Guy Ritchie "You Must Be The Master of Your Own Kingdom" - The Joe Rogan Experience

Hello freak bitches. I'm getting fascinated by the way your brain works because for you it's important that the person want to wear the suit and I have a feeling that that's symbolic of how you feel about life itself. Like the person has to want to be doing what they're doing. They have to want to wear that suit. It has to be an authentic gesture. Did you ever read a book called Extreme Ownership written by a couple of Navy SEALs? That's Jocko Willink right? No. No that's... I think it is. Is it Jocko's book? Yeah. Yeah. I've heard Jocko on the show a bunch of times. Important book. Well I've had him on once before when we're talking about a bunch of times. Right. I've had him once but... But it's an important book. Yes. Now there's lots of books that I've picked up on this theme but they were very eloquent about it. If you don't own something you're not the boss. You have to take full responsibility for everything that you do. Why be subservient? You must be the master of your own kingdom. I feel you. Makes a lot of sense. You've got to own things. You can't just walk into things with your eyes half open. You're walking into things with your eyes fully open. You've got to know what you're getting into. You have to take possession of your life. Is this a thought process that you have to constantly reaffirm or is this something that you have to have? Yes. It's exactly that. It's exactly that. You drift on this point. Right. And it is whatever form of meditation or mantra that you decide to espouse, there needs to be some period in your day where you remember that there's a world out there trying to tell you who you are and there's a world in here that's trying to tell you who you are. Now where do you want to put your ex? Because the world outside is very noisy and very tempting and as all the razzmatazz, as all the tinsel and all the glitter, it's got all the toys. But that's because you don't think you're enough in the first place. You don't think you're enough in the first place. The whole idea of the world to sell you stuff is first of all, they have to make you feel bad about yourself less than in some way. And I don't resent this system by the way. It is the system. But what's the expression about? Don't hate the player. Don't hate the game. Love the game because you're in it mate. So own the game, accept the rules and move on into the rules. So the world will try and tell you who you are and you have to tell yourself who you are. And there's this ongoing battle and somehow there needs to be a reconciliation between the two. But in the end, you've got to have all the eggs in your basket. There's also an ongoing internal battle though, isn't there? There's the you that you want people to think you are and there's the you who you are and trying to figure out like how do I figure out who I am? Do I have a correct assumption of how the people are perceiving me and how I actually am objectively or am I bullshitting the world with this suit and pocket square? Yeah, I would say it's exactly the scenario that we're talking about. There's essentially only two worlds. There's the inner world of energy and there's the outer world of energy. There's two identities. One's real, one's false. The external world is I'm asking you to tell me who I am. That's what we're all playing at. And as soon as you start playing that game, we run into all sorts of trouble. Call it the ego, call it whatever you want to call it. But that's the dynamic that we're in and somehow we have to give ourselves enough confidence to reassure ourselves that we are enough. However, I enter the game because I've got to move on in the world. I've got to crack on in the world and I know there's loads of temptations that come along the way. So I will own the suit. I'm going to wear the suit, but I'm going to own the suit. Now I don't mean by paying for it. I mean by owning it. It's now my suit. It's my idea to put on this suit. I have to personalize it in some way. I have to understand a narrative that allows me to own that suit and thereby I put on my suit of armor and I come out into the world and guess what? I'm in a good time because I'm owning the suit. Now this is a very rock solid philosophy. Is this something you've ever written down? It's what the essence of narrative, I'm a storyteller. The essence of narrative is only about this dynamic. There is nothing else in a story other than this dynamic. So the struggle between other people's perceptions and your own wants and desires and who you truly are, your significant real self. That's it. That's all there is. You tell me a story that didn't, that we engaged in that's famous that's not about this journey. I'll give you an example. The prodigal son. Parable Christian. Seems religious. Doesn't really make much sense. Do you know the story? Sure, but why don't you lay it out? So there's a father. He has two sons, an older son, a younger son. And he says to them, who wants to spend their inheritance? The younger son says, me dad, I can't spend it. And the younger son takes all the dough and he runs off and sniffs coke off strippers tits for a number of years until he realizes this is getting pretty boring and I'm in a lot of trouble. He ends up feeding, throwing food to pigs. That's his job. And he can't even eat the food that he gives to the pigs. At which point he says, dad, will you take me back? Dad then goes to, they don't meet. This somehow happens not through telephones. It just happens. At which point dad goes to the fatty calves, has killed the fatty calves. The older son says, hold on dad, what's going on? I've stayed with you since the beginning. I've been loyal to you. And I hear the stories of my younger brother coming back who's been sniffing coke off strippers tits for the last half of those how many years. And you're prepared to kill the fatty calf. What's the SP dad? I want to know the story. He says, you're right son. Don't worry about that. You take a little side, a little step to the side. You'll always be with me. You're a good boy. At which point he goes out to meet the prodigal son, the wasteful son, the wasteful son returns. And he says, you were lost and now you're found. That's the end of the story. It's quite hard to make sense of that in a literal sense. You go, oh, dad was a bit unfair. I mean, you should have been kind to the oldest son because he never ran off and did anything. But the essence of the story is that you are the father. You are enough. Your older son is your intellect. He says, oh, don't do this. Don't do that. He's trying to reconcile make sense of a prosaic and material world. The younger son being the wild feral entity that he is wants to go out in the world and find out what it's all about. So in his recklessness and sense of adventure, he finds that he can't escape himself. So he has to return to himself. And at which point he has to accept who he is, which point the intellect is left out the equation pretty much as the older brother, because