human beings but if you look at it from a Kabbalistic Jewish perspective Jewish mysticism you could say that it's the solo neshama right that the soul is above us on a higher plane our own your soul my soul and it's trying to reach down to us and and communicate with us and we're trying simultaneously to reach up to it to it through prayer or through if you're a writer or an artist you know when you sit down at the keyboard you're entering into a kind of prayer you're entering into a different state of an altered consciousness to some extent you're opening yourself opening the pipeline or turning on the radio to tune into the cosmic radio station and another way of looking at it this is Anna do you ever see the movie City of Angels the visual of the movie it was meg Ryan and Owen the game yeah I've seen a hip and right the visual of the movies was meg Ryan is a heart surgeon and as she's operating on somebody suddenly Nicolas Cage in this long duster coat like Jesse James appears right next to her in the operating woman he's an angel and he's waiting to take out the soul of the Prairie patient on the on the operating table and she doesn't see him she's totally unaware of him and so is everybody else in the operating room except maybe the guy who's about to die I suddenly sees him but I kind of believe that that there are beings like that or if you don't like that it's a force it's a consciousness it's something that are right here right now and we and they're trying to communicate to us and like through a membrane like tapping on that window over there they're like right out there and they carry the future they are everything that is in potential all the works that you will do Lex your startup whatever else you're doing they they know that and it's not really you that's coming up with those ideas in my opinion those things are appearing you know it's like somebody knocks on the door yeah and puts it in I mean in the Iliad where gods and goddesses appear along with the human antagonists on the battlefield all the time right they'll be you know Homer flashes to Olympus and then back to the real world and there's the thing where one Aphrodite let's say wants to help Paris and so she says well I will appear to him in a dream and I'll take the form of his brother and I'll say bumpety bumpety bump so that's creatures beings on one dimension as the Greek sought communicating with and I believe that that's exactly what's going on in one whatever analogy you want to use that that communication to which degree is do you play the role in that communication as opposed to sitting at the computer if you're a writer and staring at the blank page and putting in the time and waiting what so if in your in your view it is are these creatures basically waiting to tell you about your future or is their choice how many possible futures are there how many possible ideas are that's a great question I think there's basically yes they're all alternatives you know degrees within it but IFIF you look at Bruce Springsteen's albums how much could he have done really differently yeah he would you can just see there's a whole impetus we're going through the whole thing and nothing was gonna shake him off that you know and yeah maybe the river could have been different it could have been called something else but but he was dealing with certain issues his conscious self was dealing with certain issues that were really out of his control he was he was drawn he was called to it right nothing could stop him and so it is sort of a partnership but I think the creative process between the creative impulse that's coming from some other place or it's coming from deep within us is another way to look at it you know it's a like if we are acorns and and we're growing then to Oaks so the conscious bird artist who's sitting there at the keyboard or whatever is applying his or her consciousness to that but is also going into opening themselves to the unconscious or to this other realm whatever whatever that is I mean certainly songwriters for a million years have said you know a song just came in over their head right home just all I had to do is write but then you ever see that thing where of Keats's notes for a thing of beauty is a joy forever it's like covers an entire pay it's like you know he's crossing this out and that out yet so though his consciousness is his conscious mind is working on it but I saw I I do think it's a partnership and I think that I know when I was first starting out as a writer I worked in advertising and I and I tried to do novels that I could never do I was like really unskilled at getting to that tuning into that station I just beat my brains out and was unable to do it you know except and because I was sort of trying too hard it was sort of like a Zen monk or a monk of some kind trying to meditate and just like constantly thoughts driving you crazy but overtime you know not would I've kind of gotten better at it and I can sort of let go of those that part of me that's trying so hard and so these angels can speak a little more easily through the membrane can you put into words the process of letting go and clearing that channel of communication what does it take that's like another great question for me it just took I took probably thirty years and I don't even I would I guess I would liken it to meditation even though I'm not a meditator but it would seem to me to be one of the hardest things in the world to just sit still and stop thinking right and so it's very hard to put into words and I think that's why these teachers of meditation use tricks and cones and stuff like that but for me at least I think it was just a process of