Last updated: 5 Jul 24 03:31:14 (UTC)
War,by Robert Greene
My Notes
Ideal aim is that of a strategic war. The most common ways that people deal with conflict - trying to avoid it all costs, getting emotional and lashing out, turning sly and manipulative - are all counterproductive. Instead, think ahead of your long-term goals, decide which fights to avoid an which are inevitable, know how to control and channel your emotions. When forced to fights, do so with indirection and subtle maneuver, making your manipulations hard to trace.
Always maintain a peaceful exterior.
Be supremely rational and emotionally balanced, striving to win with minimum bloodshed and loss of resources. The moment you aim for results, you are in the realm of strategy.
Six Fundamental ideals of a Strategic Warrior
-
Look at things as they are, not as your emotions color them. When you’re angry, take no action. War demands utmost realism.
-
Judge people by their actions.
-
Depend on your own arms. In the middle of a crisis, your mind will find its way to the right solution.
-
Worship Athena, not Ares. Athena was the goddess of strategic warfare. Fight with utmost intelligence and subtlety. Blend philosophy and war, wisdom and battle.
-
Elevate yourself above the battlefield. Strategy vs tactics. Strategists are light on their feet and can see far and wide.
-
Spiritualize your warfare. The greatest battle is with yourself - weaknesses, emotions, lack of resolution. Face them down, do battle with them.
#1 Declare War on Your Enemies
Your enemy is the polar star that guides you.
Don’t be seduced by popularity. Let some of the public hate you; you cannot please everyone. Do not crowd into the center. Counter-cultural. Polarize people, drive some of them away. The center is the realm of compromise. Do not worry about antagonizing people. Do not be lured by the need to be liked; better to be respected, even feared.
Conflict is therapeutic. A tough opponent will bring out the best in you. Exaggerate the differences between you and the enemy. Victory is the goal, not fairness and balance.
#2 Do Not Fight the Last War
What most often weighs you down and brings you misery is the past, in the form of unnecessary attachments, repetition of tired formulas, and the memory of old victories and defeats. You must constantly wage war against the past and force yourself to react to the present moment.
As we become older we become more rooted in the past.
Never take for granted that your past successes will continue into the future. Actually, they are your biggest obstacle. Every battle is different and you cannot assume that what worked before will work today.
Rid yourself of myths and misconceptions. Victory has no magic formula. Let go of all fetishes and become your own strategist. Reexamine all your cherished beliefs and principles. Your only principle should be to have no principles. Be brutal with the past, with tradition, with the old ways of doing things.
When you are faced with a new situation it is often best to imagine that you know nothing and that you need to start learning all over again. Clearing your head of everything you thought you knew, even your most cherished ideas, will give you the mental space to be educated by your present experience - the best school of all.
Success makes us lazy and complacent.
Do not waste time on things you cannot change or influence. Just keep moving. Force past it. Distract yourself with something else.
By constantly adapting and changing your style, you will avoid the pitfalls of your previous wars. Attack problems from new angles.
#3 Do Not Lose Your Presence of Mind
There’s a danger of responding emotionally, with fear, depression, or frustration. Keep your presence of mind. Resist the emotional pull of the moment, staying decisive, confident, and aggressive no matter what hits you. Learn to detach yourself from the chaos of the battlefield.
Increase your capacity of dealing with the unexpected.
Once the engagement begins, hesitation and carefulness need to end. Our greatest weakness is losing heart, doubting ourselves, becoming unnecessarily cautious. Being more careful is not what we need; that is just a screen for our fear of conflict and of making a mistake.
In moments of turmoil and trouble, you must force yourself to be more determined.
Hitchcock was outwardly pleasant - he could afford to pretend to listen - but inside he was totally unmoved. Your relaxed manner will prove contagious to other people, making them easier to manage. Preparation is key; let people think that your Buddha-like detachment comes from some mysterious source. The less they understand you the better.
