it was a golden start for india in the paris paraolympics avani lekhara defended her crown in the women air rifle standing sh event
it was a golden start for india in the paris paralympics avani lekhara defended her crown in the women air rifle standing sh event
aaa bbb ccc dd ee ff g h i jjjkkklllmmnnoopqr sss ttt uuu vv ww xx y z
LAW 37
CREATE COMPELLING SPECTACLES
JUDGMENT
Striking imagery and grand symbolic gestures create the aura of power— everyone responds to them. Stage spectacles for those around you, then, full of arresting visuals and radiant symbols that heighten your presence. Dazzled by appearances, no one will notice what you are really doing.
ANTONY AND CLEOPATHA
She relied above all upon her physical presence and the spell and
enchantment which it could create.... She came sailing up the river Cydnus in a barge with a poop of gold, its purple sails billowing in the wind, while her rowers caressed the water with oars of silver which dipped in time to the music of the flute, accompanied by pipes and lutes. Cleopatra herself reclined beneath a canopy of cloth of gold, dressed in the character of Aphrodite, as we see her in paintings, while on either side to complete the picture stood boys costumed as Cupids who cooled her with their fans.
Instead of a crew the barge was lined with the most beautiful of her waitingwomen attired as Nereids and Graces, some at the rudders, others at the tackle of the sails, and all the while an indescribably rich perfume, exhaled from innumerable censers, was wafted from the vessel to the riverbanks.
Great multitudes accompanied this royal progress, some of them following the queen on both sides of the river from its very mouth, while others hurried down from the city of Tarsus to gaze at the sight.
Gradually the crowds drifted away from the marketplace, where Antony awaited the queen enthroned on his tribunal, until at last he was left sitting quite alone. And the word spread on every side that Aphrodite had come to revel with Dionysus for the happiness of Asia. Antony then sent a message inviting Cleopatra to dine with him. But she thought it more appropriate that he should come to her, and so, as he wished to show his courtesy and goodwill, he accepted and went. He found the preparations made to receive him magnificent bevond words, but what astonished him most of all was the extraordinary number of lights. So many of these, it is said, were let down from the roof and displayed on all sides at once, and they were arranged and grouped in suchingenious patterns in relation to each other, some in squares and some in circles, that they created as brilliant a spectacle as can ever have been devised to delight the eve.
LIFE OF ANTONY, PLUTARCH, c. A.D. 46-120
OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW I
In the early 1780s, word spread through Berlin of the strange and
spectacular medical practice of a Dr. Weisleder. He performed his miracles in an enormous converted beer hall, outside which Berliners began to notice ever longer lines of people—the blind, the lame, anyone with an illness incurable by normal medicine. When it leaked out that the doctor worked by exposing the patient to the rays of the moon, he soon became dubbed The Moon Doctor of Berlin.
Sometime in 1783, it was reported that Dr. Weisleder had cured a well-todo woman of a terrible ailment. He suddenly became a celebrity. Previously only the poorest Berliners had been seen waiting outside the beer hall in their rags; now magnificent carriages were parked outside, and gentlemen in frock coats, and ladies with enormous coiffures, lined the street as sunset drew near. Even folk with the mildest of ailments came, out of sheer
curiosity. As they waited in line, the poorer clients would explain to the gentlemen and ladies that the doctor only practiced when the moon was in its increscent phase. Many would add that they themselves had already been exposed to the healing powers he called forth from the rays of the moon. Even those who felt cured kept coming back, drawn by this powerful experience.
Inside the beer hall, a strange and stirring spectacle greeted the visitor: Packed into the entrance hall was a crowd of all classes and ethnic backgrounds, a veritable Tower of Babel. Through tall windows on the northern side of the hall, silvery moonlight poured in at odd angles. The doctor and his wife, who, it seemed, was also able to effect the cure, practiced on the second floor, which was reached by a stairway, at the end of the hall. As the line edged closer to the stairs, the sick would hear shouts and cries from above, and word would spread of, perhaps, a blind
gentleman suddenly able to see.
Once upstairs, the line would fork in two directions, toward a northern room for the doctor, a southern one for his wife, who worked only on the ladies.
Finally, after hours of anticipation and waiting in line, the gentlemen patients would be led before the amazing doctor himself, an elderly man with a few stalks of wild gray hair and an air of nervous energy. He would take the patient (let us say a young boy, brought in by his father), uncover the afflicted body part, and lift the boy up to the window, which faced the light of the moon. He would rub the site of the injury or illness, mumble
something unintelligible, look knowingly at the moon, and then, after collecting his fee, send the boy and his father on their way. Meanwhile, in the south-facing room, his wife would be doing the same with the ladies— which was odd, really, since the moon cannot appear in two places at once; it cannot have been visible, in other words, from both windows.
Apparently the mere thought, idea, and symbol of the moon were enough, for the ladies did not complain, and would later remark confidently that the wife of the Moon Doctor had the same healing powers as he.
Interpretation
Dr. Weisleder may have known nothing about medicine, but he understood human nature. He recognized that people do not always want words, or rational explanations, or demonstrations of the powers of science; they want an immediate appeal to their emotions. Give them that and they will do the rest—such as imagine they can be healed by the light reflected from a rock
a quarter million miles away. Dr. Weisleder had no need of pills, or of lengthy lectures on the moon’s power, or of any silly gadgetry to amplify its rays. He understood that the simpler the spectacle the better—just the moonlight pouring in from the side, the stairway leading to the heavens, and the rays of the moon, whether directly visible or not. Any added effects might have made it seem that the moon was not strong enough on its own.
And the moon was strong enough—it was a magnet for fantasies, as it has been throughout history. Simply by associating himself with the image of the moon, the doctor gained power.
Remember: Your search for power depends on shortcuts. You must always circumvent people’s suspicions, their perverse desire to resist your will.
Images are an extremely effective shortcut: Bypassing the head, the seat of doubt and resistance, they aim straight for the heart. Overwhelming the eyes, they create powerful associations, bringing people together and stirring their emotions.
With the white light of the moon in their eyes, your targets are blinded to the deceptions you practice.
OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW II
In 1536 the future king Henri II of France took his first mistress, Diane de Poitiers. Diane was thirty-seven at the time, and was the widow of the grand seneschal of Normandy. Henri, meanwhile, was a sprightly lad of seventeen, who was just beginning to sow his wild oats. At first their union seemed merely platonic, with Henri showing an intensely spiritual devotion to Diane. But it soon became clear that he loved her in every way, preferring her bed to that of his young wife, Catherine de’ Médicis.
In 1547 King Francis died and Henri ascended to the throne. This new situation posed perils for Diane de Poitiers. She had just turned forty-eight, and despite her notorious cold baths and rumored youth potions, she was beginning to show her age; now that Henri was king, perhaps he would return to the queen’s bed, and do as other kings had done—choose mistresses from the bevy of beauties who made the French court the envy of Europe. He was, after all, only twenty-eight, and cut a dashing figure. But
Diane did not give up so easily. She would continue to enthrall her lover, as she had enthralled him for the past eleven years.
In the Middle Ages the symbolist attitude was much more in evidence. ... Symbolism appears as a sort of short cut of thought. Instead of looking for the relation between two things by following the hidden detours of their causal connexions, thought makes a leap and discovers their relation not in the connexion of cause and effects, but in a connexion of signification....
Symbolist thought permits an infinity of relations between things. Each thing may denote a number of distinct ideas by its different special qualities, and a quality may have several symbolic meanings. The highest conceptions have symbols by the thousand. Nothing is too humble to represent and glory the sublime.
The walnut signifies Christ: the sweet kernel is His divine nature, the green and pulpy outer peel is His humanity, the wooden shell
between is the cross. Thus all things raise his thoughts to the eternal.... Every precious stone, besides its natural splendour sparkles with the brilliance of its symbolic values. The assimilation of roses and virginity is much more than a poetic comparison, for it reveals their common essence. As each notion arises in the mind the logic of symbolism creates an harmony of ideas.
THE WANING OF THE MIDDLE AGES, JOHAN HUIZINGA, 1928
Diane’s secret weapons were symbols and images, to which she had always paid great attention. Early on in her relationship with Henri, she had created a motif by intertwining her initials with his, to symbolize their union.
The idea worked like a charm: Henri put this insignia everywhere— on his royal robes, on monuments, on churches, on the facade of the Louvre, then the royal palace in Paris. Diane’s favorite colors were black and white, which she wore exclusively, and wherever it was possible the insignia appeared in these colors. Everyone recognized the symbol and its meaning. Soon after Henri took the throne, however, Diane went still further: She decided to identify herself with the Roman goddess Diana, her
namesake. Diana was the goddess of the hunt, the traditional royal pastime and the particular passion of Henri.
Equally important, in Renaissance art she symbolized chastity and purity. For a woman like Diane to identify herself with this goddess would instantly call up those images in the court, giving her an air of respectability.
Symbolizing her “chaste” relationship with Henri, it would also set her apart from the adulterous liaisons of royal mistresses past.
To effect this association, Diane began by completely transforming her castle at Anet. She razed the building’s structure and in its place erected a magnificent Doric-columned edifice modeled after a Roman temple. It was made in white Normandy stone flecked with black silex, reproducing Diane’s trademark colors of black and white. The insignia of her and
Henri’s initials appeared on the columns, the doors, the windows, the carpet. Meanwhile, symbols of Diana—crescent moons, stags, and hounds —adorned the gates and facade. Inside, enormous tapestries depicting episodes in the life of the goddess lay on the floors and hung on the walls.
In the garden stood the famous Goujon sculpture Diane Chasseresse, which is now in the Louvre, and which had an uncanny resemblance to Diane de Poitiers. Paintings and other depictions of Diana appeared in every corner of the castle.
Anet overwhelmed Henri, who soon was trumpeting the image of Diane de Poitiers as a Roman goddess. In 1548, when the couple appeared together in Lyons for a royal celebration, the townspeople welcomed them with a tableau vivant depicting a scene with Diana the huntress. France’s greatest poet of the period, Pierre de Ronsard, began to write verses in honor of Diana—indeed a kind of cult of Diana sprang up, all inspired by
the king’s mistress. It seemed to Henri that Diane had given herself a kind of divine aura, and as if he were destined to worship her for the rest of his life. And until his death, in 1559, he did remain faithful to her—making her a duchess, giving her untold wealth, and displaying an almost religious devotion to his first and only mistress.
Interpretation
Diane de Poitiers, a woman from a modest bourgeois background, managed to captivate Henri for over twenty years. By the time he died she was well into her sixties, yet his passion for her only increased with the years. She knew the king well. He was not an intellectual but a lover of the outdoors— he particularly loved jousting tournaments, with their bright pennants, brilliantly caparisoned horses, and beautifully dressed women. Henri’s love of visual splendor seemed childlike to Diane, and she played on this weakness of his at every opportunity. Most astute of all was Diane’s appropriation of the goddess Diana. Here she took the game beyond physical imagery into the realm of the psychic symbol. It was quite a feat to transform a king’s mistress into an emblem of power and purity, but she managed it. Without the resonance of the goddess, Diane was merely an aging courtesan. With the imagery and symbolism of Diana on her shoulders, she seemed a mythic force, destined for greatness.
You too can play with images like these, weaving visual clues into an encompassing gestalt, as Diane did with her colors and her insignia.
Establish a trademark like these to set yourself apart. Then take the game further: Find an image or symbol from the past that will neatly fit your situation, and put it on your shoulders like a cape. It will make you seem larger than life.
There was a man named Sakamotoya Hechigwan who lived in upper Kyoto.... When [Emperor] Hideyoshi gave his great Cha-no-yu [tea ceremony] meeting at Kitano in the tenth month of 1588, Hechigwan set up a great red umbrella nine feet across mounted on a stick seven feet high.
The circumference of the handle he surrounded for about two feet by a reed fence in such a way that the rays of the sun were reflected from it and diffused the colour of the umbrella all around. This device pleased
Hideyoshi so much that he remitted Hechigwan’s taxes as a reward.
CHA-NO-YU: THE JAPANESE TEA CEREMONY, A. L. SADLER, 1962
Because of the light it shines on the other stars which make up a kind of court around it, because of the just and equal distribution of its rays to all alike, because of the good it brings to all places, producing life, joy and action, because of its constancy from which it never varies, I chose the sun as the most magnificent image to represent a great leader.
Louis XIV, the Sun King, 1638-1715
KEYS TO POWER
Using words to plead your case is risky business: Words are dangerous instruments, and often go astray. The words people use to persuade us virtually invite us to reflect on them with words of our own; we mull them over, and often end up believing the opposite of what they say. (That is part of our perverse nature.) It also happens that words offend us, stirring up associations unintended by the speaker.
The visual, on the other hand, short-circuits the labyrinth of words. It strikes with an emotional power and immediacy that leave no gaps for reflection and doubt. Like music, it leaps right over rational, reasonable thoughts. Imagine the Moon Doctor trying to make a case for his medical practice, trying to convince the unconverted by telling them about the healing powers of the moon, and about his own special connection to a distant object in the sky. Fortunately for him, he was able to create a compelling spectacle that made words unnecessary. The moment his
patients entered the beer hall, the image of the moon spoke eloquently enough.
Understand: Words put you on the defensive. If you have to explain yourself your power is already in question. The image, on the other hand, imposes itself as a given. It discourages questions, creates forceful associations, resists unintended interpretations, communicates instantly, and forges bonds that transcend social differences. Words stir up arguments and
divisions; images bring people together. They are the quintessential instruments of power.
The symbol has the same force, whether it is visual (the statue of Diana) or a verbal description of something visual (the words “the Sun King”). The symbolic object stands for something else, something abstract (such as the image “Diana” standing for chastity). The abstract concept—purity, patriotism, courage, love—is full of emotional and powerful associations.
The symbol is a shortcut of expression, containing dozens of meanings in one simple phrase or object. The symbol of the Sun King, as explained by Louis XIV, can be read on many layers, but the beauty of it is that its associations required no explanation, spoke immediately to his subjects, distinguished him from all other kings, and conjured up a kind of majesty that went far beyond the words themselves.
The symbol contains untold power.
The first step in using symbols and images is to understand the primacy of sight among the senses. Before the Renaissance, it has been argued, sight and the other senses—taste, touch, and so on—operated on a relatively equal plane.
Since then, however, the visual has come to dominate the others, and is the sense we most depend on and trust.
As Gracián said, “The truth is generally seen, rarely heard.”
When the Renaissance painter Fra Filippo Lippi was a captured slave among the Moors, he won his freedom by sketching a drawing of his master on a white wall with a piece of charcoal; when the owner saw the drawing, he instantly understood the
power of a man who could make such images, and let Fra Lippi go. That one image was far more powerful than any argument the artist could have made with words.
Never neglect the way you arrange things visually.
Factors like color, for example, have enormous symbolic resonance. When the con artist Yellow Kid Weil created a newsletter touting the phony stocks he was peddling, he called it the “Red Letter Newsletter” and had it printed, at considerable
expense, in red ink. The color created a sense of urgency, power, and good fortune.
Weil recognized details like these as keys to deception—as do
modern advertisers and mass-marketers. If you use “gold” in the title of anything you are trying to sell, for example, print it in gold. Since the eye predominates, people will respond more to the color than to the word.
The visual contains great emotional power. The Roman emperor
Constantine worshipped the sun as a god for most of his life; one day, though, he looked up at the sun, and saw a cross superimposed on it. The vision of the cross over the sun proved to him the ascendancy of the new religion, and he converted not just himself but the whole Roman Empire to Christianity soon thereafter.
All the preaching and proselytizing in the world could not have been as powerful.
Find and associate yourself with the images and symbols that will communicate in this immediate way today, and you will have untold power.
Most effective of all is a new combination—a fusion of images and symbols that have not been seen together before, but that through their association clearly demonstrate your new idea, message, religion.
The creation of new images and symbols out of old ones in this way has a poetic effect—viewers’ associations run rampant, giving them a sense of participation.
Visual images often appear in a sequence, and the order in which they appear creates a symbol.
The first to appear, for instance, symbolizes power; the image at the center seems to have central importance.
Near the end of World War II, orders came down from General
Eisenhower that American troops were to lead the way into Paris after its liberation from the Nazis. The French general Charles de Gaulle, however, realized that this sequence would imply that the Americans now commanded the fate of France. Through much manipulation, de Gaulle made certain that he and the French Second Armored Division would appear at the head of the liberating force.
The strategy worked: After he had successfully pulled off this stunt, the Allies started treating him as the new leader of an independent France. De Gaulle knew that a leader has to locate
himself literally at the head of his troops. This visual association is crucial to the emotional response that he needs to elicit.
Things change in the game of symbols: It is probably no longer possible to pose as a “sun king,” or to wrap the mantle of Diana around you. Yet you can associate yourself with such symbols more indirectly.
And, of course, you can make your own mythology out of figures from more recent history, people who are comfortably dead but still powerfully associative in the public eye.
The idea is to give yourself an aura, a stature that your normal
banal appearance simply will not create.
By herself Diane de Poitiers had no such radiant powers; she was as human and ordinary as most of us. But the symbol elevated her above the human lot, and made her seem divine.
Using symbols also has a courtier-like effect, since they are often gentler than brutish words. The psychotherapist Dr. Milton H. Erickson always tried to find symbols and images that would communicate to the patient in ways that words could not.
