The 50th Law by 50 Cent and Robert Greene

Published September 2009 by G-Unit Books & Harper Collins Publishers.

ISBN: 978-1846680687

The Recommend:

Gonna take it back to the old school here for a minute.

This book is a challenge to the senses in nearly every respect.  The design is bold.  It looks and feels like some kind of holy book.

And to some, I expect, it reads like one too.

This book calmly brings cold heat to a world beset on all sides by books offering vapid advice, groan-inducing self-help manuals and specious business books offering ‘proven solutions’ to timeless problems.

Robert Greene and Curtis ‘50 Cent’ Jackson deliver the no nonsense goods in this book on facing life’s problems with confidence.  This includes renewed senses of curiosity, openness, personal authenticity, intuitiveness and precise realism.

Based on hard won characteristics and perspectives of 50 Cent growing up in Queens and evoked with passion and precision by Robert Greene, this book hits a lot of strong notes.  Greene supports the 50th Law with his usual array of literary/historical evidence via quotes and examples from Miles Davis, Machiavelli, Napolean Bonaparte, Dostoeyevsky, Malcom X, Marcus Aurelius and James Baldwin.

Highly recommended for business people in industries that are in transition – *cough* book publishing *cough* – hip hop fans, urban youth, and anyone interested in working to overcome their personal fears and realize their dreams.

The book design and the presence of 50 Cent as an author will undoubtedly scare some people away from this book.  It shouldn’t.  This book is solid, direct, lean and timely and deserves a wide audience.

Destined to become a classic of its kind.

*

About Abe, the Advent Book Elf

*

Abe, the Advent Book Elf, does not tweet.  He considers it a ridiculous human extravagance like the steeple chase.

When he’s working in the lab at the Advent Book Lodge Abe often cranks crunk.  Or boogaloo.  He just loves them slammin’ beats.

He has traveled the world and sold ice to an eskimo – well, almost.  He sold a bag of snow to a really old blind guy in Vladivostok once.

Abe now spends his time communicating telepathically with @seancranbury and @bookmadam

After writing the 48 Laws of Power, it seems that master author Robert Greene has released his newest add-on to his classic in collaboration with his “Fitty”-ness, 50 Cent. The book, entitled The 50th Law takes Greene’s prospective of 50 and how the rapper extraordinare has a different dimension of power that he had never touched on in the first 48.

Judging the Book By Its Cover: Wait, did the 49th law not make the editing cut? You be the judge.

On to the actual review, despite my less than amused views on 50 Cent as a rapper, the book itself has a greater quality that jumps off the page and looks past the bling. From Greene’s objective view, 50 is defined as artistic emperor who rules as an archetypical rebel, in accordance to many in the past (including Thurgood Marshall, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln).

As as a spoiler, the 50th law is to look past fear and harness fearlessness. Through the “story mode” of the work, the life and times of 50 Cent are like a 20 year delay of that of Malcolm X (all he needs now is a Spike Lee joint). In accordance, Greene makes that parallel, one which isn’t quite as emphasized as it ought to be.

Here are my thoughts on the 50th Law as a continuation on Greene’s best work: It’s amazing. Though not as thought provoking or as mind boggling as his first 48, the introduction of fear as a major player in the beliefs and mathematics of power beg the question: Why was this not a part of the original work? I think that what Greene and 50 show throughout the chapters is that attakling fear is such a difficult concept to grasp that it deserves to be expanded with ideas like “intense realism” or what I call “objectified realism.”

Grade: A-

Lil Kim said it best, “Money, power, respect… That’s the key to life.” In hip-hop especially there are no greater motivational tools than those three. Dissect the importance of each, and you’ll see that the first and third are byproducts of the second. And there are few scholars out there with more knowledge on how to obtain power than writer Robert Greene. A New York Times best-selling author, Greene is best known for his 2000 book, The 48 Laws of Power, which has become a guiding force behind the dollar-chasing pursuits of Wall Street types and politicians, as well as music industry elite.

Perhaps Greene’s biggest rapper-fan is Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, whose appreciation for the Los Angeles-born scribe’s work culminated in their collaborative text, The 50th Law. Released this past September, the book breaks down the key to triumph as a not-too-simple conquering of one’s own fears. To compile the nearly-300-page tome, Greene shadowed 50 for six months back in 2007, everything from attending meetings alongside the megastar to spending time at his Connecticut mansion. XXLMag.com recently caught up with Greene to discuss his time with the rapper/mogul who directly inspired The 50th Law. His insights may just paint a whole new Curtis Jackson picture.

XXLMag.com: How did you and 50 first meet to work on this book?

Robert Greene: Someone in his team had reached out to me in, I think it was early 2006. He’d read The 48 Laws of Power [and] found it very helpful, dealing with the music business, like a lot of other rappers. So, he wanted to meet me. I didn’t precisely know why at that time; I thought he was thinking about a book, and also there was all that stuff going on with Game, and he wanted to talk about that, which we did talk about. We met in this steakhouse in Manhattan, [in] the backroom. He had his entourage of about 10 people, and I was just by myself. [Laughs].

XXLMag.com: That must have been intimidating?

Robert Greene: His son was there, and his manager and agent and a few others. It was really good. I didn’t know what to expect, so I was a little surprised. He was more open, and he wasn’t intimidating at all. And I think I wasn’t what he was expecting—he was probably thinking this old man, kind of like Henry Kissinger, and I wasn’t like that. So I think we were both surprised, in a good way. We felt really comfortable.

XXLMag.com: Where you even familiar with 50’s music at that time?

Robert Greene: Well, I knew his music. When I was writing my 33 Strategies of War… sometimes, when I write my books, I like to have a bit of an aggressive energy, particularly when I was writing the war book. Sometimes, I just would wake up and it wasn’t there. 50 was one of the few hip-hop artists that I would put [his music] on and it put me in the kind of war-like mood.

XXLMag.com: Any songs in particular?

Robert Greene: Well, there were things like “Position of Power” and “My Toy Soldier,” and “Hustler’s Ambition.” I had Power of the Dollar, somebody had passed it to me secretly, and there were some songs I really liked. I don’t have it in front of me, but I had the hard stuff. And the one where he’s really dissing Ja Rule…

XXLMag.com: “Back Down.”

Robert Greene: Yeah, that’s the kind of stuff I like—the nasty stuff. So, I knew his music that way. Then, before I met him, when I knew the meeting was coming, I got a copy of From Pieces to Weight and devoured that. I think it’s a great book; I found it inspiring… When you first meet him, you’re kind of expecting that “gangsta,” intimidating presence, and I think he uses that to an effect. He knows that most people, particularly White guys like myself, when we first meet him we’re expecting that, and he uses that to his advantage, because it’s very disarming when you realize that he’s not. So my first impressions were, at first, he’s really nice and charming. He’s not like all ego-ridden. He looks you in the eye when he talks to you.

XXLMag.com: Earlier you said when you guys first started talking that he spoke to you about the Game situation. Was he looking for advice on that?

Robert Greene: I don’t think he was looking for “advice,” per se. Because, who am I to give him advice? But, maybe he was. We talked about it, for sure. To be honest with you, I wasn’t too up on the situation. I knew that there was a beef going on, but what was behind it? How did it start? I really didn’t know. So, talking about it then, what I would’ve said knowing what I know now about the whole thing, it would’ve been different. So I don’t know if my “advice” was particularly insightful at that time. That’s when I thought he was a very crafty person. He was really strategizing in a hardcore way, about how to make this guy go away. Not in the Mafia sense, but how to end [the problem], so it doesn’t turn into this mutually destructive war… I was impressed about how he was weighing certain options and not just going with raw emotion, because you’d expect someone with the persona that he projects—which really isn’t who he is—that he would be looking for something kind of ultra-aggressive. That’s the entertainment part of 50. The real 50 is much more strategic.

XXLMag.com: In order to write The 50th Law, you trailed 50 for nearly six months straight. Do any memories from that time stand out in your mind as being exemplary of his character?

Robert Greene: I remember we would talk about how he had learned to adapt to the business world. A lot of the book, at first, and even as it came out, was about him as a hustler on the streets and how that translated into working in corporate America… He said that he was always learning on the job. He noticed that Lloyd Banks, whenever he would be in a meeting, would be kind of surly, and didn’t want to talk to anyone. But because of that, people would always be trying to please him, and giving him attention, thinking he was upset and they needed to win him over somehow—but that’s just his personality. 50 noticed that he needed to talk less in these meetings, and act a little bit like he wasn’t totally happy, and then people would work harder to please him—a little psychological ploy. Then we went into a meeting and I saw him do exactly that. [Laughs] This group of four or five very conservative White people from the Midwest. He did a little seduction number on them, making them feel like he wasn’t totally happy with what they were offering, and it worked like a charm, just as he told me it would.