Expose yourself to conflict. Patton made a point of visiting the front lines, exposing himself needlessly to danger. It’s better to confront your fears, let them come to the surface, than to ignore them or tamp them down.
Be self-reliant. To get things done, rely on yourself.
In the words of the ancients, you should make decisions within the space of seven breaths.
Never let yourself get angry or frustrated.
Crowd out feelings of panic by focusing on simple tasks. When circumstances scare us, our imagination tends to take over, filling our minds with endless anxieties. You need to gain control of your imagination. Force the mind to concentrate on something relatively simple - a calming ritual a repetitive task that you are good at.
Unintimidate yourself. Instead of letting Stalin intimidate him, he forced himself to see the man as he was: fat, ugly, unimaginative. He faced up to Stalin talking to him normally and straightforwardly. If, without being aggressive or bazen, ou showed no fear, h would generally leave you alone.
Develop Fingerspitzengefuehl. Get your mind into the habit of making lightning-quick decisions, trusting your fingertip feel.
Good pilots do not waste time worrying about what they cannot control.
#4 Create a Sense of Urgency and Desperation
The only way to change is through action and outside pressure.
A sense of urgency comes from a powerful connection to the present.
You may see a fallback plan as a blessing - but in fact it is a curse. It divides you. Because you think you have options, you never involve yourself deeply enough in one thing to do it thoroughly, and you never quite get what you want. Sometimes you need to run your ships aground, burn them, and leave yourself just one option. Get rid of your safety net.
Common sense will not accomplish great things. Simply become insane and desperate.
Try to get as much done as possible in the shortest time. The illusion of limitless time, and a consequent lack of seriousness about daily life. Your days are numbered. Will you pass them half awake and halfhearted or will you live with a sense of urgency? There is always the niggling thought that we could accomplish so much more. We waste so much time.
Chinese strategist Sun-tzu came to believe that listening to speeches, no matter how rousing, was too passive an experience to have an enduring effect.
Stake everything on a single throw.
It is better to take on one daunting challenge, even one that others think foolish.
Act before you are ready. It is sometimes better to act before you think you are ready.
Make it “you against the world”. A fighting spirit needs a little edge, some anger and hatred to fuel it.
Keep yourself restless and unsatisfied. Napoleon worked eighteen to twenty-hour days. He would go without sleep for several days. He never let himself rest, he was never satisfied. When we are tired it is often because we are bored.
Take a risk and your body and mind will respond with a rush of energy. Make risk a constant practice, never let yourself settle down.
Reversal - always try to lower your enemy’s sense of urgency.
#5 Avoid the Snares of Groupthink
If you are too authoritarian, they will resent you and rebel in silent ways. If you are too easy-going, they will revert to natural selfishness, and you will lose control. Create a sense of participation, but do not fall into Groupthink. Make yourself look like a paragon of fairness, but never relinquish unity of command.
Any army is like a horse, in that it reflects the temper and the spirit of it’s rider. If there is uneasiness and an uncertainty, it transmits itself though the reigns, and the horse feels uneasy and uncertain. Vagueness at the top turns into confusion and lethargy at the bottom. Everything starts at the top.
Marshall got along with other officers yet was quietly forceful.
Marshall exuded authority but never yelled and never challenged men frontally.
Divided leadership is a recipe for disaster. Work behind the scenes; make the group feel involved in your decisions. Cultivate the image as a delegator, a fair and democratic leader.
#6 Segment your Forces
Critical aspects of warfare are speed and adaptability.
Decentralizing is army is such a way as to enable its parts to operate independently for a limited period of time.
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
Allow for a margin of chaos and uncertainty.
Separate to live, unite to fight. Napoleon
Make fluidity your goal.
After each campaign or training exercise, the staff would rigorously examine itself and it’s performance.
They were judged by the results of their actions, not on how those results were achieved.
Wise generals set nothing in stone.
#7 Transform your War into a Crusade
Get them to think less about themselves and more about the group.
Lead from the front: let your soldiers see you i the trenches, making sacrifices for the cause (recruiting).