years of years and years of trying and finally of beating my head in the wall and finally little by little giving up the bet beating of the the head but this doesn't seem to be any trick everybody wants a tack these days and I don't think there is a hack I look at it in terms of the goddess the muse he's watching you down there beating your head in the ball you're like a marine going through an obstacle course so a martial artist trying to learn you know like uma Thurman during the casket they'll try to make that little for its punch you know the muse or the goddess is just sort of watching on Lexi's turn saying I'm gonna come back in another couple of months and see if he's still there yeah and finally she'll say all right he's had it he's beaten he's paid his dues I'm gonna give it to him so the the hard work and the suffering yep but you know I'm also being Russian uh in wrestling and martial arts were big into drilling technique I was also just even getting at there's certainly there's no shortcut but is there a process so your aunt the practice that can be the process of practice so you had to one yet an example of meditation so it's essentially the practice of meditation is you I think so same drill I think is a good way to look at it too but what do you what are you drilling you're just sitting and you're you're writing you know just writing you're writing your then you're looking at what you wrote you know you're hitting moments when it flows you know and your and your and in your other hitting moments well you just can't do anything and you're trying to from the moments that weren't flowed you're trying to come back and look at and say what what did I do how did it how did that happen or was in my mind you know but I think it's just a process of over and over and over and over until finally it gets a little bit easier and did you did you always when you when you read something you write did you always have a pretty good radar for what's good enough after it's written no I think I do now but but no it was always really hard for me to know what was good I mean do you edit the process of editing is the process of looking at what you've written and improving it are you but a writer or an editor how often do you edit that's another great question great question because I do think that in writing the real process of looking at it is the process that an editor does rather than what a writer does the gentleman I was just talking about the phone is my editor Sean Cohen who was the guy who bought gates of fire when he was an editor at doubleday and who basically when I finish a book I give it to him and he and he gives me you know he he editing doesn't really mean like crossing out commas it really means looking at the overall work and saying does it work and if it doesn't work why doesn't it work is there something wrong here you know like if you were building the Golden Gate Bridge you know and one span was out of whack you know you could and I think a really skilled editor what Sean is understands what what makes a story tick and he also has the perspective that I've lost and something I've wrote because I'm so close to it to say you know this you know this isn't working and that is working what kind of advice is he giving you is it like lay out like this story doesn't flow correctly like it's you shouldn't start at this point or does he even sit back at a higher level and say I see what you're doing but you could do better no he doesn't do that okay but a lot of it is about genre and kind of the defining what genre you're working in and I'm gonna get up here to Jim this was one where Sean tore this down and made me start from scratch and what the the specifics of it were really this is a supernatural thriller that's the genre sort of like Rosemary's Baby or The Exorcist and what he made what he showed me was that I kind of I had violated certain conventions of the genre you know that and you can't do that you know it's got to be you know it has to be done the right way and so he pointed out certain things to me he must be a prolific reader himself - actually that's such an it's a tough job of editor yeah again he was sort of born to do that he just kind of glommed onto it and and but since he was his first job publishing you know cat fur Hillhurst you know cat detective but you know he studied how it works what makes a story work etc etc so he really he's great and I think any really successful writer unless they're utterly brilliant on their own has got to have a great editor behind them but you yourself edit as well I'm constantly trying to learn from him and teach myself everything you see in my blog posts about that it's about the craft of writing is me trying to teach myself the rules so that you know I'm sure it's the same in martial arts or anything else right you you try to not be dependent on that other person because it's so painful to make those mistakes you really feel like god I wish I could get it right the first time the next time I do it well research would go through that in research more than writing so what you do is a little more solitary uh-huh in research there's usually two three four people working on something together and we write a paper and there's that painful process of where you write it down and then you share it with other and not only do they criticize the writing they criticize the fundamental aspects of the approach you've taken I would think so so that's exactly like you know they would say you're attacking you're asking the wrong questions right - yeah and that's extremely you know pay off especially when you it was yes painful and helpful but there's disagreement and so on it's