Posts Tagged ‘manipulation’

Cowardice, despite being perhaps the most human characteristic, being unique to our own species, is the one which we detest the most. To underline the point: When was the last time you encountered anyone who freely confessed to being a coward?

Cowardice is a witch’s brew of fear and denial. That part we share with our cousins in the animal kingdom is fear; the denial is unique to our species. It is not difficult to imagine how this sets us up for a kind of vicious circle – the more we detest our cowardice, the more we must escape from it, the more we deny it, the stronger it grows.

In the past, the world was simpler; we were not buffered by technology against the elements. It was far more difficult to hide from our own fear, and fool ourselves into believing ourselves to be elevated beings, immune to the baser impulses. Today, given sufficient sums of money we can completely insulate ourselves from our own cowardice. This then allows it to flourish and grow to proportions that were permitted to but a select few in the past.

Cowardice is the perfect soil for the manipulator to plant their seeds. The more cowardly the individual, the greater their denial, the greater their need to believe they are the polar opposite of what they truly are. This provides the manipulator with the perfect vehicle to perform their magic. They insinuate themselves into the coward’s psyche with flattering words directed towards their specific weakness. They will happily encourage those who are weak to see their fear and cupidity as wisdom and generosity, their selfishness as martyrdom. Like a drug pusher they endeavour to create dependence upon themselves, maintaining this process until their hooks are deeply planted and they can confidently lead their victim by the nose, in any direction that suits their own ends.

The Game has precisely this impact, but on a grand scale. It weakens the moral fibre of the average man. Being tribal animals, our response to adversity is very much dependent upon how we perceive those around us are likely to react. If we’re in a subway full of people and one man wields a knife, if we believe that those around us will take action, the likelihood of us joining the charge is pretty good. However, if we believe the opposite to be the case- that should we act, we’re likely find ourselves alone and unarmed against an aggressor who is angry, desperate, with little to lose, the likelihood that we will take action is next to none.

The combination of the undermining of the individual together with the related cynicism regarding the lack of backbone in those around them creates a one-two combination that sets a downward spiral in motion in society. This kind of society is likely to be compliant, likely to readily accept restrictions to their freedom, likely to happily march in whatever direction the powers would have it march in. Also, it will enthusiastically consume any and all attempts at misdirection concocted to distract the ranks and file from seeing what is really going on.

Ironically, this is, in some sense, an act of kindness on the part of the Players because most of us seem to go to great lengths to avoid seeing that what we do not wish to see –our own weakness, our own complicity, our own cowardice!

Some of us are born heroes. Conversely, some of us are born cowards. But for the vast majority of us, we must struggle with our demons and our weaknesses in order to do the right thing, act nobly, each day.

Talk to any financial trader, investor, or guru, and they will tell you that markets run on fear and greed – success depends upon banking on the fear and greed of others, while managing to keep your own in check.

The gurus will talk about financial strategies, trend forecasting, intrinsic value and the fundamentals, etc. The trader, the frontline soldier, will use metaphors such as ‘playing’ the market, or ‘beating’ the market. Of all of these, I believe it to be the trader, the front line soldiers, who are the closest to having it right.

This enormous edifice of the financial industry, with its high technology, mountains of analysis, legions of experts in gray and blue suits, completely rests upon something as banal, vulgar and prosaic as a simple marketplace. In its essence this market is no different than a vegetable market in an open square in an old town in Europe or the Middle East.

This brings to mind something I witnessed during a short consulting assignment for the EBRD in Albania. It was back in the early 1990s, shortly after the fall of the totalitarian dictatorship of Enver Hoxha and had prevailed for several decades. The entire economy was in a shambles – the Ministry of Finance and National Bank were both housed in a single turret-like building in the middle of the main square of Tirana. Its staff, no more than a dozen are so, had no previous experience in finance. Yet, despite this, the economy managed to keep running. A powerful illustration of this was the fact that the variance between the official and black market exchange rate between the Lek (the local currency) and hard currencies was within 1 to 2%. How was this possible?

