“I have always believed,” Casanova later wrote, “that when a man gets it into his head to do something, and when he exclusively occupies himself in that design, he must succeed, whatever the difficulties.”

Book Summary — The 48 Laws of Power #2

Everything you need to know to thrive

This is the second summary (Laws 13–24) of The 48 Laws of Power. Read the first 12 laws here.

The 48 Laws of Power is a book of wisdom, a compilation of tactics, and a rich set of brilliantly tested ideas for thriving in any era. No matter how you feel about the dubious power plays that have occurred and the amoral instructions of this book, the fact is that they exist. The laws of this book you will either use or will experience being used against you.

“He who forgets the past is destined to repeat it.”

Let us stand on the shoulders of giants, therefore, and learn from 3,000 years of philosophies, legacies, statesmen, warriors and seducers.

Law 13 — When Asking for Help, Appeal to People’s Self-Interest, Never to their Mercy or Gratitude

• The past has no obligations.
• Gratitude is often a terrible burden. Appealing to past generosity subtly makes them feel guilty and puts them under obligation.
• A pragmatic person will always opt for the future over the past, regardless of any emotional appeals. Speak pragmatically to a pragmatic person.
• Most people will rarely act against their own self-interest.
• Do not confuse your needs with theirs
• If you make no appeal to his self-interest, he sees you as desperate or a waste of time.
• Understand the other person’s psychology — what is he concerned about? Social standing? Money?
• Get in the other person’s mind — see their needs and interests. Get rid of the screen of your own feelings that can obscure the truth.

Law 14 — Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy

• Develop the ability to suppress your thoughts in conversation. Always say less than necessary.
• Encourage others to talk endlessly about themselves — they inadvertently reveal their intentions and plans.
• Organise social gatherings with people whom you are interested in knowing — their guards will be down.
• You can get others to reveal truths about themselves by stirring up people’s emotions. Do this by contradicting them. They’ll say more than they intended to.
• On the other hand, give others false confessions, and you make them more likely to reveal their own secrets. Pretend to bare your soul.
• Information is critical to power. You must give out false information.

Law 15 — Crush your Enemy Totally

• Only one side can win and it must win totally.
• We have beaten them and they are humiliated; yet we nurture these resentful vipers who will one day kill us. It must be denied the chance to return to haunt us.
• Those who seek to achieve things should show no mercy — Kautilya, Indian philosopher
• They may be friendly but it is because they have no choice but to bide their time. Have no mercy.
• Do not wait for your enemies to show their cards. Never go halfway. Be wary.
• Reversal: Going too far can give them nothing to lose and create long-term resentment if you do not crush them totally. For example, the Treaty of Versailles, designed to make Germany as weak as possible, created German resentment towards the Western world, weakened Germany’s government and ultimately allowed for the rise of fascism in Germany after World War I.

Law 16 — Use Absence to Increase Respect and Honour

• Absence inflames, excites, and engages the emotions.
• Presence becomes common and ridiculous.
• The more you pursue, the less you are loved. You become too present, too accessible. You leave no room for their imagination and fancy.
• What withdraws us, what becomes scarce, suddenly seems to deserve our respect and honour.
• What stays too long, thundering us with its presence, makes us disdain it.
• Strong presence draws power and attention to you. But a point is reached when too much of it creates the opposite effect: the more you are seen and heard from, the more your value degrades. You become a habit and no matter how hard you try to be different, people respect you less and less.
• In the beginning, the lover’s absence stimulates your imagination. There is an aura of mystery. But this aura fades when you know too much — the imagination has no room to roam.
• Presence → Taken for granted
• Thus, constant feints at withdrawal from one’s lover is advised.
• Love never dies of starvation, but often of indigestion.
• Force their respect by threatening them with the possibly they will lose you for good.
• In today’s world, the game of withdrawal is even more powerful.
• Make what you are offering the world rare and hard to find
• Make yourself less accessible and you increase the value of your presence.
• The sun can only be appreciated by its absence — too many hot days and the sun overwhelms.

Law 17 — Keep Others in Suspended Terror, Cultivate an Air of Unpredictability

• Patterns are powerful. Terrify people by disrupting them.
• However, too much unpredictability is a sign of indecisiveness.
• Humans are creatures of habit with an insatiable need to see familiarity in other people’s actions. Your predictability gives them a sense of control. Turn the tables: Be deliberately unpredictable.
• Strike without warning.
• You can also use predictability as a smokescreen, a front behind which you can carry out deceptive actions.

Law 18 — Do Not Build Fortresses to Protect Yourself — Isolation is Dangerous

• Isolation sires all kinds of strange and perverted ideas: you may gain perspective on the larger picture but you lose a sense of your own smallness and limitations.
• The more isolated you are, the harder it is to break out of your isolation when you choose to.
• Humans are social creatures — the more contact, the more graceful and at ease you become.
• Isolation, on the other hand, engenders an awkwardness in your gestures.
• In moments of uncertainty and danger, fight the desire to turn inward. Instead, make yourself more accessible, seek out old allies, and make new ones. Force yourself into more and more different circles.
• Isolation makes you paranoid. You come to rely on information on a smaller and smaller circle.
• You lose perspective.
• When you feel threatened, do not turn inward.
• You must be able to float in and out of different circles and mix with different types.

Law 19 — Know Who You’re Dealing With — Do Not Offend the Wrong Person

• Get along like cats and dogs.
• Swallow the impulse to offend, even if they seem weak.
• Never rely on your instincts — gather concrete knowledge.
• Never trust appearances. Never trust the version that people give of themselves.