The way to get soldiers to work together and maintain moral is to make them feel part of a group that is fighting for a worthy cause.
Unite troops around a cause. Make them fight for an idea. Have some kind of enemy to hate.
Lead from the front. Your troops must see you leading from the front, sharing their dangers and sacrifices - taking the cause as seriously as they do. The higher the rank the greater the effect of the example.
Play on their emotions. An emotional appeal needs a setup: lower their defenses, and make them bond as group, by putting on a show, entertaining them, telling them a story. Have a sense of drama.
Mix harshness and kindness. Balance punishment and reward. Make your soldiers compete to please you.
Be ruthless with grumblers. As fast as you can, you must isolate them and get rid of them.
Personal example is the best way to set the proper tone and build morale.
Lombardi oozed confidence - no shoults, no demands.
Unlike other coaches, Lombardi explained what he was doing.
Napoleon rarely showed anger. He treated them well but never spoiled them. Rewards for always for merit. Hold yourself back, create a little space around yourself; you are warm yet with a touch of distance.
#8 Pick Your Battles Carefully
Know your limits and pick your battles carefully. Sometimes it’s better to wait, to undermine your enemies covertly rather then hitting them straight on.
The more you want the prize, the more you must compensate by examining what getting it will take. Save yourself unnecessary battles and live to fight another day.
Abundance makes us rich in dreams, but it makes us poor in reality.
Warriors focus on what they do have, the strengths that they do possess and that they must use creatively. Play for the long term.
#9 Turn the Tables
By playing weak you can seduce your aggressive enemies to comes at you full throttle.
Aggression is deceptive: it inherently hides weakness. Aggressors cannot control their emotions.
By staying silent under attack he would goad them into going too far (nothing is more infuriating than engaging with someone and getting no response) and ending up shrill and irrational.
Patience. It allows us to sniff out opportunities to time a counterblow that will catch the enemy by surprise.
Stay calm while your opponent gets frustrated and irritable. Try to pretend that you are calm and quiet with no urgent need to end the battle.
Do not be intimidated by the “barbarian” types; they are in fact weak nd are easily swayed and deceived.
Your greatest danger is the impulse to overreact.
Your own weakness can become a strength if you play it right; with a little clever manipulation, you can always turn things around.
#10 - Create a Threatening Presence
Create an impression that you are more powerful than you are. Build up a reputation that you’re a little crazy. Uncertainty is sometimes better than overt threat: if you opponents are never sure what messing you will cost.
Build a reputation of someone tough. Someone worthy of respect and a little fear.
Become adept at deception, manipulation appearances and their perceptions of you.
Mix audacity with unpredictability and unorthodoxy and act boldly in moments of weakness or danger.
Send them a message through a third party or revealing it indirectly through action is much more effective. Keep the threat veiled; they will have to imagine the rest.
A strategist never pits strength against strength; instead he probes the enemy’s weaknesses.
#11 - Trade Space for Time
Retreat in the face of a strong enemy is a sign not of weakness but of strength. Buy yourself valuable time to recover, think and gain perspective. By refusing to fight, you infuriate them and feed their arrogance. Sometimes you can accomplish most by doing nothing.
Retreat must never be an end in itself; at some point you have to turn around and fight.
#12 - Lose Battles But Win the War
The greatest dangers come from the unexpected. Think in terms of campaign, not individual battles.
The only thing that really matters: victory in the end, the achievement of greater goals, lasting power. Small victories had a greater strategic purpose.
In the grand strategy you look beyond the moment, beyond your immediate battles and concerns. You concentrate instead on what you want to achieve down the line. Controlling the temptation to react to events as they happen, you determine each of your actions according to your ultimate goals. You think in terms not of individual battles but of a campaign.
Aristotle learned the power of controlling his emotions, seeing things dispassionately, thinking ahead to the consequences of his actions.
