Teaching your kids about Tiger Woods

I told my seven-year-old about Tiger Woods. I figure, better she hears about it from me than from some other second-grader.

The story is pretty simple: a daddy had girlfriends. This provides a number of jumping off points to discuss family values. What's wrong about that? What is marriage? What is the social contract? Why is it wrong to break the social contract? Is it ever ok to break the social contract?

I have figured out that really all I can do as a parent is to instruct my kid about family values. Values are necessarily different from one family to the next, and they are shaped by our education and our experiences. We try to spend the most time with families who share the most similar values. Is it ok to spend time with families that have different values? I guess it's ok for limited time, as long as I get the last word. So we can use experiences with other families as a way of discussing what's wrong or what's right about their approach.

I take a pretty literal view of values: there is a hierarchy of what's good and what's bad. Some concepts are more valuable than others. Probably compassion is the top value, to me, then education.

By the way, they had two proms in 2009 in Charleston, Mississippi, also

For those who watched "Prom Night in Mississippi," the documentary inspired by the actor Morgan Freeman's attempt to integrate the senior prom at a high school in rural Mississippi, the immediate question came to mind: what happened in 2009? In 2008, the famous actor offered a simple proposition to the senior class: integrate the prom for the first time ever, and he would pay for it.

The documentary showed some of the parents, students, and teachers in the small town of Charleston trying to come to terms with such a radical change. In 2008, they did indeed integrate the prom, though some white families got together and put on their own whites-only prom as well.

I asked a Charleston High School student, via Facebook, whether there was still this "satellite" prom in 2009, and she indicated that indeed there was.

This story seems to have gotten lost in the press coverage of the documentary, which aired on HBO. The stories about the documentary discuss the Morgan Freeman angle, the screening at a film festival, but omit the lasting impact, if any, Mr. Freeman's proposition had on the school or the town. A year has gone by--inquiring minds want to know what's happening.

Sailing

Yes, sailing. Remember when people used to sail? I mean like the Kennedys. People used to belong to yacht clubs and sail around the Mediterranean.

Now? People watch TV. They go on the computer. You have DVD, WWW, HD, XM, and a thousand other things to take your mind off reality.

Do a little experiment. Actually go sailing. Find someone with a boat. Not just a motor boat, but a sailboat, one you have to roll up your sleeves to get going. Ask them to take you out some time.

I'll bet you'll love it. The sea has captivated the imagination of people for thousands of years. What's out there? What's on the other side of the ocean?

The ocean's a little scary. There are storms. Huge waves. Tropical heat. Pirates. A hundred things you don't even have to think about on land.

Robert Greene's next book is all about fear, and how getting power is all about conquering it.

I think sailing provides a useful platform for examining, and overcoming, fear.

You may have followed the recent arrival of Zac Sunderland after his solo circumnavigation around the world. That's a guy who might have a few things to say about fear, and how to conquer it.

The recent Transpac, Long Beach to Hawaii, is also an exciting confirmation of man's ability to conquer fear. There's a great movie about it called 'Morning Light.'

There is also a great around-the-world sailing race called the Volvo Ocean Race which just finished. Competing on a team in this grueling race is probably tougher than going to the moon, since these guys get less sleep, have worse food, and have to contend with storms.

People have been sailing for thousands of years, and while technology has improved, the sea can still be a very powerful adversary.

As the guys on Deadliest Catch often prove, sometimes the trickiest adversary is not the weather but the other people on the boat!

If you haven't been sailing, I would encourage you to try it. You might get a kick out of it. This is not meant to be presumptuous; you might already be a longtime sailor for all I know, or have some aversion to the water.

Sailing doesn't have to be expensive. Crew on someone's boat--most guys with a racing schedule are dying to take someone on board.

There are so many great images and metaphors with this sport. Never mind all the poetry about wind, waves, sun, and sail--the idea of one man using tried and tested techniques in sail trimming and navigation to take himself all the way around the world--well, that's just inspirational.

MJ

How did Michael Jackson amass so much power? What were the seeds of his destruction? Once again, the laws according to Robert Greene provide needed insight.