he can't understand the significance of the journey of the wasteful brother. In the end, you have to leave yourself to understand the value of yourself. You have to lose stuff before you realize that all the stuff that you're losing is ephemeral and transitry. It's not yours. You're enough. You're always enough. But you've got to somehow prostitute yourself before you realize your own value. That is the essence of all stories. That's deep guy, Richie. Is that something you think about all the time? Or is this, I mean, is this like a cemented philosophy? So King Arthur, the story you just made. A man is a king, has a son. The father runs into a bit of aggro. The son jumps into a little boat, a little skillet. That's what you cook your chops on, isn't it? Yeah. A little skiff. The skiff takes off down the river. He gets found by prostitutes. He's brought up in a brothel. He understands the ways of the street. He becomes a king on the street. He works his way out at different ladders. And then he pulls a sword from a stone at a certain point in his life, a certain point of evolution. And then from there, he goes on to be the king. There's a bit of a tussle all along the way, lots of wrestling matches. In the end, he fights down his demons and he becomes the king. So what's the significance of this narrative? That every man in himself is aristocratic. That he is his own king. He takes the sojourn into the material world, has to climb up all the different runs on the ladder, and ultimately has to return to himself. The significance of the extraction from the sword from the stone is the stone is the material world. The material world, which seems all solid because it controls you whilst you're projecting your sense of identity upon it. The extraction of the stone is taking back your own authority, your own divinity, your own authority, your own identity. Whatever it is that you've got to call it, your own power. You're no longer looking for a sense of self outside of yourself. And then you have to face the demons that you've created in your history by facing them and fighting them and owning them. You put them in the face of who you are. And that's a wrestling match. You'd have to take away all these crutches. And that's all that we struggle from in life is taking away our crutches. Oh, please tell me who I am. Oh, please give me a bit more money. So other people think I'm clever. Oh, and then I'm having a nice cut on people think I'm clever. You got to take away all these crutches and stand as the man that you are. And you're liberated from your whole thing. That is the story of King Arthur. But it's not just the story of King Arthur. It's the story of all narrative. Do you think that most people that are watching the film are going to get that, though? They're just going to get an entertaining story. They're just going to see a bunch of cool stuff, some drama play out. But this is fascinating that you're operating so many levels underneath it. But I'm a storyteller. It's my business. So if I'm in the business of story, I might as well understand story. And do you need to understand all that? I'm not sure if you do. It depends where you are on the ladder. So you can just go along and have a nice bit of entertainment. Good guy, bad guy. Everything's literal. There's nothing wrong with literalism. It is what it is. It's the game. You can glean what you can glean when you're ready to glean what you're ready to glean. Are you a Joseph Campbell fan? I am a Joseph Campbell fan. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's a reoccurring theme in his work. The hero's journey. Yes, the hero's journey. This underlying sort of narrative that just really guides all stories and all ancient tales and that there's something inherently human about them, important about these stories. They resonate with our wants and needs and goals and even also maybe the structure that we really, truly need in our own life. Yeah, I mean, all the stories from whatever period, I'm sympathetic to this particular, to Joseph Campbell's philosophy on this, but he's not the only one, right? Right. The weird thing about religion is religion has done to the spiritual significance of narrative what the businessman did to the suit. He's literalized it. He didn't realize that putting on a suit is putting on a suit of armor. He's putting on something that's rather spectacular. It's just doing it for convention. You're doing it for others. You're not doing it for you. And in our literal mind, we look at a narrative and we see the narrative for what we believe it to be, the exterior aspect of the narrative. So we completely, we see the world upside down. We don't, we're not actually interested in the essence of the narrative because we're so busy pandering after the approval of others. So everything that we see, every narrative that we listen to, every film that you see, you're not really interested in its soul. You're interested in its body because that's what we correspond to. It's fascinating that you're comparing it to suits because it resonates. Like when you think of a guy showing up for work or getting ready for work and he doesn't want to go and he's putting on the suit and it's just dredging through it and putting it on. Or you think about a guy who's crisply tucking in his collars and putting on his cufflinks and tightening up his tie and he feels empowered by the whole process of it. It's very, it's very appealing. Like if you see it in a film too, it's very exciting. This is a man of purpose. They did it in mean streets. I don't know if you remember Harvey Keitel getting dressed to go up on a Friday, getting dressed to go out on a Friday night and it affected a whole generation of people about the way they dress because he owned it. Yeah, yeah. I never really thought about that until this conversation. It's not because I just I don't really wear, I wear suits occasionally, like very, very occasional. But you've been robbed. I've been robbed. You've been robbed. There are so many aspects of life. Food for a long time got robbed from us and we've slowly managed to claw that back. It's true. But clothes, really? You're a 45 year old geezer and you're still dressing like an 18 year old? What cast is all that about? Well, some people like to be comfortable, though. I get that, by the way. And they like that look comfortable. Your suit's comfortable. It's comfortable. Yeah, you can get poured into this completely deconstructed on the inside. Made by a chap called Brunello, knows what he's doing. So these are all handmade? It won't be handmade. Tailored? No, I bought this off the shelf and I had a couple of things tweaked. But it's as comfortable as a pair of pajamas. Really? Yeah. So again, you have to broker a deal you can't put on things that are uncomfortable because guess what happens in the morning? You're looking through your suits and you go, oh, I like that one, but I'm going to wear it on the comfortable one. So they all have to be comfortable. Well, otherwise you're not going to play the game, are you?