Visualize yourself fulfilling this destiny in glorious details. Begin with a clear, detailed, purposeful goal in mind, one rooted in reality. Contemplate them day in and day out, and imagine how it will feel to reach them and what reaching them will look like. Clearly visualizing them this way will turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Clear long-term objectives give direction to all of your actions, large and small. Important decisions become easier to make.
Ignore the conventional wisdom about what you should or shouldn’t not be doing.
Be patient enough to plot several steps ahead.
Nothing in life happens in isolation; everything is related to everything else and has a broader context.
Control your animal nature and think before you act.
Calm detachment. Keep your perspective in the heat of the battle.
The first step is to think beyond the immediate battle.
Think deeply in all directions before launching the campaign.
Force yourself to widen your view, to take in more of the world around you, to see things for what they are and for how they may play out in the future, not for how you wish them to be.
Keep sensitive antennae attuned to the politics of any situation. Politics is the art of promoting and protecting our own interests. Being political means understanding people - seeing through their eyes.
Rein in your emotions, and maintain a sense of realism.
They plan ahead as best as they can, see far and wide, but when it comes time to move ahead, they move.
#13 Know Your Enemy
A friendly front will let you watch them closely and mine them for information. Beware of projecting your own emotions and mental habits onto them.
You must b shrewd about not believing easily things not in accord with reason.
Every individual is like an alien culture. You must get inside his or her way of thinking. Be submissive so that he will trust you and you will thereby learn about his true situation. Accept his ideas and respond to his affairs as if you were twins.
Metternich had a way of listening attentively, making apt comments, even complimenting Napoleon on his strategic insights.
Clear knowledge of those around you - the ability to read people like a book. Great students of human nature and superior readers of men. People emit signals that reveal their intentions and deepest desires. Drop your self-interest and see people for who they are, divorced from your desires, you will become more sensitive to their signals.
Let go of one’s ego, to submerge oneself temporarily in the other person’s mind. Do not ask too many questions, the trick is to get people to relax and open up without prodding.
#14 - Blitzkrieg Strategy
Striking first, before your opponents have time to think or prepare, will make them emotional, unbalanced, and prone to error.
Ancient Chinese strategy of slow-slow, quick-quick.
Men are most terrified by the unknown and unpredictable.
Prepare yourself before any action.
The unanticipated blow that makes the biggest impact.
Lulling the other side with bland banter. Then, with the deadline for the end of the talks approaching, he would suddenly hit them with a list of demands.
An army that moves quickly has a higher morale. Velocity creates a sense of vitality.
Make such decisive action as dramatic as possible: a moment of quiet and suspense on the stage before you make your startling entrance.
You must be slow in deliberation and swift in execution. - Napoleon
#15 - Control the Dynamic / Forcing Strategies
Recognize the struggle for control in all aspects of life, and never be taken in by those who claim they are not interested in control.
You must master the art of moving the other side life pieces on a chessboard, with purpose and direction.
Luring them onto terrain that is unfamiliar to them and suited to you, playing to your strengths.
Control can b aggressive or passive.
One who excels at warfare compels men and is not compelled by others.
You must have a touch of madness.
Shift the terrain. If it’s about money, shift it to something moral.
The worst dynamic in war, and in life, is the stalemate.
Control yourself and your emotions.
#16 - Hit Them Where It Hurts / The Center of Gravity Strategy
Hitting them there will inflict disproportionate pain. Find what the other side most cherishes and protects - that is where you must strike.
Look at the same problem from a different angle.
Power depends on balance and support; so look at what is holding your enemy up, and remember that what holds him up can also make him fall.
In any interaction with people you must train yourself to focus on their strength, the source of their power, what it is that gives them their critical support.
#17 - Defeat them in Detail / The Divide-and-Conquer Strategy
Do not be intimidated by their appearance; instead look at the parts that make up the whole. Look for the joints and links. Turn a large problem into small, eminently defeatable parts.
You must work to make the enemy divide its forces and then defeat these smaller forces one-by-one - “in detail” as the military say.
Fight the smallest force first.
A divided household falls.
