Theory of mind- morality and machiavellism

To construct a strategy, you need to know three things. Know the nature of others, know the nature of your environment, and know the nature of yourself. You need to understand human nature in general, and individuals in detail.

What is the first question about human nature that emerges in your mind?

Is it whether man is inherently good or evil? Were we born noble, but decay morally in this harsh world? Is society the only civilising force on the inherent baseness of man? Is evil a mere aberation from humanity, or an integral part of it?

What if I were to tell you that the very thing that provides humanity with morality is the same thing that allows us to deceive, manipulate, and betray others? That goodness is directly fused with evil?

Mishima and the nature of a writer

I came to Mishima because he was the type of character I might’ve invented if he had not existed.
Director Paul Shrader on Japanese writer Yukio Mishima. Source.

The film Mishima: a life in four chapters does not have a logical reason to exist. A ten million dollar production about an insane Japanese writer, in Japanese with English subtitles, had no chance of recouping its cost in America. It was not shown in Japanese theaters either until recently on television in an edited form. Yukio Mishima’s homosexuality, the resistance of Mishima’s widow who directed the Mishima estate, and Mishima’s ultranationalistic political beliefs barred it from being shown there. Death threats were made against Shrader’s production, and Shrader claims to have directed the film while wearing a kevlar suit.

New header: Love and desire

I started a list of aphorisms and maxims about love and desire. I’ll update it regularly (at least I promise to).

Life strategy: Give yourself the space to fail

Winners are obligated to keep on winning. His/her followers will not tolerate anything less, and will forget all of the winner’s previous successes in the face of a recent failure. Your followers will feel betrayal for having believed in you in the first place.

Most ambitious people fear obscurity, and the impatient want fame as soon as possible. But consider this: obscurity gives you the space needed to make mistakes and learn. You may hate the initial years where you drudge through your work and training without receiving any recognition. But these frustrating years can represent the time where you have the most freedom and learn the most. Once you do enter the public gaze of your chosen field, you have years of experience that prepare you to deal with the pressures of expectation.

The treacherous confidence brought on by philosophy

My main interest in philosophy lies in trying to understand the adversities of the human condition and thereby try to gain some control in what seems to be a chaotic and frightening reality. Reading the philosophy of a Sun Tzu or a Robert Greene can feel like a religious expereince, even if the work is completely removed (or in direct contradiction) with spiritual matters. But this feeling is treacherous.

Feelings of comfort can hampen our progress. Dissatisfaction and despair often motivate us to improve our lives despite the costs of doing so. Words of comfort can reduce our drive for change. Words that are meant to inspire can lead to complacency.

Knowledge is not the same as action. The Chinese have a proverb; To know but not do is not to know. The German poet Goethe expressed it this way: Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do. It still surprises me how the simplest truths take years of experience to fully understand, even if we believe we understand them immediately.

Do not let schooling interfere with your education

Education is an admirable thing. But it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

Oscar Wilde, A few maxims for the over-educated, source

No schooling was allowed to interfere with my education.

Rosalba: the Story of Her Development, by Grant Allen. Often misattributed to Mark Twain.

What greater accomplishment has civilisation brought us then mass education? It is the spring board for our life and our ambitions. To deprive a child of education amounts to child abuse.

But are you receiving adequate education? Many of you readers may come from areas where public education is is in ruins. Reading articles and watching documentaries on the state of education in parts of America fills me with despair. Changing the education system is one of the hardest things to do. The education system is marked by bureaucracy from within and political resistance from citizens (education is a hot button, and most politicians shy away from change for this reason). Many children in impoverished environments are forced to fend for themselves, including their own education. Only a precious few take this responsibility seriously.

But even those among my readers who received the best education possible may lack true knowledge. Perhaps the greatest cost of going to school is that we are, in our most formative years, exposed to an environment that has little relation to the real world. Many of us go through school, doing our homework and get the grades, in the mistaken belief that this will prepare us for the real world. Many of the greatest skills in life, far more important than any book knowledge, will never be discussed in the class room. We become dependent on someone else giving us information, which can reduce our drive to seek out information ourselves. I am constantly amazed by highly educated and intelligent people who have no curiosity beyond their specific field. Sometimes the most educated people are the laziest intellectually.

The greatest knowledge comes through our own efforts, and I am spending my time unlearning all the false ideas I formed in my adolescence. How has school prepared you for finding out what you want? How has it helped you to deal with others who try to gain power at your expense? How has it prepared you to approach the person you love? Many of you reading may scoff, thinking that these are soft skills that have no place in the class room. Perhaps, but many of us have failed in life because of these soft skills, no matter how great our knowledge of hard science.

