Success Breeds Animosity! - Joe Rogan

Now I know that you're big on this too. You're big on tribe. Like you have those guys that you travel with that you do shows with. This is like a tribe of you. Like you have a community. And it's very important. I respect that. I think that's huge. But it's a thing I've learned from my interactions with you and a thing I've seen is you don't parade it around and you don't talk about it too much. But you do talk about that there are some things where you just, you put up some firewalls in your life and the people that you're around. And I have heard you refer to at times that something got too, someone was maybe like too damaging and referring to people that, it wasn't even like you were condemning them or thought they were bad, but you just referred to like times and you've had to like just sort of protect what you had and what you care about and just make some things not part of your life anymore. Yeah, you have to do that sometimes. You have to realize that there's some people that are not looking out for themselves. Some people don't make that jump well and they keep that around. They keep that influence around because of maybe like misplaced loyalties. But I've noticed you bring that up a handful of times where you're like something just got to be where you had to like build, you had to be like, I love your respect, you would have, but I just can't, I gotta protect these other things. Well, some people get completely self-absorbed and they burn everything around them because they're only thinking about themselves and even if you love them and care them or appreciate what they're doing, like some people are amazing at certain things. Like, you know, we were talking about Hendrix. I mean, if Hendrix did beat his wife, I don't know if that's true or beat his girlfriends. But it's like some people are so good at what they do that like that's all they're thinking about and they didn't develop these interpersonal skills or relationship skills or, you know, whatever. They didn't develop a sense of nuance in terms of their perspective of the world or a sense of introspective thinking when they're looking at themselves and being objective about how they interface with the people around them and life. Those people that are just like wholly focused on the self, especially pure narcissists, which you run into a lot of them in show business. And some of them, it's not their fault. You talk to them. If you believe in determinism, you know, and you believe that they're a product of all the things that have happened to them and then you run down the list of all the things that have happened to them, it's fucking bone chilling. I mean, so many people that I know, particularly in show business are there because of just a giant hole that they developed in their self-esteem and who they are as a child. They didn't get enough love. They got too much abuse and hate and bullying and all these varying factors that made them push so hard to achieve success, to let everybody know, hey, I am special. Hey, I am something. You were all wrong. And then they, but along the way, they burn everything around them. Yeah. And I don't, you know, I don't wanna, it's possible to get there without that. That's what I wanna say. It's like, it's possible to get there without being a piece of shit. And some people think you have to be a piece of shit to be successful. You don't, you don't have to. Or I think some people get to where, remember earlier I mentioned like the collateral damage. Some people think you could develop such an inflated sense of what you're bringing to the world that you personally come to accept the idea that there is a price to pay. That price being other people. Yeah, yeah, that's a problem. But then again, if you don't have certain standards, then other people will chew up all your time and their problems become your problems and they don't even think about their problems. They're thinking about you thinking about their problems. There's many people that pawn off their problems on other folks and they think that if you're a good friend, you're helping me. Like you're not a good friend. You're not taking care of me. You're not helping me. You're not even helping yourself. The fuck are you doing for yourself? Like this is a trap that a lot of people get stuck into. It's codependency. It happens in a lot of relationships. There's a lot of people that get involved in relationships, boy and girl, that they find that the person who is their soulmate is also the source of all their fucking problems. And they're the curator of this person's life. They're supposed to be helping this person along because this person's deemed them, the person who's most important to them. And it's like you gotta find out what's the boundary where you won't cross, where you realize someone is becoming an impediment to your own happiness and success. It's amazing the degree to which people deep down do care about what someone is quote, like. Where I find that because I've been on your show a number of times, people are curious about you. And people will often ask me, what's Rogan really like? But they know what answer they wanna hear bad. People would love a story, okay? You think of something like Oprah Winfrey. I've found that people love a story about how bad, like people are gonna eat up a story that she's awful. Yeah. They're like, yeah. For sure. Like people want a story about something bad, but what's funny about what you've done and how you've done it is that, and this happens quite often, where people are like, they're like, he's a good guy, right? Like they want to know, like they feel like you are and they want to have it confirmed, not that they're like, ooh yeah, tell me a story about him being bad. Like they would with a lot of people. If someone has a really bad story about Oprah, I'm like, oh, I'm all ears. Why? Of course. Why? Well, I think first of all, because Oprah is enormously successful, like in some sort of preposterous way. She's worth a billion dollars for just talking. She can't sing, she can't dance, she's not in good shape. What is she doing? She's just talking, she's got a billion dollars. Fuck her. I hope she's a meanie. I hope she's doing terrible things. There's a thing about that. It's like you want to find her, oh, she got that wave because she's fucking people over. Yeah, I heard she beats her assistant. You know what I mean? I heard she lit her sister's house on fire. Like it makes sense in the world in some way. In some ways, like you want to think that someone who's achieved that ridiculous level of success is mean. Like I passed by Oprah, Oprah has a house in Montecito. I passed by the house, like that is a ridiculous house for a person. It's like a giant lawn, $50 million house, a fucking huge estate. It's a castle, she's a queen. You know, you don't want that. Like fuck her. You know, my house is 250 grand. Why the fuck is she doing with that 50, and that's not even a house she lives in. She just visits that like once a year, takes a shit there, has someone to cook for, takes a nap, gets up. Stirs an animosity. Yeah, well, you know, preposterous success breeds animosity, and that lady's got a lot of preposterous success. You know, there's certain people, you meet them, you want them to, like Dr. Phil, like he's a similar thing. I would be receptive to a bad Dr. Phil story. Yes, I'm sure. He's great. Dr. Phil is fucking great. My friend Jay is Dr. Phil's son. I became friends with Dr. Phil through another guy, through another guy, because my friend Ron White, my friend Ron White is a good buddy of mine, he's one of the best comedians on earth, is good friends. Jay McGraw, who's Dr. Phil's son. So I became friends with Jay before I became friends with Dr. Phil, and then I had Dr. Phil on the podcast. Dr. Phil's the fucking nicest guy ever. He's a regular guy. Like you hang out and talk to him, he's got a ridiculous amount of success, but he's hilarious. He's like a regular dude. He's a regular guy. He's a regular guy. He's a regular guy. He's a regular guy. He's a regular guy. He's a regular guy.