The Rawness

This is part 2 of an ongoing series dedicated to piecing together a plausible personality profile of Obama. Part 1 can be found here.In the last part, I mentioned how I thought Obama’s main strategy was to sell himself using a compelling narrative rather than focusing on a message with a strong intellectual policy foundation. I’m currently reading his autobiography Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, and it hit me that Obama was portraying himself in the book as a Byronic Hero, which I discussed in part 1 of this series. In the book he also mentions his grandfather owning a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

He doesn’t mention reading it himself though, but it made enough of an impact on him as a kid for him to mention it decades later. It made me wonder whether seeing his grandfather own and use that book to help him with his sales career made him open to the idea of reading self-help books to improve communicating and connecting with people too.

I flipped through my copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People to see if I could see an obvious influence of the book on his personal style, but I couldn’t really see it, at least not in the first three chapters of his book or his campaigning style, which is all I really know of him right now. (As this series progresses I hope to eventually read everything about him I can get my hands on)

Right next to my copy of Carnegie’s book however was The 48 Laws of Power, so no a whim I flipped through that next, and the similarities between the book’s advice and Obama’s approach to defining himself and winning the Presidency were staggering.
Here is a brief summary of each of the 48 Laws of Power. I’ll highlight key laws which I think apply to Obama below. Most of the connections between each law and Obama are self-explanatory, but for some of them I added commentary in bold and brackets for clarification.

Law 2
Never put too Much Trust in Friends, Learn how to use Enemies
Be wary of friends-they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy. They also become spoiled and tyrannical. But hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend, because he has more to prove. In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies. If you have no enemies, find a way to make them.
[PUBLICLY DISAVOWING HIS FRIEND AND MENTOR REV. WRIGHT, OFFERING SEC. OF STATE TO HILLARY, IMMEDIATELY MEETING WITH JOHN MCCAIN]

Law 3
Conceal your Intentions
Keep people off-balance and in the dark by never revealing the purpose behind your actions. If they have no clue what you are up to, they cannot prepare a defense. Guide them far enough down the wrong path, envelope them in enough smoke, and by the time they realize your intentions, it will be too late.

Law 4
Always Say Less than Necessary
When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike. Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.

[RATHER THEN GIVE SPECIFICS AND GOING IN-DEPTH, OBAMA RAN USING VAGUE PHRASES AND SOARING BUT BANAL RHETORIC LIKE "YES WE CAN," "HOPE," "CHANGE," AND "UNITY"]

Law 5
So Much Depends on Reputation ? Guard it with your Life
Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once you slip, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable. Always be alert to potential attacks and thwart them before they happen. Meanwhile, learn to destroy your enemies by opening holes in their own reputations. Then stand aside and let public opinion hang them.

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.

Law 7
Get others to do the Work for you, but Always Take the Credit
Use the wisdom, knowledge, and legwork of other people to further your own cause. Not only will such assistance save you valuable time and energy, it will give you a godlike aura of efficiency and speed. In the end your helpers will be forgotten and you will be remembered. Never do yourself what others can do for you.

Law 8
Make other people come to you – use Bait if Necessary
When you force the other person to act, you are the one in control. It is always better to make your opponent come to you, abandoning his own plans in the process. Lure him with fabulous gains – then attack. You hold the cards.

Law 11
Learn to Keep People Dependent on You
To maintain your independence you must always be needed and wanted. The more you are relied on, the more freedom you have. Make people depend on you for their happiness and prosperity and you have nothing to fear. Never teach them enough so that they can do without you.
[OBAMA HAS DONE THIS WITH HIS FOLLOWERS BY ENCOURAGING THE MESSIANIC FERVOR HIS FOLLOWERS HAVE FOR HIM. IT'S REACHED THE POINT WHERE PEOPLE SAY THINGS LIKE BELOW]

Law 12

Use Selective Honesty and Generosity to Disarm your Victim
One sincere and honest move will cover over dozens of dishonest ones. Open-hearted gestures of honesty and generosity bring down the guard of even the most suspicious people. Once your selective honesty opens a hole in their armor, you can deceive and manipulate them at will. A timely gift – a Trojan horse – will serve the same purpose.

