Heroes: Robert Greene

Robert Greene [left] with rapper and entrepreneur Curtis Jackson, stage name 50 Cent

 It is to him who understands the world—not to those who disfigure it—that we owe our reverence. —Voltaire

Conflict is a constant irritation in life. We feel conflict between our ideas and what actually happens, conflict between what we want and our abilities, and of course conflict with our enemies. I prefer to avoid confrontation, and I dream of a position that would protect me from all conflict. This does not appear to exist, however. In fact, the more success I have achieved, the more conflict has entered my life. I did not prepare well for conflict, growing up. No one told me when and how to fight. If fighting is not advantageous, what exactly to do? These questions influenced my most important needs and wants: making a living and attracting women—seduction being a form of conflict. Now I have a family, and I could describe every minute of my day as a battle. 

Four years ago I discovered the writing of Robert Greene by accident. At the time, I was caught in a fight. There was no negotiating around the problem or convincing the enemy to retreat with niceness. I was outnumbered, and several people close to me said I had no hope, yet I knew I had to win. Intrigued by one of Greene's interviews, I bought a copy of his book, The 33 Strategies of War. 

Through extensive planning, indirect maneuvers and controlling my information, I won. As you might imagine, this outcome confirmed the value I found in the book. I devoured Robert Greene's other books, The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction and The 50th Law. I read them through four times and explored many books in their bibliographies. I typed hundreds of pages of notes. I will probably read them through again. Greene patterns his work on Niccolo Machiavelli's. Both authors looked to history to obtain their strategies for success. History is the next best thing to a laboratory experiment, when we study Greene's favorite subjects, Power, Seduction and War.

I offer some favorite quotes from the books below.

Law 40

Despise the Free Lunch

What is offered for free is dangerous – it usually involves either a trick or a hidden obligation.  What has worth is worth paying for.  By paying your own way you stay clear of gratitude, guilt, and deceit.  It is also often wise to pay the full price – there is no cutting corners with excellence.  Be lavish with your money and keep it circulating, for generosity is a sign and a magnet for power.

Understand: With one exception — death — no lasting change in fortune comes quickly. Sudden wealth rarely lasts, for its is built on nothing solid. Never let lust for money lure you out of the protective and enduring fortress of real power. Make power your goal and money will find its way to you. 

Law 29

Plan All the Way to the End

The ending is everything.  Plan all the way to it, taking into account all the possible consequences, obstacles, and twists of fortune that might reverse your hard work and give the glory to others.  By planning to the end you will not be overwhelmed by circumstances and you will know when to stop.  Gently guide fortune and help determine the future by thinking far ahead.

Most men are ruled by the heart, not the head. Their plans are vague, and when they meet obstacles they improvise. But improvisation will only bring you as far as the next crisis, and is never a substitute for thinking several steps ahead and planning to the end.

What good is it to have the greatest dream in the world if others reap 

the benefits and the glory? Never lose your head over a vague, open

ended dream-plan to the end. 

There is a simple reason why most men never know when to come off the attack: they form no concrete idea of their goal. Once they achieve victory they only hunger for more. To stop — to aim for a goal and then keep to it — seems almost inhuman, in fact; yet nothing is more critical to the maintenance of power. The person who goes too far in his triumphs creates a reaction that inevitably leads to a decline. The only solution is to plan for the long run. Foresee the future with as much clarity as the gods on Mount Olympus, who look through the clouds and see the ends of all things.

Remember: it is the form that matters, not the content. The less your targets focus on what you say, and the more on how it makes them feel, the more seductive your effect. Give your words a lofty, spiritual, literary flavor the better to insinuate desire in your unwitting victims. 

If no resistances or obstacles face you, you must create them. No seduction can proceed without them. 

Eva Peron’s voice could make audiences weep; because of this, people saw in her great charisma. She never forgot the experience. Her every public act was framed in dramatic and religious motifs. Drama is condensed emotion, and the Catholic religion is a force that reaches into your childhood, hits you where you cannot help yourself. Evita’s uplifted arms, her staged acts of charity, her sacrifices for the common folk—all this went straight to the heart. It was not her goodness alone that was charismatic, although the appearance of goodness is alluring enough. It was her ability to dramatize her goodness. 

To promote any value, even peace and pacifism, you must be willing to fight for it and to aim at results—not simply the good, warm feeling that expressing such ideas might bring you. The moment you aim for results, you are in the realm of strategy. War and strategy have an inexorable logic: if you want or desire anything, you must be ready and able to fight for it.