Situated immediately beside the Turret was the financial black market exchange. Here about 15 to 20 traders armed with nothing more than pocket calculators took your Marks or Dollars and provided you with Leks (the local currency). The physical proximity, as well as the parity in technology, created the ideal conditions for an efficient market. Information passed freely and the market responded almost instantaneously.

Should the National Bank have been wiped off the face of the earth, or the Ministry of Finance disappeared in a puff of smoke, no one would have even noticed- there would have been next to no impact whatsoever on the economy. Meanwhile, should this makeshift currency exchange ceased to exist; the entire economy of Albania would have come to a screeching halt.

So far I have argued that the markets are pure expressions of fear and greed – nothing too new in that. What is of interest is where this leads us. Fear and greed are based on collective perceptions of events, not on the events themselves. The trader is not really interested in reality as such, only on how people are likely to respond to their perception of it. Taking this a step further, if you can manage perception and predict how the market will react to a given stimuli, you can manage outcomes and thereby effectively creating reality. This is the alchemy of the market –the secret that lies behind the Game.

Returning to the edifice of the financial industry- their function is not so much to interpret reality as it is to create it. They are the architects of the illusion that our system is rationally motivated, efficient, and equitable. In the next blog in the series I will look at the way in which this is done. Stay tuned!

No man is an island! Being social animals, our success in this world very much depends on our ability to get along with others. This includes our ability to communicate with others, to influence others, to convince them of the worth of both ourselves, and our ideas. Thus, we are always selling in one way or another. Sounds logical enough! In fact we have all heard this so many times before, that it is practically self evident. The only problem is that it is unadulterated bullshit.

Equating teaching teenagers about the ideals of the French revolution, or attempting to convince your toddler to go to bed tonight, are not the same as selling vacuum cleaners, or financial services.

True, they all involve some form of persuasion that much is undeniable. However, what distinguishes the latter examples from the former is that for the teacher and the parent it is done for the benefit of the students and the toddler. In the case of the sale, the salesman stands to benefit. In fact this benefit is the primary motivation for the entire exchange.

By blurring this distinction, selling is elevated, somehow ennobled. At the same time, persuasion that which is altruistic is minimized, or even invalidated. Everything becomes reduced to one simple common denominator – selling! For many people compulsive self-promotion and selling has become so deeply ingrained, that they literally do not know when to stop. For such people, selling does not stop in the boardroom, or in the showroom, but extends to friends, neighbours, and the family alike.

In the best case selling is selective truth; in the worst case it is outright misleading. What it does not do is convey the whole truth, as we would be asked to do in a court of law. Truth may be subjective, but when we are embellishing, or editing to convey an impression we are misleading others in some way. Technically, we’re not lying, in the legal sense. But in the moral sense, we most certainly are.

The typical justification of the salesman is that we all do it, we all have to make a buck somehow. This is the morality of the herd –which is not morality, but tribal group think masquerading as ethics.

The horror of it is that these days, all are compelled to sell. Teachers have to jump through hoops to amuse their students, university professors are evaluated on how much their students enjoy their lectures, and parents have to compete with cartoon characters and sanitized versions of classic fairy tale characters to communicate values to their children.

In such a world to not sell, to refrain from embellishing and entertaining, to simply tell it as you see it, is to be inaudible. You simply do not register, you do not count, and you do not exist.

Another more insidious consequence of this “everyone is a salesman” mindset is that it implies that the market is the ultimate arbiter of value. If something does not sell, it is not of value. This progressively crowds out anything whose deliverables to the consumer can not be squeezed into a sound byte, while promoting that which titillates the senses and appeals to the vanity. Over time we become progressively more indulgent, superficial and addicted.

Ultimately, it has taken us to where we find ourselves today as a society: relating to one another only as Buyers and Sellers, nothing more. The filter through which we hear is “what is in it for me now?” In order for our message to get out there, to not get lost in all the noise out there, we talk louder, faster, longer, – all the while saying next to nothing!