XXLMag.com: In the book, you talk about how the infamous throwing-the-plasma-TV-out-the-window incident, in response to his “Follow My Lead” video prematurely leaking online back in August of 2007, was staged, and how that showed his tactfulness, in a way.

Robert Greene: That was an amazing thing to watch, because I got to see how he handles a crisis, and how calm he was compared to everybody else, who were like chickens with their heads cut off. [Laughs] He came up with this kind of weird, made-up problem of him getting angry, and the television screen and all that, which I thought was really quite smart. And then, the next day, the management team at Violator had a meeting about this, which I attended, and they were really not happy with what he’d done, because their whole method of handling it was to suppress the video, and he had done the opposite. So there was this confrontation—not angry or anything. They were telling him, “You just can’t do that kind of thing,” and he was telling them, “No, the story is already out there. I’m not going to, like, stop something that’s already out there. You have to make a story out of it.” I thought it was really indicative of how he operates.

XXLMag.com: Another side of 50’s personality is that he seems to fully embrace this “bad guy” role that he’s been put into. How do you think that helps him as an artist?

Robert Greene: Well, it helps him, but it [also] hurts him, and that’s a real strategic bind that he’s in. It’s the entertainment character that he created, and it’s kind of a cartoon character, which he’s done all on purpose. He knows that he can’t be too subtle when you’re a celebrity like that. People want a good guy, a bad guy… You can’t be a mix, or they get confused. So he plays it up, particularly in those very public beefs that he seems to always choose. But then, on the other hand, you start getting older and you can’t keep doing that forever… Younger people come up. And it’s also just not the space that he’s in right now. He’s in this very comfortable world. So you can’t keep doing it forever. You get stale and people will grow bored with it. He’s trying to figure out how to keep that.

XXLMag.com: You think so?

Robert Greene: You know, the music sells when it’s more aggressive. He knows that. The ballads and the soft stuff, although I think is good and he likes it, just doesn’t have what people seem to be looking for. So he knows his audience, he knows what people want, and he’ll play that up, but at the same time, he has to figure out a way out of that. He has to figure out how in five-to-ten years he’s going to morph into this interesting business mogul. He just can’t keep doing it… He’s really hyper aware of how it works, how he can use that aggressive edge, and how if it can’t how he has to adapt it. Unlike a lot of rappers, who becomes sort of prisoners of their image, he’s thinking about it. He’s trying to solve it some way

I am continuing my series on the 50th Law with an analysis of the second chapter, titled: Make Everything Your Own—Self-Reliance.

This chapter of the book focuses on 50 Cent’s experiences both on the street and corporate level and how he learned the importance of self-reliance.  While his struggle to be independent on the streets as a drug dealer may not be relative to those of us “square” law-abiding citizens, the lessons he learned there were again learned while working within the corporate structure as a musician.  50 Cent quickly points out that the laws of business and human nature are often similar regardless of the fragment of society we are all in—although we all know that on the streets, the results of a bad business deal could mean death, and not for instance, the public firing of a top executive.

He points out the heroic story of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, a successful boxer who was imprisoned for many years for a crime he didn’t commit.  So strong and self-reliant was he, that he refused to let his mind waver while being imprisoned all of those years and did not take any restitution money after finally being released from prison.  Carter was determined to keep his independence and to never be self-reliant upon anyone, including the government system.

According to the 50th Law, dependency is a habit that is easy to acquire and found in everything from jobs, drugs, experts and mild pleasures we all use to pass the time (page 58).  Dependency is something that we all have to struggle against in order to not let our lives pass us by.  And in order to be successful, we must keep our minds strong and keep ourselves focused on our goals.

50 Cent offers these keys to fearlessness, which I am providing a brief summary of:

Reclaim dead time.

Create little empires.

Move higher up the food chain.

Make your enterprise a reflection of your individuality.

[50th Law, pages 61-68]

To learn more, pick up a copy and read for yourselves.  I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback on it.

Naj

On location at the Greenpoint, Brooklyn studio of the Excellent artist Robert Greene, represented by the Robert Miller Gallery.

New, unexhibited paintings and photographs by the Excellent Robert Greene. Image courtesy The Excllent People, 1:46 p.m., Friday, December 11, 2009.

All Glory Is Fleeting, Part II – An Exclusive Interview with Robert Greene

Ethan Bishop:  In Lesson 7 – Know Your Environment from the Inside – Out; Connection; you state that to succeed in life and business, you must first connect with your audience and build outwards instead of starting with your idea and finding your audience. That seems like obvious advice yet so many organizations fail at this simple concept. What are some ways that leaders can keep themselves “connected” with the audience? As we continue to rise within our respective social groups and organizations, how can we retain the ability to make confident decisions whilst still keeping our “audience” in mind?

What you can't see in the picture is Robert lays his gun on the table before the Arm Wrestling match begins.

Robert Greene: It’s really a function of one’s particular mindset. Are you someone who is inner-oriented or outer? The inner types, most people, spend a great part of time in their heads. They are constantly listening to a voice inside themselves. They are not observant. In a conversation with another, they are half–listening and half imagining what they would like to say about themselves. On a walk in the woods, they are playing over in their minds endless internal monologues and conversations.

The outer–directed type listens to people with intense absorption and is a great observer of the world. The inner types begin with a lot of great ideas in their head and then look for an audience and the facts that will fit their conception. The outer types start with the facts, the things they observe in the environment, the trends in society, and from there construct their larger plans.

In this world, with our heads crammed with so much information from so many sources, the tendency is for us to become increasingly inner–oriented. It is a kind of gravity we find hard to resist. To have power in this world you must force yourself in the opposite direction.

I am a great believer in the inductive method of reasoning. This means, you always start with the facts. You look at the world or the audience you are studying. You let go of as many preconceptions as possible. You enter their spirit and their mind. From within them or this environment, you gather so much information that you start to see connections and out of this process certain ideas start to crystallize. What you then create is a synthesis of your own impulses and some deep feedback from the outside world. It is the perfect balance. If you move in this direction you will not fail to connect and to create something powerful. You will naturally find an audience because you have interacted with something real and it will resonate with the public.

As you point out, the tendency is that as you have success in this world or rise up within an organization you lose contact with that audience and with the outside world. You surround yourself with people who share your opinions; you rely on past strategies. So, with success you must be extra vigilant.

This means opening more channels to your audience and to the outside world, finding new ways to connect with your audience or base of power; getting out of the office and seeing the world on the street level; remaining open to criticism and changing your old ways of doing things; keeping up on all of the latest trends washing through the world. It is not that you must slavishly follow the public’s tastes, but rather that you maintain this constant balance of ideas and contact with the world, inner and outer. You need to always be testing your ideas in the real world, in real time.

Ethan Bishop: Lesson 8 – Respect the Process – Mastery is in my opinion, one of the most powerful chapters of the book. In it, you state that you have to respect the time it takes to learn and master a subject. You mention the following to help cultivate these skills:

*Progress Through Trial and Error

*Master Something Simple

*Internalize the Rules of the Game

*Attune Yourself to the Details.

*Rediscover Your Natural Persistence.

In our results driven, bottom-line society, how can one be sure that they are not short-stepping the process? Do you feel that society encourages people to take shortcuts in order to get ahead?

Curtis "50" Jackson and Robert Greene

Robert Greene: We all have a feel for what process means. When we learn a language, or a game, or a musical instrument we understand that it will take time and much practice, some of which involves drudgery. We have to be patient. After a year or two, the game or the instrument suddenly becomes easier and we move on to the next set of challenges. In such processes there are no possible shortcuts. No teacher, drug or book in the world can allow us to skip steps or decrease the time we need to practice to master the craft.

We know this, but somehow when it comes to other endeavors (such as making money or creating our own enterprise) we imagine it is different. We live in a society of speed and shortcuts. Technology makes everything so easy, giving us this instant power, so why shouldn’t this be the case with everything in life? Such belief can be dangerous and it grows within us unconsciously. We develop the feeling that hard work and practice are dull and unnecessary. We lose touch with the process.

On the larger scale, you build your business slowly. It is like a house with a solid foundation. You have made the proper connections and alliances. You spread out organically. You create a scale to your business that matches your skills and level of proficiency. When you start to expand it is with a definite purpose and larger plan in mind, not just for expansion’s sake.  It is not easy to follow such a path nowadays, but to the degree you manage to slow yourself down you will leap above all of the other impatient suckers in this world.

Ethan Bishop: How do you feel that The 50th Law builds off and differs from the 48 Laws of Power? For someone who is not a “fan” of Curtis Jackson’s (50 Cent) music, what might they find interesting and learn from the book?

