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.