Why striking the shepered then the sheep will scatter ?
KEYS TO POWER
In the past, an entire nation would be ruled by a king and his handful of
ministers. Only the elite had any power to play with. Over the centuries,
power has gradually become more and more diffused and democratized.
This has created, however, a common misperception that groups no
longer have centers of power-that power is spread out and scattered
among many people. Actually, however, power has changed in its numbers but not in its essence. There may be fewer mighty tyrants commanding the power of life and death over millions, but there remain thousands
of petty tyrants ruling smaller realms, and enforcing their will through indirect power games, charisma, and so on. In every group, power is concentrated in the hands of one or two people, for this is one area in which
human nature will never change:
People will congregate around a single
strong personality like planets orbiting a sun.
To labor under the illusion that this kind of power center no longer
exists is to make endless mistakes, waste energy and time, and never hit
the target. Powerful people never waste time. Outwardly they may play
along with the game-pretending that power is shared among many-but
inwardly they keep their eyes on the inevitable few in the group who hold
the cards. These are the ones they work on. When troubles arise, they
look for the underlying cause, the single strong character who started the
stirring and whose isolation or banishment will settle the waters again.
In his family-therapy practice, Dr. Milton H. Erickson found that if
the family dynamic was unsetded and dysfunctional there was inevitably
one person who was the stirrer, the troublemaker. In his sessions he would
symbolically isolate this rotten apple by seating hirn or her apart from the
others, if only by a few feet. Slowly the other family members would see
the physically separate person as the source of their difficulty. Once you
recognize who the stirrer is, pointing it out to other people will accomplish
a great deal. Understanding who controls the group dynamic is a critical
realization. Remember: Stirrers thrive by hiding in the group, disguising
their actions among the reactions of others. Render their actions visible
and they lose their power to upset.
A key element in games of strategy is isolating the enemy's power. In
chess you try to corner the king. In the Chinese game of go you try to isolate the enemy's forces in small pockets, rendering them immobile and ineffectual. It is often better to isolate your enemies than to destroy
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them-you seem less brutal. The result, though, is the same, for in the
game of power, isolation spells death.
The most effective form of isolation is somehow to separate your victims from their power base. When Mao Tse-tung wanted to eliminate an
enemy in the ruling elite, he did not confront the person directly; he
silently and stealthily worked to isolate the man, divide his allies and turn
them away from hirn, shrink his support. Soon the man would vanish on
his own.
Presence and appearance have great import in the game of power. To
seduce, particularly in the beginning stages, you need to be constantly
present, or create the feeling that you are; if you are often out of sight, the
charm will wear off. Queen Elizabeth's prime minister, Robert Cecil,
had two main rivals: the queen's favorite, the Earl of Essex, and her former favorite, Sir Walter Raleigh. He contrived to send them both on a
mission against Spain; with them away from the court he managed to
wrap his tentacles around the queen, seeure his position as her top adviser and weaken her affection for Raleigh and the earl. The lesson here
is twofold: First, your absence from the court spells danger for you, and
you should never leave the scene in a time of turmoil, for your absence
can both symbolize and induce a loss of power; second, and on the other
hand, luring your enemies away from the court at critical moments is a
great ploy.
Isolation has other strategie uses. When trying to seduce people, it is
often wise to isolate them from their usual social context. Once isolated
they are vulnerable to you, and your presence becomes magnified. Similarly, con artists often look for ways to isolate their marks from their normal social milieux, steering them into new environments in which they
are no longer comfortable. Here they feel weak, and succumb to deception more easily. Isolation, then, can prove a powernd way of bringing
people under your spell to seduce or swindle them.
You will often find powerful people who have alienated themselves
from the group. Perhaps their power has gone to their heads, and they
consider themselves superior; perhaps they have lost the knack of communicating with ordinary folk. Remember: This makes them vulnerable.
Powernd though they be, people like this can be tumed to use.
The monk Rasputin gained his power over Czar Nicholas and Czarina Alexandra of Russia through their tremendous isolation from the peopIe. Alexandra in particular was a foreigner, and especially alienated
from everyday Russians; Rasputin used his peasant origins to insinuate
hirnself into her good graces, for she desperately wanted to communicate
with her subjects. Once in the court's inner circle, Rasputin made hirnself
indispensable and attained great power. Heading straight for the center,
he aimed for the one figure in Russia who commanded power (the czarina
dominated her husband), and found he had no need to isolate her for the
work was already done. The Rasputin strategy can bring you great power:
Always search out people who hold high positions yet who find them-
selves isolated on the board. They are like apples falling into your lap,
easily seduced, and able to catapult you into power yourself.
Finally, the reason you strike at the shepherd is because such an action will dishearten the sheep beyond any rational measure. When Hernando Cortes and Francisco Pizarro led their tiny forces against the Aztec
and Incan empires, they did not make the mistake of fighting on several
fronts, nor were they intimidated by the numbers arrayed against them;
they captured the kings, Moctezuma and Atahualpa. Vast empires fell
into their hands. With the leader gone the center of gravity is gone; there
is nothing to revolve around and everything falls apart. Aim at the leaders, bring them down, and look for the endless opportunities in the confusion that will ensue