Robert Greene: I consider this in many ways the ultimate law of power. I often think of the following metaphor—we are all like samurai warriors having to do battle in life, with others and with ourselves. The fearlessness that we talk about in here is like the primary position, the primary stance you must have in life. If you are secretly infected with fears, then you have no balance. Good and bad things affect you too much. You might have great knowledge about the world, know the 48 Laws and be a good student of strategy, but none of it will matter because when events intersect your ideas and actions, you tend to overreact. You have not mastered your fears and you have not mastered yourself. You can be pushed easily to one side or the other.

From a state of inner balance, you are not afraid to take action on your own, or to go against conventional wisdom; in the middle of adversity, you are able to keep your head together and see the secret opportunities from within any crisis; you know how to perfectly upend and defeat your opponents, unconcerned what people might think of you in the short–term; you know how to lead and not be lead by events or people. When it is necessary, you can take bold and even risky action, because you know that boldness creates its own circumstances.

In looking back at all of the great figures that I wrote about, it seems to me that they all shared this quality—from Napoleon Bonaparte to FDR. In this sense, The 50^th Law is more about a general mindset you must develop than specific fighting strategies in life.

You don’t have to be a fan of 50’s music to appreciate the book. But you should find the story of his life inspiring and enlightening. My books are often centered around characters who rise from the bottom to the top on their own, through their “own arms,” as Machiavelli would say. They show us how it can be done, without money or connections or privilege.

We are entering a kind of new weird order in this world in which the old styles, the old ways of doing things, the old icons of power are no longer relevant. They are dinosaurs. The old mainstream media is about to die off, and thank god. From within this dying order new figures of power are emerging. They are younger, think differently and are not burdened with the past and old ways of doing things. They approach business or politics from a fresh angle. They can handle the chaos that comes from decentralized sources of power.

Fifty exemplifies this new type. He came from the bottom of America with skills learned on the streets and he is able to navigate the treacherous waters of the 21^st century much better than the lumbering dinosaurs. We have much to learn from these new types and that is what you will gain from the book.

Robert Greene currently resides in Los Angeles, California. He maintains a blog called Power,Seduction and War. Be sure to follow him on Twitter@RobertGreene48 and check out his latest book The 50th Law.

Today it’s 6:30 in the morning, west coast time, and I’ve been back from the hospital for a little over 1 hour.  My father had his rosary and was reciting Hail Marys; my inconsolable mother waited anxiously for good news from the doctors; my 36 year old uncle sat shell-shocked, no doubt wondering if this was the day he would lose his father, so soon after having lost his mother, too.  I had a copy of The 50th Law in my pocket when I went into the waiting room and I sat there reading it for hours on end.  I’ve already read this book cover to cover twice; I think it will take a while before I can internalize the very valuable lessons in this book.  I could certainly use them now; particularly chapter 10…

In high school, I made an appointment to see a counselor.  Sensing a profound lack of self-esteem in me, she forced me to write down a list of 5 positive things about myself.  I struggled for 5 minutes thinking of a single answer.  It’s not that I was being modest, or even that I didn’t know.  I knew I had one positive trait, but it’s one that I didn’t want to admit.  I didn’t want to admit that the only good thing I had going for me was my intelligence.  I didn’t want to be a nerd, and all that it implied.

Fear has been my biggest obstacle ever since I can remember.  For me it was the fear of failure.  Not the everyday “I might fall on my face and look like a fool” fear.  I’m talking complete and utter failure as a human being.  Because of an inability to relate to kids my own age, I never developed the kind of social awareness that even the least popular kids seemed to possess.  On the home front I was pressured into getting good grades and not even think about socializing – school was for learning, not for friends.  Because of my lack of social skills growing up I just knew – as a kid – that I would somehow end up homeless and alone.  I just KNEW it.  As a KID.  From that I developed an intense fear of growing up that only stunted my social progress further and made me suffer the lasting consequences to this day.  I scored excellent grades in elementary school but by the time high school came around I hovered in the mid 2.0s.  Suddenly I didn’t even consider myself smart – I was a socially awkward nerd, only without the perks of being smart enough to fund a high-tech start-up that would at least make me insanely rich.

Sure enough, I developed a pattern of fatalistic thinking that still plagues me to this day.  The thing about fearful and negative thinking is the way in which it reinforces itself; little did I know then that I had the power to shape my own reality all along and that I had instead been using that power to sabotage my own success.  The 50th Law confronts the fear that hold us back. It is applied psychology for the fearful mind, disguised as self-help, only it never condescends or treats you with kid gloves.  It has profoundly affected the way I look at my own life.  I was surprised to learn the many ways in which fear manifests itself – I didn’t know I could fear being bored!  But when Robert Greene breaks it down, it makes perfect sense. I now know that the yellow lens of fear is and has always been the most paralyzing force in my life and sadly, in the lives of countless others. This is the book I wish I got for my high school graduation.  Maybe earlier.

Don’t let the fact that 50 Cent gets top billing on the cover fool you into believing that this book was written by some illiterate hoodlum with shiny teeth.  You would be grossly underestimating 50 Cent, a mistake that countless others have made in the past, to their own detriment – just ask Ja Rule.  If you don’t know who Ja Rule is, that’s exactly the point.  The book uses the story of 50 Cent – née Curtis Jackson – to illustrate the lessons in each chapter of the book.  They are lessons that Fiddy had to learn the hard way as a hustler on the street, the tools and tactics he used to make it out alive and rise to the top of the music industry and beyond.  Just like fear manifests itself in many ways, so too does fearlessness.  It manifests itself in 50’s business savvy, his leadership qualities, and even his ability to stage beefs.  In many ways 50 Cent is the idea of “Makaveli” taken to its logical philosophical conclusion – not the passion-driven, at times hedonistic, thug poet embodied by Tupac Shakur, but rather the shrewd, cold and calculating mastermind like the man who inspired him – Niccolo Machiavelli.  If he hadn’t been murdered, Tupac might have become 50 Cent.  Or maybe he always was.

But this isn’t really 50’s book.  This is a Robert Greene book all the way, from the anecdotal stories of historical figures and power players past and present such as 50 Cent, to the neat authoritative analysis of the lessons derived from each story.  With the 50th Law, Greene has identified the key human characteristic on which his other books depend on for their success – the 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, and The 33 Strategies of War – and that element is fearlessness.  The 50th Law is not a companion to these books; it is the spinal cord, the very essence of all his works to date.  For without fearlessness, you can never really apply the laws of power, seduce the fair maiden, or confront your enemies.

This book may challenge deeply held views for many.  For me it was Chapter 5, which raises questions about morality and “reaping the wages of humility”. Jesus’ idea of humility on Earth in exchange for inheriting the kingdom of Heaven always felt right to me, a righteous fulfillment of karma.  I’m not even a religious church-goer, but I always gave Jesus credit for his un-worldly wisdom; Robert Greene’s books, on the other hand, are decidedly “worldly” (Ironic how even the book is designed to look like a Bible, from the leathery cover down to the last gold-trimmed page). I’ve tried to mesh the two world views into a new paradigm that I could feel comfortable with, but I just can’t do it.  Greene’s books at times promote the use of “badness” for our own ends is the antithesis of everything Jesus talked about.  Greene argues that all of us – especially the moralizers – have flexible morals anyway.  Jesus never said we were going to be perfect, but weren’t we at least supposed to TRY?  After 8 years of Bush/Cheney in the White House, certainly the last thing I want to do is embrace the kind of selfish ideals that led to the suffering of others halfway around the world.  I read language like, “push people out of position to get our way” and I think, “what ever happened to ‘turn the other cheek?” I read words like “taking on those who stand against your interests” and remember Condi Rice talking about “protecting our interests in Iraq”; I always knew that was code for “slaughtering civilians for oil and military contracts”.  But Greene preempts my bleeding heart liberal response by making examples of FDR and Abraham Lincoln; one lifted the US out of the Great Depression by crushing his political foes and the other ended slavery and maintained the Union by baiting the Southerners into a fight.  I was even surprised to learn that Machiavelli, raised a Christian, went through the exact same thing!  So maybe the ends can justify the means.  Sometimes.

Perhaps my beliefs are based on a lack of self-esteem, but I’d hate to believe that humility and peace are nothing more than a reflection of fear.  And yet, I can’t deny that much of what has held me back in life has been fear.  I know because I’ve been able to see the same qualities it in so many others ever since reading this book.  I see it in my grandfather, who just suffered a heart attack brought on by years of alcohol abuse.  My grandfather lived with the spectre of fear for most of his life.  A deeply sensitive man raised on the streets of Mexico in dire poverty, he turned to many vices to drown the pain, not the least of which was alcohol, which have brought him no shortage of self-pity, regret, and poor health in his old age.  He could have used this book more than anybody I know.  Well, almost anybody; his son, my uncle, suffers from a potent lack of self-worth, no doubt caused by not having had a positive father figure he could look up to.  I only wish they had learned to conquer their fears when they were coming of age. I hope I can still conquer mine.