and through that comes out a better product yeah and if is you want to still have an ego but you also want to silence it every once in a while so there's a balance in your book the war of art you talk about resistance with capital R as the invisible force in this universe of ours that finds a way to prevent you from starting or doing the work where do you think resistant comes from why is there force in our mind that's constantly trying to jeopardize our efforts with laziness excuses and so on that's another great question I mean in in Jewish mysticism in Kabbalistic thinking it's called the yetzer Hara right and it's a force that if this up here is your soul of neshama trying to talk to you us down here the answer Harrah's this negative force in the middle so I'm not the only one that ever thought about this but and I don't know if anybody really knows the answer but here's my answer I think that there are two places where we as human beings can seat our identity one is the ego a conscious ego and the other is the greater self and the self in the in the Union sense the self in a Jungian sense includes the unconscious and butts up against what Jung called the divine ground which what I would call the muse the goddess or whatever and I think and the ego is just this little dot inside this bigger self and the ego has a completely different view of of life as from the self the ego believes I'm going to give you a long answer here like no perfect the ego believes that death is real the ego believes that time and space are real the ego believes that each one of us is separate from the other I'm separate from you I could punch you in the face and it wouldn't hurt me it would only hurt you and in the egos world the dominant emotion is fear because we were all made of flesh we can all die we can all be hurt we can all be ruined bumpity-bump so we were protecting ourselves and even our desire to create as we were talking about before comes out of that fear of death the self on the other hand the crater self that butts up against the divine ground believes that death is not real that time and space are not real that the gods travel swiftest thought and the ego also believes that I mean the self believes that there's no difference between you and me that we're all one if I hurt you I hurt myself karma right and in the world of the self of the greater self the dominant emotion is love not fear now so I think that let me I'll go farther back here a long way to answer your question when Jesus died on the cross or when the 300 Spartans willingly sacrificed their lives at Thermopylae they were acting according to the rules of the self death is not real no difference between you and me time and space are not real predominant emotion is love so in my opinion we as conscious human vessels have are in a struggle between these two things the ego and the self to me resistance is the voice of the ego saying and it's a fearful voice because if when we identify with the self we move our consciousness over to the self as as artists or scientists opening ourselves up to the cosmic dimension to the to the other forces the ego is tremendously threatened by that because if we're if we're in that space that headspace we don't need the ego anymore so I think resistance is a voice of the ego trying to keep control of us you there in a way I'll give you a bad example Trump is the ego it's probably a very good example right you know it's a zero-sum world for him yes and for anybody that's in that and the opposite of that would be somebody like Martin Luther King or Gandhi and that's of course why they all wind up getting assassinated because that voice that ego is hanging on to itself and feels so threatened yeah by I could talk more about this if you want to know for sure that that's that's fascinating is just it's interesting why the fear is attached the ego I really like this dichotomy of ego and self and that struggle it's just ego has a you know the the self obsession of it why why fear such a predominant thing like why is resistance trying to undermine everything the it's very here it's out of fear let's think about the whole thing in terms of stories in a story the villain is always resistance is always the ego the hero is is always of course always not everything but you know what I mean pretty much it represents kind of the self if you think about the alien on the spaceship that's like the ultimate kind of villain it keeps changing form right first it goes on the guy's face then it pops out of his chest but it always just has that one monomaniacal thing to destroy you know and just like the ego just like resistance and maybe alien is a bad example because Sigourney Weaver has to sort of fight on the same terms as as the alien but maybe a better example might be something like Casablanca where in the end the Pumphrey Bogart character has to acting operating out of the self has to give up his his selfish dream of going off with Ingrid Bergman Nilsa lund the love of his life and instead you know puts around the plane to Lisbon while he goes off to fight the Nazis and you know in the desert I don't know if that's clear but in a but in almost every story the villain is the ego its resistance is fear is that zero-sum thing and in almost every story the hero is someone that is willing to make a sacrifice to help others it's letting go of that fear is what leads the productivity into success yeah do you think there's a it that's probably the answer is either obvious or impossible but do you think there's an evolutionary advantage to resistance like what would life look like without resistance that sort of that's another great question I think I also