Life strategy: Change your lifestyle gradually

Any change of status quo may incite an immediate counterreaction. This is true for any form of governance of citizens, and it is true for changing the habits that prevent you from improving your life. We make resolutions to change with great immediacy, trying to make up for lost time. We may go on the most stringent diet and the most demanding exercise regime. These resolutions fail in the long-run, because results rarely come immediately, will power is finite, and we revert back to our old habits. If you want to change your life and adopt a new lifestyle, consider taking a piecemeal approach. You take small steps, and only increase change once you see the benefits of doing so. Slowly you exchange your bad habits for good ones, but these good habits will stick without creating a counterreaction from within yourself.

Albert Ellis: avoid the three main irrational beliefs

Albert Ellis is the founder of the rational therapy movement, now known as Rational Emotive Beviour Therapy (REBT). Ellis broke off from traditional Freudian therapy by abandoning extensive introspection into the past of the patient. Instead focusing on the irrational thoughts and beviours that lead to the patient’s psychological suffering. This laid the foundation for Aaron Beck’s cognitive therapy movement.

Oscar Wilde on love

The very essence of love is uncertainty.

Algernon, in Oscar Wilde’s play The importance of being earnest.

We often fear the uncertain outcome in the beginning of any relationship. It inspires too much anxiety. We thereby rush through the motions, trying to reach a positive outcome as quickly as possible. Often this results in an unsuccesful mess, but even if succesful, it bypasses the opportunity for a pleasurable courtship. Uncertainty inspires the other person to think of you, not to take you for granted. It gives them the pleasure of trying to figure out your motives and intentions. It makes them more involved. And any delayed climax will induce a greater release of emotions.

Attraction tip: Love is a play, and tension its lifesource

Love and attraction can harp on our greatest insecurities and needs. The obstacles, uncertainty, and potential pain in this game are too intense for many to handle, and they then rush through it and make a mess of it. But tension is the lifeblood of a good play. If you approach seduction as a play remote from the real world, with both of you playing a role, then these sources of insecurities become the lifeblood of your seduction.

Attraction tip: the other person has not read your script

Many times we do or say something and then feel surprised when it does not have the desired effect on the other person. This just reflects how self-involved we are in the love game and how we fail to truly understand the other person. The person has not read the script that you wrote in your head. Spend more time entering the spirit of your target, adapting to his/her taste and nature, rather then coming up with ideas on how (s)he should act.

Robert Greene quote on our perception powers

We humans have a particular limitation to our reasoning powers that causes endless problems: when we are thinking about someone or about something that happened to us, we generally opt for the simplest, most easily digestible interpretation. An acquaintance is good or bad, nice or mean, his or her intentions noble or nefarious; an event is positive or negative, beneficial or harmful; we are happy or sad. The truth is that nothing in life is ever so simple. People are invariably a mix of good and bad qualities, strengths and weaknesses. Their intentions in doing something can be helpful and harmful to us at the same time, a result of their ambivalent feeling towards us. Even the most positive event has a downside. And we often feel happy and side at the same time. 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 constantly misunderstanding and misreading. It would be of infinite benefit for us to allow more nuances and ambiguity into our judgements of peop,e and events.

Robert Greene (2006). The 33 strategies of war, p. 428, Penguin Books Ltd.

Thomas Hardy on looking at the worst

[I]f a way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst.

Thomas Hardy, In Tenebris – II, source.

Entire poem

WHEN the clouds’ swoln bosoms echo back the shouts of the many and strong
That things are all as they best may be, save a few to be right ere long,
And my eyes have not the vision in them to discern what to these is so clear,
The blot seems straightway in me alone; one better he were not here.
The stout upstanders say, All’s well with us; ruers have nought to rue!
And what the potent say so oft, can it fail to be somewhat true?
Breezily go they, breezily come; their dust smokes around their career,
Till I think I am one born out of due time, who has no calling here.
Their dawns bring lusty joys, it seems; their evenings all that is sweet;
Our times are blessed times, they cry: Life shapes it as is most meet,
And nothing is much the matter; there are many smiles to a tear;
Then what is the matter is I, I say. Why should such a one be here?…
Let him in whose ears the low-voiced Best is killed by the clash of the First,
Who holds that if way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst,
Who feels that delight is a delicate growth cramped by crookedness, custom and fear,
Get him up and be gone as one shaped awry; he disturbs the order here.

Robert Greene on desire

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.

Robert Greene (1998), The 48 laws of power, p. 305, Penguin Putman

The paradox nature of love and desire has always frightened me. If the universe were perfect and rational, we could express our desire in the simplest terms without any need for games or deception. But I understood that this had very little application to reality. Love quickly vanished as people took each other for granted. I saw that people often desired those who showed no interest in them, thereby ignoring those who expressed their love more explicitly. Some even craved disdain and pain. Most people attribute this frightening paradox to the capricious nature of love itself, as if love were a magical phenomenom without any basis in observable reality. I always knew that this covered up their own lack of knowledge and fear.