By nature, we are predisposed to believe everything and anything that is said to us. Life experience, however, teaches us that what is said is not necessarily true. In fact in today’s world, lying is so prevalent that for just about anyone in the business world the implied assumption is quite the opposite – that there is a hidden agenda behind what ever is being said.

However, even though our survival instinct leads us to be sceptical, our need to believe remains in no way diminished. This creates an internal tension inside us. On the one hand we need to believe, while on the other we cannot allow ourselves to trust those around us. This creates an untenable situation for us psychologically, a psychic paralysis which is not sustainable over time.

Therefore, in order to resolve this dilemma at some point we must place our scepticism in abeyance, placing our trust in someone or something. So then in whom do place our trust? Is it in the most trustworthy individual who we have taken time to vet, or the one who’s most skilled at penetrating our psychological defenses? Obviously it is the latter, as the former is simply too cumbersome. This then leads to an end result which is counter intuitive. The more ‘sophisticated’ we become the more easily we are fooled. As the players and the environment become more and more skilled at deception, and we become more sceptical, it becomes more and more likely that it is only the skilled manipulator will be the one who wins our trust.

Then when we are misled and taken advantage of once again, we become more cynical, more suspicious. Our critical factor becomes stronger and thicker, our loneliness intensifies, and our mental stability becomes more tenuous. This then only makes us increasingly vulnerable to being manipulated. This then explains why we as a society never seem to wake up, and fall ourselves time and time again for different variations of the same cons. Be it Junk Bonds, Enron, Mortgage-backed securities, or Medicare, the packaging changes, but underneath, the Game is the same!

Taoism is a philosophy that models the world in terms of the interaction of two complimentary and opposing forces – Yin and Yang. The Yang is that which is manifest; it is what we see on the surface, the Yin force, meanwhile, is its reciprocal- that which lies concealed beneath the surface, the latent force. Tai Chi is a martial art that is an application of Taoism to physical combat. It is an ideal framework for us to use in playing the players.

The narcissist lives in the Yang world. They only see what is overt, tangible, and concrete. Their obsession is with status and looking good. What lies beneath is of little interest to them. This obsession with the overt makes them blind to the subtle, the implied, the covert, which is the Yin realm. Therefore in our encounters with the narcissists it is far better to remain in the shadows and only show our hand when the time is propitious.

This is true for a number of reasons. Firstly they travel in packs and they don’t fight fairly– if you are skillful or lucky you may win a few battles, but ultimately you will lose the war. Therefore if you can finesse them in such a way that they are left with no idea how they have been bested, or for that matter that matter, beaten at all, so much the better.

The narcissists’ worldview is that life is a zero sum game. This means that they look at every interaction with another person as a competition, one in which there are no ties, and one can only win or lose. They are very skilled at concealing their agendas beneath a very engaging veneer, nonetheless their agenda, to gain the advantage or dominate, is relentless, leaving no chance of a happy compromise. In this ongoing war with the Players, victories are rare and the best you can realistically hope for is a kind of standoff or stalemate.

This is best achieved by putting them at ease and luring them into a kind of trap, where they cannot act against you without harming themselves in the process. This is done by leading them to believe their position is far stronger; inducing them to overplay their hand. Then when you have them out on a limb, you spring the trap. Now you have one of two choices: finish them off, or allow them to return to safety while retaining leverage over them.

This may all seem a bit dark in draconian, but with narcissists is very much a case of ‘live by the sword and die by the sword’. Being incapable of experiencing any enduring guilt, or remorse, if you show the mercy they will only redouble their efforts to exact revenge for the humiliation they suffered at your hands.

If you enjoyed this article, I invite you to download my brand new ebook “Social Ju Jitsu: Navigating the World Narcissism by clicking here. Enjoy and I welcome your feedback! Please feel free to share this ebook with anyone whom you think will benefit from it.

Once upon a time there was a traveler who was caught out alone in the dark in the middle of a deep, dark forest. The wind was howling and the rain pouring down. He had been travelling for what seemed like an eternity, but no shelter was in sight.

