This was just so shallow and american, I felt like drinking warm

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A girl recommended it to me once. I downloaded it to my kindle to have something to talk about with her. I couldn't get past the table of contents. I know how the world works. I don't think reading this book is going to make it any easier to become powerful. I don't have the personality to behave this way even if I wanted to, which I don't. Someone write a book about navigating the real world, being somewhat successful, and still making some effort to be an ethical person. Unless of course that's impossible and I'll always be mediocre as long as I still care about ethics. In that case, God kill me now.

>>9443352
This is a book for idiot plebs, you really shouldn't try to come to any conclusions based on your experience of it.

>>9443352
Your fault mate, you've picked ''How to be a power-addled psychopath 101''.

>>9443415
Thats the way of the world. I guess you cant be succesfull and ethical unless you are a genius
Sad

>>9443352
Well, despite of its shortcomings, at the very least it teaches readers to be aware of psychopaths and be more socially aware.

>>9443415
>>9443475
>>9443481
>>9443501
>>9443502
I really liked Il principe and thought that a few hundred years and general accessablility to once secret knowledge has led to the philosophical deepening of the knowledge on the topic power.

It seems like this is not the case, maybe because the power is not as big as it used to be. The reason could be the decay and democracy. Or just that Machiavelli wrote for actual rulers, not insecure high ambition buisinessman.

>>9443502
Not that it matters. But I saw a friend liked the book's page on facebook it explained so much. So yes, this book taught me how to spot just that.

>>9443415

You're not supposed to milk every single "law" at every opportunity you get. You're only supposed to be cognizant of them so you don't get used and so you can apply leverage when necessary.

Example: I love to teach and to inform, especially when I can help other people make big picture connections across multiple topics, and I've had a crazy political journey over the past two years as I turned from a socialist to a conservative. But I'm not going to share that information with anybody on my college campus because I know that they'll not be interested in how they can learn from my experience, but rather in how they could use that information against me. Instead, I blend in with my surroundings, sometimes out of satire for the laughs, and rarely do I go as far as to innocently nudge people in the same direction that I did, out of hopes that a carefully chosen fact may lead to the same realizations that I had experienced.

Knowledge is a premium. There's a few facts in this world that are so essential for power, success, and happiness that few people are going to share them with you, especially when they have the ability to backfire immensely on the teacher.