Judge people by their actions. The brilliance of warfare is that no amount of eloquence or talk can explain away a failure on the battlefield. A general has led his troops to defeat, lives have been wasted, and that is how history will judge him. You must strive to apply this ruthless standard in your daily life, judging people by the results of their actions, the deeds that can be seen and measured, the maneuvers they have used to gain power. What people say about themselves does not matter; people will say anything. Look at what they have done; deeds do not lie. You must also apply this logic to yourself. In looking back at a defeat, you must identify the things you could have done differently. It is your own bad strategies, not the unfair opponent, that are to blame for your failures. You are responsible for the good and bad in your life. As a corollary to this, look at everything other people do as a strategic maneuver, an attempt to gain victory. People who accuse you of being unfair for example, who try to make you feel guilty, who talk about justice and morality, are trying to gain an advantage on the chessboard. — Robert Greene 

In Memory of Those Who Served

Memorial Day is set aside to honor people who died fighting in America's wars. So far as I know, no one in my family died while in the service, but several men served in the armed forces, so I honor them today also. The most distant relative I know about was my great-great grandfather John W. Welborn. He fought in the Union Army from November, 1861 to December, 1864. His war diary for July, 1864 describes a campaign to take Atlanta, Georgia in stark terms:

July 19th 3 miles, with some skirmishing, and took Decatur. 10th came upon the Rebs’ lines, enclosing Atlanta. 

From the 19th to 22nd heavy skirmishing and cannonading. 

From 22 to 27th we was fortifying, and part of the time under brisk shelling. 28th heavy fighting on our right; 10,000 Rebs’ loss, ours 2000. 

The young man seated is my grandfather, John Calvin Turnage, in 1918. John Calvin Turnage served his country in WW I. He was in the 138th. Field Artillery Regiment of the Old Kentucky National Guard. He served with the American Expeditionary Force in France in 1918. Although he did not see combat, his unit was moving up to the front when the Armistice was signed, and only a train-wreck kept him from seeing action at the Front. 

John Calvin's son, my father, Bill Turnage served in the Army Air Corps during World War II. HIs fondest ambition was to become a fighter pilot. He did well in pilot's training, but was removed when a heart condition disqualified him. He attempted to go overseas as a radio operator, but the war ended before he could depart. He was shaped by his time in the service, and he remembered it in great detail ever after. He kept a war diary, just as his great grandfather Welborn had. Near his twentieth birthday and far from home, he wrote:

I received a letter from Betty two days ago. She told me that she had never loved me and that she had found someone else. They should be married by now. I shall never love another girl. 

The young man did live to love again. I wonder how many service men received the dreaded letter from their sweetheart at home.

I'm sure those of us who have not experienced the horror of war cannot imagine it. "Oh, your train wrecked on the way to the front, Soldier? You're the lucky one."

We hope for a peaceful world, where young men or women will not die from bullets or bombs. I don't know how to accomplish this, or even how we could measure progress. I can say we seem to know each other better than we once did. Bill's president declared war on the Empire of Japan, but his son married a Japanese girl. During World War I the Russian Revolution took place. Almost one hundred years later, John Calvin Turnage's half-Asian great-grandson is best friends with a little girl whose parents came to America from the former Soviet Republic of Moldova. Let's hope love can conquer all.

I close with a beautiful song by Eric Bogle, sung by June Tabor. It needs no further introduction. Hail to all our heroes, past and present. Thank you for your bravery and your service.

No Man's Land, by Eric Bogle

1. Well, how do you do, Private William McBride,
Do you mind if I sit down here by your graveside?
And rest for awhile in the warm summer sun,
I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done.
And I see by your gravestone you were only 19
When you joined the glorious fallen in 1916,
Well, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?

cho: Did they Beat the drum slowly, did the play the pipes lowly?
Did the rifles fir o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sound The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined?
And, though you died back in 1916,
To that loyal heart are you always 19?
Or are you a stranger without even a name,
Forever enshrined behind some glass pane,
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?

3. The sun's shining down on these green fields of France;
The warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance.
The trenches have vanished long under the plow;
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard that's still No Man's Land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man.
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.

4. And I can't help but wonder, no Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you 'The Cause?'
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.

 

Tell A Good Story

It's hard to let go of bad ideas. We'd like to see our intuitions proved correct, so we never had to learn anything. Real education, however, contradicts and destroys our mistaken intuitions. One of my mistakes involves work and rewards. I hope to be rewarded for my abilities, to do a good job and people will notice. This is not how the world works. Rewards are not based on objective qualities in the work, but in other people's perceptions. Wise workers carefully control those perceptions. Rewards come to those who tell a good story. 

We may regard "honesty" as a virtue, but it's often an excuse for our failure at public relations. Any situation or event may be described accurately in several ways, with dramatically different effects. In his book, Flaubert's Parrot, author Julian Barnes presents contrasting sketches of the french author's life. Here's one example of his treatments: 

1880

Full of honour, widely loved, and still working hard to the end, Gustave Flaubert dies at Croisset. 

1880

Impoverished, lonely and exhausted, Gustave Flaubert dies. Zola, in his obituary notice, comments that he was unknown to four-fifths of Rouen, and detested by the other fifth. 

So far as I know, the statements are equally honest. Life is complex, never just one way.

Once I worked for a man who was famous in his field. Seen up close, his work was a disaster. All his projects were completed late, if at all. Every aspect of his business was unprofitable and out of control. What he did control, masterfully, were his press releases. Each one was an ecstatic hymn to his greatness, citing all his awards and his position at the vanguard of his profession. Important clients trampled each other to retain his services. 