When dealing with a severely troubled patient, he would not question him directly but would talk about something irrelevant, such as driving through the desert in Arizona, where he practiced
in the 1950s. In describing this he would eventually come to an appropriate symbol for what he suspected was the man’s problem. If he felt the patient was isolated, say, Dr. Erickson would talk of a single iron-wood tree, and how its isolation left it battered by the winds. Making an emotional connection with the tree as a symbol, the patient would open up more readily to the doctor’s probing.
Use the power of symbols as a way to rally, animate, and unite your troops or team.
During the rebellion against the French crown in 1648,
those loyal to the king disparaged the rebels by comparing them to the slingshots (in French, frondes) that little boys use to frighten big boys. Cardinal de Retz decided to turn this disparaging term into the rebels’ symbol: The uprising was now known as the Fronde, and the rebels as frondeurs. They began to wear sashes in their hats that symbolized the slingshot, and the word became their rallying cry. Without it the rebellion might well have petered out.
Always find a symbol to represent your cause —the more emotional associations, the better.
The best way to use images and symbols is to organize them into a grand spectacle that awes people and distracts them from unpleasant realities.
This is easy to do: People love what is grand, spectacular, and larger than life.
Appeal to their emotions and they will flock to your spectacle in hordes.
The visual is the easiest route to their hearts.
Image:
The Cross and the Sun. Crucifixion and total radiance. With one
imposed over the other, a new reality takes shape— a new power is in the ascendant. The symbol—no explanation necessary.
Authority: The people are always impressed by the superficial appearance of things.... The [prince] should, at fitting times of the year, keep the people occupied and distracted with festivities and spectacles.
(Niccolò Machiavelli, 1469-1527)
REVERSAL
No power is made available by ignoring images and symbols. There is no possible reversal to this law.
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
aabbccddeeffgghhiijjkkllmmnnooppqqrrssttuuvvwwxxyyzz
aaabbbcccdddeeefffggghhhiiijjjkkklllmmmnnnooopppqqqrrrssstttuuuvvvwwwxxxyyyzzz
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
aaa bbb ccc ddd eee fff ggg hhh iii jjj kkk lll mmm nnn ooo ppp qqq rrr sss ttt uuu vvv www xxx yyy zzz
a b c aaa bbb ccc
d e f ddd eee fff
g h i ggg hhh iii
j k l jjj kkk lll
m n o mmm nnn ooo
p q r ppp qqq rrr
s t u v sss ttt uuu vvv
w x y z www xxx yyy zzz
wxyz
wwxxyyzz
wwwxxxyyyzzz
wxxyyyzzzz
wzyx
zywx
xwzy
yxwz
stuv
ssttuuvv
ssstttuuuvvv
ssstttuuuvvvssttuuvvstuv
svut
tuvs
ustv
vuts
pqr
ppqqrr
pppqqqrrr
pqqrrr
prq
rqp
qrp
rpq
mno
mmnnoo
mmmnnnooo
mmmnnnooommnnoomno
mon
nom
onm
nmo
jkl
jjkkll
jjjkkklll
jlk
kjl
lkj
ljk
klj
LAW 36
DISDAIN THINGS YOU CANNOT HAVE: IGNORING THEM IS THE BEST REVENGE
JUDGMENT
By acknowledging a petty problem you give it existence and credibility. The more attention you pay an enemy, the stronger you make him; and a small mistake is often made worse and more visible when you try to fix it. It is sometimes best to leave things alone. If there is something you want but cannot have, show contempt for it. The less interest you reveal, the more superior you seem.
TRANSGRESSION OF THE LAW
The Mexican rebel leader Pancho Villa started out as the chief of a gang of bandits, but after revolution broke out in Mexico in 1910, he became a kind of folk hero—robbing trains and giving the money to the poor, leading daring raids, and charming the ladies with romantic escapades. His exploits fascinated Americans—he seemed a man from another era, part Robin Hood, part Don Juan. After a few years of bitter fighting, however, General
Carranza emerged as the victor in the Revolution; the defeated Villa and his troops went back home, to the northern state of Chihuahua. His army dwindled and he turned to banditry again, damaging his popularity. Finally, perhaps out of desperation, he began to rail against the United States, the gringos, whom he blamed for his troubles.
In March of 1916, Pancho Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico.
Rampaging through the town, he and his gang killed seventeen American soldiers and civilians. President Woodrow Wilson, like many Americans, had admired Villa; now, however, the bandit needed to be punished.
Wilson’s advisers urged him to send troops into Mexico to capture Villa. For a power as large as the United States, they argued, not to strike back at an army that had invaded its territory would send the worst kind of signal.
Furthermore, they continued, many Americans saw Wilson as a pacifist, a principle the public doubted as a response to violence; he needed to prove his mettle and manliness by ordering the use of force.
The pressure on Wilson was strong, and before the month was out, with the approval of the Carranza government, he sent an army of ten thousand soldiers to capture Pancho Villa. The venture was called the Punitive Expedition, and its leader was the dashing General John J. Pershing, who had defeated guerrillas in the Philippines and Native Americans in the American Southwest. Certainly Pershing could find and overpower Pancho Villa.
The Punitive Expedition became a sensational story, and carloads of U.S. reporters followed Pershing into action. The campaign, they wrote, would be a test of American power. The soldiers carried the latest in weaponry, communicated by radio, and were supported by reconnaissance from the air.
In the first few months, the troops split up into small units to comb the wilds of northern Mexico. The Americans offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to Villa’s capture. But the Mexican people, who had been disillusioned with Villa when he had returned to banditry, now idolized him for facing this mighty American army.
They began to give Pershing false leads: Villa had been seen in this village, or in that mountain hideaway, airplanes would be dispatched, troops would scurry after them, and no one would ever see him. The wily bandit seemed to be always one step ahead of the American military.
THE FOX AND THE GRAPES
A starving fox ... saw a cluster of luscious-looking grapes of purplish luster Dangling above him on a trellis-frame. He would have dearly liked them for his lunch, but when he tried and failed to reach the bunch: “Ah well, it’s more than likely they’re not sweet—Good only for green fools to eat!” Wasn’t he wise to say they were unripe Rather than whine and gripe?
FABLES, JEAN DE LA FONTAINE, 1621-1695
Once when G. K. Chesterton’s economic views were abused in print by George Bernard Shaw, his friends waited in vain for him to reply. Historian Hilaire Belloc reproached him.
“My dear Belloc,” Chesterton said,
“I have answered him. To a man of Shaw’s wit, silence is the one unbearable repartee.
THE LITTLE, BROWN BOOK OF ANECDOTES, CLIFTON FADIMAN,
ED., 1985
By the summer of that year, the expedition had swelled to 123,000 men. They suffered through the stultifying heat, the mosquitoes, the wild terrain. Trudging over a countryside in which they were already resented, they infuriated both the local people and the Mexican government. At one point Pancho Villa hid in a mountain cave to recover from a gunshot wound he received in a skirmish with the Mexican army; looking down from his aerie,
he could watch Pershing lead the exhausted American troops back and forth across the mountains, never getting any closer to their goal. All the way into winter, Villa played his cat-and-mouse game. Americans came to see the affair as a kind of slapstick farce—in fact they began to admire Villa again, respecting his resourcefulness in eluding a superior force.
In January of 1917, Wilson finally ordered Pershing’s withdrawal. As the troops made their way back to American territory, rebel forces pursued them, forcing the U.S. Army to use airplanes to protect its rear flanks. The Punitive Expedition was being punished itself—it had turned into a retreat of the most humiliating sort.
Interpretation
Woodrow Wilson organized the Punitive Expedition as a show of force: He would teach Pancho Villa a lesson and in the process show the world that no one, large or small, could attack the mighty United States and get away with it. The expedition would be over in a few weeks, and Villa would be forgotten. That was not how it played out. The longer the expedition took, the more
it focused attention on the Americans’ incompetence and on Villa’s cleverness. Soon what was forgotten was not Villa but the raid that had started it all. As a minor annoyance became an international embarrassment, and the enraged Americans dispatched more troops, the imbalance between the size of the pursuer and the size of the pursued—who still managed to stay free—made the affair a joke. And in the end this white elephant of an army had to lumber out of Mexico, humiliated. The Punitive Expedition did the opposite of what it set out to do: It left Villa not only free but more popular than ever.
What could Wilson have done differently?
He could have pressured the Carranza government to catch Villa for him. Alternatively, since many Mexicans had tired of Villa before the Punitive Expedition began, he could have worked quietly with them and won their support for a much smaller raid to capture the bandit. He could have organized a trap on the American side of the border, anticipating the next raid. Or he could have ignored the matter altogether for the time being, waiting for the Mexicans themselves to do away with Villa of their own accord.
THE ASS AND THE GARDENER
An ass had once by some accident lost his tail, which was a grievous affliction to him; and he was everywhere seeking after it, being fool enough to think he could get it set on again. He passed through a meadow, and afterwards got into a garden. The gardener seeing him, and not able to endure the mischief he was doing in trampling down his plants, fell into a violent rage, ran to the ass, and never standing on the ceremony of a pillory, cut off both his ears, and beat him out of the ground. Thus the ass,
who bemoaned the loss of his tail, was in far greater affliction when he saw himself without ears.
FABLES, PILPAY, INDIA, FOURTH CENTURY
THE PRODIGY OX
Once, when the Tokudaiji minister of the right was chief of the imperial police, he was holding a meeting of his staff at the middle gate when an ox belonging to an official named Akikane got loose and wandered into the ministry building. It climbed up on the dais where the chief was seated and lay there, chewing its cud. Everyone was sure that this was some grave portent, and urged that the ox be sent to a yin-yang diviner. However, the
prime minister,
the father of the minister of the right, said, “An ox has no discrimination. It has legs—there is nowhere it won’t go. It does not make sense to deprive an underpaid official of the wretched ox he needs in order to attend court.”
He returned the ox to its owner and changed the matting on which it had lain. No untoward event of any kind occurred afterward. They say that if you see a prodigy and do not treat it as such, its character as a prodigy is destroyed.
ESSAYS IN IDLENESS, KENKO, JAPAN, FOURTEENTH CENTURY
Remember: You choose to let things bother you. You can just as easily choose not to notice the irritating offender, to consider the matter trivial and unworthy of your interest. That is the powerful move. What you do not react to cannot drag you down in a futile engagement. Your pride is not involved. The best lesson you can teach an irritating gnat is to consign it to oblivion by ignoring it. If it is impossible to ignore (Pancho Villa had in fact killed American citizens), then conspire in secret to do away with it, but never inadvertently draw attention to the bothersome insect that will go away or die on its own. If you waste time and energy in such
entanglements, it is your own fault. Learn to play the card of disdain and turn your back on what cannot harm you in the long run.
Just think—it cost your government $130 million to try to get me. I took them over rough, hilly country. Sometimes for fifty miles at a stretch they had no water. They had nothing but the sun and mosquitoes.... And nothing was gained.
Pancho Villa, 1878-1923
OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW
In the year 1527, King Henry VIII of England decided he had to find a way to get rid of his wife, Catherine of Aragon. Catherine had failed to produce a son, a male heir who would ensure the continuance of his dynasty, and Henry thought he knew why:
He had read in the Bible the passage, “And if a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing: he hath uncovered
his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless.”
Before marrying Henry, Catherine had married his older brother Arthur, but Arthur had died five months later. Henry had waited an appropriate time, then had married his brother’s widow.
Catherine was the daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, and by marrying her Henry had kept alive a valuable alliance. Now,
however, Catherine had to assure him that her brief marriage with Arthur had never been consummated. Otherwise Henry would view their relationship as incestuous and their marriage as null and void. Catherine insisted that she had remained a virgin through her marriage to Arthur, and
Pope Clement VII supported her by giving his blessing to the union, which he could not have done had he considered it incestuous. Yet after years of marriage to Henry, Catherine had failed to produce a son, and in the early 1520s she had entered menopause.
To the king this could only mean one thing: She had lied about her virginity, their union was incestuous, and God had punished them.
There was another reason why Henry wanted to get rid of Catherine: He had fallen in love with a younger woman, Anne Boleyn. Not only was he in love with her, but if he married her he could still hope to sire a legitimate son.
The marriage to Catherine had to be annulled. For this, however, Henry had to apply to the Vatican. But Pope Clement would never annul the marriage.
By the summer of 1527, rumors spread throughout Europe that Henry was about to attempt the impossible—to annul his marriage against Clement’s wishes. Catherine would never abdicate, let alone voluntarily enter a nunnery, as Henry had urged her.
But Henry had his own strategy: He stopped sleeping in the same bed with Catherine, since he considered her his sister-in-law, not his lawful wife. He insisted on calling her Princess Dowager of Wales, her title as Arthur’s widow.
Finally, in 1531, he banished her from court and shipped her off to a distant castle. The pope ordered him to return her to court, on pain of excommunication, the most severe penalty a Catholic could suffer. Henry not only ignored this threat, he insisted that his marriage to Catherine had been dissolved, and in 1533
he married Anne Boleyn. Clement refused to recognize the marriage, but Henry did not care. He no longer recognized the pope’s authority, and proceeded to break with the Roman Catholic Church, establishing the Church of England in its stead,
with the king as the head of the new church. And so, not surprisingly, the newly formed Church of England proclaimed Anne Boleyn England’s rightful queen.
The pope tried every threat in the book, but nothing worked. Henry simply ignored him. Clement fumed—no one had ever treated him so contemptuously. Henry had humiliated him and he had no power of recourse. Even excommunication (which he constantly threatened but never carried out) would no longer matter.
Catherine too felt the devastating sting of Henry’s disdain. She tried to fight back, but in appealing to Henry her words fell on deaf ears, and soon they fell on no one’s. Isolated from the court, ignored by the king, mad with anger and frustration, Catherine slowly deteriorated, and finally died in January of 1536, from a cancerous tumor of the heart.
Interpretation
When you pay attention to a person, the two of you become partners of sorts, each moving in step to the actions and reactions of the other.
In the process you lose your initiative. It is a dynamic of all interactions: By acknowledging other people, even if only to fight with them, you open yourself to their influence.
Had Henry locked horns with Catherine, he would have found himself mired in endless arguments that would have weakened his resolve and eventually worn him down. (Catherine was a
strong, stubborn woman.) Had he set out to convince Clement to change his verdict on the marriage’s validity, or tried to compromise and negotiate with him, he would have gotten bogged down in Clement’s favorite tactic: playing for time, promising flexibility, but actually getting what popes always got—their way. Henry would have none of this. He played a devastating power game— total disdain.
By ignoring people you cancel them out. This unsettles and infuriates them—but since they have no dealings with you, there is nothing they can do.
And in this view it is advisable to let everyone of your acquaintance— whether man or woman—feel now and then that you could very well dispense with their company. This will consolidate friendship.
Nay, with most people there will be no harm in occasionally mixing a grain of disdain with your treatment of them; that will make them value your friendship all the more. Chi non stima vien stimato, as a subtle Italian proverb has it—to disregard is to win regard. But if we really think very highly of a person, we should conceal it from him like a crime. This is not a very gratifying thing
to do, but it is right. Why, a dog will not bear being treated too kindly, let alone a man!
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, 1788-1860
THE MONKEY AND THE PEAS
A monkey was carrying two handfuls of peas. One little pea dropped out. He tried to pick it up, and spilt twenty. He tried to pick up the twenty, and spilt them all. Then he lost his temper, scattered the peas in all directions, and ran away.
FABLES, LEO TOLSTOY, 1828-1910
This is the offensive aspect of the law. Playing the card of contempt is immensely powerful, for it lets you determine the conditions of the conflict.
The war is waged on your terms. This is the ultimate power pose: You are the king, and you ignore what offends you.
Watch how this tactic infuriates people—half of what they do is to get your attention, and when you withhold it from them, they flounder in frustration.
MAN: Kick him—he’ll forgive you. Flatter him—he may or may not
see through you. But ignore him and he’ll hate you.
Idries Shah, Caravan of Dreams, 1968
As some make gossip out of everything, so others make much ado about everything. They are always talking big, [and] take everything seriously, making a quarrel and a mystery of it.
You should take very few grievances to heart, for to do so is to give yourself groundless worry. It is a topsyturvy way of behaving to take to heart cares which you ought to throw over your shoulder. Many things which seemed important [at the time] turn out to be of no account when they are ignored; and others, which seem trifling, appear formidable when you pay attention to them. Things can easily be settled at the outset, but not so later on.
In many cases, the remedy itself is the cause of the disease: to let things be is not the least satisfactory of life’s rules.
BALTASAR GRACIÁN, 1601-1658
KEYS TO POWER
Desire often creates paradoxical effects: The more you want something, the more you chase after it, the more it eludes you. The more interest you show, the more you repel the object of your desire. This is because your interest is too strong—it makes people awkward, even fearful. Uncontrollable desire makes you seem weak, unworthy, pathetic.
You need to turn your back on what you want, show your contempt and disdain. This is the kind of powerful response that will drive your targets crazy. They will respond with a desire of their own, which is simply to have an effect on you—perhaps to possess you, perhaps to hurt you.
If they want to possess you, you have successfully completed the first step of seduction.
If they want to hurt you, you have unsettled them and made them play by your rules (see Laws 8 and 39 on baiting people into action).
Contempt is the prerogative of the king. Where his eyes turn, what he decides to see, is what has reality; what he ignores and turns his back on is as good as dead.
