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A review by lpm100
The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
3.0
Book Review
48 Laws of Power
"Nice guys finish last."
Of the book:
-48 chapters over 431 pages; average of 9 pages per chapter
-Greene and Elffers absolutely INSIST on using the ###extremely aggravating###(!) Wade Giles code--and yet 99.9% of foreigners who learn Chinese learn the internally consistent Hanyu Pinyin
-The format is somewhere between mildly interesting and VERY distracting:
∆There are lots of {anecdotal stories} and {proverbs} written in red in the outer margins of the book, and I believe that they are placed there because they are optional.
∆There are {word image inserts} that are several sentences formatted in an odd way that are meant to induce the reader to visualize.
-There are regular themes:
¶Observance of the law (a historical figure successfully uses the law);
¶Transgression of the law (a historical figure goes against the law and it ends badly);
¶Reversal (generalized exceptions to the law);
¶Keys to power (generalized recapitulation of how this might work in your case);
¶Authority sections (identify the basis source of the chapter);
¶Interpretation (an elucidation of either and observance or transgression of the law)
*******
A lot of this book draws on the lessons of several thousand years of statecraft in different places, mainly including China (during the Warring States Period and beyond) / the Roman empire/ Greece (during its Warring States Period). It also has a fair bit of French and Italian intrigue.
The book is an expanded advocacy of Pragmatism/Realism (as opposed to Idealism), and this is a very old argument that has independently regenerated itself in MANY disparate cultures.
But really, it brings up all sorts of secondary big questions.
FIRST BIG QUESTION:
How much of these things are really of concern to Everyman?
This book is a very thoughtful as a historical - intellectual exercise, but in reality: Most people in the world are not bargaining from a position of great strength, nor are they fighting military battles / building empires.
Hence: one may be able to take a few of these lessons, but only the Bill Gates / Warren Buffetts of the world will be able to use all 48. (And that's because it's really only people like him that have enough power to move other human beings around like chess pieces on a board.)
Only in the rarest of cases can you move people in this way if you are a working square
Additionally, there are specific examples of individuals who have not quite been lost to history that played "medium" to "long" cons-- but only if you are a professional con artist (or a politician) is the length of the con an issue of concern to you. (Greene does give several of examples of successful short cons.)
And some of the cases, the advice that the author gives are frankly absurd: in law 34, he says that a person should act like a king in order to be treated like one.
What happens in the case that you are a black person moving within groups of people that just don't particularly care for black people (and there are many of them out there)?
Do you just go into a masjid full of Arabs and expect to be taken seriously? (As a rule, Arabs do not like black people, either in the United States or the Middle East.)
Do you walk into a study hall of Black Hat Jews and expect to be able to take the amud like any one of them? (As a rule, Black Hat Jews do not like black people, either in the United States or Israel)
Examples of this could be multiplied at will, but I think the reader gets the point.
SECOND BIG QUESTION:
What if everybody thought in the extremely Machiavellian way that this book does?
On the one hand, if you want to be a simple and honest person and not try to turn every single relationship / transaction into a game of four dimensional chess, then you are helping to make the world a better place in your own naive way.
But on the other hand, at ALL scales of reality: It is absolutely true that people who can outfox other people end up taking a lot more out of life. And by being "simple and honest," you do set yourself up to have your lunch eaten by somebody else/become someone else's lunch.
THIRD BIG QUESTION:
Why does the author have to decide on 48 rules? Why could there not have been a dozen rules (which is a more manageable number).
The Jordan Peterson Book "12 Rules" started out as several dozen rules and he finally had to narrow/consolidate his list in order to have a workable number.
FOURTH BIG QUESTION:
It is said that a crust partaken is preferable to a feast taken in anxiety.
Once you do all of this maneuvering to get what you want, it seems like you would have to be in a constant state of anxiety to keep what you have gotten by hook or by crook. (And in all of these many specific examples, people are on top one minute and fall just as far the next. But a person who was a simple farmer or shop owner or peddler could be what he was all the way until the end of his working life.)
Couldn't one avoid all of these dramatic changes in position by simply seeking a middling existence?
What's wrong with just being honest on every level?
I have some relatives who went to work everyday and ended up with a beautiful retirement and a paid for house and others who lived pillar to post and whose dream of Easy Money was the ship that was always at a distance and never sailed in with the tide.
Ever.
FIFTH BIG QUESTION:
For a society/civilization: Is there a stopping point for how much misdirection a person / society wants to use? At some point, the efforts to pull the wool over the eyes of the mark becomes primary and delivering on any actual good /product becomes a distant second.
China is probably the most heavily sourced example for this book, and they are/have been for THOUSANDS of years masters at misdirection of ALL types.