[OBAMA'S POST-ELECTION OVERTURES TO MCCAIN AND HILLARY CLINTON, TWO PEOPLE WHO COULD CAUSE HIM POLITICAL GRIEF IN THE FUTURE, FALL UNDER THIS LAW AS WELL]

Law 13
When Asking for Help, Appeal to People’s Self-Interest, Never to their Mercy or Gratitude
If you need to turn to an ally for help, do not bother to remind him of your past assistance and good deeds. He will find a way to ignore you. Instead, uncover something in your request, or in your alliance with him, that will benefit him, and emphasize it out of all proportion. He will respond enthusiastically when he sees something to be gained for himself.
[THIS WORKS WITH OBAMA BY MAKING PROMISES BASED ON CLASS WARFARE. HE PAINTS A ROBIN HOOD IMAGE WHERE HE'LL REDISTRIBUTE THE WEALTH OF THE RICH AMONG THE POOR AND MIDDLE CLASSES. THIS LEADS TO DISPLAYS LIKE THE WOMAN IN THE YOUTUBE VIDEO ABOVE PROCLAIMING THAT HER GAS AND MORTGAGE WILL BE PAID IF OBAMA WINS.]

Law 20
Do Not Commit to Anyone
It is the fool who always rushes to take sides. Do not commit to any side or cause but yourself. By maintaining your independence, you become the master of others – playing people against one another, making them pursue you.

Law 24
Play the Perfect Courtier
The perfect courtier thrives in a world where everything revolves around power and political dexterity. He has mastered the art of indirection; he flatters, yields to superiors, and asserts power over others in the mot oblique and graceful manner. Learn and apply the laws of courtiership and there will be no limit to how far you can rise in the court.

Law 25
Re-Create Yourself
Do not accept the roles that society foists on you. Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience. Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define if for you. Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions – your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life.

[FROM WHAT I'VE READ SO FAR IN HIS BIO, OBAMA ALWAYS SEEMS TO BE TRYING TO RECREATE HIS IDENTITY GROWING UP. THE BOOK ITSELF SEEMS TO BE AN ATTEMPT TO RECREATE HIMSELF]

Law 26
Keep Your Hands Clean
You must seem a paragon of civility and efficiency: Your hands are never soiled by mistakes and nasty deeds. Maintain such a spotless appearance by using others as scapegoats and cat’s-paws to disguise your involvement.
[PLENTY OF LEAKS AND CHEAP SHOT ATTACKS DONE BY OBAMA SUPPORTERS AND THE MEDIA, ESPECIALLY AGAINST PALIN, WHICH OBAMA THEN DISTANCES HIMSELF FROM BY PUBLIC DENOUNCING AFTER THEY'VE ALREADY HAD THEIR EFFECT. NOT SAYING HE WAS DEFINITELY BEHIND THESE ATTACKS, BUT HE DID BENEFIT FROM THEM WHILE MAKING SURE TO KEEP HIS HANDS CLEAN PUBLICLY]

Law 27
Play on People?s Need to Believe to Create a Cultlike Following
People have an overwhelming desire to believe in something. Become the focal point of such desire by offering them a cause, a new faith to follow. Keep your words vague but full of promise; emphasize enthusiasm over rationality and clear thinking. Give your new disciples rituals to perform, ask them to make sacrifices on your behalf. In the absence of organized religion and grand causes, your new belief system will bring you untold power.

Law 28
Enter Action with Boldness
If you are unsure of a course of action, do not attempt it. Your doubts and hesitations will infect your execution. Timidity is dangerous: Better to enter with boldness. Any mistakes you commit through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity. Everyone admires the bold; no one honors the timid.

[OBAMA IS VERY GOOD AT THIS. HE ACTED LIKE HE WAS ALREADY PRESIDENT WHEN HE WAS IN THE DEBATES BY CONSTANTLY SAYING "WHEN I'M PRESIDENT..." AFTER HE WON, IN HIS ACCEPTANCE SPEECH HE IMMEDIATELY STARTED TALKING ABOUT HIS SECOND TERM. THAT'S BOLD AND AUDACIOUS.]

Law 30
Make your Accomplishments Seem Effortless
Your actions must seem natural and executed with ease. All the toil and practice that go into them, and also all the clever tricks, must be concealed. When you act, act effortlessly, as if you could do much more. Avoid the temptation of revealing how hard you work – it only raises questions. Teach no one your tricks or they will be used against you.

Law 32
Play to People’s Fantasies
The truth is often avoided because it is ugly and unpleasant. Never appeal to truth and reality unless you are prepared for the anger that comes for disenchantment. Life is so harsh and distressing that people who can manufacture romance or conjure up fantasy are like oases in the desert: Everyone flocks to them. There is great power in tapping into the fantasies of the masses.

