Greene Robert的新书The Law of Human nature将在10月23日发售,期待早日阅读。
整理部分阅读摘要如下:
There are no principles; there are only events. There is no good and bad, there are only circumstances. The superior man espouses events and circumstances in order to guide them. If there were principles and fixed laws, nations would not change them as we change our shirts and a man cannot be expected to be wiser than an entire nation.
I thought to myself with what means, with what deceptions, with how many varied arts, with what industry a man sharpens his wits to deceive another, and through these variations the world is made more beautiful.
The most important of these skills, and power’s crucial foundation, is the ability to master your emotions. Anger is the most destructive of emotional responses, for it clouds your vision the most. Love and affection are also potentially destructive, in that they blind you to the often self-serving interests of those whom you least suspect of playing a power game.
Related to mastering your emotions is the ability to distance yourself from the present moment and think objectively about the past and future. Like Janus, the double-faced Roman deity and guardian of all gates and doorways, you must be able to look in both directions at once, the better to handle danger from wherever it comes. Such is the face you must create for yourself—one face looking continuously to the future and the other to the past.
Power requires the ability to play with appearance. To this end you must learn to wear many masks and keep a bag full of deceptive tricks. Deception is a developed art of civilization and the most potent weapon in the game of power.
Power is essentially amoral and one of the most important skills to acquire is the ability to see circumstances rather than good or evil. Power is a game—this cannot be repeated too often—and in games you do not judge your opponents by their intentions but by the effect of their actions. You measure their strategy and their power by what you can see and feel.
What does it matter if another player, your friend or rival, intended good things and had only your interests at heart, if the effects of his action lead to so much ruin and confusion? It is only natural for people to cover up their actions with all kinds of justifications, always assuming that they have acted out of goodness. You must learn to inwardly laugh each time you hear this and never get caught up in gauging someone’s intentions and actions through a set of moral judgments that are really an excuse for the accumulation of power.
It is a game. Your opponent sits opposite you. Both of you behave as gentleman or ladies, observing the rules of the game and taking nothing personally. You play with a strategy and you observe your opponent’s moves with as much calmness as you can muster. In the end, you will appreciate the politeness of those you are playing with more than their good and sweet intentions. Train your eye to follow the results of their moves, the outward circumstances, and do not be distracted by anything else.