Law 20 — Do Not Commit to Anyone

• Play the virgin Queen: give them hope but never satisfaction.
• If you allow people to feel they possess you to any degree, you loose all power over them.
• Tricks that will enhance your image: refuse to commit to a person/group: by making yourself ungraspable, not succumbing to the group or the relationship, you instantly seem more powerful.
• Desire is like a virus: if we see that someone is desired by other people, we tend to find this person desirable too.
• You cannot inadvertently allow yourself to feel obligated to anyone. However, the goal is not to put others off or make it seem you are incapable of commitment: you need to stir the pot, excite interest, lure people with the possibility of having you.
• Put yourself in the middle of competing powers. Lure one side with the promise of your help; the other side, always wanting to outdo its enemy, will pursue you as well.
• People who rush to the support of others tend to gain little respect in the process, for their help is so easily obtained.
• When Kissinger wanted to reach a detente with the Soviet Union, he courted China instead. This infuriated and scared them, pushing them to the negotiation table.
• Stay aloof and people will come to you.
• Men of great abilities are slow to act.
• Seem interested in the affairs and interests of each side while actually committing to no one but yourself and your kingdom.
• Learn to control yourself, to restrain your natural tendency to take sides and join the fight.
• You cannot completely stand aside. You must seem interested in people’s problems but maintain your inner energy and sanity bu keeping your emotions disengaged.
• Play a waiting game and you cannot lose.

Law 21 — Play a Sucker to Catch a Sucker. Seem Dumber than your Mark

• The feeling that someone else is more intelligent than we are is almost intolerable.
• Masquerading as a swine to kill the tiger — Chinese phrase
• Be dumb — make people feel better about themselves, not just in intelligence but also taste and sophistication.

Law 22 — Use the Surrender Tactic: Transform Weakness into Power

• When you are weaker, there is nothing to be gained by fighting a useless fight.
• No one comes to help the weak — they would put themselves in jeapordy.
• Surrendering conceals great power. It lulls the enemy into complacency. It gives you time to recoup, recalibrate and undermine. It gives you time for revenge.
• People trying to make a show of their authority are easily deceived by the surrender tactic. Your outward sign of submission makes them feel important; they are satisfied that you respect them.
• ‘When the great Lord passes, the wise peasant bows and silently farts’ — Ethiopian proverb.
• Yielding often neutralises their behaviour.
• Inwardly you stay firm, outwardly you bend, like the animal who plays dead to save its hide.
• Use surrender to gain access to your enemies. Learn his ways, insinuate yourself with him slowly, outwardly conform to his customs but inwardly maintain your own culture.

Law 23 — Concentrate Your Forces

• Intensity beats extensity every time
• If you are not in danger, do not fight.
• The mind must not wander from goal to goal.
• “Only through an anchoring in the past was the family able to thrive amidst such chaos”.
• The world is plagued by greater and greater division. We are hardly able to keep our minds in one direction before we are pulled by a thousand others.
• The solution: Retreat to the past, to more concentrated forms of thought and action.
• Have a single-mindedness of purpose, total concentration on the goal. The use of these quality against people less focused.
• Concentrate on a particular goal and push at it until it yields.
• Casanova: “I have always believed,” he later wrote, “that when a man gets it into his head to do something, and when he exclusively occupies himself in that design, he must succeed, whatever the difficulties.” For example, nobody had ever escaped the prison he was sent to yet he managed to do so despite constant cell changes taking away his painstaking efforts at digging.
• In the game of power, only the fool flails about without fixing his target.
• It is the misfortune of men with wide general interests that while they would like to have their finger in every pie, they have one in none.
• However, being too single-minded in purpose can make you an intolerable bore.

Law 24 — Play the perfect courtier

Do not dismiss the game of power as a relic of the past. Here are the laws of court politics:

• Avoid ostentation. Avoid talking so much about yourself: stir up envy, stir up suspicion. Talk less about yourself and more of others.
• Practice nonchalance. Be like the Tarahumara tribe: make running marathons in the Copper Canyons of Mexico with nothing but flip flops look effortless. If people see your hard work, blood and toil, they see simply another form of ostentation.
• Be frugal with flattery. Downplay your own contribution. Do not flatter too much.
• Arrange to be noticed. You stand no chance of rising if the ruler does not notice you in the swamp of courtiers. Create a subtly distinctive style and image.
• Alter your style and language according to the person you are dealing with. If you don’t, those below you see your words as a form of condescension whilst those above you become offended. Never assume that your criteria of behaviour and judgement are universal.
• Never be the bearer of bad news. The king kills the messenger who brings bad news.
• Never affect friendliness and intimacy with your master. He wants a sub-ordinate, not a friend.
• Never criticise those above you directly. Sometimes you cannot say nothing or give no advice. You must provide as polite and indirect a criticism as possible.
• Be frugal in asking those above you for favours. Rejecting a request stirs up guilt and resentment. Ask for faours as rarely as possible. Earn your favours. Never ask on a friend’s behalf.
• Never joke about appearance or taste. These are two highly sensitive areas.
• Do not be the court cynic. If you constantly criticise, some of that criticism will fall on you. Express modest admiration for other people’s achievements. It will paradoxically call attention to your own.
• Be self-observant. Train your mind to see yourself as others see you — are you try too hard to please others, for example?
• Master your emotions. Learn to cry and laugh on command, disguise anger and frustration, fake contentment and agreement. Be the master of your own face.
• Fit the spirit of the times. Your spirit and thinking must keep up with the times.
• Be a source of pleasure. People flee from what is unpleasant and distasteful. Charm and promises of delight draw us like a moth to a flame. You will be as indispensable as food and drink.
• Never spend so much time on your studies that you neglect your social skills.
• In matters of taste you can never be too obsequious with your master.
• Do not overstep your bounds. Do only what you are assigned to do, to the best of your abilities.
• Make your master a gift of your talents and you will rise above other courtiers.
• Better temporarily to dull your brilliance than to suffer the slings and arrows of envy.