As a young boy growing up in Memphis,Tennessee in the 1920s, my Grandfather loved to tell us stories of how he would pick up dinner table chairs by one of the legs and march around the house shouting “POWER”. Perhaps its by no coincidence at all that in 2001 when I finally saw a book entitled “The 48 Laws of Power” (click here for a quick review) sitting on the top shelf of a Barnes and Noble, that I thought back to my Grandfather’s story. Unlike most books that caught my interest, I did not jump at the chance to read this. Instead, I passed by it week after week, and month after month, staring at this book with guarded interest. Almost any movie that hoped to instill moralities to youngsters ranging from Star Wars to Indiana Jones to the more recent Lord of the Rings warned against the power-hungry and those who seek it. I would make sure that I would not be one of those that fell victim to power’s seductive allure.

Robert Greene's First Masterpiece "The 48 Laws of Power"

“It will be $23.95!”

I could barely restrain myself from throwing my credit card at the cashier and running out of the store with the book. After months of deliberation, I had finally thumbed through and read enough of it to justify my purchase. This book was not about POWER at the expense of others. Well, not really, it was Power for the sake of how to prevent others from using these strategies AGAINST you. If you were to protect yourself from those that might seek to take advantage of your situation and lot in life, you would need to know these 48 Laws and that was all the justification I needed.  Despite my high interest in reading the book, I was a college student at that time and was swamped with important things to do like drinking, partying,women and when I was free of those, studying for class.  Even though I had the book sitting on my shelf at school, it was not until a few years later that I would actually go through the book in its entirety.

As I had suspected, it turned out to be one of the best and most interesting reads I had made in the last five years. By that time in 2005, Robert Greene had released another book called “The Art of Seduction” and for some reason I again went through the same slow deliberation process and questions of morality that I went through when purchasing “48 Laws of Power”:

“Is this right? Should I really be learning about this stuff?”

Right or wrong, I bought it anyway. Better to know these things than to be ignorant of them is how I rationalized the decision.

Ultimately, it was these two books “The 48 Laws of Power” and “Art of Seduction” that I would wind up showing to my friends and recommending to people when they encountered trouble and needed advice with life or women.

The time is now September 2009, and Robert Greene has just released his latest book, The 50th Law. Unlike before, I did not go through morality questions with this purchase but I asked myself “What I could possibly learn from a collaboration with Rap Artist 50 Cent?”. I had nothing in common with this rapper, I did not grow up in a harsh environment and even though “In Da Club” had been my personal anthem for years after its release, I had stopped listening to rap after finishing college and leaving the club scene. So I asked the question- “What’s in it for me?”

I didn’t quite have an answer for it this time, but I knew from past experience that I had been a huge fan of Robert Greene’s previous books and his writings were powerful and well-researched often drawing from historical examples as case studies. If Robert Greene felt that it was something I needed to know, who was I to question his authority? I bit the bullet and made the purchase.

I loved it. After going through the book in its entirety, I contacted the author and requested an interview with him for the blog. Perhaps it was the fact that “Law” was in the name (i.e. Unbreakable Man Laws) and not because of the paragraphs of praise of appreciation for his books, or the expensive Turkey sent to him on Thanksgiving, but he agreed to the interview anyway.

Contained below is Part I of this correspondence with the author. I suggest printing it out and keeping it with you until you have a chance to buy the book. It just might change your life, as it did mine when I decided to stop having life throw me by the reins and I decided to take control of my destiny.

Robert's second Masterpiece "The Art of Seduction"

Ethan Bishop: You have written several best-selling books including 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, and The 33 Strategies of War. In your latest book, The 50th Law, you again revisit the “Power” theme. The 50th Law seemed to be the “48 Laws of Power” in action.  Although we had historical examples of Napoleon and Alexander the Great, in The 50th Law, you used someone in our lifetime as an example of one who has “mastered” these skills. How do you think the power “laws” play out in present day society?

Robert Greene: There are two schools of thought. Some people believe that humans are constantly changing, that ideas of power must be constantly updated to current realities. For instance, how we deal with technology has altered something in our behavior patterns and in our character. Others believe that there is a timeless quality to human nature. We are emotional creatures and although technological progress has definitely shaped us in many ways, there is something at our core that remains essentially the same.

I am clearly in the latter camp. People want to believe in progress, in how far we have come, but the truth is less glamorous. As much as men and women in ancient times we remain rooted in the present and find it hard to think past the moment; we react to events instead of reflect; we respond with our ego then find moral justifications for what we do; we choose the path of least resistance and find effort distasteful. We are supremely impatient. All of these are elements in our nature that we must struggle against and overcome. They are there because we are the animal that thinks, and the animal part of us has not gone away or diminished to any degree. Technology cannot alter that; only you, as an individual, through your efforts.

So, for instance, take law number one—Never Outshine the Master. The idea is that people above you, your boss or director, have egos and are generally more insecure than you think. If you inadvertently strike their insecurities, you will alienate them in ways you cannot see or notice immediately. You may end up fired or demoted or somehow isolated and never know why. You could do this by trying so hard to please them that the boss thinks you are after his position, or that other people are coming to like you more than him.

I have seen this happen dozens of times—to me and to other people in my field. I have heard this story repeated countless times by those who want advice from me. This is not going to change, no matter how democratic we become or how much time we spend on the Internet. A person’s ego is generally fragile and none more so than the person on top. You can violate this law at your own risk in 2010, and I guarantee your life will be rather difficult.

But in general the laws are very much in action in 2009 and I see the same for 2010. Do you not think that greed played a major factor in the economic meltdown? People are always looking for shortcuts to money; they want to make the most with the least effort—whether it is searching for El Dorado or subprime mortgages. Plus ça change…

Ethan Bishop: The 50th Law could easily be called the Universal Law because in it you transcend those instances of race, class and background to show how these laws of “Power” apply to everyone. In what ways do you think the “Laws of Fearlessness” may apply to those in a corporate or office setting? Must one have grown up in an impoverished setting to learn these “street smarts”?

Robert Greene: On the streets of Southside Queens where Fifty grew up, feeling fear was unavoidable. He had to face rival hustlers threatening violence, police crackdowns, gangs trying to muscle their way into his business. In some perverse way, this was an advantage. It was clear to him the nature of his fears, what was causing them and the real dangers in his life if he succumbed to them. You can’t hustle on the streets in a fearful frame of mind. People smell it on you and you become too defensive. You lose your edge.

Yet another excellent read and yes, you are starting to see a pattern. Robert Greene's third book, "The 33 Strategies of War"

In the office setting, it is much less clear. And this can be a great problem. In business we face many dangers, probably the most critical now being the changes going on in so many industries. We humans have a great fear of change and anything remotely chaotic. Because the danger is less obvious than someone pointing a gun at our heads, we can delude ourselves that everything is okay, that we can keep on doing what we have done in the past. Unaware that we are operating in a fearful manner, we convince ourselves that we are merely being conservative, prudent and practical. We humans are masters at denying our fears.

The 50^th Law is designed to make it impossible for you to remain in a state of denial. It shows you in brutal detail the anxieties that are infecting your decision-making process and the dangers this presents to you. The book operates as a kind of slap on the face, making you confront reality as Fifty had to do on the streets. Perhaps it is easier to have your eyes opened when dangers are more acute, but you can develop a fearless mind at any point in life and in any circumstance. In fact, if you come to this mindset on your own, through reading, thinking and working on yourself it can be even more powerful than having it imposed on you by circumstance.

Take the intense fear of change. In the hood, nothing stays the same—it is constant chaos and new trends. Fifty learned early on to move with the flow and not hold on to the past. This has served him very well in business. He is in the forefront of entertainers using the Internet in very creative ways. He was one of the first artists to see that you could not stop piracy and that you needed to find other streams of revenue besides CD sales.

You can have all the business pedigree in the world, an MBA from the finest school, but if you find change as something threatening, you will make bad decisions and rely on stale strategies. It’s that simple. To overcome that fear you need to work on yourself; to work on yourself you need to be aware of the problem. The book will get you to that point.

Robert Greene with 50 Cent

Ethan Bishop: One of the most interesting and intriguing concepts in the book was Lesson #3 – the chapter on “Opportunism” and how Curtis (50 Cent) conditioned himself to think that opportunity is all around us and not only “once in a lifetime.” What can we learn from people who have gone through significant adversity? Why do you suppose we tend to view these opportunities as “chances of a lifetime” rather than everyday occurrences? How can we learn to see opportunities in everyday occurrences?

Robert Greene: I look at it this way. We all live in an environment that affects us both physically and mentally. An environment like the hood I picture as something tight and pressurized. You are not free to move wherever you like. People are packed in tightly, and emotions are heated. You are very aware of the limitations and hardships of your life and this affects your mentality. If you’re a hustler, if you’re ambitious, as Fifty was, this makes you painfully aware that life is short and that you must make the most of everything that comes your way.