Law 33
Discover Each Man’s Thumbscrew
Everyone has a weakness, a gap in the castle wall. That weakness is usually an insecurity, an uncontrollable emotion or need; it can also be a small secret pleasure. Either way, once found, it is a thumbscrew you can turn to your advantage.

[OBAMA IS A MASTER AT TELLING EACH INTEREST GROUP EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT TO HEAR]

Law 34
Be Royal in your Own Fashion: Act like a King to be treated like one
The way you carry yourself will often determine how you are treated; In the long run, appearing vulgar or common will make people disrespect you. For a king respects himself and inspires the same sentiment in others. By acting regally and confident of your powers, you make yourself seem destined to wear a crown.

Law 37
Create Compelling Spectacles
Striking imagery and grand symbolic gestures create the aura of power – everyone responds to them. Stage spectacles for those around you, then full of arresting visuals and radiant symbols that heighten your presence. Dazzled by appearances, no one will notice what you are really doing.

[OBAMA'S STRIKING ICONOGRAPHY IS LIKE NOTHING I'VE SEEN FROM A MODERN CANDIDATE. SLEEK, BOLD, COMPELLING, CLEAN AND COLORFUL, IT'S THE TYPE OF BRANDING YOU'D EXPECT FROM A FRESH NEW HIP PRODUCT DESIGNED BY A TOP AD AGENCY AND GRAPHIC DESIGN FIRM. MANY OF HIS SPEECHES HAVE ALSO BEEN COMPELLING SPECTACLES, LIKE THE ONE HE GAVE IN BERLIN TO 200,00 PEOPLE]

[LOOK AT THIS CROWD OF 200,000 THAT CAME OUT TO SEE OBAMA SPEAK IN BERLIN. HOW'S THAT FOR COMPELLING SPECTACLE?]

Law 38
Think as you like but Behave like others
If you make a show of going against the times, flaunting your unconventional ideas and unorthodox ways, people will think that you only want attention and that you look down upon them. They will find a way to punish you for making them feel inferior. It is far safer to blend in and nurture the common touch. Share your originality only with tolerant friends and those who are sure to appreciate your uniqueness.

Law 43
Work on the Hearts and Minds of Others
Coercion creates a reaction that will eventually work against you. You must seduce others into wanting to move in your direction. A person you have seduced becomes your loyal pawn. And the way to seduce others is to operate on their individual psychologies and weaknesses. Soften up the resistant by working on their emotions, playing on what they hold dear and what they fear. Ignore the hearts and minds of others and they will grow to hate you.

Law 45
Preach the Need for Change, but Never Reform too much at Once
Everyone understands the need for change in the abstract, but on the day-to-day level people are creatures of habit. Too much innovation is traumatic, and will lead to revolt. If you are new to a position of power, or an outsider trying to build a power base, make a show of respecting the old way of doing things. If change is necessary, make it feel like a gentle improvement on the past.

Law 48
Assume Formlessness
By taking a shape, by having a visible plan, you open yourself to attack. Instead of taking a form for your enemy to grasp, keep yourself adaptable and on the move. Accept the fact that nothing is certain and no law is fixed. The best way to protect yourself is to be as fluid and formless as water; never bet on stability or lasting order. Everything changes.

Regardless of whether or not Obama actually read 48 Laws or not, a majority of the book directly applies to the strategies Obama used when running.

Recommended Reading:

[This is the first of an open-ended, ongoing series I plan to have about Barack Obama and what may or may not motivate him. I think he makes a fascinating figure, regardless of whether or not you believe in his politics. I think he is an extremely cunning and Machiavellian figure with methods that, once deconstructed, will be very instructive to anyone interested in human nature. This series will go on for as long as I have insights to make about Obama, but will not be the exclusive focus of this blog.]

I had a lot of debates with my intellectual friends during this election about Barack Obama. Many of them would take apart the logical and economic fallacies of Obama’s proposals, giving examples of why they wouldn’t work and pointing out contradictions and inconsistencies. I kept responding that their intellectual approach was actually an obstacle for them in analyzing the political race because the informed people choose their sides and ideologies early in the game. After all, both candidates laid out their agendas very early in the game, either on their campaign websites, their political careers before the election or in their stump speeches.