1. Mike's power. Michael Jackson, let's say in the 1980s, was the most powerful artist in the world. The proof of this is in the "We are the World" project. You look at that video, and it's remarkable how many A-listers came to record that track. Every top performer at that moment is in the song. Power can be defined as the ability to get people to do things for you, even before you ask them to.

The other proof of the power is the ability to sell out 1,000,000 tickets to a show, within a few hours. People still love this guy. Would the show have been any good? I doubt it--have you seen that Youtube video of him busting a few moves in 2005? Even my kid thought he looked pretty weak, and that was four years ago!

Creating compelling visual spectacles. Play to people's fantasies. Mike started out with the usual, singing and dancing. But he got tired of that early on, and he resented having to perform what he considered his "Step 'n Fechit" routine of Jackson 5-type songs. So he created more and more elaborate images, becoming more and more bizarre in the process. He ended up a long way from where he started, substituting more razzle-dazzle for honest show production.

Adding an element of danger (an idea more fully developed in the Seduction book). A lot of his songs embrace the danger, and he is enough of an artist to pull off the conceit of a skinny young guy trying to be tough. The first song to address this was "Beat It," which ultimately concludes that it's better to run away or forge some sort of peace, than it is to be tough. Right after that came "Bad," which then explores the glory of actually being tough. Same with "Billy Jean" and "Dirty Diana," essentially the same song, but one that shys away from the danger, the other that embraces it.

Re-create yourself. Ditched the aw-shucks concept in Thriller for a darker, edgier sound in Bad, Dangerous, etc. Madonna does this well too, and she's still famous as a result.

Create a cultlike following. He figured out a way to turn his music into a kind of religion. The screaming throngs, the symbolism.

Make your accomplishments seem effortless. You don't see much about the amount of practice and rehearsal that went into MJ's art, but you can be sure there were many many hours spent practicing. We know from books like Outliers that there are very few "naturals;" most of us, and even MJ, had to practice for many years before perfecting our art. This explains why Mike was so good in his teens and twenties, only to lose his gifts in his thirties and forties. Many artists follow this path, and I think it has to do with the trappings of success. Substance abuse doesn't help, of course. Frank Lloyd Wright says the wealthy are janitors for their possessions, and Mike seems to have surrounded himself with quite a few fanciful possessions. Not a lot of time to practice your moonwalk when you have to feed your pet emu. Somehow Usher continues to produce great music, as does Mariah Carey. Motley Crue still sounds decent. Eddie Van Halen, not so much.

2. Mike's destruction.

Guard your reputation. He suffered a major blow to his reputation in the early 1990s with allegations of molestation, eventually silenced with a huge cash payment. The second blow came with his early 2000s trial for molestation. Though he was acquitted, his reputation was never really the same.

Don't build fortresses. Well, 2,500 acres in Santa Barbara may not be a fortress, but maybe it is. This is the hardest rule to observe, since the flip side is using selective absence to increase power (which Mike did as well).

Think as you like. I love this rule--it is so true. We say we want people to be "themselves," but truly different people are marginalized. Mike broke this rule in so many ways--holding the baby off the balcony, making friends with children thirty years his junior. He refused to play by a number of common rules, and he paid for it.

You could really write a whole book from the Greene perspective about the rise and fall of Michael Jackson. There probably would be a fair amount of interest in such a book now.

Churchill

I am watching the HBO special on Winston Churchill, "Into the Storm." The story is well-told, and they hit some high points. The Battle of Britain is a small part of the movie, thought it should have had more coverage.

What laws of power did Churchill follow?

Law 28 Enter Action with Boldness

The conventional narrative (which I believe) is that Chamberlain was weak and appeasing. Churchill realized early on that negotiation with Hitler was futile, and that there would be no freedom without a fight. He appeared at the right time in history, and his boldness has kept us from all speaking German now.

Call Me Ted

Ted Turner's life is very instructional, and his book is terrific. He is a tremendous power player.