In business. (But, all of the best car companies are Japanese and the highest tech manufacturers are Swiss/German / American.)
In political theater. (And this has made them hostile enemies of their neighbors for a very long time.)
In population/information control. (And yet their best people just leave the country and become rich somewhere else.)
And countless other ways-- if there's a way to deceive someone, they will do it at the highest level and 10 steps ahead of everyone else.
And ultimately, over all of the many dynasty collapses and ongoing famines over thousands of years...... what good has it done them?
For an individual: if you spend so much time trying to be slick that that is what everyone knows of you, then it's easier to just avoid you altogether rather than figure out where any given person may stand in your machinations.
SIXTH BIG QUESTION:
What option would most people choose?
The most religious Jewish people are the vicious, cynical, corrupt, Machiavellian Haredim.
A person who wanted to recreate the political intrigues in this book of long dead people (or, of "Lord of the Flies") could just pay attention to present Haredi politics, and the general level of wickedness would far exceed anything that most people could imagine. (A lot of their nefarious plots would probably make *even* the First Emperor of China /Hanfeizi blush.)
But the thing is: both in Israel and the United states, most Jews are not religious. (Maybe 85%.) And so that is your answer to what path most Jewish people would choose, given the choice: they vote with their feet.
I find it more prudent to associate with the minor fraction of Modern Orthodox people--and that's really the only way to sidestep a lot of BlackHat ugliness.
So, that means I'm giving up 2/3 to 3/4 of the Orthodox world - - and the loss is every bit worth it.
SEVENTH BIG QUESTION:
How do we know that any of this is true?
-The author himself held about 65 different jobs before he decided to become a writer. And that was the one job at which he could succeed. (I might also mention that Noam Chomsky never held a real job but he has been very successful as an academic promoting ideas that exist nowhere on this planet.)
-The heaviest source of inspiration for this book was Gracian Baltasar. (That person was a monk who never had a woman or any offspring or held a job other than being a monk. There's a good reason that clergy are kept out of the affairs of government.)
Verdict:
If there is a synopsis of this book, it might be worth reading. But, the book as it is is too long to be worthwhile. Give it a miss.
48 Laws:
1. Never Outshine the Master
2. Never Put Too Much Trust in Friends, Learn How to Use Enemies
3. Conceal Your Intentions
4. Always Say Less Than Necessary
5. So Much Depends on Reputation – Guard It With Your Life
6. Court Attention at All Costs
7. Get Others to Do the Work for You, but Always Take the Credit
8. Make Other People Come to You – Use Bait if Necessary
9. Win Through Your Actions, Never Through Argument
10. Infection: Avoid the Unhappy and the Unlucky
11. Learn to Keep People Dependent on You
12. Use Selective Honesty and Generosity to Disarm Your Victim
13. When Asking for Help, Appeal to the Self-interests of Others, Never to Their Mercy or Gratitude
14. Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy
15. Crush Your Enemy Totally
16. Use Absence to Increase Respect and Honor
17. Keep Others in Suspended Terror: Cultivate an Air of Unpredictability
18. Do Not Build Fortresses to Protect Yourself – Isolation is Dangerous
19. Know Who You’re Dealing With – Don’t Offend the Wrong Person
20. Don’t Commit to Anyone
21. Play a Sucker to Catch a Sucker – Appear Dumber Than Your Mark
22. Use the Surrender Tactic: Transform Weakness Into Power
23. Concentrate Your Forces
24. Play the Perfect Courtier
25. Recreate Yourself
26. Keep Your Hands Clean
27. Create a Cult-like Following by Playing on People’s Need to Believe
28. Enter Action With Boldness
29. Plan All the Way to the End
30. Make Your Accomplishments Seem Effortless
31. Control the Options: Get Others to Play With the Cards You Deal
32. Play Into People’s Fantasies
33. Discover Each Man’s Thumbscrew
34. Be Royal in Your Own Fashion: Act Like a King to Be Treated Like One
35. Master the Art of Timing
36. Disdain Things You Cannot Have: Ignoring Them is the Best Revenge
37. Create Compelling Spectacles
38. Think as You Like, but Behave Like Others
39. Stir Up Waters to Catch Fish
40. Despise the Free Lunch
41. Avoid Stepping Into a Great Man’s Shoes
42. Strike the Shepherd, and the Sheep Will Scatter
43. Work on the Hearts and Minds of Others
44. Disarm and Infuriate With the Mirror Effect
45. Preach the Need for Change, but Never Reform Too Much at Once
46. Never Appear Too Perfect
47. Don’t Go Past the Mark You Aimed For: In Victory, Learn When to Stop
48. Assume Formlessness
48 Laws of Power
"Nice guys finish last."