For Fifty a chance encounter with Jam Master Jay, at a time when he was wanting to get out of the hustling racket, meant that he had to exploit this to the maximum. Not merely befriend Jay, and turn him into a valuable contact—what probably most of us might have done—but attach himself to the man and use him as a mentor. He had to get everything out of this moment he possibly could. With this energy impelling him forward, he managed to ingratiate himself with Jay and for the next several years served an apprenticeship under him that transformed Fifty into a savvy musician.

Although this has only been out for a few months, it is sure to become a classic. The 50th Law explains the 10 "Laws of Fearlessness".

Later, after Fifty was shot in 2000 and the record label Columbia canceled his first album and dropped him from the label, it looked like he was finished. He couldn’t return to hustling (there was still a contract out on his life) and his music career seemed over. But with that inner heat that comes from growing up in such environment, he turned it around in his mind. Being shot and surviving could be the ultimate marketing device and sign of street credibility. It was an amazing opportunity to launch a different music career—guerrilla style, appealing directly to his audience, creating a new sound. When you think like that, then it means that everything that crosses your path, the good and the bad, can be exploited for some positive purpose.

Now most of us grow up in environments that are looser and less constricting than the hood. In fact, we don’t really feel our environment as an environment. We move in it like a fish in water, comfortable and at ease. We can move to different neighborhoods. We can imagine living in different cities, wherever work takes us. This looseness has an affect on our minds. We do not feel the same sense of urgency or danger in the world around us. We feel like we have all of the time in the world. Some day, we will make that project we wanted to, when it becomes important. We waste valuable time.

When something bad happens to us, it seems like a great injustice. Our instinct is to complain and feel slighted. We get depressed. When something good crosses our path, like an opportunity, we go at it with half our spirit, trying to hedge our bets. But all of this is in our heads. Our world is just as dangerous and heated as the hood, but it is not so obvious. We are not so keenly aware of the dangers, the intense competitiveness of the global economy. We need to be more aware of this reality, of feeling the tightness and the dangers that are out there, making our senses keener, so that we recognize the incredible opportunities that continually cross our paths.

It is all in how you look at things. You can choose to wait for the golden moment that may never come, or you can actively seek out the opportunities in everything that is around you.

I know the difference personally. When I was offered the chance to write my first book, based on a chance encounter with a book packager, Joost Elffers, I recognized this as my Jam Master Jay moment. For two years I worked like a fiend on The 48 Laws. It was my ticket out of the film business and into something I always wanted. I turned a chance encounter into an amazing opportunity. But now on several occasions I have offered other people similar opportunities in working with me on some level; I would train them for a great writing career. But they do not feel the hunger and the need that I felt when I was 36, and so they come to this with half a heart and convert an opportunity into a lukewarm possibility and it all slips by.

It is not just your mindset, but that inner heat and need that makes you an opportunist like Fifty or Napoleon. And there is nothing wrong with having ambition.

Continue to Part II of this interview!

I am continuing my series on the 50th Law today concentrating on the first chapter which calls for us to “see things for what they are” or “face reality.”

One of the major tenets of the 50th Law is to face one’s fears and to approach life and people with total fearlessness.  Not an easy feat.  This book also calls for you to look at your own life and your reality with a fearlessness that requires bravery and full concentration.  If I have not said so before, this book is not for the faint of heart.  This book calls into question every decision and life choice you have ever made—good and bad—and makes you question your future.  All of which require that you tap into that fearless side of you.

I find that as I am reading the 50th Law, I not only reflect on my own life experiences but also how I could have done things better had I known what I know today.  My grandfather would always say that experience was the best teacher, and of course he was right.  And I can say, if only for myself, that some of the more poignant lessons were learned after one has been back-stabbed or kicked in the behind.  After the sting of the lesson, it is usually one that you will not forget.  The hard part is to remove the emotion out of those experiences and rest fully on the reality of it all.  Indeed, there is a fine line between growing wiser and growing bitter.

I think to conquer one’s fear, we must first understand what fear is.

Fear is a natural response to life felt by both humans and animals. It is designed to stimulate physical responses so that we can retreat in time to avoid danger. Once the threat is over, you must let go of one’s fears or you will find that you cannot eat or sleep. Animals recognize this, but many humans do not. We then allow the fear to remain inside of us and shape how we see the world. We become fearful of life and think of every event in terms of risk. We exaggerate the dangers and our vulnerability, focusing solely on the adversity that is always possible.

[50^th Law, pages 4-5]

But knowing what fear is is only a small step in making progress.  We have to also understand why fear is so important in our lives and why it is necessary to conquer this fear in order to move forward.  Robert Greene and 50 Cent offer us a new harsh reality of the world, one that we all know subconsciously, but are often too afraid to admit to:

The reality of the world now is that it is a global, competitive environment in which everyone is a ruthless hustler, out for him or herself—essentially no different from the grimy and dangerous streets of any violent and urban neighborhood.

[50^th Law, page 32]

I think the older we get, the more we realize this.  I think this is an important lesson most learn in their twenties, a few lucky people realize it sooner during the angst of our teenage years.  This especially hit home for me when many of the friendships I made as an adult were rife with competition and in some cases outright ruthlessness to stay ahead of the pack and prevent anyone—even their dear friends—from surpassing them.  I learned this lesson the hard way.

Knowing this, you may ask, what can be done about it?  Some people may even ask how knowing this may help them.  I think Greene and 50 Cent have the best answer.  They tell us to face reality and not to turn our backs from it.  By facing and accepting reality we can become fearless and are stronger because of it.

The greatest danger we face is really ourselves—allowing our minds to grow soft and our eyes to grow dull. It is so easy to fall into a world of daydreaming and fantasies, or to become complacent when things are going well.

[50^th Law, page 33]

In the end, all we have is the reality of the world we live in. If we ignore it, we will fall prey to our reality and lose everything. Living in reality calls for us to wak up and assess ourselves, the people in our lives and the direction our lives are headed in the coldest, most brutal light as possible and to do it without fear. [50^th Law, page 33]

This chapter also points out the six keys to fearlessness, all of which are fully expanded upon on within the first chapter.  I will list the six points but if you want more insight, you will have to read the book.

The keys to fearlessness are:

1. Openness-rediscover curiosity
2. Expansion-know the complete terrain
3. Depth-dig to the roots
4. Proportion-see further ahead
5. Sharpness-look at people’s deeds, not words
6. Detachment-reassess yourself

[50th Law, pages 36-44]

I encourage anyone who hasn’t to pick up this book and read it for yourself.  I think that most people believe that because 50 Cent is a hip hop artist and is as notorious for his past as a drug dealer as for getting shot nine times, that he may not have much to share.  This would not be correct.  If anything, he has so much more to share.  It isn’t by luck that a young man from the streets leaves a dangerous life, survives a shoot out and builds a multi-million dollar empire.  If it were, we would all be able to do it.  Whether or not you are fan of his music or his antics, I think that anyone could be a fan of this book.  It is a book that simply cannot be missed.

Naj

50 Cent Has Something Else to Say......

Which might be worth listening to!

“When you work for others you are at their mercy. They own your work; they own you. The ultimate power in life is to be completely self-reliant completely yourself.”

You can say what you want about Curtis Jackson. Like him or not, you’d have to admit that he marches to the beat of his own drum.

The above passage is from a HuffingtonPost blog. It’s an excerpt from The 50th Law by 50 Cent and Robert Greene. Fiddy’s book is described as a “bible” for success in life and work based on a single principle: fear nothing. The book is another one of Curtis’ ventures along with the recent release of this cologne, Power.

‘Make Everything Your Own’ blog on Huffingtonpost.com

Ghirardelli Square and its quaint cafe.  My kinda’ place.  Corner location, easy access, old world in decor with the stained glass & wood thing going on throughout.  When the fog is in the atmospheric tone within this spot can be very inspirational.  Un hun, my kinda’ place.

Sippin’ cocoa with the nice dollop of real whipped cream floating gracefully on top, I find myself in a reflective state of mind.  My thoughts are those which revolve around this thing known as (role model).  Images which filter in and surround my thoughts based on this topic make me smile with satisfaction.  Laugh also because society and those who feel they lead it are funny.  More so when they feel it is them who decide who is and who should be the definitive one to assume this mantel of…  Role Model.

One point about this aspect of role model is true.  Everyone should have or be privy to another who can assist them in defining the rules of the road.  “Road” as in course traveled to deliver one to that point of intersection for life’s engagements.

It was during this introspective moment that I realized I had no mentors while rising within this world.  A realization that didn’t faze me because no one had ever displayed the capacity for inspiring me.  Oh there were those I had no direct connection to who…  Well, for one, “Muhammad Ali“, The Worlds Greatest Boxer.  Boxing was merely a means to another dimension of life for him as he was more than a boxer slash performer inside a ring.  Ali gave me cause to pause and imagine the spiritual benefits that come when one stands for something and stops falling for everything.