What rules is he using? He has a flair for theatrics and drama, and only mentions how hard he worked a few times.

Law 6 Court Attention at all Cost Shenanigans on the baseball field annoyed the baseball establishment, but helped improve the recognition of the Braves.

Law 9 Win through your Actions, Never through Argument We saw this in the episode of trying to buy back the business after his dad died.

Law 28 Enter Action with Boldness

Law 30 Make your Accomplishments Seem Effortless

Law 37 Create Compelling Spectacles

Facebook and the rule of saying the least amount

Facebook can be a very dangerous place. I would urge people to strongly consider law four before posting anything on there:


Law 4: Always Say Less than Necessary

People have done these things on Facebook, that I know of:

1. Reveal that they hid their travel from family. For example, you visit Sheboygan without calling your Aunt Edna who lives there.

2. Reveal that they traveled with part of a group, but not another part.

3. Reveal that they drank more than they should have, either in their writing or their photos.

4. Fixate on material possessions.

5. Criticize people when they should have kept their mouths shut. Read this: Facebook post gets worker fired Oops.

Facebook is a loaded weapon, people. When you post something up there, pretty much everyone you have ever known will see it. It's easy to forget that, since our human tendency is to grow accustomed to our tools. So please treat Facebook with the respect it deserves, and it will reward you as the powerful social resource it really is.

Poker and the forty eight laws

Which of the forty eight laws do you need to put into play while at the poker table? Experienced poker players say it's this one:

Law 4: Always Say Less than Necessary

So many people around the poker table like to talk, kibbitz, or compare hands after the game is over. Resist the temptation. People try to draw you out, get you to make verbal mistakes so that you will make monetary mistakes.

Concentrating around the poker table is hard enough, let alone having to concentrate and maintain harmless conversation. It's often better to just say nothing.

We are social animals, so needless to say it's very tough to maintain complete silence at the table for hours on end. But the closer you come to this ideal, the better your chances for a big payoff.

The story of Dr. Walker, the legendary attending at Emory University Department of Medicine, applies here. He was known for his unorthodox powers of persuasion, and the most unnerving of these was his silence. He could sit across from you and smile and say nothing for at least a few minutes. He could reduce you practically to tears without saying a word! By the time I was at Emory, he was no longer chair of the residency program, but he still held a commanding presence in the administrative office. I will never forget his penetrating gaze, or the valuable lesson it teaches. I still admire his self-control, at being able to stare anyone down for as long as they could manage to remain silent.

Schmuck

Schmuck (pejorative), an insulting term for a stupid person or dimwitted fool or an unwanted guest

In other words, what do you call a guy that cost himself $7.5 million for using a banned substance, and cost his team potentially far more in lost post-season opportunities and marketing?

Which Law of Power did he break?

Law 5 So Much Depends on Reputation – Guard it with your Life

Porsche's climb to the top

Have you ever bought a Porsche? If you have, you can understand why they are the top car company in the world. They just bought VW. In a time when car companies are filing for bankruptcy, and others are on the "dole" for government handouts, Porsche is a company more associated with terms like, "billion dollar profits," and "record-breaking sales."

So what are they doing right?

The biggest thing is the application of the Laws of Power.

Law 8 Make other People come to you – use Bait if Necessary

Law 13 When Asking for Help, Appeal to People’s Self-Interest, Never to their Mercy or Gratitude

Law 26 Keep Your Hands Clean

These are actually similar concepts. The idea is that when you want to trigger a behavior, do it in a positive way, not through complaining.

When you go to turn in your leased Porsche, they don't find every little flaw in the turn-in. A lot of dealers will do that--they bad-mouth the trade. This assaults the buyers' self-esteem, wearing them down until they accept a lowball on the trade.

Porsche takes the opposite approach. They try to make it very easy to get out of your old Porsche and into a better one. They emphasize the advantages of the new car, and basically ignore the old car. Not a single negative word is uttered.

I have found this strategy very useful in my dealings with people. It is so easy to be sidetracked into negativity--with some people, that's the only way they know how to talk. But if you can get people smiling and create a positive environment around you, people will love you. Though some days it can be a real effort to put on a happy face, with the right group of people it can be fun.