You must first separate them from whatever ties them to the past and makes them resist change. To make people join you, separate them from their past.
Cut people off from their group- make them feel alienated, alone and unprotected - and you weaken them enormously.
Weaken them by creating as much division in their ranks as possible, Leaders function poorly when they lose their support among the people.
Establish yourself as the center of power; individuals must know they need to complete for your approval.
Better to rotate our stars, occasionally making each one fall. Bring in people with different viewpoints and encourage them to fight it out. You can justify this as a healthy form of democracy, but the effect is that while those below you fight to be heard, you rule.
Hitchcock kept all the departments a little out of the loop. No one could bypass him; every decision went through him.
The divide and rule strategy is invaluable in trying to influence people verbally. Start by seeming to take your opponent’s side on some issue, occupying their flank. Once there, however, create doubt about some part of their argument, tweaking and diverting it. THis will lower their resistance and maybe create a little inner conflict about a cherished idea or belief. That conflict will aken them, making them vulnerable to further suggestion and guidance.
Always divide up the issue at hand, first placing yourself in a central position, then proceeding down the line, killing off your problems one by one.
#18 - Expose and Attack Your Opponent’s Soft Flank - The Turning Strategy
Distract your opponent’s attention to the front, then attack them from the side, where they least expect it.
Seeming to engage the enemy frontally; meanwhile he would sneak the other half to the side or rear.
Go for their flank, their vulnerable side.
Most people advance more or less directly, attempting to overpower their opponents. But unless they kill the foes they beat this way, they are merely creating long-term enemies who harbor deep resentment and will eventually make trouble.
Behave more gently, though, and your enemy may become your best follower.
Instead of attacking them frontally and engaging them directly in battle, he would take their side, support their causes, give them gifts, charm them with words and favors.
Disarm them and make them your all; you can decide later whether to keep them on your side or exact revenge. Take the fight out of people through strategic acts of kindness, generosity, and charm.
Never reveal your intentions or goals; instead use charm, pleasant conversation, humor and flattery.
At first he would seem to go along with their ideas, would even encourage them to take things further.
#19 - Envelop the Enemy / Annihilation Strategy
Envelop your opponents - create relentless pressure on them from all sides. The best encirclements are psychological - you have surrounded their minds.
The greater danger almost always comes from the panic and confusion within - so make them feel surrounded.
Generate an impression as a relentless foe who would leave no gaps for the enemy to sneak through.
#20 - Maneuver them Into Weakness / Ripening-for-the-Sickle Strategy
Do not burden yourself with commitments that will limit your actions.
Take the news with surprising calm and simply make adjustments.
Napoleon not only stayed cool, he seemed oddly excited by these sudden twists of fortune. Somehow he could discern opportunities in them that were invisible to everyone else.
A superior strategist could create his own luck - through calculation, careful planning, and staying open to change.
He had anticipated so many possible problems that he could come up with a rapid answer to any of them.
Quick adjustments.
Nothing ever happens just as you expect it to. Keep things loose and adjustable.
Politicas is all about positioning.
Room to maneuver and the ability to channel chaos and confusion into the creative process.
The solution is to plan, to have a clear idea what you want, then put yourself in open space, and give yourself options to work with.
Maneuver rather than brute force.
#21 - Negotiate While Advancing / The Diplomatic-War Strategy
Use appeals of fairness and morality as a cover to advance your position.
If you are weak, use negotiations to buy yourself time, to delay battle until you are ready; be conciliatory not to be nice but to advance your position.
Do not worry about your reputation or about creating distrust. It is amazing how quickly people will forget your broken promises when you are strong and in a position to offer them something in their self-interest.
Give the appearance of power; being the center of attention.
If you are weak and ask for little, little is what you will get. But if you act strong, making firm, even outrageous demands, you will create the opposite impression: people will think that your confidence must be based upon something real. You will earn respect, which in turn will translate into leverage. Once you are able to establish yourself in a stronger position, you can take this further by refusing to compromise, making it clear that you are willing to walk away from the table -and effective form of coercion.