That was the weapon of King Louis XIV—if he did not like you, he acted as if you were not there, maintaining his superiority by
cutting off the dynamic of interaction. This is the power you have when you play the card of contempt, periodically showing people that you can do without them.
If choosing to ignore enhances your power, it follows that the opposite approach—commitment and engagement—often weakens you.
By paying undue attention to a puny enemy, you look puny, and the longer it takes you to crush such an enemy, the larger the enemy seems. When Athens set out to conquer the island of Sicily, in 415 B.C., a giant power was attacking a tiny one. Yet by entangling Athens in a long-drawn-out conflict, Syracuse, Sicily’s most important city-state, was able to grow in stature and
confidence. Finally defeating Athens, it made itself famous for centuries to come. In recent times, President John F. Kennedy made a similar mistake in his attitude to Fidel Castro of Cuba:
His failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs, in 1961, made Castro an international hero.
A second danger: If you succeed in crushing the irritant, or even if you merely wound it, you create sympathy for the weaker side. Critics of Franklin D. Roosevelt complained bitterly about the money his administration spent on government projects, but their attacks had no resonance with the public, who saw the president as working to end the Great Depression. His opponents thought they had an example that would show just how wasteful he had become: his dog, Fala, which he lavished with favors and attention. Critics railed at his insensitivity—spending taxpayers’ money on a dog while so many Americans were still in poverty.
But Roosevelt had a response: How dare his critics attack a defenseless little dog?
His speech in defense of Fala was one of the most popular he
ever gave. In this case, the weak party involved was the president’s dog and the attack backfired—in the long run, it only made the president more sympathetic, since many people will naturally side with the “underdog,” just as the American public came to sympathize with the wily but outnumbered Pancho Villa.
It is tempting to want to fix our mistakes, but the harder we try, the worse we often make them. It is sometimes more politic to leave them alone. In
1971, when the New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, a group of government documents about the history of U.S. involvement in Indochina,
Henry Kissinger erupted into a volcanic rage. Furious about the Nixon administration’s vulnerability to this kind of damaging leak, he made recommendations that eventually led to the formation of a group called the Plumbers to plug the leaks. This was the unit that later broke into Democratic Party offices in the Watergate Hotel, setting off the chain of events that led to Nixon’s downfall. In reality the publication of the Pentagon Papers was not a serious threat to the administration, but Kissinger’s reaction made it a big deal. In trying to fix one problem, he created another: a paranoia for security that in the end was much more
destructive to the government. Had he ignored the Pentagon Papers, the scandal they had created would eventually have blown over.
Instead of inadvertently focusing attention on a problem, making it seem worse by publicizing how much concern and anxiety it is causing you, it is often far wiser to play the contemptuous aristocrat, not deigning to acknowledge the problem’s existence. There are several ways to execute this strategy.
First there is the sour-grapes approach. If there is something you want but that you realize you cannot have, the worst thing you can do is draw attention to your disappointment by complaining about it. An infinitely
more powerful tactic is to act as if it never really interested you in the first place.
When the writer George Sand’s supporters nominated her to be the first female member of the Académie Française, in 1861, Sand quickly saw that the academy would never admit her. Instead of whining, though, she claimed she had no interest in belonging to this group of worn-out, overrated, out-of-touch windbags.
Her disdain was the perfect response: Had she shown her anger at her exclusion, she would have revealed how much it meant to her. Instead she branded the academy a club of old men— and why should she be angry or disappointed at not having to spend her time with them?
Crying “sour grapes” is sometimes seen as a reflection of the weak; it is actually the tactic of the powerful.
THE MAN AND HIS SHADOW
There was a certain original man who desired to catch his own shadow. He makes a step or two toward it, but it moves away from him. He quickens his pace; it does the same. At last he takes to running; but the quicker he goes, the quicker runs the shadow also, utterly refusing to give itself up, just as if it had been a treasure. But see! our eccentric friend suddenly turns round,
and walks away from it. And presently he looks behind him; now the shadow runs after him. Ladies fair, I have often observed... that Fortune treats us in a similar way. One man tries with all his might to seize the goddess, and only loses his time and his trouble. Another seems, to all appearance, to be running out of her sight; but, no: she herself takes a pleasure in pursuing him.
FABLES, IVAN KRILOFF, 1768-1844
Second, when you are attacked by an inferior, deflect people’s attention by making it clear that the attack has not even registered.
Look away, or answer sweetly, showing how little the attack concerns you. Similarly, when you yourself have committed a blunder, the best response is often to make less of your mistake by treating it lightly.
The Japanese emperor Go-Saiin, a great disciple of the tea ceremony, owned a priceless antique tea bowl that all the courtiers envied. One day a guest, Dainagon Tsunehiro, asked if he could carry the tea bowl into the light, to examine it more closely. The bowl rarely left the table, but the emperor was in good spirits and he consented. As Dainagon carried the bowl to the railing of the verandah, however, and held it up to the light, it
slipped from his hands and fell on a rock in the garden below, smashing into tiny fragments.
The emperor of course was furious.
“It was indeed most clumsy of me to let it drop in this way,” said Dainagon, with a deep bow,
“ but really there is not much harm done. This Ido tea-bowl is a very old one and it is impossible to say how much longer it would have lasted, but anyhow it is not a thing of any public use, so I think it rather fortunate that it has broken thus.”
This surprising response had an immediate effect: The emperor
calmed down. Dainagon neither sniveled nor overapologized, but signaled his own worth and power by treating his mistake with a touch of disdain.
The emperor had to respond with a similar aristocratic indifference; his anger had made him seem low and petty—an image Dainagon was able to manipulate.
Among equals this tactic might backfire: Your indifference could make you seem callous.
But with a master, if you act quickly and without great fuss, it can work to great effect: You bypass his angry response, save him the time and energy he would waste by brooding over it, and allow him the opportunity to display his own lack of pettiness publicly.
If we make excuses and denials when we are caught in a mistake or a deception, we stir the waters and make the situation worse. It is often wiser to play things the opposite way.
The Renaissance writer Pietro Aretino often boasted of his aristocratic lineage, which was, of course, a fiction, since he was actually the son of a shoemaker. When an enemy of his finally revealed the embarrassing truth, word quickly spread, and soon all of Venice (where he lived at the time) was aghast at Aretino’s lies. Had he tried to defend himself, he would have only dragged himself down.
His response was masterful: He announced that he was indeed the son of a shoemaker, but this only proved his greatness, since he had risen from the lowest stratum of society to its very pinnacle.
From then on he never mentioned his previous lie, trumpeting instead his new position on the matter of his ancestry.
Remember: The powerful responses to niggling, petty annoyances and irritations are contempt and disdain.
Never show that something has affected you, or that you are offended—that only shows you have acknowledged a problem. Contempt is a dish that is best served cold and without affectation.
Image:
The Tiny Wound. It is small but painful and irritating. You try all sorts of medicaments, you complain, you scratch and pick at the scab. Doctors only make it worse, transforming the tiny wound into a grave matter.
If only you had left the wound alone, letting time heal it and freeing yourself of worry.
Authority: Know how to play the card of contempt. It is the most politic kind of revenge. For there are many of whom we should have known nothing if their distinguished opponents had taken no notice of them. There is no revenge like oblivion, for it is the entombment of the unworthy in the dust of their own nothingness.
(Baltasar Gracián, 1601-1658)
REVERSAL
You must play the card of contempt with care and delicacy.
Most small troubles will vanish on their own if you leave them be; but some will grow and fester unless you attend to them.
Ignore a person of inferior stature and the next time you look he has become a serious rival, and your contempt has made him vengeful as well.
The great princes of Renaissance Italy chose to ignore Cesare Borgia at the outset of his career as a young general in the army of his father, Pope Alexander VI. By the time they paid attention it was too late—the cub was now a lion, gobbling up chunks of
Italy.
Often, then, while you show contempt publicly you will also need to keep an eye on the problem privately, monitoring its status and making sure it goes away. Do not let it become a cancerous cell.
Develop the skill of sensing problems when they are still small and taking care of them before they become intractable.
Learn to distinguish between the potentially disastrous and the mildly irritating, the nuisance that will quietly go away on its own. In either case, though, never completely take your eye off it. As long as it is alive it can smolder and spark into life.
ghi
gghhii
ggghhhiii
ggghhhiiigghhiighi
gih
hig
ihg
hgi
def
ddeeff
dddeeefff
dddeeefffddeeffdefn
fed
edf
dfe
fde
LAW 35
MASTER THE ART OF TIMING
JUDGMENT
Never seem to be in a hurry-hurrying betrays a lack of control over yourself, and over time. Always seem patient, as if you know that everything will come to you eventually. Become a detective of the right moment; sniff out the spirit of the times, the trends that will carry you to power. Learn to stand back when the time is not yet ripe, and to strike fiercely when it has reached fruition.
SERTORIUS’S LESSON
Sertorius’s strength was now rapidly increasing, for all the tribes between the Ebro and the Pyrenees came over to his side, and troops came flocking daily to join him from every quarter. At the same time he was troubled by the lack of discipline and the overconfidence of these newly arrived barbarians, who would shout at him to attack the enemy and had no patience with his delaying tactics, and he therefore tried to win them over by argument. But when he saw that they were discontented and persisted in pressing their demands regardless of the circumstances, he let them have their way and allowed them to engage the enemy; he hoped that they would suffer a severe defeat without being completely crushed, and that this would
make them better disposed to obey his orders in future. The event turned out as he expected and Sertorius came to their rescue, provided a rallying point for the fugitives, and led them safely back to his camp. His next step was to revive their dejected spirits, and so a few days later he summoned a general assembly. Before it he produced two horses, one of them old and enfeebled,
the other large and lusty and possessing a flowing tail, which was
remarkable for the thickness and beauty of its hair. By the side of the weak horse stood a tall strong man, and by the side of the powerful horse a short man of mean physique. At a signal the strong man seized the tail of his horse and tried with all his strength to pull it towards him, as if to tear it off, while the weak man began to pull the hairs one by one from the tail of the strong horse.
The strong man, after tugging with all his might to no purpose and causing the spectators a great deal of amusement in the process, finally gave up the attempt, while the weak man quickly and with very little trouble stripped his horse’s tail completely bare. Then Sertorius rose to his feet and said,
“Now you can see, my friends and allies, that perseverance is more effective than brute strength and that there are many difficulties that cannot be overcome if you try to do everything at once, but which will yield if you master them little by little. The truth is that a steady continuous effort is irresistible, for this is the way in which Time captures and subdues the greatest powers on earth. Now Time, you should remember, is a good friend and ally to those who use their intelligence to choose the right moment, but a most dangerous enemy to those who rush into action at the wrong one.”
LIFE OF SERTORIUS, PLUTARCH, C.A.D. 46-120
OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW
Starting out in life as a nondescript French seminary-school teacher, Joseph Fouché wandered from town to town for most of the decade of the 1780s, teaching mathematics to young boys. Yet he never completely committed himself to the church, never took his vows as a priest—he had bigger plans. Patiently waiting for his chance, he kept his options open. And when the French Revolution broke out, in 1789, Fouché waited no longer: He got rid of his cassock, grew his hair long, and became a revolutionary. For this was the spirit of the times. To miss the boat at this critical moment could have spelt disaster. Fouché did not miss the boat: Befriending the revolutionary leader Robespierre, he quickly rose in the rebel ranks.
In 1792 the town of Nantes elected Fouché to be its representative to the National Convention (created that year to frame a new constitution for a French republic). When Fouché arrived in Paris to take his seat at the convention, a violent rift had broken out between the moderates and the radical Jacobins. Fouché sensed that in the long run neither side would emerge victorious. Power rarely ends up in the hands of those who start a revolution, or even of those who further it; power sticks to those who bring it to a conclusion. That was the side Fouché wanted to be on. His sense of timing was uncanny. He started as a moderate, for moderates were in the majority. When the time came to decide on whether or not to execute Louis XVI, however, he saw that the people were clamoring for the king’s head, so he cast the deciding vote—for the guillotine. Now he had become a radical. Yet as tensions came to the boil in Paris, he foresaw the danger of being too closely associated with any one faction, so he accepted
a position in the provinces, where he could lie low for a while. A few months later he was assigned to the post of proconsul in Lyons, where he oversaw the execution of dozens of aristocrats. At a certain moment, however, he called a halt to the killings, sensing that the mood of the country was turning-and despite the blood already on his hands, the citizens of Lyons hailed him as a savior from what had become known as the Terror. So far Fouché had played his cards brilliantly, but in 1794 his old friend
Robespierre recalled him to Paris to account for his actions in Lyons.
Robespierre had been the driving force behind the Terror. He had sent heads on both the right and the left rolling, and Fouché, whom he no longer trusted, seemed destined to provide the next head. Over the next few weeks, a tense struggle ensued: While Robespierre railed openly against Fouché, accusing of him dangerous ambitions and calling for his arrest, the crafty Fouché worked more indirectly, quietly gaining support among those who were beginning to tire of Robespierre’s dictatorial control. Fouché was playing for time. He knew that the longer he survived, the more disaffected citizens he could rally against Robespierre. He had to have broad support before he moved against the powerful leader. He rallied support among both the moderates and the Jacobins, playing on the widespread fear of
Robespierre-everyone was afraid of being the next to go to the guillotine.
It all came to fruition on July 27: The convention turned against Robespierre, shouting down his usual lengthy speech. He was quickly arrested, and a few days later it was Robespierre’s head, not Fouché’s, that fell into the basket. When Fouché returned to the convention after Robespierre’s death, he played his most unexpected move: Having led the conspiracy against Robespierre, he was expected to sit with the moderates, but lo and behold, he once again changed sides, joining the radical Jacobins.
For perhaps the first time in his life he aligned himself with the minority. Clearly he sensed a reaction stirring: He knew that the moderate faction that had executed Robespierre, and was now about to take power, would initiate a new round of the Terror, this time against the radicals. In siding with the Jacobins, then, Fouché was sitting with the martyrs of the days to come—the people who would be considered blameless in the troubles that were on their way.
Taking sides with what was about to become the losing team was a risky gambit, of course, but Fouché must have calculated he could keep his head long enough to quietly stir up the populace against the moderates and watch them fall from power. And indeed, although the moderates did call for his arrest in December of 1795, and would have sent him to the guillotine, too
much time had passed. The executions had become unpopular with the people, and Fouché survived the swing of the pendulum one more time.
A new government took over, the Directoire. It was not, however, a Jacobin government, but a moderate one—more moderate than the government that had reimposed the Terror. Fouché, the radical, had kept his head, but now he had to keep a low profile. He waited patiently on the sidelines for several years, allowing time to soften any bitter feelings against him, then he approached the Directoire and convinced them he had a new passion: intelligence-gathering. He became a paid spy for the
government, excelled at the job, and in 1799 was rewarded by being made minister of police. Now he was not just empowered but required to extend his spying to every corner of France—a responsibility that would greatly reinforce his natural ability to sniff out where the wind was blowing. One of the first social trends he detected, in fact, came in the person of Napoleon, a brash young general whose destiny he right away saw was entwined with the future of France.
When Napoleon unleashed a coup d‘etat, on November 9, 1799, Fouché pretended to be asleep. Indeed he slept the whole day. For this indirect assistance—it might have been thought his job,
after all, to prevent a military coup—Napoleon kept him on as minister of police in the new regime.
Over the next few years, Napoleon came to rely on Fouché more and more. He even gave this former revolutionary a title, duke of Otranto, and rewarded him with great wealth. By 1808, however, Fouché, always attuned to the times, sensed that Napoleon was on the downswing. His futile war with Spain, a country that posed no threat to France, was a sign that he was losing a sense of proportion. Never one to be caught on a sinking ship, Fouché conspired with Talleyrand to bring about Napoleon’s downfall.
Although the conspiracy failed—Talleyrand was fired; Fouché stayed, but was kept on a tight leash—it publicized a growing discontent with the emperor, who seemed to be losing control. By 1814 Napoleon’s power had crumbled and allied forces finally conquered him. The next government was a restoration of the monarchy, in the form of King Louis XVIII, brother of Louis XVI. Fouché, his nose always sniffing the air for the next social shift, knew Louis would not last long—he had none of Napoleon’s flair. Fouché once again played his waiting game, lying low, staying away from the spotlight.
Sure enough, in February of 1815,
Napoleon escaped from the island of Elba, where he had been imprisoned.
Louis XVIII panicked: His policies had alienated the citizenry, who were clamoring for Napoleon’s return. So Louis turned to the one man who could maybe have saved his hide, Fouché, the former radical who had sent his brother, Louis XVI, to the guillotine, but was now one of the most popular and widely admired politicians in France. Fouché,
however, would not side with a loser: He refused Louis’s request for help by pretending that his help was unnecessary—by swearing that Napoleon would never return to power
(although he knew otherwise).
A short time later, of course, Napoleon and his new citizen army were closing in on Paris. Seeing his reign about to collapse, feeling that Fouché had betrayed him, and certain that he did not want this powerful and able man on Napoleon’s team,
King Louis ordered the minister’s arrest and execution.
On March 16, 1815, policemen surrounded Fouché’s coach on a Paris boulevard.
Was this finally his end?
Perhaps, but not immediately: Fouché told the police that an ex-member of government could not be arrested on the street. They fell for the story and allowed him to return home. Later that day, though, they came to his house and once again declared him under arrest. Fouché nodded—
but would the officers be so kind as allow a gentleman to wash and to change his clothes before leaving his house for the last time?
