DARK PSYCHOLOGY: Forget Machiavelli this guy is better 

We’ve all heard of Machaveli, that master  manipulator, that crafter of cunning,   that doctor of deceit whose treaties to a prince  to teach him how to grasp and hold on to power   with ruthless efficiency in a dangerous  world has been studied for generations.   But did you know there is a much more shrewd  observer of human nature than Machaveli whose   name not many people even know. And yet his wisdom 

dwarfs that of Machaveli in breadth and in depth.   Instead of being like Machavelian spending pages  talking about state politics or problems which no   one today will face even in principle like what  to do when capturing a city or spending reams   talking about the history of the boures. This  writer, this observer speaks to us in maxims,   practical, workable, direct, and blunt commands  that help you navigate the constant psychological  

wars that we face each day in our life. So,  if you’re looking for a manual to help you   know what to do in the multifaceted interactions  that we go through, whether at work or in family   or in school or in friendship groups or just  meeting strangers, if you want to know the   invisible mechanics of why some people are on  the inside, always invited, always called for,   always sought after. If you want to know 

why some people make brilliant confidants,   why people stop and listen to them and take what  they have to say seriously rather than dismiss it,   then you will want to put down Machaveli,  and you’ll want to pick up Baltasar Gracian. This is the art of worldly wisdom written by the  Spanish priest Baltasar Gracian in 1647 in Spain.  

Now you might wonder what does a priest know about  power and about establishing one’s reputation   and holding favor in a tricky and psychological  battle of wits. Well, he wasn’t just any priest.   He was a Jesuit priest. The Jesuit priesthood in  the 17th century were the intellectual SAS of the   day. They studied Greek. They studied Latin.

 They  studied theology. They studied philosophy. They   studied statecraft. All over Europe at this time,  you would find Jesuit priests embedded into the   machinery of the state. whether that be in royal  courts or advisers to um highly significant and   powerful people or in parliament or in judiciary  and administrative matters.

 These men went beyond   just crafting piety but also becoming worldly  wise to shape the state that they were in. Don’t think Gracian was cloistered away somewhere  praying. He lived in the Spanish golden age. Spain   was the mightiest power in Europe. This was  a time of magnificent decay. On the surface,   the Spanish court was all glamour  and empire and South American gold.  

But underneath it was a viper pit of spies, social  climbers, sycopants, rival families, and intrigue. Baltasar Gracian was a chaplain  in this war zone. daily, weekly,   he would see the good or the naive chewed up and  spat out because they played by honorable rules,   expecting the world to play by the same rules. 

But they didn’t. And so Gracian writes a worldly   wise book. A book that doesn’t teach you how  to be good. The Bible does that. It teaches   you how not to be stupid. and the psychological  insights he makes to guide people’s decisions to   get them firmly within themselves to understand  how people operate how everything can be a mask.  

People putting on pretense and hiding their  true motives. Those things haven’t changed   in humanity for all time and are still with us  today. That’s what makes his work so powerful.   The first thing that strikes you about this book  when you open it is just how dense it is. Now,   don’t let that worry you.

 This isn’t density of  heavy jargon, convoluted sentences, meandering   paragraphs that go on for pages and pages, a lot  of jargon. It’s not like that. It’s contentheavy.   It is one pearl of wisdom after another after  insight after insight after insight just keep   hitting you. Unlike many treatises including  Machavelis which is by the way very brilliant   and very rich a treatise will give you background  information.

 It will develop the thought quite   extensively. It may give you historic details.  It may give you military strategy and tactics.   But Gracian talks to you directly in maxims. Now  it’s really important to remember what a maxim is.   different to an apherism which is a more  generalized observation of a truth about   life as a whole and are very very valuable.

 A  maxim is more direct. It is a command. It is   a do this don’t do that because he was writing a  guide book for good people sometimes naive people   to be able to strip away all the veneer of what’s  going on, what people are presenting to them, the   mask as it’s called. and see exactly what people  are really doing and to protect oneself from being  manipulated and to improve one’s trustworthiness  or one’s usefulness to others to really get the   psychology.

 When you read his maxims, what strikes  you is how stark they are, how to the point,   almost cynical some say. Because if you think  because he’s a priest he’s going to be nice,   I’ll give you some dark philosophers who loved his  work more than anyone else.