Most of these much-sought after “undecideds” or “moderates” are simply not that intellectually engaged in the process, because if they were they’d have made a decision already. The key to these people is not to inundate them with more facts, because that is a waste. There are already more than enough facts out there for them to make a decision on. The key to win these people over is to switch from focusing on content, like facts and policy, and focus on context arguments, like enthusiasm, charisma, emotional connection, pointing out personal and professional associations, and likeability.

Keep in mind I’m not calling these undecideds stupid. Although I think many of them actually were stupid, there were also many intellectuals that were tired of focusing on logic and facts and were looking for someone that would engage them emotionally

This is the beauty of Obama, he perfectly understood the power of context over content. When his informercial came out for example, a friend of mine went into an in-depth refutation of it, declared it a failure for being too pessimistic and showing economic illiteracy through factual inaccuracies. I told him to turn off his intellectual instinct to engage every message on a logical.  He needed to realize that the content was irrelevant. It was pure public relations, and Obama was creating a brand using snazzy graphics, slogans and iconography and creating a narrative using soaring rhetoric, cinematography, drama, characters, the narrative, the music that pulled on the heart strings.  It was pure style over substance, and it needed to be judge it as a feel-good movie trailer or commercial and not a logical argument. And from that perspective, the informercial worked.

Most Presidents have written books before or during their elections, but they have usually been policy books. Obama main book, the one most discussed in the lead-up to the election, was pure narrative, an autobiography describing his struggles with class and race and not much else. No sophisticated policy arguments, no nuanced intellectual viewpoints, just personal narrative. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance paints him to be the Byronic Hero. This is an archetype well proven to resonate with people, especially single women, in works of fiction:

A Byronic hero exhibits several characteristic traits, and in many ways he can be considered a rebel. The Byronic hero does not possess “heroic virtue” in the usual sense; instead, he has many dark qualities. With regard to his intellectual capacity, self-respect, and hypersensitivity, the Byronic hero is “larger than life,” and “with the loss of his titanic passions, his pride, and his certainty of self-identity, he loses also his status as [a traditional] hero” (Thorslev 187).

He is usually isolated from society as a wanderer or is in exile of some kind. It does not matter whether this social separation is imposed upon him by some external force or is self-imposed. Byron’s Manfred, a character who wandered desolate mountaintops, was physically isolated from society, whereas Childe Harold chose to “exile” himself and wander throughout Europe. Although Harold remained physically present in society and among people, he was not by any means “social.”

Often the Byronic hero is moody by nature or passionate about a particular issue. He also has emotional and intellectual capacities, which are superior to the average man. These heightened abilities force the Byronic hero to be arrogant, confident, abnormally sensitive, and extremely conscious of himself. Sometimes, this is to the point of nihilism resulting in his rebellion against life itself (Thorslev 197). In one form or another, he rejects the values and moral codes of society and because of this he is often unrepentant by society’s standards. Often the Byronic hero is characterized by a guilty memory of some unnamed sexual crime. Due to these characteristics, the Byronic hero is often a figure of repulsion, as well as fascination.

More on the Byronic Hero can be found here:

The Byronic hero is an idealised but flawed character exemplified in the life and writings of Lord Byron, characterised by his ex-lover Lady Caroline Lamb as being “mad, bad and dangerous to know”.^[1] The Byronic hero first appears in Byron’s semi-autobiographical epic narrative poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812-18). The Byronic hero typically exhibits the following characteristics:^[2][3]

• high level of intelligence and perception
• cunning and able to adapt
• sophisticated and educated
• self-critical and introspective
• mysterious, magnetic and charismatic
• struggling with integrity
• power of seduction and sexual attraction
• social and sexual dominance
• emotional conflicts, bipolar tendencies, or moodiness
• a distaste for social institutions and norms
• being an exile, an outcast, or an outlaw
• “dark” attributes not normally associated with a hero
• disrespect of rank and privilege
• a troubled past
• cynicism
• arrogance
• self-destructive behaviour“

The Byronic Hero is immensely powerful with women, and usually just about any fictional work that is immensely popular with women has a Byronic hero as its protaganist, from Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights (Signet Classics) to the vampire Lestat in Ann Rice’s works to the character Edward in the new hit movie Twilight, based on a popular novel Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1). I think the immense popularity of Dark Knight last summer with women was because it portrayed a battle of wills between two (arguably three) Byronic heroes. This Byronic appeal was so strong that it created an intense love of the movie among single women despite the fact the movie is, in my humble opinion, utter crap. Is it any wonder Obama’s biggest voting block was unmarried women?