believe that resistance like death gives a meaning to life right if we didn't have it it's gonna be you know what would we be we'd be in the Garden of Eden picking fruit and just happy and stupid you know and I do think that that myth of the Garden of Eden is really about this kind of thing you know where where Adam and Eve decide to sort of take matters into their own hands and and acquire knowledge that until then God had said I'm the only one that's got that knowledge and of course once they have acquired that knowledge they're cast out into the world you and I live in now where they do have to deal with that fear and they do have to deal with all that stuff is the human condition the human condition and the meaning and the purpose comes from the resistance being there and the struggle to overcome it the overcoming right that's and also the other aspect of it is that it's not real at all it's not even like it's an actual force it's all here right so the the sort of in a way it's sort of a surrender to it you know you know or like turning on the light in a dark thing it's like it's gone but not quite because it's not quite because it comes back again tomorrow morning exactly so you have to keep changing lightbulbs every day so what's been uh maybe recently but in general maybe you know life what's been the most relentless or one of the more relentless sources of resistance to you personally I mean it's always the same it's about writing for me and an evolving within my own body of work you know it never goes away it never gets any less you have particular excuses particular justifications that come out no it's always the same well I would say it's always its same but it's really not because resistance is so protein you know it keeps changing form and as you as you move to hopefully a higher level resistance gets a little more nuanced and a little more subtle trying to fake you out but I think you learn that it's always there and you're always gonna have to face it so I mean you're but your battle is sitting down and writing to some number Awards to a blank page yeah give a process there with his battle you have a number of hours you put end honestly yeah I'm definitely a a believer that even though this battle is fought on the highest sort of spiritual level that the way you fight it is on the most mundane I'm sure it's like martial arts must be the same way I mean I go to the gym first thing in the morning and I sort of am rehearsing myself faced you know the gym is called resistance training right you're working against resistance right yeah and I don't want to go I don't want to get out of bed I hate that you know so but I'm sort of fortifying myself to to be ready for the day and you know like I said over not would over years I've learned to sort of get into the right kind of mindset and it's not as hard for me as it used to be the real resistance I think for me and I think this is true for anybody is the question of sort of what's the next idea what's the next book what's the next project that you're going to work on and when I when I ask that question I'm sorry I'm asking it of the muse I'm kind of saying what do you want me or I'm asking it up my unconscious if we're looking at Bruce Springsteen's albums it's kind of well what's the next album you know now he's on Broadway that was a great idea right um where'd that come from you know but and then for him what's what's after that you know because that that body of work is already alive it already exists inside us canonical woman's biological clock and we have to serve it and we have to otherwise it'll give us cancer you know I don't mean to say that if anybody has cancer that they're not yeah but you know what I mean it'll it'll do it'll take it's a revenge on us so the next of the resistance to me is sort of well a big aspect of it is what's next you know when I finish the book I'm working on now I'm not sure what I'm gonna do next and I see at the same time you have a kind of you have a sense that there is a Bruce Springsteen single line of albums so like it's it's already known somewhere in the universe what you're going to do next is the sense you have in it in a sense yes I don't know if it's like predetermined you know but it's but there's something like that yeah I'd like to believe that there's uh was this kind of like quantum mechanics I guess once once you observe it maybe once you talk to the muse it's it's it's one thing for sure it was always going to be that one thing but really in reality it's a distribution it could be any number of things yeah I think so there's an alternate reality alternate realities they're not that far apart I mean Bruce Springsteen is not gonna write you know a Joni Mitchell you know no matter how hard he's probably when I'm brought I mean he still did that which is not a Bruce Springsteen thing to do so I think I think you're being in retrospect I think it is making things you know it's a next sort of evolution form why not take his music to there you know in retrospect it all makes sense I think yeah because he if you pull it off especially do you visualize yourself completing the work like Olympic athletes visualize getting the gold medal do you you know they that's they go through I mean that's actually a really you can learn something from athletes on that is um years out certainly two three years awesome some people do much longer everyday you visualize how the day of the the championship will go yet down to I mean everything down to how will it feel to stand on the podium and so on do you do anything like that you know how you approach writing no because no moment because yeah it isn't a moment I think because it's