They gave their permission, Fouché left the room, and the minutes went by. Fouché did not return. Finally the policemen went into the next room—where they saw a ladder against an open window, leading down to the garden below. That day and the next the police combed Paris for Fouché, but by then
Napoleon’s cannons were audible in the distance and the king and all the king’s men had to flee the city. As soon as Napoleon entered Paris, Fouché came out of hiding. He had cheated the executioner once again. Napoleon greeted his former minister of police and gladly restored him to his old post.
During the 100 days that Napoleon remained in power, until Waterloo, it was essentially Fouché who governed France. After Napoleon fell, Louis XVIII returned to the throne, and like a cat with nine lives, Fouché stayed on to serve in yet another government—by then his power and influence had grown so great that not even the king dared challenge him.
Mr. Shih had two sons: one loved learning; the other war. The first
expounded his moral teachings at the admiring court of Ch‘i and was made a tutor, while the second talked strategy at the bellicose court of Ch’u and was made a general. The impecunious Mr. Meng, hearing of these successes, sent his own two sons out to follow the example of the Shih boys.
The first expounded his moral teachings at the court of Ch‘in,
but the King of Ch’in said: “At present the states are quarreling violently and every prince is busy arming his troops to the teeth. If I followed this prig’s pratings we should soon be annihilated.” So he had the fellow castrated.
Meanwhile, the second brother displayed his military genius at the court of Wei.
But the King of Wei said: “Mine is a weak state. If I relied on force
instead of diplomacy, we should soon be wiped out. If, on the other hand, I let this fire-eater go, he will offer his services to another state and then we shall be in trouble.”
So he had the fellow’s feet cut off Both. families did exactly the same thing, but one timed it right, the other wrong. Thus success
depends not on ratiocination but on rhythm.
LIEH TZU, QUOTED IN THE CHINESE LOOKING GLASS, DENNIS
BLOODWORTH, 1967
Interpretation
In a period of unprecedented turmoil, Joseph Fouché thrived through his mastery of the art of timing. He teaches us a number of key lessons.
First, it is critical to recognize the spirit of the times. Fouché always looked two steps ahead, found the wave that would carry him to power, and rode it. You must always work with the times, anticipate twists and turns,
and never miss the boat. Sometimes the spirit of the times is obscure: Recognize it not by what is loudest and most obvious in it, but by what lies hidden and dormant. Look forward to the Napoleons of the future rather than holding on to the ruins of the past.
Second, recognizing the prevailing winds does not necessarily mean running with them. Any potent social movement creates a powerful reaction, and it is wise to anticipate what that reaction will be, as Fouché did after the execution of Robespierre. Rather than ride the cresting wave of the moment, wait for the tide’s ebb to carry you back to power.
Upon occasion bet on the reaction that is brewing, and place yourself in the vanguard of it.
Finally, Fouché had remarkable patience. Without patience as your sword and shield, your timing will fail and you will inevitably find yourself a loser. When the times were against Fouché, he did not struggle, get emotional, or strike out rashly. He kept his cool and maintained a low profile, patiently building support among the citizenry, the bulwark in his next rise to power. Whenever he found himself in the weaker position, he played for time, which he knew would always be his ally if he was patient.
Recognize the moment, then, to hide in the grass or slither under a rock, as well as the moment to bare your fangs and attack.
Space we can recover, time never.
Napoleon Bonaparte, 1769-1821
KEYS TO POWER
Time is an artificial concept that we ourselves have created to make the limitlessness of eternity and the universe more bearable, more human.
Since we have constructed the concept of time, we are also able to mold it to some degree, to play tricks with it. The time of a child is long and slow, with vast expanses; the time of an adult whizzes by frighteningly fast. Time, then, depends on perception, which, we know, can be willfully altered.
This is the first thing to understand in mastering the art of timing. If the inner turmoil caused by our emotions tends to make time move faster, it follows that once we control our emotional responses to events, time will move much more slowly.
This altered way of dealing with things tends to lengthen our
perception of future time, opens up possibilities that fear and anger close off, and allows us the patience that is the principal requirement in the art of timing.
The sultan [of Persia] had sentenced two men to death. One of them, knowing how much the sultan loved his stallion, offered to teach the horse to fly within a year in return for his life. The sultan, fancying himself as the rider of the only flying horse in the world, agreed. The other prisoner looked at his friend in disbelief “You know horses don’t fly. What made you come up with a crazy idea like that? You’re only postponing the inevitable.”
“Not so,” said the (first prisoner].
“I have actually given myself four chances for freedom.
First, the sultan might die during the year.
Second, I might die.
Third, the horse might die.
And fourth ... I might teach the horse to fly!”
THE CRAFT OF POWER, R.G.H. SIU, 1979
There are three kinds of time for us to deal with; each presents problems that can be solved with skill and practice.
First there is long time: the drawn-out, years-long kind of time that must be managed with patience and gentle guidance. Our handling of long time should be mostly defensive— this is the art of not reacting impulsively, of waiting for opportunity.
Next there is forced time: the short-term time that we can manipulate as an offensive weapon, upsetting the timing of our opponents.
Finally there is end time, when a plan must be executed with speed and force. We have waited, found the moment, and must not hesitate.
Long Time. The famous seventeenth-century Ming painter Chou Yung relates a story that altered his behavior forever. Late one winter afternoon he set out to visit a town that lay across the river from his own town. He was bringing some important books and papers with him and had commissioned a young boy to help him carry them. As the ferry neared the other side of the river, Chou Yung asked the boatman if they would have time to get to the town before its gates closed, since it was a mile away and
night was approaching. The boatman glanced at the boy, and at the bundle of loosely tied papers and books—
“Yes,” he replied,
“if you do not walk too fast.”
As they started out, however, the sun was setting. Afraid of being locked out of the town at night, prey to local bandits, Chou and the boy walked faster and faster, finally breaking into a run. Suddenly the string around the papers broke and the documents scattered on the ground. It took them many minutes to put the packet together again, and by the time they had reached the city gates, it was too late.
When you force the pace out of fear and impatience, you create a nest of problems that require fixing, and you end up taking much longer than if you had taken your time. Hurriers may occasionally get there quicker, but papers fly everywhere, new dangers arise, and they find themselves in constant crisis mode, fixing the problems that they themselves have created.
Sometimes not acting in the face of danger is your best move—you wait, you deliberately slow down. As time passes it will eventually present opportunities you had not imagined.
Waiting involves controlling not only your own emotions but those of your colleagues, who, mistaking action for power, may try to push you into making rash moves. In your rivals,
on the other hand, you can encourage this same mistake: If you let them rush headlong into trouble while you stand back and wait, you will soon find ripe moments to intervene and pick up the pieces.
This wise policy was the principal strategy of the great earlyseventeenth-century emperor Tokugawa Ieyasu of Japan. When his predecessor, the headstrong Hideyoshi, whom he served as a general, staged a rash invasion of Korea, Ieyasu did not involve himself. He knew the invasion would be a disaster and would lead to Hideyoshi’s downfall. Better to stand patiently on the sidelines, even for many years, and then be in position to seize power when the time is right—exactly what Ieyasu did, with great artistry.
THE TROUT AND THE GUDGEON
A fisherman in the month of May stood angling on the bank of the Thames with an artificial fly. He threw his bait with so much art, that a young trout was rushing toward it, when she was prevented by her mother.
“Never,” said she,
“my child, be too precipitate, where there is a possibility of
danger. Take due time to consider, before you risk an action that may be fatal. How know you whether yon appearance be indeed a fly, or the snare of an enemy? Let someone else make the experiment before you. If it be a fly, he will very probably elude the first attack: and the second may be made, if not with success, at least with safety.”
She had no sooner spoken, than a gudgeon seized the pretended fly, and became an example to the giddy daughter of the importance of her mother’s counsel.
FABLES, ROBERT DODSLEY, 1703-1764
You do not deliberately slow time down to live longer, or to take more pleasure in the moment, but the better to play the game of power.
First, when your mind is uncluttered by constant emergencies you will see further into the future.
Second, you will be able to resist the baits that people dangle in front of you, and will keep yourself from becoming another
impatient sucker.
Third, you will have more room to be flexible.
Opportunities will inevitably arise that you had not expected and would have missed had you forced the pace. Fourth, you will not move from one deal to the next without completing the first one. To build your power’s foundation can take years; make sure that foundation is secure.
Do not be a flash in the pan—success that is built up slowly and surely is the only kind that lasts.
Finally, slowing time down will give you a perspective on the times you live in, letting you take a certain distance and putting you in a less emotionally charged position to see the shapes of things to come.
Hurriers will often mistake surface phenomena for a real trend, seeing only what they want to see. How much better to see what is really happening, even if it is unpleasant or makes your task harder.
Forced Time. The trick in forcing time is to upset the timing of others—to make them hurry, to make them wait, to make them abandon their own pace, to distort their perception of time. By upsetting the timing of your opponent while you stay patient, you open up time for yourself, which is half the game.
In 1473 the great Turkish sultan Mehmed the Conqueror invited
negotiations with Hungary to end the off-and-on war the two countries had waged for years. When the Hungarian emissary arrived in Turkey to start the talks, Turkish officials humbly apologized—Mehmed had just left Istanbul, the capital, to battle his longtime foe, Uzun Hasan. But he urgently wanted peace with Hungary, and had asked that the emissary join him at the front.
When the emissary arrived at the site of the fighting, Mehmed had already left it, moving eastward in pursuit of his swift foe. This happened several times. Wherever the emissary stopped, the Turks lavished gifts and banquets on him, in pleasurable but time-consuming ceremonies. Finally Mehmed defeated Uzun and met with the emissary. Yet his terms for peace with Hungary were excessively harsh. After a few days, the negotiations ended, and the usual stalemate remained in place. But this was fine with
Mehmed.
In fact he had planned it that way all along: Plotting his campaign
against Uzun, he had seen that diverting his armies to the east would leave his western flank vulnerable.
To prevent Hungary from taking advantage of his weakness and his preoccupation elsewhere, he first dangled the lure of peace before his enemy, then made them wait—all on his own terms.
Making people wait is a powerful way of forcing time, as long as they do not figure out what you are up to. You control the clock, they linger in limbo—and rapidly come unglued, opening up opportunities for you to strike.
The opposite effect is equally powerful: You make your opponents hurry.
Start off your dealings with them slowly, then suddenly apply
pressure, making them feel that everything is happening at once. People who lack the time to think will make mistakes—so set their deadlines for them.
This was the technique Machiavelli admired in Cesare Borgia, who, during negotiations, would suddenly press vehemently for a decision, upsetting his opponent’s timing and patience.
For who would dare make Cesare wait?
Joseph Duveen, the famous art dealer, knew that if he gave an indecisive buyer like John D. Rockefeller a deadline—the painting had to leave the country, another tycoon was interested in it—the client would buy just in time. Freud noticed that patients who had spent years in psychoanalysis without improvement would miraculously recover just in time if he fixed a definite date for the end of the therapy. Jacques Lacan, the famous French psychoanalyst, used a variation on this tactic—he would sometimes end the customary hour session of therapy after only ten minutes, without warning.
After this happened several times, the patient would realize that he had better make maximum use of the time, rather than wasting much of the hour with a lot of talk that meant nothing. The deadline, then, is a powerful tool.
Close off the vistas of indecision and force people to make up their damn minds or get to the point never let them make you play on their excruciating terms.
Never give them time. Magicians and showmen are experts in forcing time. Houdini could often wriggle free of handcuffs in minutes, but he would draw the escape out to an hour, making the audience sweat, as time came to an apparent standstill.
Magicians have always known that the best way to alter our perception of time is often to slow down the pace.
Creating suspense brings time to a terrifying pause: The slower the magician’s hands move, the easier it is to create the illusion of speed, making people think the rabbit has appeared instantaneously.
The great nineteenth-century magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin took explicit notice of this effect:
“The more slowly a story is told,” he said,
“the shorter it seems.”
Going slower also makes what you are doing more interesting—the audience yields to your pace, becomes entranced. It is a state in which time whizzes delightfully by. You must practice such illusions, which share in the hypnotist’s power to alter perceptions of time.
End Time. You can play the game with the utmost artistry—waiting patiently for the right moment to act, putting your competitors off their form by messing with their timing—but it won’t mean a thing unless you know how to finish.
Do not be one of those people who look like paragons of patience but are actually just afraid to bring things to a close: Patience is worthless unless combined with a willingness to fall ruthlessly on your opponent at the right moment. You can wait as long as necessary for the conclusion to come, but when it comes it must come quickly. Use speed to paralyze your opponent, cover up any mistakes you might make, and impress people with your aura of authority and finality.
With the patience of a snake charmer, you draw the snake out with calm and steady rhythms. Once the snake is out, though, would you dangle your foot above its deadly head?
There is never a good reason to allow the slightest hitch in your endgame.
Your mastery of timing can really only be judged by how you work with end time—how you quickly change the pace and bring things to a swift and definitive conclusion.
Image: The Hawk. Patiently and silently it circles the sky, high above, all-seeing with its powerful eyes. Those below have no awareness that they are being tracked. Suddenly, when the moment arrives, the hawk swoops down with a speed that cannot be defended against; before its prey knows what has happened,
the bird’s viselike talons have carried it up into the sky.
Authority: There is a tide in the affairs of men, / Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; / Omitted, all the voyage of their life / Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
(Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare, 1564-1616)
REVERSAL
There is no power to be gained in letting go of the reins and adapting to whatever time brings.
To some degree you must guide time or you will be its merciless victim. There is accordingly no reversal to this law.
There is a large celebration for their arrival at Qarth apparent as Daenerys’ khalasar approaches the city and a column of camelry rides from the city to provide her an honor guard. The warlock Pyat Pree told Daenerys that Qarth is the greatest city, a crossroads, and ancient. Upon seeing the city, Daenerys has to admit the city is magnificent. It has three thick walls: the first is 30 feet high and made of red sandstone carved with animals, the second 40 feet high and made of granite carved with scenes of war, and the third 50 feet high, made of black marble carved with scenes of sex. Qartheen line the streets and balconies to watch them pass, black Drogon on her shoulder. The women are in gowns that bare one breast, and the men wear beaded silk shirts while the children wear only sandals and paint. Daenerys thinks how the Dothraki call these people “Milk Men" for their skin and how Khal Drogo dreamed sacking the great city.
The merchant prince Xaro Xhoan Daxos rides up on his camel, which the Dothraki horses shy away from. He tells Daenerys that if she desires anything she sees it is hers. Pyat Pree sings from her other side “Qarth itself is hers, she has no need of baubles,” and she should come to the House of the Undying to drink wisdom and truth. Daenerys tells them both that she only wants the Red Keep in King's Landing and if they want to give her gifts, to give her ships and swords. Pyat states that it will be as she commands and the other complements her on her wisdom. Xaro Xhoan Daxos warns her that warlocks are not to be trusted. The two continue to bicker until Ser Jorah Mormont mutters in the common tongue “The crow calls the raven black,” that she should avoid both men, and that it would be best to not linger here. Daenerys, however, wants their help in winning her throne.
Daenerys expected something grand when Xaro Xhoan Daxos offered the hospitality of his home, but not a palace larger than a market town, with an entire wing given over to her. He tells her that there will be a feast the next day with delicacies and music, and the Thirteen will come to do her honor. Xaro Xhoan Daxos and Pyat depart. The last of the three seekers, the shadowbinder Quaithe gives Daenerys a warning to beware of everyone, for they all lust for the power of her dragons, and then departs.
After Quaithe leaves, Ser Jorah states she is right, but he also does not trust her. Daenerys admits that she does not understand Quaithe. While the others shower her in promises, she has only cryptic words. It also concerns her that she has not seen her face. Then Daenerys declares that they will keep their own watch, and will keep a sharp eye on the dragons. After Aggo confirms it will be done, she tells Rakharo to use good men and women to explore the rest of Qarth since they have only seen the parts that the seekers wanted them to see. She then asks Ser Jorah to go to the docks to get news of the Seven Kingdoms, and maybe find a ship to carry them home. Ser Jorah tells her the usurper will kill her and wants to stay with her but she tells him that Jhogo can guard her, and he has the languages and more experience with the sea.
After they leave, her handmaidens strip her of her travel stained silks and she bathes in a marble pool with golden fish. She wonders if the Red Keep has a pool like this with fragrant gardens, remembering Viserys saying that the Seven Kingdoms are the most beautiful place in the world. She also thinks she no longer has Drogo’s khalasar behind her, only her four fierce bloodriders, and that the Dothraki plundered but do not know how to govern. She ponders Ser Jorah’s words: "The Usurper will kill you." She then thinks about Robert Baratheon, strong as a bull, fearless in battle and loving war, who killed her brother Rhaegar Targaryen, and his dogs: Eddard Stark, Tywin Lannister and Jaime Lannister. How will she overthrow them? Even her dragons might not be enough. Viserys, who was a fool, believed the realm would rise for their rightful king. She then decides that the Bleeding Star has led her to Qarth for a purpose, and if the gods intend for her to conquer they will send a sign.
