Robert Greene
Human behavior is governed by primal emotions and unconscious drives rather than logic. True self-mastery requires piercing the masks people wear and confronting your own psychological flaws.
Rationality is not an inherent human default, but a hard-earned discipline requiring us to recognize our emotional biases and trace actions to their subconscious roots.
In Greene's account, hostile or volatile reactions can reflect unresolved childhood baggage directed at a new target, making it useful to view some social friction as an impersonal psychological pattern.
Human nature defaults to the path of least resistance, meaning elevation from lower animal impulses to a higher self demands deliberate discipline and purpose.