such a mystery you just don't know I think it's different from sports right because you don't know that this thing there's no gold medal do you know in fact I would like to think and that as soon as you finish one the next day you're on the other and in fact hopefully you've already started the other you're already you know one hundred pages into the other when you finish the first one but it is a it is a it's a journey it's a process I don't think it is a in fact I think it's very dangerous to think that way hmm to think oh this I'm gonna win the Oscar you know it's interesting for the creative process it might be dangerous it it's it's a maybe you can like why is it dangerous because I kind of Zoey go it's the e because you're giving yourself over to the ego you know I keep saying this myself my job I'm a servant of the muse I am there to do what she tells me to do and if I've suddenly think oh I'm really I just want to you know whatever news doesn't like that yeah and you know yeah he's on another dimension for me I'm trying to square that cuz I agree I'm trying to square that with I think there's a meditation to visualizing success in the athletic realm to where it focuses it removes everything else away to where you focus on this particular battle I mean I think that you can do that in many kinds of ways and in sports the ego serves a more important role I think than it does in writing any the ego there's something well no let me when you say that I know what you mean Alexa do you think there is a sort of uh you know it's interesting to watch if interviews was with Steph Curry yeah who's such obviously such a nice guy but he's got such tremendous self-confidence you know that it but it doesn't border on ego so much because he's worked so hard for it you know but he knows so he has visualized he has visualized maybe not so much winning you know that as just him being the best he can be him being in the flow you know doing his thing that he knows he can do and I do think in the creative world yeah there is a sort of a thing like that where you were and you know a choreographer or a filmmaker or whatever might be do an internal thing where they're saying I can make an oscar-winning movie I can direct this movie you know I'm banishing these thoughts that I'm not good enough I can do that I can I can edit it I can score it I can you know bump it a month a month but and I don't think that's really ego I think that's that's part of the process in a good way like an athlete does that so extreme confidence is what some of the best athletes come come with and you think it's possible to as a writer to have extreme confidence in yourself I do think so you know that I'm sure when John Lennon sat down to write a song he felt like shit I can do this you know I'm not so sure I I think I think is this the great artist has seen any that you're you're haunted by self-doubt it's that resist I mean the confidence yes but I mean I guess but even beyond the cell and then the cell above the self-doubt I was the biggest organ picks yourself the leaf you know some yeah I'm freaking out yeah I'm worried that I'm not gonna be able to but you know I know I could do this yeah when you look at it when you take a bigger picture yeah so the writing process is it fundamentally lonely so no and because you're with your characters you are so you really put yourself in the world absolutely you know I've written about this before that I used to have my desk used to face a wall instead of seeing and people would say well don't you want to look out the window but I'm I'm in here I mean I'm seeing you know the Spartans I'm seeing you know whatever and the character characters that are on the page or that you create are not accidents you know they're coming out of some issue some deep issue that you have whether you realize it or not you might not realize it till twenty years later or somebody explains it to you so your characters are kind of fascinating to you and their dilemmas are fascinating to you and you're also trying to to come to grips with them you know you sort of see them through a glass darkly you know and you really want to see them more clearly so yeah I know it's not lonely at all fact I'm more lonely sometimes later going out to dinner with some people and actually talking to people do you miss the characters after it's over uh let's say I have I have affection for them kind of like children that have gone off to college and now our you know you only see them at Thanksgiving definitely I have affection for even the bad guys maybe especially the bad guys especially the bad guys you've said that writers even successful writers are often not tough minded enough I've read then post that you have to be a professional in a way you handle your emotions you have to be a bit of a warrior to be a writer so what are what do you think makes a warrior is that as a warrior born or trained in the realm and the bigger realm in the realm of writing in the creative process I think I think they're born to some extent you have the gift like you might have a gift as a martial artist to do whatever martial artists do but the training is the big thing 90% training 10% 10% genetics and you know I use another analogy other than warrior 2 as far as writers and it's like to be a mother if you think about if you're a writer or any creative person you're giving birth to something right you're carrying a new life inside you and in terms of bravery if your child your two-year-old child is underneath a car is coming down the street the mothers are gonna splake stop a Buick you know with their bare hands so that's a that's another way to think about how how a writer