The Porsche dealers use this technique to essentially turn you into a Porsche addict, almost like a mafia deal. You know turning in the leased vehicle for another Porsche is ridiculously easy, while turning it in for another type of car would involve all kinds of expenses, repairs, and other inconveniences.

Then they can not only upsell you on features and options, but also they have a nice number to brag about: buyer loyalty.

Think about it--not a single negative word is said, and they get the car shopper to do exactly what they want them to do: forget about every other car out there and follow the path of least resistance to a new Porsche.

The best strategy to win here is to avoid the dealership altogether. Unless, of course, you prefer Porsches...

Indirect is best

When you're a kid, you have one way of confrontation: directly against the person who aggravated you. "Hey, give that back!"

When you're a grownup, hopefully you'll learn a different technique. Let's call it "indirect." If you are upset at something I did, do you call me out on it? Total waste of time. I get mad at you, you end up looking bad.

The better maneuver is that I tell others around you what you did. I create a compelling narrative sympathetic to my story. Choose the details that put me in a good light, you in a bad one.

If my story is any good, others rally to my cause. They see the harm in what you've done. They may not really remember all the details of what you did later, but when they see you, they have a negative thought about you.

This negatively impacts your reputation, and if this happens enough, you will suffer for it.

I guess this is why social review networks are so powerful: they let people tell others about bad service you offered. If enough people complain, your reputation will be impacted. It has to be, if by definition reputation is what others say about you.

Why chemo patients are awesome

Look into the chemo room, if you dare.

Ok, it's a motley crew. People who are thin. People who don't have much hair. People with IVs. I agree, it doesn't have the appeal of an ice cream social. People ask, "how could you do that," meaning oncology and the whole chemotherapy bit.

But wait. You're missing the whole point.

These are the people who have decided to live. They have willingly rearranged schedules, delegated childcare, and enlisted friends and family to help.

Not everyone even has the guts to sit in the chemo room chair. Some people are afraid. I understand that. When there's a catastrophe, they say the way to survive is to never stop looking for the way out. Some people lock up, freeze. The people in the chemo room are motivated to action by a crisis. That's inspiring.

You have to understand that the chemo room is the place where the mortal struggle between human and cancer is conducted, and often won. What is a basketball court? Ok, it's got better lighting and sound, but isn't the contest played on a basketball court a little ridiculous compared to the one in the chemo room?

Little old ladies have shed their oxygen tanks there. I kid thee not.

Stage III breast cancers by the dozens become a thing of the past there. The list is longer than I can remember.

Ideally, nobody would have to sit in these chairs, enduring the wig discussions and the side effects. Someday, we will have a different treatment model. I personally prefer the Star Trek model, where the doc waves a machine over your body and you magically get better.

Until then, I'll be in the chemo room.

Monsters v. Aliens

This was a work of craftsmanship, if not art. I would agree more with Slate's take that this is Dreamwork's Pixar moment, than with Ebert's trashing of the movie. The review was just not good. A dictionary definition of "wit" in a review of a kid movie?

Hey bud, I dunno about you, but my kids liked it. It gave me an opportunity to introduce the concept of "code brown" to my daughter, which I had actually been meaning to do for a while, but never got around to it.

T.I. sentencing Friday

Best rapper since Eminem

Drama

I wasn't much for drama/acting in school. But now that I'm Old, I recognize, it's all about acting. I'm encouraging my kids to go in for drama.

We all love acting. There aren't awards for Telling the Truth, but there are awards for Acting. Every year, we watch to see who the best actor is going to be.

The California governor is an actor.

A very popular past president was an actor.

It's not a coincidence. Acting is nothing less than the engine of Power.

People don't mind that acting is insincere (though eventually such acting grates on people). People would rather have insincere acting than no acting.

The hard thing is to not forget who you are despite all the acting. We all have roles to play, but we never stop being who we are despite the roles. Being with trusted friends, shouldn't involve acting.