In some jobs, like law and acting, story-telling is 100% of the game. But even in a field like art, what is said is much more important than paint on canvas. Consider the work of modernist painter Barnet Newman, who painted the same picture hundreds of times, and got himself into all the art history books.

Despite his personal charm and verbal brilliance, Barnet Newman’s art remained baffling even to insiders. But what he said about it sounded so deep, and the way he said it was so forceful that he gradually won over the most influential writers on contemporary art. —Alice Goldfarb Marquis, The Art Biz

Internal perception is just as powerful as the external kind. Carefully prepare what you say to yourself about what you're doing. We have an unfortunate tendency to equate truth with negativity. If you are too "honest" with yourself you'll easily to become your own worst enemy. To interrupt this pattern, I sat down a few years ago and wrote down everything I could remember doing right. It took some time to get good at remembering. In trying to maximize good outcomes, I often forget that things could always turn out worse. When I get discouraged, I force myself to read the stuff I did right and add to it from time to time. 

I know, I know . . .

Hello everyone. The blog has been lean and may remain so for now. I have many thoughts to put down, but not enough time to put them in presentable form. You deserve a planned presentation; I don't want to just spew out stream of consciousness rants. 

So lately that production process hasn't happened. This post is to let you know I'm still writing, but tied up in other areas. Blogging is somewhere around Number 7 in my job responsibilities. Right now Jobs 1-6 are rather heavy, but no complaints. Meanwhile my son Max built a robot to help Mommy vacuum the house. 

Congratulations to all people of good will on the death of Osama bin Laden. Happy spring days to you, and watch this space for more posts eventually.

Parenting

My son Max is seven years old. He's a normal, average boy in every way, except he's always the tallest in his class. This makes him easy to find, on the playground. In the photo below, you can see the size differential. These boys are all about the same age, but Max is too big to ride in the toy car.

My wife Misa makes lunch for Max every day. She puts a lot of love and design into this work.

Max is happy most of the time; we're lucky that way. He has a big workload. He goes to public school five days a week, then Japanese school on Saturdays. He must do homework for both schools almost every day. 

I do English homework with Max every day in my office / studio. This is often the most difficult time of the day for us, because Max is in no mood for homework. I feel sorry for him, but I must be tough and force him to get it done. Our fights can be quite dramatic, but we haven't missed turning in an assignment in almost two years. 

Max likes to make train tracks and build models out of paper. 

Over his spring break, Max spent more time with me because Misa was sick. We wandered around San Francisco together. As you may know, the city has many hills and a few mountains. We ran across these beautiful mosaic stairs and had to climb them. This was a tough assignment for an old man.

Our reward at the top - a view of city and ocean.

Max and I read through Susan Wise Bauer's Story of the World. When we read about Moses growing up in the house of Pharaoh in Egypt, I asked him, "How did Moses know he wasn't Egyptian?" 

Max thought for a minute, then said, "His pee-pee was cut on the end."

I leaped for joy. You'll do alright, little man.  

Raising a child completely exhausts me. Still, I'm grateful for the experience, and I almost missed it. Before we had Max, I resented parents who went on and on about the commitment a child represents. Now I agree with them. Bringing a child into the world is like putting your last penny on the table. It takes all discretion away. Stop thinking about what you want; you have work to do, Pal. You're not just visiting anymore. 

Spring Joy

After weeks of rain, the sun appears over San Francisco. 

This week I met a friend on Columbus Avenue in North Beach for a long, leisurely lunch. He was new to the city. We traded stories of how we got here and how it's different from the places we came from. 

It was a perfect day to watch the city go by. Columbus Avenue always moves, but at a slow pace. Pretty women walk by. Aspiring novelists type away at their computers in a cloud of espresso steam. We had the luxury of time, which is exceedingly rare for me. Normally, my day starts running and ends running. 

My friend's pleasant conversation reminded me of another warm afternoon in Philadelphia, the summer after I finished art school. My roommate went away to a summer house-sitting gig, so our apartment was quiet as a tomb. My girlfriend had just dumped me, most of my friends left town for the season, and I felt confused about what I should do next. I decided to stay put, work my job, and paint some pictures. I'd think hard about what had gone wrong. I wouldn't make a big decision until I had a well-made plan. 

The hot, silent days dragged by. When I wasn't working my job or painting, I had little to do. Often I just wandered around Center City, watching people. One day I ran into Tony, and Italian boy I'd bussed tables with. We sat in a window at Dirty Frank's on 13th Street, where the house beer only cost fifty cents a glass. Even poor boys like us could tank up. 

I don't know how long we sat there. I unloaded all my complaints on Tony, mostly about my failure to impress young women. He nodded sympathetically, even though he was so good looking, he'd encountered little frustration with girls in his life. Finally we went out separate ways, and the long summer lurched into fall.

At the time, I was embarrassed to say that afternoon drinking with Tony was the best day of the summer for me. I didn't go on a single date with a young woman, after all. Now I feel different. Talking and drinking with Tony, watching people walk past Dirty Frank's was the best thing I could have done. Such moments are rare, and maybe they should be.