Near eveningfall, Irri brings word that Ser Jorah has returned. He enters with Quhuru Mo, captain of the Cinnamon Wind out of Tall Trees Town. Daenerys has her dragons all around her. He has the news that Robert Baratheon is dead, reported in Oldtown, Dorne and Lys. There are tales that the queen, his brother (Stannis Baratheon or Renly Baratheon, or Eddard Stark betrayed him. Joffrey Baratheon sits on the throne with House Lannister ruling, Robert’s brothers have fled, and the Hand of the King has been seized for treason. Jorah does not think it likely that Eddard is a traitor, saying the long summer will come again before he besmirches his honor. Daenerys wonders if her brother would have been wiser had he known that vengeance was so close at hand. When asked, the captain replies he is not returning to Westeros for a year or more since his ship will sail east from Qarth, making the trader’s circle around the Jade Sea. When Daenerys states he has brought her a precious gift, he tells her that he has been amply repaid by being allowed to see dragons. She aks him to come to her one day in King's Landing.
After the trader leaves, Ser Jorah warns Daenerys of speaking so freely. Daenerys replies that the Seven Kingdoms are flying to pieces like the khalasar did after Khal Drogo died. Ser Jorah tells her that she will still need gold, armies, and ships. Daenerys responds that she knows this, but she is the blood of the dragon. Jorah goes on to say that King Robert killed a dragon with a warhammer. To this she replies that dragons die, but so do dragon slayers.
LAW 34
BE ROYAL IN YOUR OWN FASHION: ACT LIKE A KING TO BE TREATED LIKE ONE
JUDGMENT
The way you carry yourself will often determine how you are treated: In the long run, appearing vulgar or common will make people disrespect you. For a king respects himself and inspires the same sentiment in others. By acting regally and confident of your powers, you make yourself seem destined to wear a crown.
TRANSGRESSION OF THE LAW
In July of 1830, a revolution broke out in Paris that forced the king, Charles X, to abdicate. A commission of the highest authorities in the land gathered to choose a successor, and the man they picked was Louis-Philippe, the Duke of Orléans.
From the beginning it was clear that Louis-Philippe would be a different kind of king, and not just because he came from a different branch of the royal family, or because he had not inherited the crown but had been given it, by a commission, putting his legitimacy in question. Rather it was that he disliked ceremony and the trappings of royalty; he had more friends among the bankers than among the nobility; and his style was not to create a new kind of royal rule, as Napoleon had done, but to downplay his status, the better to mix with the businessmen and middle-class folk who had called him to lead. Thus the symbols that came to be associated with LouisPhilippe were neither the scepter nor the crown, but the gray hat and umbrella with which he would proudly walk the streets of Paris, as if he were a bourgeois out for a stroll. When Louis-Philippe invited James
Rothschild, the most important banker in France, to his palace, he treated him as an equal. And unlike any king before him, not only did he talk business with Monsieur Rothschild but that was literally all he talked, for he loved money and had amassed a huge fortune.
As the reign of the “bourgeois king” plodded on, people came to despise him. The aristocracy could not endure the sight of an unkingly king, and within a few years they turned on him. Meanwhile the growing class of the poor, including the radicals who had chased out Charles X, found no satisfaction in a ruler who neither acted as a king nor governed as a man of the people. The bankers to whom Louis-Philippe was the most beholden soon realized that it was they who controlled the country, not he, and they treated him with growing contempt. One day, at the start of a train trip organized for the royal family, James Rothschild actually berated him—and in public—for being late.
Once the king had made news by treating the banker as an equal; now the banker treated the king as an inferior. Eventually the workers’ insurrections that had brought down LouisPhilippe’s predecessor began to reemerge, and the king put them down with force.
But what was he defending so brutally?
Not the institution of the monarchy, which he disdained, nor a democratic republic, which his rule prevented. What he was really defending, it seemed, was his own fortune, and the fortunes of the bankers—not a way to inspire loyalty among the citizenry.
Never lose your self-respect, nor be too familiar with yourself when you are alone. Let your integrity itself be your own standard of rectitude,
and be more indebted to the severity of your own judgment of yourself than to all external precepts. Desist from unseemly conduct, rather out of respect for your own virtue than for the strictures of external authority.
Come to hold yourself in awe, and you will have no need of Seneca’s imaginary tutor.
BALTASAR GRACIÁN, 1601-1658
In early 1848, Frenchmen of all classes began to demonstrate for
electoral reforms that would make the country truly democratic. By February the demonstrations had turned violent.
To assuage the populace, Louis-Philippe fired his prime minister and appointed a liberal as a replacement. But this created the opposite of the desired effect: The people sensed they could push the king around. The demonstrations turned into a full-fledged revolution, with gunfire and barricades in the streets.
On the night of February 23, a crowd of Parisians surrounded the palace. With a suddenness that caught everyone by surprise, Louis-Philippe abdicated that very evening and fled to England. He left no successor, nor even the suggestion of one—his whole government folded up and dissolved like a traveling circus leaving town.
Interpretation
Louis-Philippe consciously dissolved the aura that naturally pertains to kings and leaders. Scoffing at the symbolism of grandeur, he believed a new world was dawning, where rulers should act and be like ordinary citizens.
He was right: A new world, without kings and queens, was certainly on its way. He was profoundly wrong, however, in predicting a change in the dynamics of power.
The bourgeois king’s hat and umbrella amused the French at first, but soon grew irritating. People knew that Louis-Philippe was not really like them at all—that the hat and umbrella were essentially a kind of trick to encourage them in the fantasy that the country had suddenly grown more equal. Actually, though, the divisions of wealth had never been greater. The French expected their ruler to be a bit of a showman, to have some presence.
Even a radical like Robespierre, who had briefly come to power during the French Revolution fifty years earlier, had understood this,
and certainly Napoleon, who had turned the revolutionary republic into an imperial regime, had known it in his bones. Indeed as soon as LouisPhilippe fled the stage, the French revealed their true desire: They elected Napoleon’s grand nephew president. He was a virtual unknown, but they hoped he would re-create the great general’s powerful aura, erasing the
awkward memory of the “bourgeois king.”
Powerful people may be tempted to affect a common-man aura, trying to create the illusion that they and their subjects or underlings are basically the same. But the people whom this false gesture is intended to impress will quickly see through it. They understand that they are not being given more power—that it only appears as if they shared in the powerful person’s fate.
The only kind of common touch that works is the kind affected by Franklin Roosevelt, a style that said the president shared values and goals with the common people even while he remained a patrician at heart. He never pretended to erase his distance from the crowd. Leaders who try to dissolve that distance through a false chumminess gradually lose the ability to inspire loyalty, fear, or love. Instead they elicit contempt. Like Louis-Philippe, they are too uninspiring even to be worth the guillotine—the best they can do is simply vanish in the night, as if they were never there.
OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW
When Christopher Columbus was trying to find funding for his legendary voyages, many around him believed he came from the Italian aristocracy.
This view was passed into history through a biography written after the explorer’s death by his son, which describes him as a descendant of a Count Colombo of the Castle of Cuccaro in Montferrat. Colombo in turn was said to be descended from the legendary Roman general Colonius, and two of his first cousins were supposedly direct descendants of an emperor of Con
stantinople.
An illustrious background indeed. But it was nothing more than
illustrious fantasy, for Columbus was actually the son of Domenico Colombo, a humble weaver who had opened a wine shop when Christopher was a young man, and who then made his living by selling cheese.
Columbus himself had created the myth of his noble background,
because from early on he felt that destiny had singled him out for great things, and that he had a kind of royalty in his blood. Accordingly he acted as if he were indeed descended from noble stock. After an uneventful career as a merchant on a commercial vessel, Columbus, originally from Genoa, settled in Lisbon. Using the fabricated story of his noble background, he married into an established Lisbon family that had excellent connections with Portuguese royalty.
Through his in-laws, Columbus finagled a meeting with the king of Portugal, João II, whom he petitioned to finance a westward voyage aimed at discovering a shorter route to Asia. In return for announcing that any discoveries he achieved would be made in the king’s name, Columbus wanted a series of rights: the title Grand Admiral of the Oceanic Sea; the office of viceroy over any lands he found; and 10 percent of the future commerce with such lands. All of these rights were to be hereditary and for all time. Columbus made these demands even though he had previously
been a mere merchant, he knew almost nothing about navigation, he could not work a quadrant, and he had never led a group of men. In short he had absolutely no qualifications for the journey he proposed. Furthermore, his petition included no details as to how he would accomplish his plans, just vague promises.
When Columbus finished his pitch, João II smiled: He politely declined the offer, but left the door open for the future. Here Columbus must have noticed something he would never forget: Even as the king turned down the sailor’s demands, he treated them as legitimate. He neither laughed at Columbus nor questioned his background and credentials.
In fact the king was impressed by the boldness of Columbus’s requests, and clearly felt comfortable in the company of a man who acted so confidently.
The meeting must have convinced Columbus that his instincts were correct: By asking for the moon, he had instantly raised his own status, for the king assumed that unless a man who set such a high price on himself were mad, which Columbus did not appear to be, he must somehow be worth it.
HIPPOCLEIDES AT SICYON
In the next generation the family became much more famous than before through the distinction conferred upon it by Cleisthenes the master of Sicyon. Cleisthenes... had a daughter, Agarista, whom he wished to marry to the best man in all Greece. So during the Olympic games, in which he had himself won the chariot race, he had a public announcement made, to the effect that any Greek who thought himself good enough to become
Cleisthenes’ son-in-law should present himself in Sicyon within sixty days— or sooner if he wished—
because he intended, within the year following the sixtieth day, to betroth his daughter to her future husband. Cleisthenes had
had a race-track and a wrestling-ring specially made for his purpose, and presently the suitors began to arrive—
every man of Greek nationality who had something to be proud of either in his country or in himself....
Cleisthenes began by asking each [of the numerous suitors] in turn to name his country and parentage; then he kept them in his house for a year, to get to know them well, entering into conversation with them sometimes singly, sometimes all together, and testing each of them for his manly qualities and temper, education and manners.... But the most important test of all was their behaviour at the dinner-table. All this went on throughout their stay in Sicyon, and all the time he entertained them handsomely. For one reason or another it was the two Athenians who impressed Cleisthenes most favourably, and of the two Tisander’s son Hippocleides came to be preferred.... At last the day came which had been fixed for the betrothal, and
Cleisthenes had to declare his choice. He marked the day by the sacrifice of a hundred oxen, and then gave a great banquet, to which not only the suitors but everyone of note in Sicyon was invited. When dinner was over, the suitors began to compete with each other in music and in talking in company. In both these accomplishments it was Hippocleides who proved by far the doughtiest champion, until at last, as more and more wine was
drunk, he asked the flute-player to play him a tune and began to dance to it.
Now it may well be that he danced to his own satisfaction; Cleisthenes, however, who was watching the performance, began to have serious doubts about the whole business. Presently, after a brief pause, Hippocleides sent for a table; the table was brought, and Hippocleides, climbing on to it, danced first some Laconian dances, next some Attic ones, and ended by standing on his head and beating time with his legs in the air The Laconian
and Attic dances were bad enough; but Cleisthenes, though he already loathed the thought of having a son-in-law like that, nevertheless restrained himself and managed to avoid an outburst; but when he saw Hippocleides beating time with his legs, he could bear it no longer.
“Son of Tisander,”he cried,
“you have danced away your marriage.”
THE HISTORIES, HERODOTUS, FIFTH CENTURY B.C.
A few years later Columbus moved to Spain. Using his Portuguese
connections, he moved in elevated circles at the Spanish court, receiving subsidies from illustrious financiers and sharing tables with dukes and princes. To all these men he repeated his request for financing for a voyage to the west—and also for the rights he had demanded from João II. Some, such as the powerful duke of Medina, wanted to help, but could not, since they lacked the power to grant him the titles and rights he wanted. But Columbus would not back down. He soon realized that only one person could meet his demands: Queen Isabella.
In 1487 he finally managed a meeting with the queen, and although he could not convince her to finance the voyage, he completely charmed her, and became a frequent guest in the
palace.
In 1492 the Spanish finally expelled the Moorish invaders who centuries earlier had seized parts of the country. With the wartime burden on her treasury lifted, Isabella felt she could finally respond to the demands of her explorer friend, and she decided to pay for three ships, equipment, the salaries of the crews, and a modest stipend for Columbus.
More important, she had a contract drawn up that granted Columbus the titles and rights on which he had insisted. The only one she denied—and only in the contract’s fine print—was the 10 percent of all revenues from any lands discovered:
an absurd demand, since he wanted no time limit on it. (Had the clause been left in, it would eventually have made Columbus and his heirs the wealthiest family on the planet. Columbus never read the fine print.) Satisfied that his demands had been met, Columbus set sail that same year in search of the passage to Asia. (Before he left he was careful to hire the best navigator he could find to help him get there.)
The mission failed to find such a passage, yet when Columbus petitioned the queen to finance an even more ambitious voyage the following year, she agreed. By then she had come to see Columbus as destined for great things.
Interpretation
As an explorer Columbus was mediocre at best. He knew less about the sea than did the average sailor on his ships, could never determine the latitude and longitude of his discoveries, mistook islands for vast continents, and treated his crew badly. But in one area he was a genius: He knew how to sell himself How else to explain how the son of a cheese vendor, a lowlevel sea merchant, managed to ingratiate himself with the highest royal and
aristocratic families?
Columbus had an amazing power to charm the nobility, and it all came from the way he carried himself. He projected a sense of confidence that was completely out of proportion to his means. Nor was his confidence the aggressive, ugly self-promotion of an upstart—it was a quiet and calm selfassurance. In fact it was the same confidence usually shown by the nobility themselves. The powerful in the old-style aristocracies felt no need to prove or assert themselves; being noble, they knew they always deserved more, and asked for it. With Columbus, then, they felt an instant affinity, for he carried himself just the way they did—elevated above the crowd, destined for greatness.
Understand: It is within your power to set your own price. How you carry yourself reflects what you think of yourself. If you ask for little, shuffle your feet and lower your head, people will assume this reflects your character. But this behavior is not you—it is only how you have chosen to present yourself to other people. You can just as easily present the Columbus front: buoyancy, confidence, and the feeling that you were born
to wear a crown.
With all great deceivers there is a noteworthy occurrence to which they owe their power. In the actual act of deception they are overcome by belief in themselves: it is this which then speaks so miraculously and compellingly to those around them.
Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900
KEYS TO POWER
As children, we start our lives with great exuberance, expecting and demanding everything from the world. This generally carries over into our first forays into society, as we begin our careers. But as we grow older the rebuffs and failures we experience set up boundaries that only get firmer with time. Coming to expect less from the world, we accept limitations that are really self- imposed.
We start to bow and scrape and apologize for even the simplest of requests. The solution to such a shrinking of horizons is to deliberately force ourselves in the opposite direction—
to downplay the failures and ignore the limitations, to make ourselves demand and expect as much as the child.
To accomplish this, we must use a particular strategy upon ourselves. Call it the Strategy of the Crown.
The Strategy of the Crown is based on a simple chain of cause and effect: If we believe we are destined for great things, our belief will radiate outward, just as a crown creates an aura around a king. This outward radiance will infect the people around us, who will think we must have reasons to feel so confident. People who wear crowns seem to feel no inner sense of the limits to what they can ask for or what they can accomplish. This too radiates outward. Limits and boundaries disappear.
Use the Strategy of the Crown and you will be surprised how often it bears fruit.
Take as an example those happy children who ask for whatever they want, and get it. Their high expectations are their charm. Adults enjoy granting their wishes—just as Isabella enjoyed granting the wishes of Columbus. Throughout history, people of undistinguished birth—the Theodoras of Byzantium, the Columbuses, the Beethovens, the Disraelis—have managed
to work the Strategy of the Crown, believing so firmly in their own greatness that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The trick is simple: Be overcome by your self-belief. Even while you know you are practicing a kind of deception on yourself, act like a king. You are likely to be treated as one.
The crown may separate you from other people, but it is up to you to make that separation real: You have to act differently, demonstrating your distance from those around you. One way to emphasize your difference is to always act with dignity, no matter the circumstance. Louis-Philippe gave no sense of being different from other people—he was the banker king. And the moment his subjects threatened him, he caved in. Everyone sensed this and pounced. Lacking regal dignity and firmness of purpose, Louis-Philippe seemed an impostor, and the crown was easily toppled from his head. Regal bearing should not be confused with arrogance. Arrogance may seem the king’s entitlement, but in fact it betrays insecurity. It is the very opposite of a royal demeanor.
Haile Selassie, ruler of Ethiopia for forty or so years beginning in 1930, was once a young man named Lij Tafari. He came from a noble family, but there was no real chance of him coming to power, for he was far down the line of succession from the king then on the throne, Menelik II.
Nevertheless, from an early age he exhibited a self-confidence and a royal bearing that surprised everyone around him.
At the age of fourteen, Tafari went to live at the court, where he
immediately impressed Menelik and became his favorite. Tafari’s grace under fire, his patience, and his calm self-assurance fascinated the king.
The other young nobles, arrogant, blustery, and envious, would push this slight, bookish teenager around. But he never got angry—that would have been a sign of insecurity, to which he would not stoop. There were already people around him who felt he would someday rise to the top, for he acted as if he were already there.