Along with Ali was a character portrayed in a film titled (Night World) staring “Boris Karloff”.  Yes the original monster man, (see Frankenstein 1931).  It was in this picture that I realized the depth of Mr. Karloff’s consciousness with regard to what his capabilities were as an actor.  He put the layers to his character who was a low-life gangster that owned a club in an environment where tact & diplomacy was something completely foreign to all those around.  Basically Boris did Boris by reaching into his past to project a personality he knew of.  Call it panache’.  “Okay, for you metro-sexual types will “swagger” do?  Feel better!”

In the film (Kill Bill II) “Michael Parks” took the character known as Estefan’ and delivered it with a marked sense of…  “For those not in the loop it would have to be classified as believability.” To me, it was raw and un-cut.  Right, my friend whom sipped cocoa with me along the Wharf in The City By The Bay (San Francisco) was the prototype of Estefan’.  In fact, Estefan’ was Zel 2.0!  No, Zel wasn’t a pimp but you wouldn’t know that.  Especially if you’d encountered him standing in the fog along the Wharf with his arms braced on the rails of the wooden pier.  Wearing a cream-colored two piece suit complete with a blacked band Panama hat & Crocodile loafers, color black, adorning his feet.  Zel was Estefan’ before Estefan’ existed because Zel was living life and not playing at being a part of life.  And…  While we stood together he wasn’t the least bit concerned about soiling his suit.

I was lucky while growing up.  My Pops, (The Real Bill) had my back.  Hey, don’t get it twisted, we had our moments, but it was usually based on me being too busy trying to get somewhere and be something I had no business being.  Placing me in a position that caused me to encounter all the drama & madness that I experienced.  Still I was sharp enough to see his total value onto me!  Not only as his son but a to be man also.

A role model should have enough focus so that whenever you see ‘em, you get a sense of them knowing they have the full attention of those viewing them no matter what they are doing.  Role model should be disciplined enough to understand the importance of defining goals and having a vision that many can tap into for their own foundation.  insight that helps them to recognize ethics and how they come into play during pursuit of another.

‘Hey, thought I forgot what I’m about?  Not hardly.  This piece is about He & She, sooooo.  Stay in the loop cause I’m goin’ somewhere!”

Now for the good stuff… Many women have approached The 22nd G asking.  Strike that, “begging” would be a better word in this case.  They would beg to the point of compromising themselves by offering to do anything just so as they may acquire from The 22nd G, his understanding of women.  All for the sake of taking this knowledge back to their man!  “Ladies & Gents to be ever so humble and speaking on behalf of The 22nd G, I think you’ve put a ‘lil too much on it.”

What you’ve experienced in talkin’ with The 22nd G and what you’ve may of felt during any type of engagement with the same came from…  Right; You.  Straight that!

Although I come in livin’ color, I’m not T.V.  I use analogies drawn from the Silver Screen only for the purpose of relevance.  This is live and in real-time and for the next few blogs I’m gonna kick (The 48 Rules Of Power) while cross referencing this with (The Art Of Seduction).  Both written by Robert Greene with each compilation consisted of things written and learned way back in the day.  This is the best way to assist all in dispelling those delusional thoughts that create images of a new role model.  Like Robert Greene shares within his books, everything follows an exact formula.

In closing check this, especially if you are wondering where this going and what is this about.  When you think power or seduction see (Cleopatra Queen Of The Nile).  Or read up on (Helena Of Troy).  True stories of powerful and seductive females.  Women who created The Art of Seduction.  Which is to say, like the great leader Hannibal, or the powerful Moors who ran all over the Spanish, Italians making friends and creating new families as in (babies).  And…  Just like The 22nd G, they knew it all came from woo-man!

Psssss; Hey “Eve” the 1st female was tricky, but…  She knew enough of the value of understanding morals, ethics and advanced disciplines of life to get to where she needed to be.  Soooo, stay tuned.  This is definitely gonna be one of those E-ticket adventures.

This guy seems to be doing pretty good with one of man's top fears of having a razor sharp beak anywhere within 5 feet of Captain Winky and The Boys

Do You Take A Fearless Approach To Life?

Hey you,

It’s #2.

Quick question.  How much do you let fear control your life?  A smidge or a lot?

For me, I was wired up real young to be afraid of everything from what people thought of me to confrontation all the way to physical pain.

As I’ve evolved directly/indirectly under the wing of mentors like the Chief, Tony Robbins, Dan Kennedy, Larry Crane, Robert Dilts and other geniuses, I’ve slowly but surely began living life freer and freer of fears that rob you of a life where you’re comfortable in your own skin.

“I Was Born Alone And I Will Die Alone.  I’ve Got To Do What’s Right For Me And Not Live My Life The Way Anybody Else Wants It.”

-50 Cent

The quote above comes directly from the book, “The 50^th Law” written by Robert Greene, the author of “The 48 Laws of Power”, “The Art of Seduction”, and “Strategies of War”.

Robert Greene is a shining example of a writer who “gets” the power of story.

Every one of the books he’s written are teaching the principles historic figures used to become icons and he does it by telling concise tales, giving you snap shots of how they embodied this principle in their life.

Everyone from Genghis Khan to Marilyn Monroe, Napoleon Bonaparte to Elvis, George Washington to Miles Davis, Barack Obama to 50 Cent.

World Famous Author Meets Thugged Out Rapper?

I’m pretty embarrassed to say that Robert’s book was on the front shelf at my local Barnes and Noble and I completely shunned it once I saw 50 Cent’s name as the co-author.

I enjoy some rap but not 50 Cent.  On top of this I think I thought Robert was out of his mind joint venturing with a gangsta rapper.  After hearing CD 1 of this program I knew I had behaved as an idiot.

My prejudice kept me from this magnificent resource.  This book should’ve been in my library as soon as it came out.  Thanks to the chief, it is now.

Robert had his radar open to what he could learn from anyone and so when 50 Cent approached him to do a book together, he at least heard him out.  As they got to talking, they found that even though they were raised in complete opposite surroundings, they saw the world in similar ways.

“How Open Are You To Wisdom?”

Today, I want to share with you a piece of a particular chapter directly from “The 50^th Law” that grabbed me based on the idea of living fearlessly.  You be the judge on how valuable this information will be for you…

“You came into this life with the only real possessions that ever matter – your body, the time you have to live, your energy, the thoughts and ideas unique to you and your autonomy.

But over the years you tend to give all of this away.

You spend years working for others – they own you during that period.  You get needlessly caught up in people’s games and battles, wasting energy and time that you will never get back.

You come to respect you own ideas less and less, listening to experts, conforming to conventional opinions.  Without realizing it, you squander your independence, everything that makes you a creative individual.

Before it’s too late, you must reassess your entire concept of ownership.

It’s not about possessing things, money or titles.  You may have all of that in abundance but if you’re someone who still looks to others for help and guidance, if you depend on your money or resources, then you will eventually lose what you have when people let you down, adversity strikes, or you reach for some foolish scheme out of impatience.

“True ownership can come only from within”

It comes from a disdain for anything or anybody that impinges upon your mobility, from a confidence in your own decisions, and from the use of your time in constant pursuit of education and improvement.

Only from this inner position of strength and self-reliance will you be able to truly work for yourself and never turn back.  If situations arise in which you must take in partners or fit within another organization, you are mentally preparing yourself for the moment when you will move beyond these momentary entanglements.

If you do not own yourself first, you will continually be at the mercy of people and circumstance, looking outward instead of relying on yourself and your wits.

Understand:  we are living though an entrepreneurial revolution, on a global scale.

The old power centers are breaking up.  Individuals everywhere want more control over their destiny and have much less respect for an authority that is not based on merit but on mere power.

“We Have All Naturally Come To Question Why Someone Should Rule Over Us, Why Our Source Of Information Should Depend On The Mainstream Media, and On, and On”

We do not accept what we accepted in the past.

Where we are naturally headed with all of this is the right and capacity to run our own enterprise, in whatever shape or form, to experience that freedom.  We are all corner hustlers in a new economic environment and to thrive in it we must cultivate the kind of self-reliance that helped push Fifty past all the dangerous dependencies that threatened him along the way.

For Fifty it was very clear – he was alone in the house he grew up and on the streets.  He lacked the usual supports and so he was forced to become self-sufficient.

The consequences of being dependent on people were so much more severe in his case – it would mean constant disappointment and urgent needs that went unmet.  It’s harder for us to realize that we’re essentially alone in this world and in need of the skills that Fifty had to develop for himself on the streets.

“We Have Layers Of Support That Seem To Prop Us Up.  But These Supports Are Illusions In The End.”

