No one likes being powerless, yet we don’t take well to power-hungry people due to our modern ideologies of fairness, equity etc. It’s important to realize that power is amoral—it’s neither good nor evil. You can choose how to use power once you have it, but it’d be foolish to dismiss power as bad or unimportant. In fact, there’s much that we can learn from the masterful scheming of the aristocratic courts of the past—those who can subtly charm, deceive and manipulate without others’ awareness can rise to power without others’ resentment or resistance.
Greene encourages us to think of power-play as a game. You can use this book to learn about power in general, or study and reflect deeply upon the ideas to truly understand people and the world you live in.
- Don’t judge people by their declared intentions, but the actual outcomes of their actions. People who claim to reject power due to moral values are often the true manipulators (or are simply naïve).
- To master the game of power, you must fundamentally shift your perspective, learn and practice new skills including the ability to master your emotions (so they won’t cloud your judgement), objectively examine the past and future (to learn and identify problems) and accept deception and masquerade as a part of human interaction (not something immoral or ugly)
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