In Obama’s bio, he mentions early on that his grandfather had a copy of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends & Influence People on his desk. One of the key concepts in the book is to use dramatization and narrative to sell ideas rather than cold, hard logic, which just tends to alienate. I think this is a major part of where his strategy to build narrative over content came from, which is why unlike previous presidents, his book was a book about dramatic personal narrative rather than a book on policy. And within this narrative, he smartly chose to use the Byronic hero as his main character, except with a happier, more optimistic ending. A “safe” Byronic hero with the sharp, dangerous edges filed down if you will.

The other source of Obama’s power I think comes from the book 48 Laws of Power, which I will demonstrate in the next part, which can be found here.

Recommended Reading:

From the opening pages of Pimp by Robert Beck (better known as Iceberg Slim) (slang translations provided by me in brackets):

I grinned widely, inside of course. The best pimps keep a steel lid on their emotions and I was one of the iciest. The whores went into fits of giggles at [bottom bitch] Rachel’s shaky witticism [a bottom bitch is the top whore in the stable, the most favored by the pimp and usually considered the most reliable. Usually a seniority position.]. A pimp is happy when his whores giggle. He knows they are still asleep.

I coasted the Hog [car] into the curb outside the hotel where Kim, my newest, prettiest girl, was cribbing. Jesus! I would be glad to drop the last whore off so I could get to my own hotel to nurse my nose with cocaine and be alone. Any good pimp is his own best company. His inner life is so rich with cunning and scheming to out-think his whores.

As Kim got out I said “Goodnight Baby, today is Saturday so I want everybody in the street at noon instead of seven tonight. I said noon, not five minutes after or two minutes after, but at twelve noon sharp I want you down, got it, Baby?”

She didn’t answer, but she did a strange thing. She walked into the street around the Hog [car] to the window on my side. She stood looking at me for a long moment, her beautiful face tense in the dim dawn.

Then in her crisp New England accent she said “Are you coming back to my pad this morning? You haven’t spent a night with me in a month. So come back, Okay?”

A good pimp doesn’t get paid for screwing, he gets his pay for always having the right thing to say to a whore right on lightning tap. I knew my four whores were flapping their ears to get my reaction to this beautiful bitch. A pimp with an overly fine bitch in his stable [group of whores] has to keep his game tight. Whores constantly probe for weakness in a pimp.

I fitted a scary mask on my face and said, in a low deadly voice, “Bitch, are you insane? No bitch in my family calls any shots or muscles me to do anything. Now take your stinking yellow ass upstairs to a bath and some shut eye, and get in the street at noon like I told you.”

The bitch just stood there, her eyes slitted in anger. I could sense she was game to play the string out right there in the street before my whores…I knew the bitch was trying to booby trap me when she spat out her invitation. “Come on, kick my ass. What the hell do I need with a man I only see when he comes to get his money? I’m sick of it all. I don’t dig stables and never will. I know I’m the new bitch who has to prove herself. Well Godamnit, I am sick of this shit. I’m cutting out.”

She stopped for air and lit a cigarette. I was going to blast her ass of when she finished. So, I just sat there staring at her.”

Then she went on…”I am going back to Providence on the next thing smoking.”

She was young, fast with trick appeal galore. She was a pimp’s dream and she knew it. She had tested me with her beef and now she was lying back for a sucker response.

I disappointed her with my cold overlay. I could see her wilt as I said in an icy voice “Listen square-ass Bitch, I have never had a whore I couldn’t do without. I celebrate, Bitch, when a whore leaves me. It gives some worthy bitch a chance to take her place and be a star. You scurvy Bitch, if I shit in your face, you gotta love it and open your mouth wide….”

I went on ruthlessly, “Bitch you are nothing but a funky zero. Before me you had one chili chump [a chili pimp is a low-level pimp with only one whore] with no rep. Nobody except his mother ever heard of the bastard. Yes Bitch, I’ll be back this morning to put your phony ass on the train.”

I rocketed away from the curb. In the rearview mirror I saw Kim walk slowly into the hotel, her shoulders slumped. In the Hog, until I dropped the last whore off you could have heard a mosquito crapping on the moon. I had tested out for them, “solid ice.”

Now for this post, I want to try something different.

I meet a lot of guys who complain about women claiming to like “nice guys” but actually preferring jerks. It’s a reassuring fiction that shields their egos, but it’s really not that simple.