Everyone in the world is governed by self interest.

People naturally think first of themselves and their agendas.  An occasional affectionate or helpful gesture from people you know tends to cloud this reality and make you expect more of this support – until you’re disappointed, again and again.

You are more alone than you imagine.  This should not be a source of fear but of freedom.  When you prove to yourself that you can get things on your own, then you experience a sense of liberation.

You are no longer waiting for people to do this and that for you (a frustrating and infuriating experience).  You have confidence that you can manage any adverse situation on your own.

Prime Example of This…

You think you’ve got problems?

Look at a man like Rubin “Hurricane” Carter – a successful middleweight boxer who found himself arrested in 1966 at the height of his career and charged with a triple murder.

The following year he was convicted and sentenced to three consecutive life terms.  Through it all Carter vehemently maintained his innocence, and in 1986 he was finally exonerated of the crimes and set free.

But for those nineteen years, he had to endure one of the most brutal environments known to man, one designed to break down every last vestige of autonomy.

Carter knew he would be freed at some point.  But on the day of his release, would he walk the streets with a spirit crushed by years in prison?  Would he be the kind of prisoner who keeps coming back into the system because he can no longer do anything for himself?

He Decided That He Would Defeat The System

He would use the years in prison to develop his self-reliance so that when he was free it would mean something.

For this purpose he devised the following strategy:  He would act like a free man while surrounded by walls.  He would not wear their uniform or carry an ID badge.  He was an individual, not a number.  He would not eat with the other prisoners, do the assigned tasks, or go to his parole hearings.

He was placed in solitary confinement for these transgressions but he was not afraid of the punishment, nor of being alone.

“He was afraid only of losing his dignity and sense of ownership”

As part of this strategy, he refused to have the usual entertainments in his cell – television, radio, pornographic magazines.  He knew he would grow dependent on these weak pleasures and this would give the wardens something to take away from him.

Also, such diversions were merely attempts to kill time.  Instead he became a voracious reader of books that would toughen his mind.  He wrote an autobiography that helped gain sympathy for his cause.

He taught himself law, determined to get his conviction overturned by himself.  He tutored other prisoners in the ideas that he had learned through his reading.  In this way he re-claimed the dead time of prison for his own purposes.

“When He Was Eventually Freed, He Refused To Take Civil Action Against The State – That Would Acknowledge He Had Been In Prison And Needed Compensation”

He needed nothing.

He was now a free man with the essential skills to get power in the world.  After prison he became a successful advocate for prisoners’ rights and was awarded several honorary law degrees.

Think of it this way: dependency is a habit that is so easy to acquire.  We live in a culture that offers you all kinds of crutches – experts to turn to, drugs to cure any psychological unease, mild pleasures to help pass or kill time, jobs to keep you just above water.  It is hard to resist.

But once you give in, it is like a prison you enter that you cannot ever leave.

You continually look outward for help and this severely limits your options and maneuverability.

“When The Time Comes, As It Inevitably Does, When You Must Make An Important Decision, You Have Nothing Inside Yourself To Depend On”

Before it’s too late, you must move in the opposite direction.

You cannot get this requisite inner strength from books or a guru or pills of any kind.  It can only come from you.  It is a kind of exercise you must practice on a daily basis – weaning yourself from dependencies, listening less to others’ voices and more to your own, cultivating new skills.

***One of the most important skills and entrepreneur or business owner could ever cultivate is the ability to communicate influentially…in all formats, verbally, in print, pixel, on video, on stage.  CLICK HERE and you’ll have direct access to what I learned from Dan Kennedy’s Influential Writing seminar about and how he mastered this…

As happened with Carter and Fifty, you will find that self-reliance becomes the habit and that anything that smacks of depending on others will horrify you.

Do you agree or not?

Talk to me.

Talk soon,

Note Taking Nerd #2

“The more that you are aware of your fate, the higher the probability that you have the chance to live.”

While plugging his upcoming release, Before I Self Destruct, rapper Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson has also been busy promoting his latest piece of literature, The 50^th Law. 

Initially dubbed to be a Hip-Hop bible, the literary work revolves around the theme of fearfulness as the back cover says nihil temendum est, which means fear nothing.  Taking pages out of his own life and experiences he has gone through, the book provides factors of doing away with fear. 

Upon release, The Village Voice critiqued and wrote that, “This book will change your life.  It will shoot you nine times with bullets of pure wisdom.”

Speaking with Evan Davis, Jackson gave more into the idea of fear and how fear is a mentality which will see a person sink every time they try to swim because their own hesitance and lack of confidence creates a window for someone else to take advantage of a situation.

“We even brought it down to the perspective of a person that’s in a staff meeting that is watching another person answer a question that they know the answer to.  That means that that person deserves to be ahead of you in life because your fear of being wrong at that point is not allowing you to create your value in that work space.”

Stating that his mother’s death is by far the most traumatic experience that he has had to endure, fear has left his mentality and he is free when it comes to being in business situations or in life.  Adding that he weighs issues with his biggest loss, his mother, the worst possible scenario will not amount to that loss and he will be in a safe space to engage without having fear that he may be wrong.  

Touching on his past and things that he had to do while hustling, the rapper/author holds that experience, even if it’s bad, helps to mold the person that stands presently.

“The things that you go through make you who you are so I don’t regret those things because I don’t think I would be who I am today if I wasn’t exposed to those situations.  Those are unfortunate situations that I’ve had to experience and if I had a choice to go in a completely different direction, I might have gone to the school for business instead of having to go through this portion of my life.”

Although Jackson is known mostly for bullying other artists, he must be commended for his ability to not be fearful of the outcome.  It is once you embrace fear and the potential of being defeated when a person truly loses in life.

There’s no doubting that 50 Cent is an inspiring personality. When he told us he’d retire if Kanye West’s album outsold his, we flocked to CD shops to buy a Kanye West album we didn’t really want, only to be doubly disappointed with Fifty went back on his word.

So maybe that’s why he’s teamed up with Robert Greene to release a book. It was originally intended to be a ‘Hip-Hop bible’, a concept so vague it’s no surprise they eventually focused on the much more concise concept of ‘fearlessness’. Something which Fifty has in abundance as he’s told us time and time again.

The title is odd. The 50th law, obviously a tie-in with the whole 50 Cent idea, but surely that means it’s not that important. If it was it would be the #1 law, I feel I can afford to forget the 50th law of any matter really.

The book is about being fearless, being self-reliant, basically being all the things 50 Cent is. So not a book for people who want to become talented. The quotes in praise of the book make for some interesting reading:

‘It’s almost frightening to think of the amount of leonine stonewalling that’ll be going on in boardrooms once this volume hits the shelves’
–Ben Thompson Financial Times

Oh, so this book will inspire people to act like cunts. Fantastic stuff!

`I really needed to read The 50th Law, more than I knew. This is the new entrepreneur’s bible!!’ –DJ Krust

Yeah I go by everything DJ Krust says. This book is an ego massage for the loveable Curtis Jackson which is about as necessary as giving Madonna more exposure so she can dance around in clothes never before seen on a woman of her age.

You can listen to the whole thing on Spotify, it’s a nice alternative to killing yourself.

If your hungry for power or just want to get your power play on, this may be the one for you. 48 Laws got a lot of love so I’m sure its worth the £10 – 15. I have to say from reading 50Cents biography, he knows about inner power and when best to use it.

]]> http://returngood.com/2009/09/24/snake-eyes-in-afghanistan/ Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:13:55 +0000 dcrowe http://returngood.com/2009/09/24/snake-eyes-in-afghanistan/

Note: Derrick Crowe is the Afghanistan blog fellow for Brave New Foundation / The Seminal. You can learn more about the dangers posed to U.S. national security by the war in Afghanistan by watching Rethink Afghanistan (Part Six): Security, or by visiting http://rethinkafghanistan.com/blog.

The Pentagon expects to receive General McChrystal’s troop request by the end of the week (remember, you heard it here first). If we accept Defense Department spokesman Geoff Morrell’s remarks during today’s press briefing, Defense Secretary Gates will pocket the document until the Obama Administration completes its strategic review. But, Morrell is clearly working to prevent the document from becoming a “moment of truth” for the secretary and the president, and I would be very surprised if a strategy assessment took place without a cost/benefit analysis. After all, a discussion on strategy not constrained by resource considerations would produce strategies as useful as a retirement plan that included “win the lottery” as a necessary step.

Looking for evaluative tools for the upcoming troop request, I flipped through my copy of The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene and came across this passage:

…Rommel once made a distinction between a gamble and a risk. Both cases involve an action with only a chance of success, a chance that is heightened by acting with boldness. The difference is that with a risk, if you lose, you can recover: your reputation will suffer no long-term damage, your resources will not be depleted, and you can return to your original position with acceptable losses. With a gamble, on the other hand, defeat can lead to a slew of problems that are likely to spiral out of control. …[I]f you encounter difficulties in a gamble, it becomes harder to pull out–you realize that the stakes are too high; you cannot afford to lose. So you try harder to rescue the situation, often making it worse and sinking deeper in to the hole that you cannot get out of. People are drawn into gambles by their emotions…Taking risks is essential; gambling is foolhardy.