Let us always carry the sword in one hand and the olive branch in the other, always ready to negotiate but negotiating only while advancing. -Metternich
#22 - Know How to End Things / The Exit Strategy
The art of ending things well is knowing when to stop, never going so far that you exhaust yourself or create bitter enemies. End on the right note, with energy and flair. The height of strategic wisdom is to avoid all conflicts and entanglements from which there are no realistic exits.
Make a distinction between gamble and risk. Taking a risk is essential, gambling is foolhardy.
Short-term defeat is better than long-term disaster. Wisdom is knowing when to end.
Lyndon B. Johnson had an incredible memory for faces and names: if he happened to meet the same person twice, he could recall everything he or she had said the first time around, and he often impressed strangers by knowing someone who knew them. He listened intently and was always careful to leave people with the feeling that they would see him again. We would talk with the locals as if he had nothing else to do. On leaving he would make sure to buy something. He had the gift of creating a connection.
From his hospital bed he dictated letters to his rivals in the race. He congratulated them for running a great campaign; he also described his own victory as a fluke.
He immediately worked to win these men over, whether with charm, with meaningful gestures, or with clever appeals to their self-interest.
Persuasion is ultimately a process of the emotions.
You can become the victim of your own success, letting victory seduce you into going too far, creating hard-bitten enemies, winning the battle but losing the political game after it. Greed and delusions of grandeur will make you go too far.
A conversation or story that goes on too long always ends badly. Overstaying your welcome, boring people with your presence, is the deepest failing: you should leave them wanting more of you, not less. bring it to an end a moment before the other side expects it. Always best to end with energy and flair, on a high note.
#23 - Unconventional (Dirty) Warfare / Weave a Seamless Blend of Fact and Fiction / Misperception Strategies
Nothing stays new for long. You must use indirect methods to combat indirection, fight fire with fire, even at the cost of going dirty yourself. To try to stay clean out of a sense of morality is to risk defeat.
Make morality a strategic weapon.
The best deceptions are based upon ambiguity, mixing fact and fiction. Control people’s perceptions of reality and you control them.
There is no moral taint in using deception. It is simply an added weapon to create an advantage, much as some animals use camouflage.
Everything a person does in the social realm is a sign of some sort.
Make your deceptions more conscious and skillful.
The appearance of weakness often brings out people’s aggressive side, making them drop strategy and prudence for an emotional an violent attack.
The front of virtue, honesty, and uprightness is often the perfect cover in a political world.
You should present a face to the world that promise the opposite of what you are actually planning.
It is always good to be able to blend into the social landscape, to avoid calling attention to yourself unless you choose to do so. Mimick their belief system.
The more deeply you can make them dig for their information, the more deeply they will delude themselves.
You must use deception with utmost caution.
#24 - Take the Line of Least Expectation / The Ordinary-Extraordinary Strategy
Surprise them, chaos and unpredictability.
First do something ordinary and conventional to fix their image of you, then hit them with the extraordinary.
Never rely on an unorthodox strategy that worked before - it is conventional the second time around,
War has always been ruthless; nothing stays unconventional for long. It is either innovate or die.
You must fight the psychological aging process even more than the physical one, for a mind full of stratagems, tricks and fluid maneuvers will keep you young. Make a point of breaking the habits you have developed, of acting in a way that is contrary to how you have operated in the past.
Make every action unexpected. An enemy that is caught by surprise loses its discipline and sense of security. Surprise takes constant adaption,creativity, and a mischievous pleasure in playing the trickster.
Be a moving target.
His irritating antics and public taunts - a form of dirty warfare.
The way to be truly unorthodox is to imitate no one, to fight and operate according to your own rhythms, adapting strategies to your idiosyncrasies, not the other way around.
Once anyone succeeds at something with a specific strategy or method, it is quickly adopted by others and becomes hardened into principle.
It is when the tide is against us that we must forget the books.
#25 - Occupy the Moral High Ground / The Righteous Strategy
By questioning your enemies’ motives and making them appear evil.