has to think about or any creative person has to think about I think what they're what they're doing that what this this child this new creation that they're bringing forth yeah so the hard work that's underlying that have just a couple weeks ago talked to just happen to be in the same room both gave talks Arianna Huffington I did this conversation her I didn't know much about her before before then but she has recently been short a couple books have been promoting a lifestyle where she basically she created a huffington post and she gave herself like I don't know 20 hours a day just obsessed with her work and then she she fainted passed out and kind of uh there was some health issues and so she wrote this book saying that you know sleep basically you want to establish a lifestyle that doesn't sacrifice health that's productive but there's a sec of myself she thinks he can have both productivity and health criticizing Elon Musk who have also spoken with for working too hard and thereby sacrificing you know being less effective than he could be so I'm trying to get at this balance between health and obsessively working at something and really working hard so I'm what Arianna is talking about it make sense to me when I'm a little bit torn to me passion and reason do not overlap much or at all sometimes maybe I'm being too rushing but I feel madness and obsession does not care for health or sleep or diet or any of that and hard work it's hard work and and everything else can go to hell so if you're really focused on whether it's writing a book and it should everything should just go to hell where do you stand on this balance how important is health for productivity how important is it to sort of get sleep and so on I'm from out of the health side yeah I mean there was a period of my life when I was just I had no obligations and I was just living in a little house and just working non-stop you know but even then I would get up in the morning and I would have liver and eggs for breakfast yeah every day and I would do my you know exercise whatever it was but although I was still doing like you know 18 hours a day but I I'm definitely I kind of think of it sort of like an athlete does yeah I'm sure that like Steph Curry is is totally committed to winning championships and stuff like that but he has his family he sees his family you know the family is always there he I'm sure he eats you know perfect great stuff gets to sleep you know gets that the the train you know though whatever a trainer does Silver's knees and ankles and whatever so I or Kobe Bryant or anybody that's a it's operating in a high level so I do think I'm from that kind of the health school the good thing about being a writer is it don't you can't work for many hours a day you know four hours is like the maximum I can work I've never been able to work more than that I don't know how people do it heard of people do ten twelve I don't know how they do it so that gives you a lot of other time to optimize your health yeah because you need to you're in training you know you're you're really you're burning up a lot of B vitamins when you're working here yeah but uh maybe it's a Russian thing with you Lex well it's not even a Russian thing I mean it also may be youth you know at 35 you can be crazy you know this this that they they keep telling me but I'm pretty sure I'll be at it still at a later time too I think it has to do with the career choice too I think writing is most for whatever thing I've heard it's almost impossible to do more than a few hours really well the when you start to get into certain disciplines like oh I'm asking me engineering disciplines that really there's a lot more non muse time meaning mmm right right so the crazy hours of your talk that you often are talking about have to be done mm-hmm and it doesn't I think that's true yeah so there's still the two-three hours of music time needed for truly genius ideas but it's uh it's something it's something I'd certainly struggle with but yeah I I hear you loud and clear on the health so what does the perfect day look like for you if we're talking about writing an hour-by-hour schedule of a perfect day I get up early I go to the gym I have breakfast with some friends of mine I welcome early by the way that's like a how 13 am a.m. so we're talking really really early you know I'm crazy early it's ridiculously early yeah but and I haven't done that always but that's kind of what what what I'm on now so I'm in bed like it when I'm with my my nephews that are like four years old and three years old I'm in bed before them okay um you got a beat you wake up it's a sorry you said exercise first yeah and what does that look like what's exercise for you I go to the gym I have a trainer I have a couple guys that I work out with and I'll you know it's maybe an hour maybe a little more I'll do a little warm-up before of stretching afterwards take a shower go have breakfast but it's an intense kind of a thing that I definitely don't want to do that's hard you know so you feel like you've accomplished something first thing yeah a big accomplishment of the day at the same time it's not like so hard that I'm completely exhausted you know and then I'll come home and handle whatever correspondence and stuff has to be done and then I work for maybe three hours and then I just sort of crash that the office is closed I turn the switch I don't think about any I don't think about anything I don't think about the work at all do you listen to Oh II mean afterwards after work once the office is closed but during so this was like 12 to 3 kind of thing something like that something like that but the you listen to music no