Years later, in 1936, when the Italian Fascists had taken over Ethiopia and Tafari, now called Haile Selassie, was in exile, he addressed the League of Nations to plead his country’s case. The Italians in the audience heckled him with vulgar abuse, but he maintained his dignified pose, as if completely unaffected. This elevated him while making his opponents look even uglier. Dignity, in fact, is invariably the mask to assume under difficult
circumstances: It is as if nothing can affect you, and you have all the time in the world to respond. This is an extremely powerful pose.
A royal demeanor has other uses. Con artists have long known the value of an aristocratic front; it either disarms people and makes them less suspicious, or else it intimidates them and puts them on the defensive—and as Count Victor Lustig knew, once you put a sucker on the defensive he is doomed. The con man Yellow Kid Weil, too, would often assume the trappings of a man of wealth, along with the nonchalance that goes with them. Alluding to some magical method of making money, he would stand aloof, like a king, exuding confidence as if he really were fabulously rich.
The suckers would beg to be in on the con, to have a chance at the wealth that he so clearly displayed.
Finally, to reinforce the inner psychological tricks involved in projecting a royal demeanor, there are outward strategies to help you create the effect.
First, the Columbus Strategy: Always make a bold demand. Set your price high and do not waver. Second, in a dignified way, go after the highest person in the building. This immediately puts you on the same plane as the chief executive you are attacking.
It is the David and Goliath Strategy: By choosing a great opponent, you create the appearance of greatness.
Third, give a gift of some sort to those above you.
This is the strategy of those who have a patron: By giving your patron a gift, you are essentially saying that the two of you are equal. It is the old con game of giving so that you can take.
When the Renaissance writer Pietro Aretino wanted the Duke of Mantua as his next patron, he knew that if he was slavish and
sycophantic, the duke would think him unworthy; so he approached the duke with gifts, in this case paintings by the writer’s good friend Titian.
Accepting the gifts created a kind of equality between duke and writer: The duke was put at ease by the feeling that he was dealing with a man of his own aristocratic stamp. He funded Aretino generously.
The gift strategy is subtle and brilliant because you do not beg: You ask for help in a dignified way that implies equality between two people, one of whom just happens to have more money.
Remember: It is up to you to set your own price. Ask for less and that is just what you will get. Ask for more, however, and you send a signal that you are worth a king’s ransom.
Even those who turn you down respect you for your confidence, and that respect will eventually pay off in ways you cannot imagine.
Image: The Crown. Place it upon your head and you assume a different pose—tranquil yet radiating assurance.
Never show doubt, never lose your dignity beneath the crown, or it will not fit. It will seem to be destined for one more worthy.
Do not wait for a coronation; the greatest emperors crown themselves.
Authority: Everyone should be royal after his own fashion. Let all your actions, even though they are not those of a king, be, in their own sphere, worthy of one.
Be sublime in your deeds, lofty in your thoughts; and in all your doings show that you deserve to be a king even though you are not one in reality.
(Baltasar Gracián, 1601-1658)
REVERSAL
The idea behind the assumption of regal confidence is to set yourself apart from other people, but if you take this too far it will be your undoing.
Never make the mistake of thinking that you elevate yourself by humiliating people. Also, it is never a good idea to loom too high above the crowd— you make an easy target. And there are times when an aristocratic pose is eminently dangerous.
Charles I, king of England during the 1640s, faced a profound public disenchantment with the institution of monarchy.
Revolts erupted throughout the country, led by Oliver Cromwell. Had Charles reacted to the times with insight, supporting reforms and making a show of sacrificing some of his power, history might have been different. Instead he reverted to an even more regal pose, seeming outraged by the assault on his power and on the divine institution of monarchy.
His stiff kingliness offended people and spurred on their revolts. And eventually Charles lost his head, literally.
Understand: You are radiating confidence, not arrogance or disdain.
Finally, it is true that you can sometimes find some power through affecting a kind of earthy vulgarity, which will prove amusing by its extreme-ness. But to the extent that you win this game by going beyond the limits, separating yourself from other people by appearing even more vulgar than they are, the game is dangerous: There will always be people more vulgar than you, and you will easily be replaced the following season by someone younger and worse.
LAW 33
DISCOVER EACH MAN’S THUMBSCREW
JUDGMENT
Everyone has a weakness, a gap in the castle wall. That weakness is usually an insecurity, an uncontrollable emotion or need; it can also be a small secret pleasure. Either way, once found, it is a thumbscrew you can turn to your advantage.
FINDING THE THUMBSCREW:
A Strategic Plan of Action We all have resistances. We live with a perpetual armor around ourselves to defend against change and the intrusive actions of friends and rivals. We would like nothing more than to be left to do things our own way. Constantly butting up against these resistances will cost you a lot of energy.
One of the most important things to realize about people, though, is that they all have a weakness, some part of their psychological armor that will not resist, that will bend to your will if you find it and push on it. Some people wear their weaknesses openly, others disguise them. Those who disguise them are often the ones most effectively undone through that one chink in their armor.
THE LION, THE CHAMOIS, AND THE FOX
A lion was chasing a chamois along a valley. He had all but caught it, and with longing eyes was anticipating a certain and a satisfying repast. It seemed as if it were utterly impossible for the victim to escape; for a deep ravine appeared to bar the way for both the hunter and the hunted. But the nimble chamois, gathering together all its strength, shot like an arrow from a bow across the chasm, and stood still on the rocky cliff on the other side.
Our lion pulled up short. But at that moment a friend of his happened to be near at hand. That friend was the fox.
“What!” said he, “
with your strength and agility, is it possible that you will yield to a feeble chamois? You have only to will, and you will be able to work wonders. Though the abyss be deep, yet, if you are only in earnest, I am certain you will clear it. Surely you can confide in my disinterested friendship. I would not expose your life to danger if I were not so well aware of your strength and dexterity.”
The lion’s blood waxed hot, and began to boil in his veins. He flung himself with all his might into space. But he could not clear the chasm; so down he tumbled headlong, and was killed by the fall.
Then what did his dear friend do?
He cautiously made his way down to the bottom of the ravine. and there, out in the open space and the free air, seeing that the lion wanted neither flattery nor obedience now, he set to work to pay the last sad rites to his dead friend, and in a month picked his bones clean.
FABLES, IVAN KRILOFF, 1768-1844
In planning your assault, keep these principles in mind:
Pay Attention to Gestures and Unconscious Signals. As Sigmund Freud remarked, “No mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.”
This is a critical concept in the search for a person’s weakness—it is revealed by seemingly unimportant gestures and passing words.
The key is not only what you look for but where and how you look. Everyday conversation supplies the richest mine of weaknesses, so train yourself to listen. Start by always seeming interested—the appearance of a sympathetic ear will spur anyone to talk.
A clever trick, often used by the nineteenth-century French statesman Talleyrand, is to appear to open up to the other person, to share a secret with them. It can be completely made up, or it can be real but of no great importance to you—the important thing is that it should seem to come from the heart. This will usually elicit a response that is not only as frank as yours but more genuine—a response that reveals a weakness.
If you suspect that someone has a particular soft spot, probe for it indirectly.
If, for instance, you sense that a man has a need to be loved, openly flatter him.
If he laps up your compliments, no matter how obvious,
you are on the right track. Train your eye for details—how someone tips a waiter, what delights a person, the hidden messages in clothes. Find people’s idols, the things they worship and will do anything to get—perhaps you can be the supplier of their fantasies.
Remember: Since we all try to hide our weaknesses, there is little to be learned from our conscious behavior. What oozes out in the little things outside our conscious control is what you want to know.
Find the Helpless Child. Most weaknesses begin in childhood, before the self builds up compensatory defenses. Perhaps the child was pampered or indulged in a particular area, or perhaps a certain emotional need went unfulfilled; as he or she grows older, the indulgence or the deficiency may be buried but never disappears.
Knowing about a childhood need gives you a powerful key to a person’s weakness.
One sign of this weakness is that when you touch on it the person will often act like a child. Be on the lookout, then, for any behavior that should have been outgrown.
If your victims or rivals went without something important, such as parental support, when they were children, supply it, or its facsimile. If they reveal a secret taste, a hidden indulgence, indulge it.
In either case they will be unable to resist you. Look for Contrasts. An overt trait often conceals its opposite. People who thump their chests are often big cowards; a prudish exterior may hide a
lascivious soul; the uptight are often screaming for adventure; the shy are dying for attention.
By probing beyond appearances, you will often find people’s weaknesses in the opposite of the qualities they reveal to you.
Find the Weak Link. Sometimes in your search for weaknesses it is not what but who that matters. In today’s versions of the court, there is often someone behind the scenes who has a great deal of power, a tremendous influence over the person superficially on top.
These behind-the-scenes powerbrokers are the group’s weak link: Win their favor and you indirectly influence the king. Alternatively, even in a group of people acting with the appearance of one will—as when a group under attack closes ranks to resist an outsider—there is always a weak link in the chain.
Find the one person who will bend under pressure.
Fill the Void. The two main emotional voids to fill are insecurity and unhappiness. The insecure are suckers for any kind of social validation; as for the chronically unhappy, look for the roots of their unhappiness.
The insecure and the unhappy are the people least able to disguise their weaknesses. The ability to fill their emotional voids is a great source of power, and an indefinitely prolongable one.
Feed on Uncontrollable Emotions. The uncontrollable emotion can be a paranoid fear—a fear disproportionate to the situation—or any base motive such as lust, greed, vanity, or hatred. People in the grip of these emotions often cannot control themselves, and you can do the controlling for them.
IRVING LAZAR
[Hollywood super-agent] Irving Paul Lazar was once anxious to sell [studio mogul] Jack L. Warner a play.
“I had a long meeting with him today,” Lazar explained [to screenwriter Garson Kanin],
“but I didn’t mention it, I didn’t even bring it up.” ฃ
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because I’m going to wait until the weekend after next, when I go to Palm Springs.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t? I go to Palm Springs every weekend, but Warner isn’t going this weekend. He’s got a preview or something. So he’s
not coming down till the next weekend, so that’s when I’m going to bring it up. ”
“Irving, I’m more and more confused.” “Look,” said Irving impatiently,
” I know what I’m doing. I know how to sell Warner. This is a
type of material that he’s uneasy with, so I have to hit him with it hard and suddenly to get an okay.”
”But why Palm Springs?”
”Because in Palm Springs, every day he goes to the baths at The Spa. And that’s where I’m going to be when he’s there. Now there’s a thing about Jack: He’s eighty and he’s very vain, and he doesn’t like people to see him naked. So when I walk up to him naked at The Spa—I mean he’s naked—well, I’m naked too, but I don’t care who sees me. He does. And I walk up to him naked, and I start to talk to him about this thing, he’ll be very embarrassed.And he’ll want to get away from me, and the easiest way is to say ‘Yes,’ because he knows if he says ‘No,’ then I’m going to stick with him, and stay right on it, and not give up. So to get rid of me, he’ll probably say, ‘Yes.’”
Two weeks later, I read of the acquisition of this particular property by Warner Brothers.
I phoned Lazar and asked how it had been accomplished.
”How do you think?” he asked.
”In the buff, that’s how... just the way I told you it was going to work.”
HOLLYWOOD, GARSON KANIN, 1974
OBSERVANCES OF THE LAW
Observance I
In 1615 the thirty-year-old bishop of Luçon, later known as Cardinal Richelieu, gave a speech before representatives of the three estates of France—clergy, nobility, and commoners. Richelieu had been chosen to serve as the mouthpiece for the clergy—an immense responsibility for a man still young and not particularly well known. On all of the important issues of the day, the speech followed the Church line. But near the end of it Richelieu did something that had nothing to do with the Church and everything to do with his career. He turned to the throne of the fifteen-yearold King Louis XIII, and to the Queen Mother Marie de’ Médicis, who sat beside Louis, as the regent ruling France until her son reached his majority.
Everyone expected Richelieu to say the usual kind words to the young king. Instead, however, he looked directly at and only at the queen mother. Indeed his speech ended in long and fulsome praise of her, praise so glowing that it actually offended some in the Church. But the smile on the queen’s face as she lapped up Richelieu’s compliments was unforgettable.
A year later the queen mother appointed Richelieu secretary of state for foreign affairs, an incredible coup for the young bishop. He had now entered the inner circle of power, and he studied the workings of the court as if it were the machinery of a watch. An Italian, Concino Concini, was the queen mother’s favorite, or rather her lover, a role that made him perhaps the most powerful man in France. Concini was vain and foppish, and Richelieu played him perfectly—attending to him as if he were the king.
Within months Richelieu had become one of Concini’s favorites. But something happened in 1617 that turned everything upside down: the young king, who up until then had shown every sign of being an idiot, had Concini murdered and his most important associates imprisoned. In so doing Louis took command of the country with one blow, sweeping the queen mother aside.
Had Richelieu played it wrong?
He had been close to both Concini and Marie de Médicis, whose advisers and ministers were now all out of favor, some even arrested. The queen mother herself was shut up in the Louvre, a
virtual prisoner. Richelieu wasted no time. If everyone was deserting Marie de Médicis, he would stand by her. He knew Louis could not get rid of her, for the king was still very young, and had in any case always been inordinately attached to her. As Marie’s only remaining powerful friend,
Richelieu filled the valuable function of liaison between the king and his mother. In return he received her protection, and was able to survive the palace coup, even to thrive. Over the next few years the queen mother grew still more dependent on him,
and in 1622 she repaid him for his loyalty: Through the intercession of her allies in Rome, Richelieu was elevated to
the powerful rank of cardinal.
By 1623 King Louis was in trouble. He had no one he could trust to advise him, and although he was now a young man instead of a boy, he remained childish in spirit, and affairs of state came hard to him.
Now that he had taken the throne, Marie was no longer the regent and theoretically had no power, but she still had her son’s ear, and she kept telling him that Richelieu was his only possible savior.
At first Louis would have none of it —he hated the cardinal with a passion, only tolerating him out of love for Marie.
In the end, however, isolated in the court and crippled by his own
indecisiveness, he yielded to his mother and made Richelieu first his chief councilor and later prime minister.
Now Richelieu no longer needed Marie de Médicis. He stopped visiting and courting her, stopped listening to her opinions, even argued with her and opposed her wishes. Instead he concentrated on the king, making himself indispensable to his new master.
All the previous premiers, understanding the king’s childishness, had tried to keep him out of trouble; the shrewd Richelieu played him differently, deliberately pushing him into one ambitious project after another, such as a crusade against the Huguenots
and finally an extended war with Spain. The immensity of these projects only made the king more dependent on his powerful premier, the only man able to keep order in the realm.
And so, for the next eighteen years, Richelieu, exploiting the king’s weaknesses, governed and molded France according to his own vision, unifying the country and making it a strong European power for centuries to come.
Interpretation
Richelieu saw everything as a military campaign, and no strategic move was more important to him than discovering his enemy’s weaknesses and applying pressure to them. As early as his speech in 1615, he was looking for the weak link in the chain of power, and he saw that it was the queen mother.
Not that Marie was obviously weak—she governed both France and her son; but Richelieu saw that she was really an insecure woman who needed constant masculine attention. He showered her with affection and respect, even toadying up to her favorite, Concini. He knew the day would come when the king would take over, but he also recognized that Louis loved his mother dearly and would always remain a child in relation to her.
The way to control Louis, then, was not by gaining his favor, which could change overnight, but by gaining sway over his mother, for whom his affection would never change.
Once Richelieu had the position he desired—prime minister—he
discarded the queen mother, moving on to the next weak link in the chain: the king’s own character. There was a part of him that would always be a helpless child in need of higher authority. It was on the foundation of the king’s weakness that Richelieu established his own power and fame.
Remember: When entering the court, find the weak link. The person in control is often not the king or queen; it is someone behind the scenes—the favorite, the husband or wife, even the court fool. This person may have more weaknesses than the king himself, because his power depends on all kinds of capricious factors outside his control.
Finally, when dealing with helpless children who cannot make decisions, play on their weakness and push them into bold ventures. They will have to depend on you even more, for you will become the adult figure whom they rely on to get them out of scrapes and to safety.
THE LITTLE THINGS COUNT
As time went on I came to look for the little weaknesses.... It’s the little things that count. On one occasion, I worked on the president of a large bank in Omaha. The [phony] deal involved the purchase of the street railway system of Omaha, including a bridge across the Mississippi River.
My principals were supposedly German and I had to negotiate with Berlin. While awaiting word from them I introduced my fake mining-stock proposition. Since this man was rich, I decided to play for high stakes....
Meanwhile, I played golf with the banker, visited his home, and went to the theater with him and his wife. Though he showed some interest in my stock deal, he still wasn’t convinced. I had built it up to the point that an investment of $1,250,000 was required. Of this I was to put up $900,000, the banker $350,000. But still he hesitated. One evening when I was at his home for dinner I wore some perfume-Coty’s “April Violets.” It was not
then considered effeminate for a man to use a dash of perfume. The banker’s wife thought it very lovely.
“Where did you get it?” “It is a rare blend,” I told her,
“especially made for me by a French perfumer. Do you like it?” ”I love it,” she replied.
The following day I went through my effects and found two empty bottles. Both had come from France, but were empty. I went to a downtown department store and purchased ten ounces of Coty’s “April Violets.” I poured this into the two French bottles, carefully sealed them, wrapped them in tissue paper. That evening I dropped by the banker’s home and presented the two bottles to his wife.
”They were especially put up for me in Cologne,” I told her.
