The 50th Law (19 page)

In the hood, conditions are more crowded than elsewhere; people with all kinds of different psychologies are constantly in your face. Any power you have depends on your ability to know everything that is going on around you, to be sensitive to changes, aware of the power structures that are imposed from without and within. There is no time or room to escape to some inner dreamland. You have a sense of urgency to stay connected to the environment and the people around you—your life depends on it.

We now live in similar conditions—all kinds of people of divergent cultures and psychologies are thrown together. But because we live in a society of more apparent abundance and ease, we lack that sense of urgency to connect to other people. This is dangerous. In such a melting pot as the modern world, with people’s tastes changing at a faster pace than ever before, our success depends on our ability to move outside ourselves and connect to other social networks. At all costs, you need to continually force yourself outward. You must reach a point where any sense of losing this connection to your environment translates into a feeling of vulnerability and peril.

In the end this primal fear of ours translates into a mental infirmity—the closing of the mind to any ideas that are new and unfamiliar. The fearless types in history learn to develop the opposite: an open spirit, a mind that is constantly learning from experience. Look at the example of the great British primatologist Jane Goodall, whose field research revolutionized our ideas on chimpanzees and primates.

Prior to Goodall’s work, scientists had established certain accepted ideas on how to do research on animals such as chimpanzees. They were mostly to be studied in cages under very controlled circumstances. On occasion, primatologists would research them in the wild; they would come up with various tricks to lure the chimpanzees closer to them, while remaining hidden behind some kind of protective screen. They would conduct experiments by manipulating the animals and noting their responses. The goal was to come up with general truths about chimpanzee behavior. Only by keeping their distance from the animals could the scientists study them.

Goodall did not have any formal training in the sciences when she arrived in 1960 in what is now known as Tanzania to study chimpanzees in the wild. Operating totally on her own, she devised a radically different means of research. The chimps lived in the remotest parts of the country and were notoriously shy. She tracked them from a distance, patiently working to gain their trust. She dressed inconspicuously and was careful to not look them in the eye. When she noticed they were uncomfortable with her being in the area, she moved away, or acted like a baboon that was merely there digging for insects.

Slowly, over the course of several months, she was able to move closer and closer. Now she could begin to identify individual chimps that she kept seeing; she gave them names, something scientists had never done before—they had always been designated by numbers. With these names, she could begin to detect subtle nuances in their individual behavior; they had different personalities, like humans. After nearly a year of this patient seduction, the chimps began to relax in her presence and allow her to interact with them, something no one had ever achieved before in the history of studying primates in the wild.

This took a tremendous degree of courage, as chimpanzees were considered the most volatile of the primates, more dangerous and violent than gorillas. As she interacted with them more and more, she noticed a change in herself as well. “I think my mind works like a chimp’s, subconsciously,” she wrote a friend. She felt this because she had developed an uncanny ability to find them in the forest.

Now, gaining access to them, she took note of several phenomena that belied the accepted data on chimpanzee behavior. Scientists had catalogued the animals as vegetarians; she observed them hunting and eating monkeys. Only humans were considered capable of making and using tools; she saw them crafting elaborate instruments to catch insects for food. She saw them engage in bizarre dance rituals during a rainstorm. She later observed a horrific war that went on for four years between rival packs. She catalogued some rather strange Machiavellian behavior among the males who fought for supremacy. All in all, she revealed a degree of variety in their emotional and intellectual lives that altered the concept not only of chimpanzees but also of all primates and mammals.

This has great application beyond the realms of science. Normally when you study something, you begin with certain preconceived notions about the subject. (Because scientists had come to believe that chimpanzees had a limited range of behavior, that is all that they saw, missing the much more complex reality.) Your mind begins the process in a closed state—not really sensitive to difference and nuance. You are afraid of having your assumptions challenged. Instead, like Goodall, you must let go of this need to control and narrow your field of vision. When you study an individual or a group, your goal is to get inside their minds, their experiences, their way of looking at things. To do this, you must interact with them on a more equal plane. With this open and fearless spirit, you will discover things no one had suspected before. You will have a much deeper appreciation for the targets of your actions or the public you are trying to reach. And with such understanding will come the power to move them.

Keys to Fearlessness

FEW PEOPLE HAVE THE WISDOM TO PREFER THE CRITICISM THAT WOULD DO THEM GOOD, TO THE PRAISE THAT DECEIVES THEM.

—François de La Rochefoucauld

In the work that we produce for business or for culture, there is always a telling moment—when it leaves our hands and reaches the public for which it was intended. In that instant it ceases to be something that was in our heads; it becomes an object that is judged by others. Sometimes this object connects with people in a profound way. It strikes an emotional chord, resonates, and has warmth. It meets a need. Other times it leaves people surprisingly cold—in our minds we had imagined it having a much different effect.

This process can seem rather mysterious. Some people seem to have a knack for creating things that resonate with an audience. They are great artists, politicians with the popular touch, or business people who are endlessly inventive. Sometimes we ourselves produce something that works, but we fail to understand why, and lacking this knowledge, we cannot reproduce our success.

There is an aspect to this phenomenon, however, that is explicable. Anything we create or produce is for a public—large or small, depending on what we do. If we are the type that lives mostly in our heads, imagining what the intended public will like, or not even caring, this spirit is reproduced in the work itself. It is disconnected from the social environment; it is a product of a person who is wrapped up in him- or herself. If, on the other hand, we are deeply connected to the public, if we have a profound sense of their needs and wants, then what we make tends to resonate. We have internalized the way of thinking and feeling of our audience and it shows in the work.