Of the book:
-48 chapters over 431 pages; average of 9 pages per chapter
-Greene and Elffers absolutely INSIST on using the ###extremely aggravating###(!) Wade Giles code--and yet 99.9% of foreigners who learn Chinese learn the internally consistent Hanyu Pinyin
-The format is somewhere between mildly interesting and VERY distracting:
∆There are lots of {anecdotal stories} and {proverbs} written in red in the outer margins of the book, and I believe that they are placed there because they are optional.
∆There are {word image inserts} that are several sentences formatted in an odd way that are meant to induce the reader to visualize.
-There are regular themes:
¶Observance of the law (a historical figure successfully uses the law);
¶Transgression of the law (a historical figure goes against the law and it ends badly);
¶Reversal (generalized exceptions to the law);
¶Keys to power (generalized recapitulation of how this might work in your case);
¶Authority sections (identify the basis source of the chapter);
¶Interpretation (an elucidation of either and observance or transgression of the law)
*******
A lot of this book draws on the lessons of several thousand years of statecraft in different places, mainly including China (during the Warring States Period and beyond) / the Roman empire/ Greece (during its Warring States Period). It also has a fair bit of French and Italian intrigue.
The book is an expanded advocacy of Pragmatism/Realism (as opposed to Idealism), and this is a very old argument that has independently regenerated itself in MANY disparate cultures.
But really, it brings up all sorts of secondary big questions.
FIRST BIG QUESTION:
How much of these things are really of concern to Everyman?
This book is a very thoughtful as a historical - intellectual exercise, but in reality: Most people in the world are not bargaining from a position of great strength, nor are they fighting military battles / building empires.
Hence: one may be able to take a few of these lessons, but only the Bill Gates / Warren Buffetts of the world will be able to use all 48. (And that's because it's really only people like him that have enough power to move other human beings around like chess pieces on a board.)
Only in the rarest of cases can you move people in this way if you are a working square
Additionally, there are specific examples of individuals who have not quite been lost to history that played "medium" to "long" cons-- but only if you are a professional con artist (or a politician) is the length of the con an issue of concern to you. (Greene does give several of examples of successful short cons.)
And some of the cases, the advice that the author gives are frankly absurd: in law 34, he says that a person should act like a king in order to be treated like one.
What happens in the case that you are a black person moving within groups of people that just don't particularly care for black people (and there are many of them out there)?
Do you just go into a masjid full of Arabs and expect to be taken seriously? (As a rule, Arabs do not like black people, either in the United States or the Middle East.)
Do you walk into a study hall of Black Hat Jews and expect to be able to take the amud like any one of them? (As a rule, Black Hat Jews do not like black people, either in the United States or Israel)
Examples of this could be multiplied at will, but I think the reader gets the point.
SECOND BIG QUESTION:
What if everybody thought in the extremely Machiavellian way that this book does?
On the one hand, if you want to be a simple and honest person and not try to turn every single relationship / transaction into a game of four dimensional chess, then you are helping to make the world a better place in your own naive way.
But on the other hand, at ALL scales of reality: It is absolutely true that people who can outfox other people end up taking a lot more out of life. And by being "simple and honest," you do set yourself up to have your lunch eaten by somebody else/become someone else's lunch.
THIRD BIG QUESTION:
Why does the author have to decide on 48 rules? Why could there not have been a dozen rules (which is a more manageable number).
The Jordan Peterson Book "12 Rules" started out as several dozen rules and he finally had to narrow/consolidate his list in order to have a workable number.
FOURTH BIG QUESTION:
It is said that a crust partaken is preferable to a feast taken in anxiety.
Once you do all of this maneuvering to get what you want, it seems like you would have to be in a constant state of anxiety to keep what you have gotten by hook or by crook. (And in all of these many specific examples, people are on top one minute and fall just as far the next. But a person who was a simple farmer or shop owner or peddler could be what he was all the way until the end of his working life.)
Couldn't one avoid all of these dramatic changes in position by simply seeking a middling existence?
What's wrong with just being honest on every level?
I have some relatives who went to work everyday and ended up with a beautiful retirement and a paid for house and others who lived pillar to post and whose dream of Easy Money was the ship that was always at a distance and never sailed in with the tide.
Ever.
FIFTH BIG QUESTION:
For a society/civilization: Is there a stopping point for how much misdirection a person / society wants to use? At some point, the efforts to pull the wool over the eyes of the mark becomes primary and delivering on any actual good /product becomes a distant second.
China is probably the most heavily sourced example for this book, and they are/have been for THOUSANDS of years masters at misdirection of ALL types.