Finally, his eyes alighted upon a dim light in the distance. His heart began to pound in his chest and his pace quickened. As he trudged on, lifting one heavy, tired foot in front of the other, the light grew in intensity. Eventually, he could just make out the silhouette of a little cottage deep in the wood.

After much struggle he made it to the front door of the cottage. He knocked – no answer! He knocked again – still no answer! Finally, in desperation, with all the force he could muster, he pounded on the door with his fist.

After a few seconds he heard the sound of shuffling steps inside. Gradually the steps grew closer until the door opened, ever so slightly, just enough to reveal the small craggy face of a very old woman.

“Go away!” she said. “Please let me in!” the traveler implored. “I am a wayward traveler and have nowhere else to go. If you let me in I will sit quietly by the fire and will not ask anything more of you, so please let me in.” The old lady appeared unmoved, but the traveler was persistent. Finally, she relented and let him in.

The traveler crouched before the fireplace. He could begin to feel his frozen hands warming from the flames of the fire, and it felt wonderful. After a time, the traveler asked the old lady if he might have something to eat. “The cupboards are bare” she said. “I already told you I have nothing to offer you.” “I understand,” he replied. “I have a magical stone with which I can make you the most amazing stew you have ever tasted. All I need is a large cauldron and some hot water.”

This tale pricked the curiosity of the old lady and she went to the kitchen returning with a cauldron full of hot water which was then placed over the fire. Once the pot was brought to a boil, the traveler reached into his pocket, extracted what looked to be an ordinary pebble one might find on the road, and gingerly dropped it in the cauldron.

After stirring the pot for a time the traveler said to the old lady, “This stew will be so good, but if one adds a pinch of salt and pepper it would be all the more wonderful and flavourful.” The old lady disappeared into the kitchen once again, this time returning with salt and pepper which the traveler then sprinkled into the soup.

The traveler then tasted the soup and smiled saying that it was going to be delicious. “What might enhance the flavour still further,” he suggested, “would be some carrots, celery and turnips. But of course I know you have nothing in the cupboard so no need to bother.” Upon hearing this, the old lady disappeared once again, only to return with the desired carrots, celery and turnips. “Excellent!” exclaimed the traveler, as he tossed them into the boiling cauldron. Once again he returned to stirring the soup.

By now the old lady could smell the aroma of the simmering stew and began to feel hungry. The more she inhaled the sweet aroma, the more hungry she became, and the more she looked forward to the meal they were about to share.

Over time the old lady and the traveler struck up a conversation. The traveler told her tales from his travels – recounting in splendid detail his various adventures and misadventures. Each of the tales featured the magical stone and the incredible stews it created, each unique, each surpassing the last in excellence. Each time he mentioned the soup the traveller would describe in detail the various ingredients he used. After a time he recounted a story in which the final, and best ingredient was added to the stew: meat. As he described the part about the meat his voice grew deep and melodious. The old lady, who had become completely entranced with the traveller’s tales by now, began to salivate. Soon she disappeared into the kitchen only to return with a plate heavily laden with every type of meat. There was game, there was chicken; beef and pork was there too. These too were placed in the stew.

Finally, at long last the stew was ready. The traveller carefully removed the now heavy cauldron from the fire and then ladled the thick soup into two large bowls. The old lady by this point was beside herself with anticipation. She dipped her spoon into the soup and brought the sweet smelling stew to her lips.

“It is magnificent!” she exclaimed. “This is the best stew I have ever tasted in my entire life. You are truly a magician.” “Imagine, all this from just a simple stone.” replied the traveller with a smile.

We all learn at an early age that nothing comes for free in this life. Nonetheless, there is nothing more appealing than a really good deal. Better still, is the promise of getting something for nothing. Absolutely nothing works better in sales than the free giveaway. The traveler’s offer to the old woman to make soup from a stone employed precisely this principle.