The next day the banker called at my hotel. His wife was enraptured by the perfume. She considered it the most wonderful, the most exotic fragrance she had ever used. I did not
tell the banker he could get all he wanted right in Omaha. ”She said,”
the banker added, ”that I was fortunate to be associated with a man like you.”
From then on his attitude was changed, for he had complete faith in his wife’s judgment .... He parted with $350,000. This, incidentally was my biggest [con] score.
“YELLOW KID” WEIL, 1875-1976
Observance II
In December of 1925, guests at the swankiest hotel in Palm Beach, Florida, watched with interest as a mysterious man arrived in a Rolls-Royce driven by a Japanese chauffeur. Over the next few days they studied this handsome man, who walked with an elegant cane, received telegrams at all hours, and only engaged in the briefest of conversations. He was a count, they heard,
Count Victor Lustig, and he came from one of the wealthiest families in Europe—but this was all they could find out.
Imagine their amazement, then, when Lustig one day walked up to one of the least distinguished guests in the hotel, a Mr. Herman Loller, head of an engineering company, and entered into conversation with him. Loller had made his fortune only recently, and forging social connections was very important to him. He felt honored and somewhat intimidated by this sophisticated man, who spoke perfect English with a hint of a foreign accent. Over the days to come, the two became friends. Loller of course did most of the talking, and one night he confessed that his business was doing poorly, with more troubles ahead. In return, Lustig
confided in his new friend that he too had serious money problems— Communists had seized his family estate and all its assets. He was too old to learn a trade and go to work. Luckily he had found an answer—
“ a money-making machine.” “You counterfeit?” Loller whispered in halfshock.
No, Lustig replied, explaining that through a secret chemical
process, his machine could duplicate any paper currency with complete accuracy.
Put in a dollar bill and six hours later you had two, both perfect.
He proceeded to explain how the machine had been smuggled out of Europe, how the Germans had developed it to undermine the British, how it had supported the count for several years, and on and on. When Loller insisted on a demonstration, the two men went to Lustig’s room, where the count produced a magnificent mahogany box fitted with slots, cranks, and dials. Loller watched as Lustig inserted a dollar bill in the box. Sure enough, early the following morning Lustig pulled out two bills, still wet from the chemicals. Lustig gave the notes to Loller, who immediately took the bills to a local bank—which accepted them as genuine. Now the businessman feverishly begged Lustig to sell him a machine. The count explained that there was only one in existence, so Loller made him a high offer: $25,000, then a considerable amount (more than $400,000 in today’s terms). Even so, Lustig seemed reluctant: He did not feel right about making his friend pay so much. Yet finally he agreed to the sale.
After all, he said, “I suppose it matters little what you pay me. You are, after all, going to recover the amount within a few days by duplicating your own bills.”
Making Loller swear never to reveal the machine’s existence to other people, Lustig accepted the money. Later the same day he checked out of the hotel. A year later, after many futile attempts at duplicating bills, Loller finally went to the police with the story of how Count Lustig had conned him with a pair of dollar bills, some chemicals, and a worthless mahogany box.
Interpretation
Count Lustig had an eagle eye for other people’s weaknesses. He saw them in the smallest gesture. Loller, for instance, overtipped waiters, seemed nervous in conversation with the concierge, talked loudly about his business. His weakness, Lustig knew, was his need for social validation and for the respect that he thought his wealth had earned him. He was also chronically insecure. Lustig had come to the hotel to hunt for prey. In Loller he homed in on the perfect sucker—a man hungering for someone to fill his
psychic voids.
In offering Loller his friendship, then, Lustig knew he was offering him the immediate respect of the other guests. As a count, Lustig was also offering the newly rich businessman access to the glittering world of old wealth. And for the coup de grace, he apparently owned a machine that would rescue Loller from his worries. It would even put him on a par with Lustig himself, who had also used the machine to maintain his status. No wonder Loller took the bait.
Remember: When searching for suckers, always look for the dissatisfied, the unhappy, the insecure. Such people are riddled with weaknesses and have needs that you can fill. Their neediness is the groove in which you place your thumbnail and turn them at will.
Observance III
In the year 1559, the French king Henri II died in a jousting exhibition. His son assumed the throne, becoming Francis II, but in the background stood Henri’s wife and queen, Catherine de’ Médicis, a woman who had long ago proven her skill in affairs of state. When Francis died the next year, Catherine took control of the country as regent to her next son in line of succession, the future Charles IX, a mere ten years old at the time.
The main threats to the queen’s power were Antoine de Bourbon, king of Navarre, and his brother, Louis, the powerful prince of Condé, both of whom could claim the right to serve as regent instead of Catherine, who, after all, was Italian—a foreigner. Catherine quickly appointed Antoine lieutenant general of the kingdom, a title that seemed to satisfy his ambition. It also meant that he had to remain in court, where Catherine could keep an eye on him. Her next move proved smarter still: Antoine had a notorious weakness for young women, so she assigned one of her most attractive maids of honor, Louise de Rouet, to seduce him. Now Antoine’s intimate, Louise reported all of his actions to Catherine. The move worked so brilliantly that Catherine assigned another of her maids to Prince Condé, and thus was formed her escadron volant—“flying squadron”—of young girls whom she used to keep the unsuspecting males in the court under her
control.
In 1572 Catherine married off her daughter, Marguerite de Valois, to Henri, the son of Antoine and the new king of Navarre. To put a family that had always struggled against her so close to power was a dangerous move, so to make sure of Henri’s loyalty she unleashed on him the loveliest member of her “flying squadron,” Charlotte de Beaune Semblançay, baroness of Sauves. Catherine did this even though Henri was married to her daughter. Within weeks,
Marguerite de Valois wrote in her memoirs, “Mme. de Sauves so completely ensnared my husband that we no longer slept together, nor even conversed.”
And while I am on the subject, there is another fact that deserves mention. It is this. A man shows his character just in the way in which he deals with trifles-for then he is off his guard. This will often afford a good opportunity of observing the boundless egoism of a man’s nature, and his total lack of consideration for others; and if these defects show themselves in small things, or merely in his general demeanour, you will find that they also
underlie his action in matters of importance, although he may disguise the fact. This is an opportunity which should not be missed. If in the little affairs of every day—the trifles of life...—a man is inconsiderate and seeks only what is advantageous or convenient to himself, to the prejudice of others’ rights; if he appropriates to himself that which belongs to all alike, you may be sure there is no justice in his heart, and that he would be a
scoundrel on a wholesale scale, only that law and compulsion bind his hands.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, 1788-1860
The baroness was an excellent spy and helped to keep Henri under Catherine’s thumb. When the queen’s youngest son, the Duke of Alençon, grew so close to Henri that she feared the two might plot against her, she assigned the baroness to him as well. This most infamous member of the flying squadron quickly seduced Alençon, and soon the two young men fought over her and their friendship quickly ended, along with any danger of a conspiracy.
Interpretation
Catherine had seen very early on the sway that a mistress has over a man of power: Her own husband, Henri II, had kept one of the most infamous mistresses of them all, Diane de Poitiers. What Catherine learned from the experience was that a man like her husband wanted to feel he could win a woman over without having to rely on his status, which he had inherited rather than earned. And such a need contained a huge blind spot: As long as
the woman began the affair by acting as if she had been conquered, the man would fail to notice that as time passed the mistress had come to hold power over him, as Diane de Poitiers did over Henri. It was Catherine’s strategy to turn this weakness to her advantage, using it as a way to conquer and control men. All she had to do was unleash the loveliest women in the court, her “flying squadron,” on men whom she knew shared her husband’s vulnerability.
Remember: Always look for passions and obsessions that cannot be controlled. The stronger the passion, the more vulnerable the person. This may seem surprising, for passionate people look strong.
In fact, however, they are simply filling the stage with their theatricality, distracting people from how weak and helpless they really are. A man’s need to conquer women actually reveals a tremendous helplessness that has made suckers out of them for thousands of years. Look at the part of a person that is most
visible—their greed, their lust, their intense fear.
These are the emotions they cannot conceal, and over which they have the least control. And what people cannot control, you can control for them.
THE BATTLE AT PHARSALIA
When the two armies [Julius Caesar’s and Pompey‘s] were come into Pharsalia, and both encamped there, Pompey’s thoughts ran the same way as they had done before, against fighting.... But those who were about him were greatly confident of success ... as if they had already conquered.... The cavalry especially were obstinate for fighting, being splendidly armed and bravely mounted, and valuing themselves upon the fine horses they kept,
and upon their own handsome persons; as also upon the advantage of their numbers, for they were five thousand against one thousand of Caesar’s. Nor were the numbers of the infantry less disproportionate, there being fortyfive thousand of Pompey’s against twenty-two thousand of the enemy. [The next day] whilst the infantry was thus sharply engaged in the main battle, on the flank Pompey’s horse rode up confidently, and opened [his cavalry’s] ranks very wide, that they might surround the right wing of Caesar. But before they engaged, Caesar’s cohorts rushed out and attacked them, and did not dart their javelins at a distance, nor strike at the thighs and legs, as they usually did in close battle, but aimed at their faces. For thusCaesar had instructed them, in hopes that young gentlemen, who had nol known much of battles and wounds, but came wearing their hair long, in the flower of their age and height of their beauty, would be more apprehensive of such blows, and not care for hazarding both a danger at present and a blemish for the future.
And so it proved, for they were so far from bearing the stroke of the javelins, that they could not stand the sight of them, but turned about, and covered their faces to secure them. Once in disorder, presently they turned about to fly; and so most shamefully ruined all. For those who had beat them back at once outflanked the infantry, and falling on their rear, cut them to pieces.
Pompey, who commanded the other wing of the army, when he saw his cavalry thus broken and flying, was no longer himself, nor did he now remember that he was Pompey the Great, but, like one whom some god had deprived of his senses, retired to his tent without speaking a word, and there sat to expect the event, till the whole army was routed.
THE LIFE OF JULIUS CAESAR, PLUTARCH, c. A.D. 46-120
Observance IV
Arabella Huntington, wife of the great late-nineteenth-century railroad magnate Collis P. Huntington, came from humble origins and always struggled for social recognition among her wealthy peers. When she gave a party in her San Francisco mansion, few of the social elite would show up; most of them took her for a gold digger, not their kind. Because of her husband’s fabulous wealth, art dealers courted her, but with such condescension they obviously saw her as an upstart. Only one man of consequence treated her differently: the dealer Joseph Duveen.
For the first few years of Duveen’s relationship with Arabella, he made no effort to sell expensive art to her. Instead he accompanied her to fine stores, chatted endlessly about queens and princesses he knew, on and on.
At last, she thought, a man who treated her as an equal, even a superior, in high society. Meanwhile, if Duveen did not try to sell art to her, he did subtly educate her in his aesthetic ideas—namely, that the best art was the most expensive art. And after Arabella had soaked up his way of seeing things, Duveen would act as if she always had exquisite taste, even though before she met him her aesthetics had been abysmal.
When Collis Huntington died, in 1900, Arabella came into a fortune. She suddenly started to buy expensive paintings, by Rembrandt and Velázquez,
for example—and only from Duveen. Years later Duveen sold her
Gainsborough’s Blue Boy for the highest price ever paid for a work of art at the time, an astounding purchase for a family that previously had shown little interest in collecting.
Interpretation
Joseph Duveen instantly understood Arabella Huntington and what made her tick: She wanted to feel important, at home in society.
Intensely insecure about her lower-class background, she needed confirmation of her new social status. Duveen waited. Instead of rushing into trying to persuade her to collect art, he subtly went to work on her weaknesses. He made her feel that she deserved his attention not because she was the wife of one of the wealthiest men in the world but because of her own special character— and this completely melted her. Duveen never condescended to Arabella; rather than lecturing to her, he instilled his ideas in her indirectly.
The result was one of his best and most devoted clients, and also the sale of The Blue Boy. People’s need for validation and recognition, their need to feel important, is the best kind of weakness to exploit. First, it is almost universal;
second, exploiting it is so very easy. All you have to do is find ways to make people feel better about their taste, their social standing, their intelligence. Once the fish are hooked, you can reel them in again and again, for years—you are filling a positive role, giving them what they cannot get on their own. They may never suspect that you are turning them like a thumbscrew, and if they do they may not care, because you are making them feel better about themselves, and that is worth any price.
Observance V
In 1862 King William of Prussia named Otto von Bismarck premier and minister for foreign affairs. Bismarck was known for his boldness, his ambition—and his interest in strengthening the military. Since William was surrounded by liberals in his government and cabinet, politicians who already wanted to limit his powers, it was quite dangerous for him to put Bismarck in this sensitive position. His wife, Queen Augusta, had tried to dissuade him, but although she usually got her way with him, this time
William stuck to his guns.
Only a week after becoming prime minister, Bismarck made an
impromptu speech to a few dozen ministers to convince them of the need to enlarge the army.
He ended by saying, “The great questions of the time will be decided, not by speeches and resolutions of majorities, but by iron and blood.”
His speech was immediately disseminated throughout Germany.
The queen screamed at her husband that Bismarck was a barbaric militarist who was out to usurp control of Prussia, and that William had to fire him.
The liberals in the government agreed with her. The outcry was so
vehement that William began to be afraid he would end up on a scaffold, like Louis XVI of France, if he kept Bismarck on as prime minister.
Bismarck knew he had to get to the king before it was too late. He also knew he had blundered, and should have tempered his fiery words. Yet as he contemplated his strategy, he decided not to apologize but to do the exact opposite. Bismarck knew the king well. When the two men met, William, predictably, had been worked into a tizzy by the queen. He reiterated his fear of being guillotined.
But Bismarck only replied, “Yes, then we shall be dead! We must die sooner or later, and could there be a more respectable way of dying? I should die fighting for the cause of my king and master. Your Majesty would die sealing with your own blood your royal rights granted by God’s grace. Whether upon the scaffold or upon the battlefield makes no difference to the glorious staking of body and life on behalf of rights granted by God’s grace!”
On he went, appealing to William’s sense of honor and the majesty of his position as head of the army.
How could the king allow people to push him around?
Wasn’t the honor of Germany more important than quibbling over words?
Not only did the prime minister convince the king to stand up to both his wife and his parliament, he persuaded him to build up the army— Bismarck’s goal all along.
Interpretation
Bismarck knew the king felt bullied by those around him. He knew that William had a military background and a deep sense of honor, and that he felt ashamed at his cravenness before his wife and his government. William secretly yearned to be a great and mighty king, but he dared not express this ambition because he was afraid of ending up like Louis XVI. Where a show of courage often conceals a man’s timidity, William’s timidity concealed his
need to show courage and thump his chest.
Bismarck sensed the longing for glory beneath William’s pacifist front, so he played to the king’s insecurity about his manhood, finally pushing him into three wars and the creation of a German empire.
Timidity is a potent weakness to exploit. Timid souls often yearn to be their opposite—to be Napoleons. Yet they lack the inner strength. You, in essence, can become their Napoleon, pushing them into bold actions that serve your needs while also making them dependent on you. Remember: Look to the opposites and
never take appearances at face value.
Image: The Thumbscrew. Your enemy has secrets that he guards, thinks thoughts he will not reveal. But they come out in ways he cannot help. It is there some where, a groove of weakness on his head, at his heart, over his belly. Once you find the groove, put your thumb in it and turn him at will.
Authority: Find out each man’s thumbscrew. ’Tis the art of setting their wills in action. It needs more skill than resolution. You must know where to get at anyone. Every volition has a special motive which varies according to taste. All men are idolaters, some of fame, others of self-interest, most of pleasure. Skill consists in knowing these idols in order to bring them into play. Knowing any man’s mainspring of motive you have as it were the key to his will. (Baltasar Gracián, 1601-1658)
REVERSAL
Playing on people’s weakness has one significant danger: You may stir up an action you cannot control.
In your games of power you always look several steps ahead and plan accordingly. And you exploit the fact that other people are more emotional and incapable of such foresight. But when you play on their vulnerabilities, the areas over which they have least control, you can unleash emotions that will upset your plans. Push timid people into bold action and they may go too far; answer their need for attention or recognition and they may need
more than you want to give them. The helpless, childish element you are playing on can turn against you.
The more emotional the weakness, the greater the potential danger. Know the limits to this game, then, and never get carried away by your control over your victims. You are after power, not the thrill of control.
LAW 32
PLAY TO PEOPLE’S FANTASIES
JUDGMENT
The truth is often avoided because it is ugly and unpleasant. Never appeal to truth and reality unless you are prepared for the anger that comes from disenchantment. Life is so harsh and distressing that people who can manufacture romance or conjure up fantasy are like oases in the desert: Everyone flocks to them. There is great power in tapping into the fantasies of the masses.
THE FUNERAL OF THE LIONESS
The lion having suddenly lost his queen, every one hastened to show allegiance to the monarch, by offering consolation.
These compliments, alas, served but to increase the widower’s affliction. Due notice was given throughout the kingdom that the funeral would be performed at a certain time and place;
the lion’s officers were ordered to be in attendance, to regulate the ceremony, and place the company according to their respective rank. One may well judge no one absented himself. The monarch gave way to his grief, and the whole cave, lions having no other temples, resounded with his cries. After his example, all the courtiers roared in their different tones. A court is the sort of place where everyone is either sorrowful, gay, or indifferent to everything, just as the reigning prince may think fit; or if any one is not actually, he at least tries to appear so; each endeavors to mimic the master. It is truly said that one mind animates a thousand bodies, clearly showing that human beings are mere machines. But let us return to our subject. The stag alone shed no tears.