In business. (But, all of the best car companies are Japanese and the highest tech manufacturers are Swiss/German / American.)
In political theater. (And this has made them hostile enemies of their neighbors for a very long time.)
In population/information control. (And yet their best people just leave the country and become rich somewhere else.)
And countless other ways-- if there's a way to deceive someone, they will do it at the highest level and 10 steps ahead of everyone else.
And ultimately, over all of the many dynasty collapses and ongoing famines over thousands of years...... what good has it done them?
For an individual: if you spend so much time trying to be slick that that is what everyone knows of you, then it's easier to just avoid you altogether rather than figure out where any given person may stand in your machinations.
SIXTH BIG QUESTION:
What option would most people choose?
The most religious Jewish people are the vicious, cynical, corrupt, Machiavellian Haredim.
A person who wanted to recreate the political intrigues in this book of long dead people (or, of "Lord of the Flies") could just pay attention to present Haredi politics, and the general level of wickedness would far exceed anything that most people could imagine. (A lot of their nefarious plots would probably make *even* the First Emperor of China /Hanfeizi blush.)
But the thing is: both in Israel and the United states, most Jews are not religious. (Maybe 85%.) And so that is your answer to what path most Jewish people would choose, given the choice: they vote with their feet.
I find it more prudent to associate with the minor fraction of Modern Orthodox people--and that's really the only way to sidestep a lot of BlackHat ugliness.
So, that means I'm giving up 2/3 to 3/4 of the Orthodox world - - and the loss is every bit worth it.
SEVENTH BIG QUESTION:
How do we know that any of this is true?
-The author himself held about 65 different jobs before he decided to become a writer. And that was the one job at which he could succeed. (I might also mention that Noam Chomsky never held a real job but he has been very successful as an academic promoting ideas that exist nowhere on this planet.)
-The heaviest source of inspiration for this book was Gracian Baltasar. (That person was a monk who never had a woman or any offspring or held a job other than being a monk. There's a good reason that clergy are kept out of the affairs of government.)
Verdict:
If there is a synopsis of this book, it might be worth reading. But, the book as it is is too long to be worthwhile. Give it a miss.
48 Laws:
1. Never Outshine the Master
2. Never Put Too Much Trust in Friends, Learn How to Use Enemies
3. Conceal Your Intentions
4. Always Say Less Than Necessary
5. So Much Depends on Reputation – Guard It With Your Life
6. Court Attention at All Costs
7. Get Others to Do the Work for You, but Always Take the Credit
8. Make Other People Come to You – Use Bait if Necessary
9. Win Through Your Actions, Never Through Argument
10. Infection: Avoid the Unhappy and the Unlucky
11. Learn to Keep People Dependent on You
12. Use Selective Honesty and Generosity to Disarm Your Victim
13. When Asking for Help, Appeal to the Self-interests of Others, Never to Their Mercy or Gratitude
14. Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy
15. Crush Your Enemy Totally
16. Use Absence to Increase Respect and Honor
17. Keep Others in Suspended Terror: Cultivate an Air of Unpredictability
18. Do Not Build Fortresses to Protect Yourself – Isolation is Dangerous
19. Know Who You’re Dealing With – Don’t Offend the Wrong Person
20. Don’t Commit to Anyone
21. Play a Sucker to Catch a Sucker – Appear Dumber Than Your Mark
22. Use the Surrender Tactic: Transform Weakness Into Power
23. Concentrate Your Forces
24. Play the Perfect Courtier
25. Recreate Yourself
26. Keep Your Hands Clean
27. Create a Cult-like Following by Playing on People’s Need to Believe
28. Enter Action With Boldness
29. Plan All the Way to the End
30. Make Your Accomplishments Seem Effortless
31. Control the Options: Get Others to Play With the Cards You Deal
32. Play Into People’s Fantasies
33. Discover Each Man’s Thumbscrew
34. Be Royal in Your Own Fashion: Act Like a King to Be Treated Like One
35. Master the Art of Timing
36. Disdain Things You Cannot Have: Ignoring Them is the Best Revenge
37. Create Compelling Spectacles
38. Think as You Like, but Behave Like Others
39. Stir Up Waters to Catch Fish
40. Despise the Free Lunch
41. Avoid Stepping Into a Great Man’s Shoes
42. Strike the Shepherd, and the Sheep Will Scatter
43. Work on the Hearts and Minds of Others
44. Disarm and Infuriate With the Mirror Effect
45. Preach the Need for Change, but Never Reform Too Much at Once
46. Never Appear Too Perfect
47. Don’t Go Past the Mark You Aimed For: In Victory, Learn When to Stop
48. Assume Formlessness