In 48 Laws of Power, with law 38 "think as you like but behave like others", who are good historical examples of people who followed this and caused a group of people they led to change their mindset?

drallcom3 · 2015-10-30T11:33:11+00:00

I think that law helped more with not getting killed

Linrraba · 2015-10-30T10:19:23+00:00

Probably iconic politicians like fdr, ataturk, those responsible for major political reforms. But I don't think you can do it without strong allies

life_is_amazing100 · 2015-10-30T14:49:31+00:00

The best examples of this we will never know, because to truly abide by this law you've got to convince everyone you think a certain way and only you know how you truly think.

A fun example of this is Frank Underwood in house of cards, I acts like a normal politician but we get to see that his mindset is completely different.

jm51 · 2015-10-30T19:59:31+00:00

If politics is the art of persuation, then Harry J Anslinger has to be up there with the greats.

When hemp was the wonder crop, he persuaded farmers to make its cultivation illegal. Marijuana = hemp. Who knew?

He persuaded the moral majority that marijuana was evil because it would make black men rape white women. (Still haven't found that particular strain.) Whatever, it made men violent and must be illegal.

Some years later, he persuaded people that marijuana must be kept illegal because it makes men passive and we are facing the Russians and we cannot fight them with passive men.

Not sure of the time line but at some point he was supplying Hoover with morphine. Hey better him than some blackmailing red spy huh?

By the laws of power he was very successful but...

ston3cold · 2015-10-30T11:32:18+00:00

I think you're mixing individual and collective perspectives. Most societal change starts out as grass-roots driven collective movement. Typically with a strong leader, yes, but the effect on overall society is way larger than the active movement driving it. Hence, the power of that leader is lesser than the power of the movement. And taking down that leader after a certain point of momentum is useless, because "ideas are bulletproof". And leader != idea anyway.

The law is about best utilizing your existing superior knowledge as an individual. The value of the law stems from the human tendency to think that others think as we do. So if you have a great idea, you have a desire to immediately use it to the max, because you think everyone benefits and you get credit or more. But that will just go against the grain for most people and they will be hopelessly and without logic clinging on to the old ways. Perfectly analogous to TRP/Matrix metaphors. The solution is to gradually use your superior knowledge to gain power and carefully share it to suitable audiences if applicable.

As an hypothetical example, (I know nothing of Darwin but still..) Darwin could've come to his conclusions earlier and not publish them. Instead, he could've used his knowledge to ridicule/falsify his rivals' research, which would've increased his relative standing in the science community. So instead of going all out with world changing ideas (I don't know how things really went... not the point here), he could've chipped away his competitors' confidence and esteem by shooting down their new research with his unique knowledge of evolution. So after some time he would be the top dog who hasn't been wrong for a while and then he has the status to drop serious world changing shit.

edit: not sure if my point was made clear. What I was after is that those with power in status quo want to keep the status quo, not shake it up with new ideas. On the other hand, new ideas are how you can get to power so it's redundant to ask if they can maintain the power they gained using that idea: there's no conflict. It's not a new idea anymore really.

648262 · 2015-10-30T22:47:30+00:00

Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot.

throwawaycomedian95 · 2015-10-30T22:50:32+00:00

Cesare Borgia and Rodrigo Borgia (aka Pope Alexander IV) change the opinion of the peoples of Italy to unify into a single country from multiple nation states and smaller kingdoms.

However this would not occur within their life times. The pivotal point was during their reigns of power. In the end both were outcasts but you would be hard pressed to find someone as influential on the politics of Europe during that time period.

Cesare is often mentioned in the 48 laws of power in multiple lessons he was a master of the Machiavellian arts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesare_Borgia

Reddthrown · 2015-10-30T17:00:58+00:00

Leaders don't change people's mindsets - they harness them to make things happen.

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