How could he, forsooth?
The death of the queen avenged him; she had formerly strangled his wife and son. A courtier thought fit to inform the bereaved monarch, and even affirmed that he had seen the stag laugh. The rage of a king, says Solomon, is terrible, and especially that of a lion-king.
“Pitiful forester!” he exclaimed, “darest thou laugh when all around are dissolved in tears? We will not soil our royal claws with thy profane blood! Do thou, brave wolf, avenge our queen, by immolating this traitor to her august manes. ”
Hereupon the stag replied: “Sire, the time for weeping is passed; grief is here superfluous. Your revered spouse appeared to me but now, reposing on a bed of roses; I instantly recognized her. ‘Friend,’ said she to me,
‘have done with this funereal pomp, cease these useless tears. I have tasted a thousand delights in the Elysian fields, conversing with those who are saints like myself. Let the king’s despair remain for some time unchecked, it gratifies me.’
” Scarcely had he spoken, when every one shouted:
“A miracle! a miracle!” The stag, instead of being punished, received a handsome gift. Do but entertain a king with dreams, flatter him, and tell him a few pleasant fantastic lies: whatever his indignation against you may be, he will swallow the bait, and make you his dearest friend.
FABLES, JEAN DE LA FONTAINE, 1621-1695
OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW
The city-state of Venice was prosperous for so long that its citizens felt their small republic had destiny on its side.
In the Middle Ages and High Renaissance, its virtual monopoly on trade to the east made it the wealthiest city in Europe. Under a beneficent republican government, Venetians enjoyed liberties that few other Italians had ever known.
Yet in the sixteenth century their fortunes suddenly changed. The opening of the New World transferred power to the Atlantic side of Europe—to the Spanish and Portuguese, and later the Dutch and English. Venice could not compete economically and its empire gradually dwindled. The final blow was the devastating loss of a prized Mediterranean possession, the island of Cyprus,
captured from Venice by the Turks in 1570.
Now noble families went broke in Venice, and banks began to fold. A kind of gloom and depression settled over the citizens. They had known a glittering past—had either lived through it or heard stories about it from their elders. The closeness of the glory years was humiliating.
The Venetians half believed that the goddess Fortune was only playing a joke on them, and that the old days would soon return. For the time being, though, what could they do?
In 1589 rumors began to swirl around Venice of the arrival not far away of a mysterious man called “Il Bragadino,” a master of alchemy, a man who had won incredible wealth through his ability, it was said, to multiply gold through the use of a secret substance. The rumor spread quickly because a few years earlier, a Venetian nobleman passing through Poland had heard a
learned man prophesy that Venice would recover her past glory and power if she could find a man who understood the alchemic art of manufacturing gold. And so, as word reached Venice of the gold this Bragadino possessed —he clinked gold coins continuously in his hands, and golden objects filled his palace—some began to dream: Through him, their city would prosper
again.
Members of Venice’s most important noble families accordingly went together to Brescia, where Bragadino lived. They toured his palace and watched in awe as he demonstrated his gold-making abilities, taking a pinch of seemingly worthless minerals and transforming it into several ounces of gold dust. The Venetian senate prepared to debate the idea of extending an official invitation to Bragadino to stay in Venice at the city’s expense, when word suddenly reached them that they were competing with the Duke of Mantua for his services. They heard of a magnificent party in Bragadino’s palace for the duke, featuring garments with golden buttons, gold watches, gold plates, and on and on. Worried they might lose Bragadino to Mantua, the senate voted almost unanimously to invite him to Venice, promising him
the mountain of money he would need to continue living in his luxurious style—but only if he came right away. Late that year the mysterious Bragadino arrived in Venice. With his piercing dark eyes under thick brows, and the two enormous black mastiffs
that accompanied him everywhere, he was forbidding and impressive. He took up residence in a sumptuous palace on the island of the Giudecca, with the republic funding his banquets, his expensive clothes, and all his other whims. A kind of alchemy fever spread through Venice. On street corners, hawkers would sell coal, distilling apparatus, bellows, how-to books on the
subject. Everyone began to practice alchemy—everyone except Bragadino. The alchemist seemed to be in no hurry to begin manufacturing the gold that would save Venice from ruin. Strangely enough this only increased his popularity and following; people thronged from all over Europe, even Asia, to meet this remarkable man. Months went by, with gifts pouring in to
Bragadino from all sides. Still he gave no sign of the miracle that the Venetians confidently expected him to produce. Eventually the citizens began to grow impatient, wondering if he would wait forever. At first the senators warned them not to hurry him—he was a capricious devil, who needed to be cajoled. Finally, though, the nobility began to wonder too, and the senate came under pressure to show a return on the city’s ballooning investment.
Bragadino had only scorn for the doubters, but he responded to them. He had, he said, already deposited in the city’s mint the mysterious substance with which he multiplied gold. He could use this substance up all at once, and produce double the gold, but the more slowly the process took place, the more it would yield. If left alone for seven years, sealed in a casket, the substance would multiply the gold in the mint thirty times over.
Most of the senators agreed to wait to reap the gold mine Bragadino promised. Others, however, were angry: seven more years of this man living royally at the public trough! And many of the common citizens of Venice echoed these sentiments. Finally the alchemist’s enemies demanded he produce a proof of his skills: a substantial amount of gold, and soon. Lofty, apparently devoted to his art, Bragadino responded that Venice, in its impatience, had betrayed him, and would therefore lose his services. He left town, going first to nearby Padua, then, in 1590, to Munich, at the invitation of the Duke of Bavaria, who, like the entire city of Venice, had known great wealth but had fallen into bankruptcy through his own profligacy, and hoped to regain his fortune through the famous alchemist’s services. And so Bragadino resumed the comfortable arrangement he had known in Venice, and the same pattern repeated itself.
Interpretation
The young Cypriot Mamugnà had lived in Venice for several years before reincarnating himself as the alchemist Bragadino. He saw how gloom had settled on the city, how everyone was hoping for a redemption from some indefinite source. While other charlatans mastered everyday cons based on sleight of hand, Mamugnà mastered human nature. With Venice as his target
from the start, he traveled abroad, made some money through his alchemy scams, and then returned to Italy, setting up shop in Brescia. There he created a reputation that he knew would spread to Venice. From a distance, in fact, his aura of power would be all the more impressive. At first Mamugnà did not use vulgar demonstrations to convince people of his alchemic skill. His sumptuous palace, his opulent garments, the clink of gold in his hands, all these provided a superior argument to anything
rational. And these established the cycle that kept him going: His obvious wealth confirmed his reputation as an alchemist, so that patrons like the Duke of Mantua gave him money, which allowed him to live in wealth, which reinforced his reputation as an alchemist, and so on. Only once this reputation was established, and dukes and senators were fighting over him, did he resort to the trifling necessity of a demonstration. By then, however,
people were easy to deceive: They wanted to believe. The Venetian senators who watched him multiply gold wanted to believe so badly that they failed to notice the glass pipe up his sleeve, from which he slipped gold dust into his pinches of minerals. Brilliant and capricious, he was the alchemist of their fantasies—and once he had created an aura like this, no one noticed his simple deceptions.
Such is the power of the fantasies that take root in us, especially in times of scarcity and decline. People rarely believe that their problems arise from their own misdeeds and stupidity. Someone or something out there is to blame—the other, the world, the gods—and so salvation comes from the outside as well. Had Bragadino arrived in Venice armed with a detailed analysis of the reasons behind the city’s economic decline, and of the hardnosed steps that it could take to turn things around, he would have been scorned.
The reality was too ugly and the solution too painful—mostly the
kind of hard work that the citizens’ ancestors had mustered to create an empire. Fantasy, on the other hand—in this case the romance of alchemy— was easy to understand and infinitely more palatable.
To gain power, you must be a source of pleasure for those around you— and pleasure comes from playing to people’s fantasies. Never promise a gradual improvement through hard work; rather, promise the moon, the great and sudden transformation, the pot of gold. No man need despair of gaining converts to the most extravagant hypothesis who has art enough to represent it in favorable colors.
David Hume, 1711-1776
If you want to tell lies that will be believed, don’t tell the truth that won’t.
EMPEROR TOKUGAWA IEYASU OF JAPAN, SEVENTEENTH
CENTURY
KEYS TO POWER
Fantasy can never operate alone. It requires the backdrop of the humdrum and the mundane. It is the oppressiveness of reality that allows fantasy to take root and bloom. In sixteenth-century Venice, the reality was one of decline and loss of prestige. The corresponding fantasy described a sudden recovery of past glories through the miracle of alchemy. While the reality only got worse, the Venetians inhabited a happy dream world in which their city restored its fabulous wealth and power overnight, turning dust into gold.
The person who can spin a fantasy out of an oppressive reality has access to untold power. As you search for the fantasy that will take hold of the masses, then, keep your eye on the banal truths that weigh heavily on us all.
Never be distracted by people’s glamorous portraits of themselves and their lives; search and dig for what really imprisons them. Once you find that, you have the magical key that will put great power in your hands.
Although times and people change, let us examine a few of the
oppressive realities that endure, and the opportunities for power they provide:
The Reality: Change is slow and gradual. It requires hard work, a bit of luck, a fair amount of self-sacrifice, and a lot of patience.
The Fantasy: A sudden transformation will bring a total change in one’s fortunes, bypassing work, luck, self-sacrifice, and time in one fantastic stroke.
This is of course the fantasy par excellence of the charlatans who prowl among us to this day, and was the key to Bragadino’s success. Promise a great and total change—from poor to rich, sickness to health, misery to ecstasy—and you will have followers.
How did the great sixteenth-century German quack Leonhard Thurneisser become the court physician for the Elector of Brandenburg without ever studying medicine? Instead of offering amputations, leeches, and foultasting purgatives (the medicaments of the time), Thurneisser offered sweet- tasting elixirs and promised instant recovery. Fashionable courtiers
especially wanted his solution of “drinkable gold,” which cost a fortune.
If some inexplicable illness assailed you, Thurneisser would consult a horoscope and prescribe a talisman. Who could resist such a fantasy— health and well-being without sacrifice and pain!
The Reality: The social realm has hard-set codes and boundaries. We understand these limits and know that we have to move within the same familiar circles, day in and day out.
The Fantasy: We can enter a totally new world with different codes and the promise of adventure.
In the early 1700s, all London was abuzz with talk of a mysterious
stranger, a young man named George Psalmanazar. He had arrived from what was to most Englishmen a fantastical land: the island of Formosa (now Taiwan), off the coast of China. Oxford University engaged Psalmanazar to teach the island’s language; a few years later he translated the Bible into Formosan, then wrote a book—an immediate best-seller—on Formosa’s history and geography. English royalty wined and dined the young man, and
everywhere he went he entertained his hosts with wondrous stories of his homeland, and its bizarre customs.
After Psalmanazar died, however, his will revealed that he was in fact merely a Frenchman with a rich imagination. Everything he had said about Formosa—its alphabet, its language, its literature, its entire culture—he had invented. He had built on the English public’s ignorance of the place to concoct an elaborate story that fulfilled their desire for the exotic and strange. British culture’s rigid control of people’s dangerous dreams gave him the perfect opportunity to exploit their fantasy.
The fantasy of the exotic, of course, can also skirt the sexual. It must not come too close, though, for the physical hinders the power of fantasy; it can be seen, grasped, and then tired of—the fate of most courtesans. The bodily charms of the mistress only whet the master’s appetite for more and different pleasures, a new beauty to adore. To bring power, fantasy must remain to some degree unrealized, literally unreal. The dancer Mata Hari,
for instance, who rose to public prominence in Paris before World War I, had quite ordinary looks. Her power came from the fantasy she created of being strange and exotic, unknowable and indecipherable. The taboo she worked with was less sex itself than the breaking of social codes.
Another form of the fantasy of the exotic is simply the hope for relief
from boredom. Con artists love to play on the oppressiveness of the working world, its lack of adventure. Their cons might involve, say, the recovery of lost Spanish treasure, with the possible participation of an alluring Mexican señorita and a connection to the president of a South American country—anything offering release from the humdrum.
The Reality: Society is fragmented and full of conflict.
The Fantasy: People can come together in a mystical union of souls. In the 1920s the con man Oscar Hartzell made a quick fortune out of the age-old Sir Francis Drake swindle—basically promising any sucker who happened to be surnamed “Drake” a substantial share of the long-lost “Drake treasure,” to which Hartzell had access. Thousands across the Midwest fell for the scam, which Hartzell cleverly turned into a crusade against the government and everyone else who was trying to keep the Drake
fortune out of the rightful hands of its heirs. There developed a mystical union of the oppressed Drakes, with emotional rallies and meetings.
Promise such a union and you can gain much power, but it is a dangerous power that can easily turn against you. This is a fantasy for demagogues to play on.
The Reality: Death. The dead cannot be brought back, the past cannot be changed.
The Fantasy: A sudden reversal of this intolerable fact.
This con has many variations, but requires great skill and subtlety.
The beauty and importance of the art of Vermeer have long been
recognized, but his paintings are small in number, and are extremely rare.
In the 1930s, though, Vermeers began to appear on the art market. Experts were called on to verify them, and pronounced them real. Possession of these new Vermeers would crown a collector’s career. It was like the resurrection of Lazarus: In a strange way, Vermeer had been brought back to life. The past had been changed. Only later did it come out that the new Vermeers were the work of a middle-aged Dutch forger named Han van Meegeren. And he had chosen Vermeer for his scam because he understood fantasy: The paintings would seem real precisely because the public, and the experts as well, so desperately wanted to believe they were.
Remember: The key to fantasy is distance. The distant has allure and promise, seems simple and problem free. What you are offering, then, should be ungraspable. Never let it become oppressively familiar; it is the mirage in the distance, withdrawing as the sucker approaches. Never be too direct in describing the fantasy—keep it vague. As a forger of fantasies, let your victim come close enough to see and be tempted, but keep him far
away enough that he stays dreaming and desiring.
Image: The Moon. Unattainable, always changing shape, disappearing and reappearing. We look at it, imagine, wonder, and pine—never familiar, continuous provoker of dreams. Do not offer the obvious. Promise the moon.
Authority: A lie is an allurement, a fabrication, that can be embellished into a fantasy. It can be clothed in the raiments of a mystic conception. Truth is cold, sober fact, not so comfortable to absorb. A lie is more palatable. The most detested person in the world is the one who always tells the truth, who never romances.... I found it far more interesting and profitable to romance than to tell the truth.
(Joseph Weil, a.k.a. “The Yellow Kid,” 1875-1976)
REVERSAL
If there is power in tapping into the fantasies of the masses, there is also danger. Fantasy usually contains an element of play—the public half realizes it is being duped, but it keeps the dream alive anyway, relishing the entertainment and the temporary diversion from the everyday that you are providing. So keep it light—never come too close to the place where you are actually expected to produce results. That place may prove extremely
hazardous. After Bragadino established himself in Munich, he found that the soberminded Bavarians had far less faith in alchemy than the temperamental Venetians. Only the duke really believed in it, for he needed it desperately to rescue him from the hopeless mess he was in. As Bragadino played his familiar waiting game, accepting gifts and expecting patience, the public grew angry. Money was being spent and was yielding no results.
In 1592 the Bavarians demanded justice, and eventually Bragadino found himself swinging from the gallows. As before, he had promised and had not delivered, but this time he had misjudged the forbearance of his hosts, and his inability to fulfill their fantasy proved fatal.
One last thing: Never make the mistake of imagining that fantasy is always fantastical. It certainly contrasts with reality, but reality itself is sometimes so theatrical and stylized that fantasy becomes a desire for simple things. The image Abraham Lincoln created of himself, for example, as a homespun country lawyer with a beard, made him the common man’s president.
P. T. Barnum created a successful act with Tom Thumb, a dwarf who dressed up as famous leaders of the past, such as Napoleon, and lampooned them wickedly. The show delighted everyone, right up to Queen Victoria, by appealing to the fantasy of the time: Enough of the vainglorious rulers of history, the common man knows best. Tom Thumb reversed the familiar pattern of fantasy in which the strange and unknown becomes the ideal. But
the act still obeyed the Law, for underlying it was the fantasy that the simple man is without problems, and is happier than the powerful and the rich. Both Lincoln and Tom Thumb played the commoner but carefully maintained their distance. Should you play with such a fantasy, you too must carefully cultivate distance and not allow your “common” persona to become too familiar or it will not project as fantasy
controversial blackbook of english vocabulary all spelling asked in ssc exams controversy crater contusion convalescence convene craftmanship crayon creativity creator creature credential convenience convent conversation credible cylinder cynic daughter dealer debates debilitate debtor decaffeinated deceive decibel creditable decease converse credulous deceit conversion cremator convert crevice decency conveyance cricketer decennial convict criminal deception conviction cringe convincing criteria decide convoluted criterion cooking criticism cooperate cooperation cropping croton decision decisive declension declination copulate crouching corollary cruel corporate cruelly corporation crunchy decorative decrease defamation defence correlative crushing correspond crust correspondence correspondent crystal cube corresponding corrigendum corrigible corroborate corrupt corruption cortege cosmetic cosmopolitan crystallisation cubicle cuddle cuisine culminate cultural defer deferred defiance deficiency deficient demeanour demolish define definite definitely definition cumbersome deforestation curiosity curious currently
