One last time I will delve into the amoral and borderline sociopathic book 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene with a lesson that every half-decent politician knows: “Work on the hearts and minds of others.”

As Greene notes:

“Coercion creates a reaction that will eventually work against you. You must seduce others into wanting to move in your direction. A person you have seduced becomes your loyal pawn. And the way to seduce others is to operate on their individual psychologies and weaknesses. Soften up the resistant by working on their emotions, playing on what they hold dear and what they fear. Ignore the hearts and minds of others and they will grow to hate you” (Greene 367).

You know, there would be a fairly easy way to rephrase this into something that normal, decent, and totally not-power-hungry freaks would find helpful. The key lesson is that every person is the hero of their own story. And while you can force someone to do something (at least you can sometimes), you can never truly get someone to buy into a course of action unless they want to do that thing themselves. And the more you personalize your approach to that specific person, the better. (For example, using sports analogies around people who hate sports isn’t going to help.)

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