I responded to Greene’s philosophy on seduction because he addressed these concerns head on and even provided advice on how to deal with this based on psychology.

Art of seduction by Robert Greene

When reading Robert Greene’s Art of Seduction, I thought of actors in a play. Actors will intentionally manipulate the emotions of their audience so as to enrapture them. The actors are aware of their natural charm and intentionally seek to exploit this effect. Though this requires a certain amount of intentional artifice, it allows us to be more genuine and true to our nature (including our dark side), in the same way an actor can access and express more genuine emotion in a play then he can in the stifling politeness of daily life.

Irvin Yalom on meaning of life

The search for meaning, much like the search for pleasure, must be conducted obliquely. Meaning ensues from meaningful activity: the more we deliberately pursue it, the less likely are we to find it; the rational questions one can pose about meaning will always outlast the answers. In therapy, as in life, meaningfulness is a byproduct of engagement and commitment, and that is where therapists must direct their efforts- not that engagement provides the rational answer to the questions of meaning, but it causes these questions not to matter.

Irvin Yalom (1991). Love’s executioner, p. 12. Penguin Books.

Things fade, alternatives exclude

O the ultimate evil in the temporal world is deeper than any specific evil, such as hatred, or suffering, or death! The ultimate evil is that Time is perpetual perishing, and being actual involves elimination. The nature of evil may be epitomized, therefore, in two simple but horrible propositions: ‘Things fade’ and ‘Alternatives exclude.’ Such is His mystery: that beauty requires contrast, and that discord is fundamental to the creation of new intensities of feeling.

Priest Ork, in John Gardner’s book Grendel. Source

See also Irvin Yalom’s quote on alternatives exclude.

Irvin Yalom on decisions and diminishing options

Decisions are difficult for many reasons, some reaching down into the very socket of our being. John Gardner, in his novel Grendel, tells of a wise man who sums up his meditations on life’s mysteries in two simple but terrible postulates: “Things fade: alternatives exclude.” [...] Decision invariably involves renunciation: for every yes there must be a no, each decision eliminating or killing other options (the root of the word decide means “slay,” as in homicide or suicide).

Irvin Yalom (1991). Love’s executioner. p. 10. Penguin Books.

Never let schooling interfere with your education

No schooling was allowed to interfere with my education.

Rosalba: the Story of Her Development, by Grant Allen. Often misattributed to Mark Twain.

The Natural

Childhood is the golden paradise we are always conciously or unconciously trying to re-create. The Natural embodies the longed-for qualities of childhood- spontaneity, sincerity, unpretentiousness. In the presence of Naturals, we feel at ease, caught up in their playful spirit, transported back to that golden age. Naturals also make a virtue out of weakness, eliciting our sympathy for their trials, making us want to protect them and help them. As with a child, much of this is natural, but some of it is exaggerated, a concious seductive maneuver. Adopt the pose of the Natural to neutralize people’s natural defensiveness and infect them with helpless delight.

Robert Greene (2001). The Art of Seduction, p. 53. Penguin Books.

Defensiveness and inner resistance are your true enemies in a seduction. The feeling of being manipulated and losing control destroys any pleasure that could come from such a process. Being dominant in such a relationship can aggregate this problem even further. What to do in such a dilemna?

Amazingly, a possible solution for you is to play the weaker role in the relationship, one of the central tactics of Greene’s strategy in seduction. Instead of appearing to be in control, play up the weaknesses that you desperately try to hide from others. Appear more chaotic, impulsive, helpless and naive then you usually dare to reveal. You may find that your partner responds to these qualities more than your learned manners and aggressive displays of power. The person laughs at your vulnerability, lets herself loosen up because you appear so helpless, and thereby turns more receptive to your influence.

Many of you reading this may feel that the trials of your life have squashed these qualities within you, but they have not died out completely. They remain dormant, lying beneath years of fear, education, disappointment, and neurosis. Your job is to peal back these layers of adulthood, through intense soulsearching and delearning and teaching yourself to let go. You must root out those moments where you try to appear clever through the use of pretensiousness. You must allow yourself to appear like the weak member of your group, stop yourself from trying to impress others through your reputation, your wealth, or your knowledge. You must pursue a foolish act that leads to embarrasment. You can not act half-hearted with this; an adult with a mild childish streak is more irritating than attractive.

Why is this type so attractive to certain people? Children have obnoxious traits, and their vulnerability can easily move to pity and disdain. What is the appeal?

Many people resent the obligations of adulthood, including prudence. To see someone who has retained a childlike innocence is a miracle. The Natural comes off as unthreatening, pleasant, and sincere. It allows the other person to act as a parent figure and protect someone who is too vulnerable for this world. But it is the other person who becomes vulnerable to the Natural’s influence.