The lesson to be drawn from the story is that people need to be conned. Had the traveler told the miserly old lady precisely what the ingredients of the miraculous soup were in advance, she would have turned him down cold. So, even that which is of value cannot be sold without the aid of deception.

Abstract: As a society we have all been indoctrinated into a giant cult. It is the cult of marketing. We experience ourselves and each other as brands, commodities, assets, which are bought and sold at market. Not only does this cult crowd out authenticity of any kind, it is not sustainable in the long run. The current economic crisis is an example of the limitations of the virtual world that has been created.

What is a cynic? A man who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. – Oscar Wilde

If I were to tell you that you are a member of a cult, I bet you’d react with shock, anger and possibly rage. I bet too that if I made that same statement to any religious fundamentalist, or your garden variety fringe fanatic, I’d get pretty much the same reaction.

The main difference between their cult and yours, I would explain, is its size – their cult number in the hundreds, sometimes thousands, while yours numbers in the billions.

In one way or another we must all play in this game. No matter what your particular gift or expertise, you have no choice but to play the marketing game if you are to survive.

Such a game nullifies the value of our gifts, our passion, our intelligence, and our perseverance. Wherever the marketer is king, talking a good game, looking good, being likeable, being sexy become the winning traits. Conversely, knowledge, integrity, fortitude, kindness, generosity and graciousness become nothing more than frills, mere anachronisms. They are the traits associated with those on the fringe – the losers, artists, intellectuals, the has-beens. In fact, substance of any kind becomes a burden and an obstacle to progress. It becomes the ballast that holds you down and stifles your creativity while you concoct what you think your client expects.

If you build homes, for instance, your success is not measured by the quality of homes you build but by your ability to manage your client’s expectations. Similarly, dentists, doctors and accountants can no longer build a thriving practice on just excellence and hard work – he too must play the marketing game.

Observe the marketing cult members at a cocktail party: the seasoned pros are all looking exuberant, healthy and successful, staying on message. Any authentic person placed in this environment will appear awkward and nervous, happy to have someone to talk with – even if it means listening to an endless monologue of bombastic self-aggrandizement.

If that person commits the cardinal sin of introducing a topic they are passionate about they are met with glazed eyes and uneasiness. Success in this jungle is measured by how much fun we are; being perceived as intense, is the kiss of death.

You don’t have to get very deep into this cult before you realize that selling is not really a choice; it’s survival. The market is inundated with hustlers who lack any objective, reliable criteria upon which to assess competence; instead, likeability and slickness become their key success criteria. In this way the consumer is unwittingly steered towards the con men and those who cannot sell are simply invisible.

Placed in this context, the success of investment banks is easy to understand. In conveying an air of success and competence, their performance becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The well-tailored suit, the perfectly coifed hair and the confident even demeanor all convey success, competence and authority. This then forms the backdrop for what they’re selling – the opportunity to be rich, successful and popular as they appear to be. By the time they actually make their pitch, the potential buyer is already sold. Who is the prospective buyer? Anybody in the room!

The ubiquitousness of this game forces us to choose between two options, one more repugnant than the other:

The first option is to bite the bullet and attempt to sell. Unfortunately, when it comes to mastering bluff and small talk, most of us are like fish out of water. Not being natural liars, we are no match for those naturally inclined to embellishment and hyperbole. This puts us between a rock and a hard place. Instead of plying our trade we spend our time going to sales courses in the hope that a few crumbs will fall our way.

Those who are not socially skilled have to ally themselves with a rainmaker. To add insult to injury, in the event that they are successful in finding such a hustler, they become the drone, the weaker party in the relationship. It is no surprise then to see that professional firms – management consulting, architects, lawyers – are controlled by the partners who are adept at bringing in the clients. Over time their confidence erodes and sooner or later they fall victim to despair, or some form of sedation.

Of course, this entire focus upon making the sale, with next to no thought upon delivering the product, is not sustainable in the long run.