…

The worst way to end…a war…is slowly and painfully…Before entering any action, you must calculate in precise terms your exit strategy…If the answers…seem to vague and full of speculation, if success seems all too alluring and failure somewhat dangerous, you are more than likely taking a gamble. Your emotions are leading you into a situation that could end up a quagmire.

Before that happens, catch yourself. And if you do find you have made this mistake, you have only two rational solutions: either end the conflict as quickly as you can, with a strong, violent blow aimed to win, accepting the costs and knowing they are better than a slow and painful death, or cut your losses and quit without delay. Never let pride or concern for your reputation pull you farther into the morass; both will suffer far greater blows by your persistence. Short-term defeat is better than long-term disaster.

Greene writes these words interpreting the Soviet experience in Afghanistan. They apply equally well to the situation in which the United States finds itself in the same country.

Let’s review how we got here. (Finger-pointing, unless you were one of the brave few who were against a military response to 9/11, is useless. We got here together.) President Bush (backed by almost all of us) acted on our emotions following the attacks without planning all the way to the end. Then, he launched the Iraq war without adequately thinking through the consequences for the endeavor in Afghanistan. While President Obama correctly assailed him for the Iraq blunder (such a small, inadequate word for that crime), he and the Democrats managed a neat trick of being anti-Iraq-war hawks by promising a chest-thumping charge into Afghanistan to “finish the job.” Obama and his allies also failed to plan all the way to the end, to account for things like lost time, sputtering public enthusiasm for another presidential term lost in fever dreams of war and the awful human cost of the tough-guy promises to hit terrorists in Pakistan with drone strikes.

But, damning the torpedoes, we went full speed ahead, and in the period during which President Obama escalated drone strikes over Pakistan, ordered and escalation and then sent the new troops on a push into Helmand, the insurgent influence in Afghanistan went from this:

ICOS Map of Permanent and Significant Insurgent Presence in Afghanistan, Nov. 2008

to this:

ICOS Map of Permanent and Significant Insurgent Presence in Afghanistan, Sept. 2009

The number of insurgent attacks has also followed a steady upward trend since the U.S. invasion.

Insurgent Attacks in Afghanistan Jan 06 - Jun 09

There’s little doubt that we’re in the morass against which Greene warns in the quote above.  It should be useful, then, to examine Greene’s “two rational solutions” to the problem: the violent, crushing blow that ends the conflict quickly, or the rapid exit to prevent a worse catastrophe.

The prospects for success of a quick, violent blow are dim.  The hardened core of the Taliban is the Quetta Shura Taliban. It’s called the Quetta Shura Taliban because it’s based in Quetta, capital of Balochistan in Pakistan. That’s where we suspect Mullah Omar and possibly Osama bin Laden hide from U.S. forces. It’s also a major city of 750,000+ people, almost all of them non-combatants. Thus, our ability to strike the “violent blow” that could end the al-Qaida/Taliban threat (assuming we’re not willing to drop 600,000+ troops into Afghanistan tomorrow to suddenly begin a textbook counterinsurgency) would depend on our willingness to repeat the carnage of Fallujah 2004 in a city roughly twice its size. This move would ignite Pakistan, to put it mildly, and it would put their nuclear arsenal on the game board in the scramble.

In other words, no sudden, violent blow, absent pristine intelligence revealing the precise, time-stamped location of Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden, can end this conflict quickly without entailing costs we cannot bear.

That leaves us with option 2: cut your losses and quit without delay. So why do we remain?

First, the strategic complications of the situation boggle the mind. However, the strategic implications of the region have been on our radar for years, but cooler heads without the burden of the 9/11 trauma kept the U.S. out of a heavy military operation in Afghanistan even at the height of the Afghan civil war, and I can imagine that a desire to avoid precisely this predicament played a role in those decisions. But while I do not doubt that the strategic monstrosity of Iran/Afghanistan/Pakistan/Kashmir/India deeply concerns the president, I can also imagine that what really keeps him and his advisers up at night are fears of a possible crisis that would fall most heavily on the civilian population of Afghanistan following a U.S. withdrawal. The human, economic and political costs of our military operation are so high that, absent this humanitarian concern, I doubt we’d still be discussing whether to add or subtract troops. We’d be on our way home.

Regular readers of my blog know that I am a Christian whose understanding of Jesus’ teachings prevent me from supporting the use of violence in any circumstances. The far more (nominally) prevalent formulation among fellow Christians, obviously, is my faith’s adaptation of just war criteria. One of the main architects of Christian just war theory, Ambrose, Bishop of Milan and tutor to Augustine, articulated the viewpoint that helped drive just war criteria into Christian thought, and it’s exactly this sentiment that keeps well-meaning people of all faiths and of no faith tethered to the moral “necessity” of a U.S. military presence in Afghanistan:

He who does not keep harm off a friend, if he can, is as much in fault as he who causes it.

This is the sentiment that bridges the gap between the Sermon on the Mount and the Christian acceptance of war. And, as much as I disagree with it (note the deftness with which it queues noble sympathy for a friend while avoiding the truly revolutionary call of Jesus to love one’s enemies and to not violently resist an evil person), I understand it. However, the middle clause of the sentence is one of the most important pieces of guidance for the just war adherent: “if he can.” Courage is not the only issue, nor is sentiment: likelihood of success is crucial. That’s why the Catechism of the Catholic Church includes in its explanation of just war this explicit restriction on military actions with poor prospects for success:

1. the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;

2. all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

3. there must be serious prospects of success;

4. the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition” [CCC 2309].

Desire to keep harm off a friend is insufficient to excuse your use of violence to save him. To be morally permissible, in this view, your violence must have a serious prospect of succeeding. Otherwise one simply adds to the level of violence and suffering already present.

The U.S. lacks a credible, legitimate partner in our attempt to use counterinsurgency strategy as a means of counterterrorism, and in COIN operations you live and die by the legitimacy of the host nation government. The COIN manual goes so far as to call host nation government legitimacy the “north star.” Steadily rising attacks and maps of spreading insurgency are all symptoms of our lack of this fundamental prerequisite for the success of our chosen strategy. In addition, every single troop increase has been followed in the next year by an increased civilian casualty rate and a persistently increasing level of insurgent violence. Insurgents now have a significant presence in more than 90 percent of the country. Finally, evidence shows that even our humanitarian aid funneled through the military fuels violence in Afghanistan. We lack “serious” prospects for success; it is stretching to even say we have “credible” prospects for success. As such, our use of violence in pursuit of even humanitarian objectives only adds to the butcher’s bill in Afghanistan, and we can no longer be excused by our good intentions.

And don’t think for a second that “fewer troops, more drones” is an answer in Afghanistan. Drones have an indiscriminate track record already in Pakistan, and their expansion in Afghanistan would violate any formulation of just war ethics, causing a massive increase in death and suffering caused by U.S. forces. If one accepts the proposition that our purpose in Afghanistan is primarily to reduce the threat of terrorism against the United States, one should carefully consider the following from P.W. Singer’s excellent book on military robotics, Wired for War:

[Mubashar Jawed "M.J." Akbar concludes] that another unintentional effect must be watched out for. The greater use of unmanned systems, the more likely it will motivate terrorist strikes at America’s homeland. “It will be seen as a sign of American unwillingness to face death. Therefore, new ways to hit America will have to be devised…”(p. 312-313)

Singer also quotes Nir Rosen, who expects:

that the continuing trend will “encourage terrorism,” maybe especially among those not fighting that way now. As he explains…not every fighter is an al-Qaeda terrorist intent on attacking the United States. “the insurgents are defending their area and focusing on troops they see as occupiers. But if they can’t kill soldiers on the battlefield, they will have to do it somewhere else” He predicts that the more we take American soldiers off the battlefields [through robotics], the more it will “drive them to hit back home.” (p. 313)

None of the credible violent options in Afghanistan offer real chances for rolling back the insurgent reaction to our presence and to the corruption of the central government, nor do these options hold the potential for reducing terrorism against the United States. Because we lack a serious prospect for success via military force, we cannot justify its continued use. We should therefore make the only justifiable strategic and moral decision by grounding the drones and bringing our troops home, seeking instead humanitarian, political and diplomatic means to alleviate the inevitable suffering caused in part by our bad gamble in Afghanistan.

UPDATE:

Embedded in General Stanley McChrystal’s classified assessment of the war in Afghanistan is his conclusion that a successful counterinsurgency strategy will require 500,000 troops over five years.

Any takers?