The great Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky had almost two separate parts to his career: in the first, he was a socialist who interacted mostly with other intellectuals. His novels and stories were relatively successful. But then in 1849 he was sentenced to several years of prison and hard labor in Siberia for ostensibly conspiring against the government. There, he suddenly discovered that he hadn’t known the Russian people at all. In prison he was thrown in among the dregs of society. In the small village where he did his hard labor, he finally mingled with the Russian peasantry that dominated the country. Once he was freed, all of these experiences became deeply embedded in his work, and suddenly his novels resonated far beyond intellectual circles. He understood his public, the mass of Russian people, from the inside, and his work became immensely popular.

Understand: you cannot disguise your attitude towards the public. If you feel superior at all, part of some chosen elite, then this seeps out in the work. It is conveyed in the tone and mood. It feels patronizing. If you have little access to the public you are trying to reach but you feel that the ideas in your head cannot fail to be interesting, then it almost inevitably comes across as something too personal, the product of someone who is alienated. In either case, what is really dominating the spirit of your work is fear. To interact closely with the public and get its feedback might mean having to adjust your “brilliant” ideas, your preconceived notions. This might challenge your tidy vision of the world. You might disguise this with a snobbish veneer, but it is the age-old fear of the Other.

We are social creatures who make things in order to communicate and connect with those around us. Your goal must be to break down the distance between you and your audience, the base of your support in life. Some of this distance is mental—it comes from your ego and the need to feel superior. Some of it is physical—the nature of your business tends to shut you off from the public with layers of bureaucracy. In any event, what you are seeking is maximum interaction, allowing you to get a feel for people from the inside. You come to thrive off their feedback and criticism. Operating this way, what you produce will not fail to resonate because it will come from the inside. This deep level of interaction is the source of the most powerful and popular works in culture and business, and a political style that truly connects.

The following are four strategies you can use to bring yourself closer to this ideal.

CRUSH ALL DISTANCE

The French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec came from one of the oldest aristocratic bloodlines in France, but from early on he felt estranged from his family. Part of this came from his physical handicap—his legs had stopped growing at the age of fourteen, giving him a dwarfish appearance. Part of it came from his sensitive nature. He turned to painting as his only interest in life, and in 1882, at the age of eighteen, he moved to Paris to study with a famous artist whose studio was in Montmartre—the bohemian and somewhat seedy part of the city. There Toulouse-Lautrec discovered a whole new world—the cafés and dance halls frequented by prostitutes, con artists, dancers, street performers, and all the shady characters who found themselves drawn to this
quartier.
Perhaps because of his own alienation from his family, he identified with these outcasts. And slowly he began to immerse himself deeper and deeper in the social life of Montmartre.

He befriended the prostitutes and hired them as models, seeking to capture the essence of their lives on canvas. He returned to the dance halls often and sketched while he watched. He drank with the criminal types and the anarchist agitators who passed through the neighborhood. He absorbed every aspect of this world, including the habits of the rich people who came to the area for entertainment and to slum it. Other painters like Degas and Renoir, who both lived in Montmartre, painted many scenes of life there, but it was always with a sense of distance, as if they were outsiders peeking in. Toulouse-Lautrec was more of an active participant. And as his drawings and paintings began to reflect this immersion, his work drew more attention from the public.

All of this culminated in the posters that he did for the dance hall the Moulin Rouge, which opened in 1889. The first and most famous one of all was a scandalous image of a dancer kicking so high you can see her underwear. The colors are intense and garish. But strangest of all is the kind of flat space he created, which gives viewers the sensation that they are there onstage with the performers, in the middle of all the activity and bright lights. No one had created anything quite like it before. When the poster was placed all over the city, people were mesmerized by the image. It seemed to vibrate with a life of its own. More and more posters followed of all the figures in the Moulin Rouge whom he came to know on intimate terms, and an entire new aesthetic was forged around his complete, democratic mingling with his subjects. His work became immensely popular.

Understand: in this day and age, to reach people you must have access to their inner lives—their frustrations, aspirations, resentments. To do so, you must crush as much distance as possible between you and your audience. You enter their spirit and absorb it from within. Their way of looking at things becomes yours, and when you re-create it in some form of work, it has life. What shocks and excites you will then have the same effect on them. This requires a degree of fearlessness and an open spirit. You are not afraid to have your whole personality shaped by these intense interactions. You assume a radical equality with the public, giving voice to people’s ideas and desires. What you produce will naturally connect, in a deep way.

OPEN INFORMAL CHANNELS OF CRITICISM AND FEEDBACK

When Eleanor Roosevelt entered the White House as the First Lady in 1933, it was with much trepidation. She had a disdain for conventional politics and for the kind of cliquish attitude it fostered. In her mind, her husband’s power would depend on his connection to the people who had elected him. To get out of the Depression, the public had to feel engaged in the struggle, not merely be seduced by speeches and programs. When people feel involved they bring their own ideas and energy to the cause. Her fear was that the bureaucratic nature of government would swallow up her husband. He would come to listen to his cabinet members and experts; his contact with the public would be relegated to formal channels such as reports, polls, and studies. This isolation would spell his doom, cutting him off from his base of support. Denied an official position within the administration, she decided to work to create informal channels to the public on her own.

She traveled all over the country—to inner cities and remote rural towns—listening to people’s complaints and needs. She brought many of these people back to meet the president to give him firsthand impressions of the effects of the New Deal. She started a column in
The Woman’s Home Companion,
in which she had posted above the headline, “I want you to write me.” She would use her column as a kind of discussion forum with the American public, encouraging people to share their criticisms. Within six months she had received over 300,000 letters, and with her staff she worked to answer every last one of them. She opened other channels of communication, for instance, planting her aides in various New Deal programs who would then poll on her behalf the public affected by these programs.