The current banking crisis is a prime example the cult of marketing run amuck. The banks sold homeowners on the idea of buying a house with next to no security. They next sold the debt to fund managers and investors. They in turn re-packaged it in combination with other assets and sold it to other investors.

Over time the volume of these investments, together with the increasingly creative ways in which they were combined, flooded the market with investments of indeterminable value. The high degree of integration between all the world’s financial markets took what began as a local problem, a number of failed mortgages in the US and allowed it to infect the entire global investment and banking system.

If anything good does come out of this crisis it will be that we have been woken, albeit rudely, from our collective trance. Hopefully we can return to those things of sustaining value – kindness, graciousness, sincerity – and in so doing come to see ourselves as something more than consumers and producers bitterly struggling with one another for our place in the sun.

The game is set in motion by a junior loan officer at a small mortgage company who makes a pitch to a recently married couple with a baby on the way.

The young couple is just starting their life together. They tell the officer they saw an ad on television that claimed they could buy a home with no money down.

The loan officer confirms the claim and assures them that despite their lack of means, they could have their little dream home: not in ten years, not in five years, but today! Not only that, but they can be in their new home for a full six months without paying a single cent!

The wife is a little hesitant, but her husband assures her that lots of their friends have done it, so why be left behind? Let’s go for it, he says to his wife and she finally gives in.

Meanwhile, all the other salesmen at the company are diligently signing up new customers and, in short order, all their funds are fully committed. That’s great but what do they do now?

Bob then approaches his boss, Jim, and says, “Well I just heard of this new product, called a mortgage backed security, which allows investment dealers to use mortgages as collateral for securities. Why don’t we pool our mortgages and sell them as one package to one of these companies? Then we can go back to doing what we do best: sell mortgages.”

Jim thinks it’s a capital idea and soon an investment house buys the mortgage company’s portfolio. They in turn use it to secure shares in the mutual fund they are offering to investors. Shares are sold to investors as well as institutions.

One of these institutions is a much larger investment fund based in New York. They bundle the investment with other similar securities and create a new fund which is once again sold to investors. A fund in Singapore likes the investment house’s balance sheet and purchases their firm along with its entire portfolio. And so it goes.

Eventually, these securities are floating in the system long enough that they are randomly and evenly spread throughout the world’s financial system. At that point the product has been diluted and blended so many times it would be near impossible to determine who is actually holding the paper on our young couple’s mortgage.

Then the bubble is stretched too far.

The housing bubble bursts and the mortgages securing the securities are worth next to nothing. The mortgage company is no longer on the hook as they sold the mortgage to the first investment house. They in turn passed off their securities to their clients, taking commission on the sales.

All the insiders were smart enough to keep passing it on. Each time the debt was passed, it was re-bundled, artfully packaged and profit was taken. Like a huge game of hot potato, they pass the security as fast as they can. Everybody is doing just fine as long as they are not caught holding the potato when the game ends.

The securities are, for the most part, held by mutual funds, banks and insurance companies spread over the globe. The managers of these funds have been well compensated for their returns over the last decade.

So who is caught holding the hot potato?

The investors who are holding shares in these funds will take the hit: pensioners, professionals, teachers; in other words, you and me. To make things worse, when the investment houses, insurance companies and banks are bailed out, it is the taxpayers – you and me – who are on the hook once again.

Our young couple has lost their home and declared personal bankruptcy. The pensioner holding the mutual fund units has lost a good part of his nest egg. The taxpayers are saddled with a debt which might take a generation or two to pay off.

Who is to blame? Who do we hold accountable, the loan officer? He was just doing his job – meeting his quota trying to sell as much product as he can. Do we blame the mortgage company? Their mandate was to place their funds with homeowners and manage the risk and that’s what they did. They signed up the homeowners and then sold the debt. What more could they do in fulfilling their responsibility to their shareholders?

Should we blame the management of the investment houses? They were acting on the professional advice of their qualified experts in the research department. How about the experts they relied upon? They were only following the advice of what all the economists were saying. The only one left to blame is the economist, the man behind it all. He will tell us that based on the model it should have worked; however, certain unanticipated events (such as the extent of human greed) were not fully taken into account.

