Rule #6: Court Attention at all Cost - Part 1

 Law 6

Court Attention at all Cost

"Everything is judged by its appearance; what is unseen counts for nothing.  Never let yourself get lost in the crowd, then, or buried in oblivion.  Stand out.  Be conspicuous, at all cost.  Make yourself a magnet of attention by appearing larger, more colorful, more mysterious, than the bland and timid masses."

C O U R T   A T T E N T I O N   A T   A L L   C O S T

Good evening everyone, here to deliver another interesting and informative post on the laws of power.  In the near future i'll probably be mixing it up with posts related to different books and not just Robert Greene's.  This is one of the laws that I personally find to be the most intriguing, significant, and also at same time, quite dangerous if not applied properly.  I appreciate all the great comments and feedback on my other posts, make sure to read some of the other posts in the archives and leave a comment as well!  I'm going to start including "headers" and please let me know if you like it or not.  This post will consist of two parts since I don't want to make it super long.  Now i'll begin...

"Draw attention to yourself by creating an unforgettable, even controversial image.  Court scandal.  Do anything to make yourself seem larger than life and shine more brightly than those around you.  Make no distinction between kinds of attention - notoriety of any sort will bring you power.  Better to be slandered and attacked than ignored."

Introduction


Attention, there are some of us who are born with the natural grace and talent that seems to mesmerize and  control the ones around us.  On the other hand, there are people who have to work extremely hard to receive any sort of attention, but anyone can do it, given practice, patience, and a little bit of luck.

"Once peoples eyes are on you, you have a special legitimacy," and this attention is one of the most valuable things attainable in your quest for power.  I love to use the Kanye West/Taylor Swift picture above as an example of how smart Kanye was for pulling a stunt like that.  All good actors/actresses, and anyone else in the media business knows that it is of unequivocal importance to stay in the limelight, and to keep everyone's eyes focused on them.  Nowadays the attention span of the average human is extremely limited, there are a tremendous amount of funny, smart, and educated people that have a knack for attracting attention to themselves.


In the beginning, there is no good or bad attention, they all work in your favour.  If a lot of people are attacking your image, they are at least paying attention to you and not ignoring you, this may sound a bit stupid, but there is a method to this madness.  This ties in with an earlier post I wrote about learning how to use your enemies, bringing attention to yourself will inevitably bring you more enemies, whats important is how you learn to use them to increase your power base.


Learning How to Play the Game


Attention is very similar to fire.  You must constantly feed the flames with anything you can find to keep it alive, and to never stop burning.  No one is born with the skills needed to "burn more brightly" than others, you have to learn how to attract the attention to you.  When people try to douse your flame with water in an attempt to put it out, you must learn how to manipulate that water, and instead turn it into gasoline.  There is no obvious way to counter an attack, and use it to increase your power base, but just imagine all of the hundreds of times where scandal and personal attacks have actually benefited someone in the long run.  Of course, I am not telling you to draw attention to yourself by doing something really stupid like burning down your school or drowning innocent puppies, but instead to avoid being a "flash in the pan," and doing things that inspire strong feelings of wonderment, joy, confusion? etc.

Our society, and future generations, will always desire "larger than life figures," those who shine brighter than the rest and illuminate what would otherwise be a grey and dull world.  That is why the entertainment industry has grown consistently and rapidly over the last few centuries, and is evolving with the times, always adapting and anticipating the needs of both the young and the older audiences.  Even professionals of any kind must follow this law of power, since there is always a showmanship part to every job which separates the successful and the mediocre.

According to Robert Greene, if you are in a position of low power and have very little attention paid to you, you should attack the "most visible, most famous, and most powerful person you can find."  Personally, I think this is a strategy that is very dangerous, and I would probably not recommend it unless you have a very clear plan of what you are going to do next, and how you will defend the potential attempts of people who want to take your life afterwards.  Also, doing this may make you appear weaker and desperate, so you must plan ahead and make sure that it is worthwhile before doing something that might damage your reputation beyond repair.

"Once in the limelight you must constantly renew it by adapting and varying your method of courting attention.  If you don't, the public will grow tired, will take you for granted, and will move on to a newer star.  The game requires constant vigilance and creativity.  Pablo Picasso never allowed himself to fade into the background; if his name became too attached to a particular style, he would deliberately upset the public with a new series of paintings that went against all expectations.  Better to create something ugly and disturbing, he believed, than to let viewers grow too familiar with his work.  Understand: People feel superior to the person whose actions they can predict.  If you can show them who is in control by playing against their expectations, you gain their respect and tighten your hold on their fleeting attention"

To be continued....