Danger Flags #1: Fear And Love

IL TORMENTO DELLA CORDA

The shouting and screaming ceased.

 
And while listening to the torments of another man was obviously discomforting, the silence was perhaps more ominous.
 
Soon, all too soon, the clacking and rumblings of heavy iron keys are worked into the reinforced locks of the prisoner’s jail cell in the Bargello Fortress.
 
The guard is neither malicious nor sympathetic; there is a matter-of-fact mannerism about him as he thumbs indifferently through a huge iron keyring and turns to the prisoner’s leg shackles, unlocking them, unchaining the man from the wall.
 
The guard waits a moment to see if the prisoner will rise on his own power. If not, he’ll call for assistance to drag the man to the chamber.
 
The prisoner rises.
 
For just a half of a moment, the prisoner attempts to enjoy himself as he’s at liberty to walk under his own power. He walks in front of the guard, knowing the short route, follows it along.
 
But this attempt to maintain a stoic detachment does not entirely succeed; he is unable to sustain the brief enjoyment at the momentary liberation from the leg shackles as he sees now the entrance to the torture chamber.
 
He blinks twice and sees the magistrate waiting, also bored and indifferent. There’s no sadism in the man’s face. He’s doing his job.
 
The guards do their work while the magistrate watches, tying the prisoner’s arms behind his back, marching him up to the raised wooden pavilion and forcing him to ascend it, and then tying the ropes to a sturdy wooden beam on the ceiling.
 
The magistrate speaks:
 
“Do you wish to confess, Niccolo?”
 
And the prisoner replies politely:
 
“No, Signore, I have nothing to confess.”
 
The magistrate nods to the guards as he replies:
 
“A pity.”
 
And one of the guards gives the prisoner a swift kick in the side to push him off the pavilion’s edge.
 
He is in the air for only a split second when the rope catches, and the prisoner hears his shoulders crack in an awful sound of bone breaking and sinew tearing before his he actually feels the pain.
 
“Bastardo! Bastardi! Maledice!”
 
And with that, any stoic composure that Niccolo Machiavelli had tried to summon is now gone. He screams for the better part of an hour before blacking out, waking up hours later in the jail cell, the iron shackles back upon his legs.
 
***
 
HARD REALISM
 
Adversity marks a special quality on those who survive it.
 
Almost 2000 years before Machiavelli, it was the disgraced Athenian general Thucydides who wrote The History of the Peloponnesian War  – and is thus considered the father of scientific history and political realism, the same realms in which Machiavelli would do his famous works.
 
There were many victorious Athenian and Spartan Generals – they did not often become excellent theorists and historians.
 
Machiavelli was likewise well-familiar with the greatest poet in Italian history, Dante Alighieri – who was also from Florence, also lost a political conflict, and also was disgraced and exiled some 200 years before.
 
Would we have had The Divine Comedy  if Dante had kept to his secure position as a diplomat and statesmen? Almost certainly not.
 
So too it went with Niccolo Machiavelli. He was imprisoned and tortured for almost exactly a month, from 12 February to 13 March 1513.
 
The year previous, 1512, the illustrious Medici family had re-conquered Florence. Machiavelli had been one of the most important diplomats, chancellors, and occasional military leader of the Florentine Republic. He had served on diplomatic missions to all the most prominent kings and dukes of the era, and had led a reorganization of the Florentine military. When the Medici re-conquered the city, the obviously talented Machiavelli was placed under house arrest.
 
The next year, a conspiracy emerged against Giovanni Medici. Machiavelli was most likely not involved, but he was a prominent rival and well-connected and might have had information. Following the customs of the day, he was arrested and tortured via strappado , a brutal method of suspending a person in the air by rope until their shoulders broke and ligaments tore.
 
Machiavelli likely would have been tortured to death or executed, except for a stroke of very good fortune for him. On 21 February 1513, while Machiavelli was imprisoned and being tortured, Pope Julius II died of fever.
 
In one of those strange turns of history, the target of the assassination conspiracy that had led to Machiavelli’s arrest – Giovanni Medici – was elected Pope Leo X.
 
In a moment of graciousness, he pardoned those under arrest in Florence after ascending to the Papal Throne.
 
Disgraced and brutalized, but alive, Machiavelli retreated to a family farm south of Florence.
 
Five months later, no doubt still feeling the grim aftereffects of the torture in his shoulders and arms, Niccolo Machiavelli wrote his seminal work – Il Principe – The Prince.
 
Hard realism.
 
Very hard realism.
 
***
 
IL PRINCIPE

Machiavelli is nowhere near as hardcore as his reputation might suggest. Actually, the first 14 chapters of  The Prince  are a somewhat dry cataloguing of the different types of governments.
 
There’s insights in there – for instance, a government with a single extremely powerful ruler is harder to conquer, but easier to govern if conquered. When the Persians were conquered by the Macedonians, they did not rebel even when Alexander died. There had been no “lesser nobility” – no dukes, no barons; it was all just the Persian King and servants. The loyalty and obedience of the population that had been installed by the Persian Monarchs was simply transferred to the Macedonians who replaced them.
 
Contrarily, a kingdom with lesser nobles might be easier to conquer by allying with a discontent baron or duke, but then any conqueror faces many potential challengers who think themselves a better king when they attempt to govern.
 
This is all insightful, but not particularly hardcore. You read it; you think: “oh, that makes sense”; you nod; you move on. It reads more similar to Aristotle than what you’d expect something, well, Machiavellian  to be.
 