So in the end, who truly is to blame?

Nobody, they tell us! Instead, they feed us lines: ‘it’s an economic anomaly, the exception that makes the rule;’ or, ‘It is like an ‘Act of God,’ something which simply defies prediction;’ or, ‘One just has to accept that these things will happen from time to time;’ and, ‘It’s part of the self-correcting mechanism that makes capitalism so great.’

Thanks to the media, no one is exempt from the dismal news of the economic collapse of Wall Street.

The very fact it happened is ludicrous. But how did it happen? How could such a thing blindside the best minds of the financial world? And, who is really to blame? Is the very notion of holding anyone accountable outdated? Such are the questions on everyone’s mind.

I believe it was not a freak occurrence; it was not an unforeseeable consequence of a perfect storm of global factors which just happened to converge at one single time.

On the contrary, beneath the surface of this crisis lies a set of dynamics concealed from public view that made it not so much happenstance as inevitable – the predictable outcome of a sinister choreography I prefer to call The Game.

In reality, The Game has been around for millennia. It rises and falls with the fluctuations of circumstance. Like the phoenix, out of the ashes of one Game comes another – different in form, but remarkably identical in substance. A deeper examination of the latest incarnation – the consumption bubble which led to the collapse on Wall Street – reveals the necessary clues to how this Hidden Game is played out right before our eyes.

First, we know what goes up must come down, so it is no surprise that the enormous bubble created by the sales-driven economy would burst. Nonetheless, when it did, its brutal reality of chaos and carnage shocked every last one of us.

How that bubble grew is simple, really. Over the last several decades myriad products were foisted upon the public who drifted into a buying trance. As needs gave way to wants, specific wants gave way to addicts buying for the sake of buying. Consumption became rapacious, driven by slick advertising and enabled by easy credit. A population of shopaholics became so habituated to shopping that even when the money ran out last fall, penniless people carrying maxed out credit cards filled the malls coast-to-coast.

Because humans are driven by emotion and not reason, effective salesmen know that more can be achieved by a manipulative appeal to our emotional weaknesses than by the most cogent, brilliant argument. Being a master manipulator then, is their goal.

Manipulation is the art of managing impressions. It stands to reason then that through the process of natural selection those who are the most talented at impression management rise to the top of the organizational hierarchy. I call these the “Players.”

Manipulators – Players – are born, not made. Their art requires a degree of congruence in presentation that is simply not sustainable for those who are not naturally inclined to manipulate. The defining element in the character profile of a player is narcissism. But they are not merely narcissistic; they are narcissists to their very core.

The narcissist is a predator. Their motivation is power, status, and instant gratification. Lacking conscience, they exist without barriers; they hold no regard for the law or any social norm. They execute their plans without question to the methods and means they employ to achieve their goals.

Despite being supremely self-serving, Players, like wolves, form a type of tribe, or pack. They share a common worldview and instinctively draw to one another, seeking each other out in the crowd. Once this ‘tribe’ gains control of an environment, all others are barred from the upper ranks and so The Game begins.

A contra-selection takes place wherein the best and the brightest are pushed aside to make way for the Players and their loyal followers. Since excellence is the natural enemy of mediocrity, and people of excellence have a conscious, it stands to reason that over time the Players exclusively occupy the upper ranks. Their challenge then is to create a game which looks fair and open on the surface, but whose outcome is fully predetermined. No matter what the role of the dice, Players come out on top.

How do they do this? Hypnosis.
I’m not talking about the kind you see practiced by mentalists and stage magicians, no, Players are much more covert. They disguise their game far better and are far more successful than mere actors.

The Game itself is in reality nothing more than a trance induced by the Players and is only sustained by our collective belief in the fabricated reality we are duped into believing. Once we wake up, The Game evaporates and in very short order becomes a vague and distant memory; the way we shake off a nightmare when we rise in the morning.