Never assume that the justice of your cause is self-evident; publicize and promote. Position yourself as the underdog, the victim, the martyr. Learn to inflict guilt as a moral weapon.
Portray the enemy as authoritarian, hypocritical and power hungry.
You quote your enemies’ own words back at them to make your attacks seem fair. You create a moral taint that sticks to them like glue.
Resort to exaggeration, picking out and emphasising cases in which the enemy are heavy-handed. Don’t paint a balanced picture; ignoring the ways in which the enemy is good. Your goal is not to be fair. Do not be subtle.
#26 - Deny them Targets / The Strategy of the Void
Give your enemies no target to attack, be dangerous but elusive and invisible, then watch as they chase you into the void.
Make your attack small but relentless.
The power of guerrilla warfare is essentially psychological.
Your goal is maximum disorder and unfamiliarity.
#27 - Seem to Work for the Interests of Others While Furthering Your Own / The Alliance Strategy
Create a constantly shifting network of alliances, getting others to compensate for your deficiencies, do your dirty work, fight your wars, spend energy pulling you forward.
Give them gifts, offer them friendship, help them in time of need - all to blind them to reality and put them under subtle obligation to you.
Keep yourself free of negative entanglements.
Sensible men when their enemies attack them, divert them to someone better able to defend them than they are themselves.
It is a mistake to become dependent on one person. Our emotions lead us astray.
The perfect allies are those who give you something you cannot get on your own.
Look for allies to whom you in turn have something to offer as well, creating a link of self-interest.
He would work on himself to stay calm and rational, squelching any desire either to please or to run away from confrontation. His refusal to take sides made it easier to open up to him.
Interact and engage with people while staying autonomous. You must deftly avoid false alliances by taking provocative actions that make it impossible for people to entrap you.
You ability to separate friendship from need.
Understand that all of us constantly use other people to help advance ourselves. There is no shame in this, not need to ever feel guilty. Now should we take it personally when we realize that someone else is using us; using people is a human and social necessity.
You emotional needs is what your personal life is for, and you must leave them behind when you enter the area of social battle. Alliances infected with emotions, or with ties of loyalty and friendship, are nothing but trouble.
Think of your alliances as stepping-stones toward a goal. When this particular river is crossed, you will leave them behind you.
Sentiment has no place in this strategy.
Keep your options open.
Crawford would often make alliances with up-and -coming young talent who valued a relationship with the star.
Learn to recognize who can best advance your interests at that moment.
Begin by seeming to help another person in some cause of fight. Now you have put them under a subtle obligation.
Play the mediator, the center around which other powers pivot. Merely by assuming a central position, you can wield tremendous power.
Self-interest rules the world.
#28 - Give Your Rivals Enough Rope to Hang Themselves With / The One-Upmanship Strategy
Work to instill doubts and insecurities in such rivals, getting them to think too much and act defensively. Bait them with subtle challenges that get under their skin, triggering an overreaction, an embarrassing mistake.
Make them hand themselves through their own self-destructive tendencies, leaving you blameless and clean.
You must try first to gather intelligence on them.
Begin by doing something to pick the underlying wound.
People are invariably a mix of good and bad qualities, strengths and weaknesses.
Reducing things to simpler terms makes them easier for us to handle, but because it is not related to reality, it also means we are contantly misunderstanding and misreading.
Get under their skin.
Work covertly getting other people, the media, or simple rumor to do the job for you.
Avoid the temptation to gloat.
To win without your victim’s knowledge how it happened or just what you have done is the height of unconventional warfare.
Never interfere with an enemy that is in the process of committing suicide. -Napoleon
Your goal is to get your rivals to put their ambition and selfishness on display.
Crawford had a huge capacity to absorb and deal with insults and disrespect.
You will often find yourself nursing the desire to revenge yourself on those who have mistreated you. The temptation is to be direct, to say something honest and mean, to let people know how you feel - but words are ineffective here.