Many self-proclaimed “nice guys” are rarely actually nice guys. Genuinely nice people are nice to everyone unless the person gives them a reason not to be. But with self-proclaimed “nice guys,” the only people they seem to be consistently nice to are extremely hot girls they want to bang. It’s not like these guys are running around doing nice things for fat or gruesome chicks. In fact, they’re often rude and cruel to them. Being truly nice means treating everyone well, regardless of whether they have something you want, and it means doing good things for people without expecting anything in return. For example these “nice guys” will be nice to hot women they meet at bars while rudely ignoring the hot girl’s homelier friends. Self-proclaimed “nice guys” only behave that way because they expect to be rewarded with sex or a relationship in return for their niceness (or at the very least get tossed some drunken pity pussy). It’s a transparent, passive-aggressive form of seduction and women can see right through that. Nigga, please.

But I’m not here to talk about the psychology of so-called “nice guys.” That’ll be another post. What I want to talk about is another part of the nice guy equation: why women don’t just say what they want. Why do they say they want nice guys but go with jerks? Are women just liars? Truth be told, I don’t think it’s a malicious lie so much as a natural two-part human response that people have when asked a question: (1) they want to give the answer that gives the most flattering impression of them and (2) they also go as far as to delude themselves into believing at some level that this flattering fiction is actually true. Not everyone is emotionally and psychologically strong enough to reveal unflattering truths about themselves, especially to themselves. Self-deception is a very important coping mechanism among human beings.

Regarding self-deception, consider the “illusion of invulnerability” effect found in studies conducted by Robert Levine in The Power of Persuasion: How We’re Bought and Sold (this is going to seem like an irrelevant tangent at first, but be patient, I’ll bring it back around soon enough):

• 50% of college students said they were less naive than the average student their age and gender, only 22% said they were more naive
• 43% claimed to be less gullible than average, only 25% said they were more gullible than average.
• 46% believed themselves to be less conforming than average, only 16% said more conforming than average.
• 74% claimed to be more independent than average, only 7% said less independent.
• 77% said they had better than average awareness of how groups manipulate people; only % said they were below average

And so one and so on. The book gives plenty of other examples. Smokers think they’re less likely than other smokers to get lung cancer, which keeps them smoking. Sexually active women polled believe themselves less likely to get pregnant than other sexually active girls their age. People believe they’re 32% less likely to get fired from a job than their peers.

In fact, pessimists and depressed people may actually be the most realistic of us all. One study had clinically depressed people and psychologically normal people rate themselves and try to figure out how others viewed them. The depressed people were able to much more accurately gauge how others viewed them than the normal people. The normal group consistently overestimated the impression they made on others and had an inflated image of themselves. Another study had depressed and normal people participate in secretly rigged games where the results were fixed. The normal people routinely overestimated the degree to which personal skill contributed to the outcome when they won the rigged game, and routinely blamed outside factors when they lost. Depressed people were able to assess both situations much more realistically. Studies also show that the on average people with eating disorders actually have more accurate perceptions about strangers view their body than normal people do.

Contrary to popular belief, for the clinically depressed and those with eating disorders, their problems often stem not from irrational beliefs but from an overdose of reality and an inability to deceive themselves. Self-deception apparently keeps us sane. Take it away and give people unflinching reality and the average person’s mind will not be able to take it and their mental health will suffer.

So what does this have to do with the chick who says she wants a sensitive earnest nice guys like Lloyd Dobler from Say Anything but actually goes for Josh Hartnett in The Virgin Suicides? You know, the woman who says she wants a sensitive softie who puts her up on a pedestal, but goes for the challenging, aloof macho guy or occasionally the outright jerk? She may not be consciously lying. Chances are, she’s deluded herself into believing that’s what she wants because it’s a reassuring fiction that feeds the self-image she desires. She may actually believe her own bullshit. Like the people in the studies I mentioned, she wants to view herself as being smarter, more resistant to manipulation and more resistant to assholdery than the average chick. She’s suffering from that illusion of invulnerability.