if and yes that's just me I mean I don't think you know if somebody could this fast in different ways it's fascinating you know the I mean you've also of most of many writers you've really but like I've heard even Kingston writing is you've optimized this conversation with the muse you're having that optimized but you've at least thought about it so what can you say a little bit more about the trivialities of that process of like you said facing the wall what's do you have little ritual I mean like the granular aspect of granular aspects yeah is there little rituals I do have all kinds of well I'm not even going to tell you I'm sure but the one thing and I don't want to like to talk about this too much because it sort of jinxes things I think but the one thing I I do try to do is when I then when I sit down I immediately get into it first second yeah I don't sit and fuck around with anything immediately try to get into it as as quickly as I can and the other thing is that writing a book or screenplay or anything like that is a process of multiple drafts and it's the first draft that's where you're most with the muse where you're going through the blank page like right now I'm on I don't know what the fifth or sixth seventh draft of some other thing I'm working on so when I'm I've got pages already written and I'm kind of reading them afresh as I as I go through the story so it's not quite where I am now it's not quite a deep muse scenario partly it is but it's also sort of bouncing back and forth between the different between the right brain and the left brain I'm kind of looking at it and trying to evaluate it then I'm going into it and try to change it a little bit when uh do you know sit down do you know the night before of what that starting point is yeah I always try to stop and I learned this I think Hemingway wrote about this or done Steinbeck or one of the or maybe both of them to always stop when you kind of know what's coming next so you're not I'd have facing a chasm you know yeah okay so and afterwards when you're done the office is closed offices closed I let the muse take care of it you know I don't know I don't want to and I think it's a very unhealthy thing to worry about it or think about any creative process you don't I got a long walk later think about yeah if that then I will sort of keep my mind open to it but I won't be like obsessing about it yeah there's a actually on walks sometimes things pop in your head you know and you go oh I should change that but that's not your ego doing it that's a deeper level okay so how does the day end so in terms of writing so yet the writing you know writing the the office door closes and then the rest of the day just do whatever the hell maybe go out to dinner my girlfriend is not here now she's in New York working we'll make dinner or whatever go out to dinner something like that and maybe maybe I'll read something nothing heavy and I go to bed pretty early and um the gym is a big thing for me already if sorry probably would you like with you with martial arts the night before I'll be I'll be visualizing what I have to do the next day and getting myself psyched up for that and then let's conk out like a light and wake up at the crack of dawn so looking out into the future this year next few years what do you think the muse has in store for you I don't think you can ever know it's probably something along the same I really believe you know there's that exercise where you where they say to you visualize yourself five years in the future then write a letter to your from that person to yourself I don't leaving that at all because I don't think you can you know there's a line in Out of Africa that God made the world round so that we couldn't see too far ahead you just don't know as a writer or as a create a person you know I never knew my first book was The Legend of Bagger Vance I hadn't before that happened I had no clue that I was gonna be writing anything like that on that subject anything at all no clue until it just sort of came and then when I when that was done people said well you got to write another I had no idea what it was which was going to be gates of fire no clue so so if somebody'd sat me down at the start of that and asked the question I would have been crazy to say so I just hope as as the future unfolds that I'm open to it you know well I think I speak for a lot of people in saying that we look forward to with that that's thanks so much for talking satisfy yeah it's a great you got the best job in the world going around talking to people that you want to talk to and that they will talk to you you know so thank you for doing hey thank you for the great questions you made me think I've certainly a bunch of questions I never ever answered before awesome so thanks a lot great thanks for listening to this conversation with Steven Pressfield and thank you to our sponsors the Jordan Harbinger show and cash app please consider supporting the podcast by going to Jordan Harbinger complex and downloading cash app and using code Lex podcast click on the links buy the stuff it's the best way to support this podcast if you enjoy this thing subscribe on youtube review it with five stars in a podcast supported on patreon or connect with me on Twitter Alex Friedman spelled without the e just Fr ID ma n and now let me leave you with some words from Steven Pressfield are you paralysed by fear that's a good sign fear is good like self-doubt fear is an indicator fear tells us what we have to do remember one rule of thumb the more scared we are of a work or calling the more sure we can be that we have to do it thank you for listening and hope to see you next time you