Notes on Mētis: Preface to Greene’s 48 Laws of Power

Greene’s 48 Laws of Power is a modern manual of Mētis. I read reviews of this book on Amazon and a common complaint is that you “cannot apply the laws as they are too abstract” or whatever other reason they can think of. I think readers who espouse this view haven’t read the most important part of Greene’s book: the preface. In the preface Greene lays out a number of basic skills that a person needs before they are able to apply the 48 laws. The basic skills are:

• Mastery of emotions, especially anger.
• The ability to think historically about past, present, and future.
• The ability to deceive others.
• The ability to acquire patience.
• A perceptual and decision making process based on circumstances and cost.
• The ability to understand people.
• Strategic indirectness as your guiding philosophy.

Without forging those basic skills Greene states you cannot apply the 48 Laws of Power. So with that, here are my notes from the preface of ‘The 48 Laws of Power’ that will lead into a series of posts with the basic skills notes.

Preface

It is dangerous to seem to be to power hungry. You need to be subtle.

The world resembles the power dynamic in old aristocratic courts.

• They are formed around person in power.
• Courtiers had to be subtle.
• It was courtier versus courtier with the aim of winning the masters favor. The had to choose between moving upward and protecting themselves.
• Never ending game of constant vigilance and tactical thinking.

Today we must appear fair, but if we are too fair our opponents will destroy us.

The world imagines itself as fair, but underneath a number of bad emotions brew.

To attain heights of power you need to:

• master arts of indirection.
• learn to seduce, charm, deceive, and subtly outmaneuver opponents.

You need to bend people to your will without them noticing. If they don’t realise, they will neither resent nor resist you.

“Non-player” power strategists

There are a number of people who claim they are not in the game of power. They are still after power. You can recognise them by the way they flaunt their moral qualities. These “non player” power strategies are the following:

(1) People who believe playing power games are immoral.

• Beware these people. They are displaying weakness and lack of power as a moral virtue.

(2) People who believe in equality

• Not everyone is equal.

(3) People who believe you should be honest and straightforward at all times, rather than secretive and deceitful.

• Being honest all the time will hurt and insult many people. They may choose to fight back.
• Honest is also a form of power strategy. A type of coercive persuasion.

(4) People who are naive.

• Can be a power strategy.

If the world is a court there is no opting out. It will render you powerless.

If game of power is inescapable, better to be an artist than a bungler. It will help people around you.

Learning the game of power

Learning requires a certain way of looking at the world. A shifting of perspective.

There are a number of basic skills required to apply the laws of power.

The notes from these basic skills shall be separated into other blog posts to follow down the line.

~ by D on August 16, 2008.