It is more important to secure good feelings and maintain appearances. Wise courtiers always seem to be paragons of civilized behaviour.
#29 - Take Small Bites - The Fait Accompli Strategy
If you seem too ambitious, you stir up resentment in other people; overt power grabs and sharp rises to the top are dangerous, creating envy, distrust, and suspicion. Take small bites, swallow little territories, playing upon people’s relatively short attention spans. Stay under the radar and they won’t see your moves. Before people realize it, you have accumulated an empire.
Supremely patient and with an eye on his goal, he took one small bite at a time.
Do not be tempted to to try and take anything large; bite off more than you can chew and you will be consumed with problems.
#30 - Penetrate Their Minds - Communication Strategies
Learn to infiltrate your ideas behind enemy lines, sending messages through little details, luring people into coming to the conclusion you desire and into thinking they’ve gotten there by themselves. At all cost, avoid language that is static, preachy and overly personal.
If Hitchcock liked what you did, he said nothing. If he didn’t he looked like he was going to throw up.
The greatest evil was stagnation and complacency.
The need to manage appearances, to play upon people’s belief systems, and sometimes to take decidedly amoral action.
A mind captivated by a story is relatively undefended and open to suggestion.
He left his writing open-ended, never telling people exactly what to do.
He would compliment his listeners, feeding their vanity by praising their ideas in an offhand way. He would never directly say anything negative.
He began by tearing himself down and building others up, a way of defusing his listeners’ natural defensiveness, imperceptibly lowering their walls.
You must not preach; instead make your listeners connect the dots and come to the conclusion on their own.
Silence can be used to great effect: by keeping quiet, not responding, you say a lot; by not mentioning something that people expect you to talk about.
Silence, innuendo, loaded details, deliberate blunders…
Deeds and results do not lie.
Communication that does not advance its cause or produce a desired result is just self-indulgent talk.
#31 - Destroy From Within - The Inner-Front Strategy
By infiltrating your opponents’ ranks, working from within to bring them down, you give them nothing to see or react against…
You have no sentimental attachment to the group.
Rather than trying to penetrate defenses, infiltrate them.
Befriend your enemies, worming your way into their hearts and minds.
For a more immediate effect, you can try a sudden act of kindness and generosity that gets people to lower their defenses.
Keep your troops satisfied, engaged in their work, and united by their cause. #32 - Dominate While Seeming To Submit - The Passive-Aggression Strategy
Aggression behind a compliant, even loving exterior. Seem to go along with people, offering no resistance. You are noncommittal, even a little helpless.
Just make sure you have disguised your aggression enough that you can deny it exists. Do it right and they will feel guilty for accusing you.
The use of nonviolence.
Height of strategic wisdom to prey upon people’s latent guilt and liberal ambivalence by making yourself look benign, gentle even passive. This will disarm them and getpart their defenses.
Metternich listened with his usual attentive air, agreeing and nodding. He presented himself as compliant, going along with ideas he actually disagreed with to the extreme. He flattered personal qualities in the czar.
Hide his aggression to the point where it is invisible.
Play up your weakness, your crushed spirit, your desire to be friends - an emotional ploy with great power to distract. You must be something of an actor.
It is never to wise to SEEM too eager for power, wealth, or fame. Disguise your maneuvers for power. Be passive and make others come to you.
People tend to take criticism far too personally.
Squash any feelings of guilt. You need to stay calm.
#33 - Uncertainty and Panic Through Acts of Terror / The Chain-Reaction Strategy
Cause maximum chaos and provoking the other side into desperate overreaction.
The victims of terror must not succumb to fear or even anger, they must stay balanced. One’s rationality is the last line of defense.
Victory is gained not by the number killed but by the number frightened.
People are crafty, resourceful and adaptable creatures.
A violent temper or outlandish act, volcanic and startling, can also create the illusion of power, disguising actual weaknesses and insecurities.
Occupy the moral high ground.
Patient resolve and the refusal to overreact will serve as their own deterrents.