Now the other problem is that even when people do have enough clarity to realize the truth about themselves and aren’t suffering from self-deception, if you put them on the spot, especially in front of strangers who will be judging them, they will still probably lie to save face. In the 1990s for example, KFC did focus groups and surveys in their stores where they asked regular customers whether they’d try a low-calorie, low-fat, nonfried skinless chicken if it was offered. The response from customers was overwhelmingly positive. Execs took this info back to HQ and launched a healthy chicken line that was sure to be insanely popular. Only it wasn’t. It bombed horribly. What went wrong? The people didn’t tell the truth (“I’m a fat, greasy bastard that loves me some fat greasy chicken”), they instead said what they thought was the right answer (“Yes, I would eat healthy chicken if it was offered.”). The funny thing is, a little common sense and observation of the people’s actions rather than their words would have saved them a lot of grief; basically, if these people cared so much about eating healthy, why would they be regular KFC customers to begin with?

Another example of self-serving lies to total strangers is the average Nielsen family. It’s said that Nielsen families often feel self-conscious about admitting what they really like to watch because they don’t want to look bad. So they suddenly claim to watch a whole lot of PBS and documentaries and hard news when they may really be overdosing on Tila Tequila marathons and watching I Love NY 2. They didn’t want to tell the truth and be judged, as shown in this article from today’s NY Times:

I recently completed a week as a Nielsen family, an experience that only multiplied my doubts about ratings science. My sample is biased — three friends and myself — and perhaps my circle is inordinately deceitful, but everyone I know or have met who has ever responded to a Nielsen survey has told flagrant lies about his or her viewing habits. I don’t mean small lies, such as claiming never to have seen an episode of “Three’s Company.” I mean outrageous, wholesale, novelistic fictions, which, if there were enough people in America as untrustworthy as the people I know, could skew the numbers beyond reckoning…

My friend and I stayed up late one night to fill out the pamphlet. Seldom at home long enough to watch anything, she still felt obliged to support a few names that she had heard were worthwhile — Phil Donahue, MacNeil/Lehrer, Jacques Cousteau; and, together, we pretended to have seen nearly every nature documentary and news analysis show on the air.

Having told a few stretchers, we found it easy to fabricate more elaborate untruths. We decided to be married. She inked in two well-behaved children who never saw anything but “Sesame Street” and “Mister Rogers.” (I know another volunteer who conceived two instant children, named after her cats. They loved anything that had a fish theme.) Rather than gorging myself on sports, as is my wont, I was put on a samurai businessman’s diet of “Face the Nation” and “Wall Street Week.” The entire family lived graciously in her studio apartment, which we expanded to five rooms with a sharp $100,000 increase in my annual income…

According to my diary, I lead an ascetic life these days, estranged from wife and children. During the third week in May, the pages indicate that I watched nothing except “Bookmark,” Lewis Lapham’s high-toned book-chat show on public television. I seem to have enjoyed the program so much, I even caught a repeat broadcast and taped it on my VCR.

In fact, my week as a Nielsen volunteer coincided with the basketball playoffs, and the television was roaring for at least three hours the night or afternoon of every game. I never saw “Bookmark” that week; and I don’t know how to record on my VCR.

All the factors I describe above also apply to women when they say they want nice, sensitive sappy guys. They are either deluding themselves about what they want because that’s the kind of person they want to believe they are or they know exactly the kind of person they are but are saying what they think is the right thing to say to look like a good person or most likely a combination of the two. This is why you have to follow what Machiavelli calls the “effective truth”: judge people by the things they do, not the self-serving things they say. Robert Greene, author of 48 Laws of Power and other books, covers this extremely well in his blog:

Judge people by the results of their actions and maneuvers, not their words. Machiavelli calls this “the effective truth,” and it is his most brilliant concept, in my opinion. It works like this: people will say almost anything to justify their actions, to give them a moral or sanctimonious veneer. The only thing that is clear, the only way we can judge people and cut away all of this crap is by looking at their actions, the results of their actions. That is their effective truth. Take the Pope, for instance. He will sermonize forever about the poor, about morality, about peace, but in the meantime he presides over the most powerful organization in the world (in Machiavelli’s time). And his actions are basically concerned with increasing this power. The effective truth is that the Pope is a political animal, and that his decisions inevitably involve maintaining the Catholic Church’s preeminent place in the world. The religious verbiage is simply a part of his political gamesmanhip, serving as a distracting device.

In other words, don’t be the whiner that complains when people’s actions don’t measure up to their words. Words, as you can see, are unreliable for a variety of reasons. People will lead you wrong with their words, sometimes deliberately and sometimes unintentionally. But actions will always show you the truth, and it’s up to you to pay more attention to people’s actions and react accordingly. And that’s real talk.

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