And you must remember that as Niccolo Machiavelli took to his pen and ink blotter, his arms and shoulders were likely still creaking and semi-mutilated. How much that have effected the man’s mind?
 
Immensely, no?
 
There is a certain honesty – glory, even – that can come through in the writing of someone who feels they have nothing to lose, someone with no reputation to protect, someone who has already faced the unthinkable and survived.
 
And while the first 14 chapters of The Prince  are somewhat dry, it is Chapter 15 where Machiavelli’s fireworks truly begin:
 
“It is my intention to write something that will be useful to he who understands it – and so the truth of what actually happens seems more useful to me than whatever people merely imagine might be. There have been many imaginations of republics and kingdoms that have never actually existed, but  how men actually live is so far removed from how we imagine we ought to live, that he who neglects reality for imagination brings about his own ruin rather than salvation. ”
 
***
 
AN IMPORTANT JOURNEY
 
Hail and well-met, traveler. I have good news and bad news.
 
The bad news is that sometimes you have to go down before you go up.
 
The good news is that, while that path might seem a longer one, it is actually far less treacherous and far more joyful than the alternative.
 
For the record, this is the first of my 2017 essays. I write from the east coast of the United Arab Emirates; Fujairah, to be precise. I went to sleep early on New Year’s Eve; on the morning New Year’s Day I started by reconciling my accounts, calculating my income and expenses for the month of December, outlining and reviewing my projects and how my time has been spent recently, and then I sat down to begin to lay down our roadmap for this journey, for Danger Flags.
 
Arabia, and Fujairah in particular, it is a serene but strange place. I’m sure there must be some other Americans here besides Kai Zau and myself, but I have not seen any of them. It is very hot outside, and very dusty. It feels, simultaneously, both far more primitive and far more modern than the cities we usually haunt. This coastal city speaks to me, at least for now, and inspiration has struck.
 
Regardless, what are we doing here?
 
One of the most important things in life is choosing which people you will spend your life with. This is the friends you choose, the business associates you choose, really, everyone  who you welcome into your life and share it with.
 
I think it’s probably one of the two most important things in life, alongside choosing what work you will do.
 
If you choose the people to spend your life with correctly and well, you’ll have a tremendous mix of virtuous people, good and supportive friends, loyal allies, excellent colleagues. You’ll work on good projects, you’ll bring in terrific people on those projects, those people will likewise invite you to excellent collaborations.
 
You’ll have people to think with, to muse with, to problem-solve with.
 
In dark times, it’s the people that are closest to you that might be your salvation.
 
Contrariwise, there’s no faster path to damnation than choosing wrong  who is in your life. This might be as small of an error as choosing to eat food from a chef with a dirty kitchen or choosing to have your plumbing fixed by a haphazard plumber. The former gives risk of food poisoning, the latter of having your pipes leak and damage your home.
 
The wrong doctor can literally kill you; the wrong lawyer put you at tremendous risk; the wrong teacher can make your children hate learning.
 
All of this is obvious enough, and we’re rightfully afraid from eating in an unclean kitchen or being operated on by a surgeon with unclean hands.
 
But what of those closest to us?  How are they chosen and selected? Have you given this enough thought?
 
If fortune is with you, you might see a surgeon less than three times in your life. But every single day you’ll be among the people you choose to work alongside, the people you choose to love and share life with, the friends with whom you debrief, celebrate, analyze, and look to ascend life’s challenges with.
 
***
 
DANGER FLAGS
 
The concept of Danger Flags  is a simple one that’s emerged in my social circle over the last two years, and were codified somewhat over the last six months.
 
It’s a simple concept, but often neglected: before a person does something bad, there’s often predictable signs that they were going to do it.
 
It’s similar to how a well-trained auditor might be able to spot fraud right away, whereas people less skilled and less experienced in finance and accounting might miss it. There’s very often warning signs, but the lay public cannot see them without training and study.
 
Here were my original (private) notes on Danger Flags from some months ago –
 
-- Danger flags are over and beyond the person’s skills/experience.
-- EX, it’s okay for an inexperienced person to screw up a task they’re not experienced for.
-- But if someone that’s usually reliable flips out periodically and screws up a task, that gets an extra danger flag over and beyond their skillset.
-- You need to avoid putting people with danger flags in situations which triggers their danger flag. EX: some people are very good conversationalists 1-on-1, but fall apart in a group of people and start acting very rudely. Thus, you need to flag that that person can’t be put in a group of people.
-- Danger flags are mentally expensive to manage, because you need to think about special exceptions for that person instead of whether they’d generally be well-suited for something.
-- People that are very good but have uneven skillsets often have a lot of danger flags, which means they can’t be trusted, introduced, or given authority. It sucks.
-- It’s better to have one sharp skill than be bad at everything with no danger flags, but one sharp skill or “intermediate and solid at most things” in one’s skillset + no danger flags probably performs better for one's life.
-- Weaknesses aren’t necessarily danger flags; they’re subtly different.
-- It’s expensive to try to remember what danger flags someone has. If someone has one, they might have 20. It’s binary, it’s either yes or no.
 
I went a step further; again, this was originally from my private notes –
 
-- For Sebastian, a single danger flag and you can’t be inner friend circle.
-- Not everyone should adopt that rule, but SM already has a great close circle of friends that he loves, the conversation and effectiveness is always high, and has around ~2500 solid acquaintances around the world, many of whom he’d wish to get to know better. Thus, having no danger flag people around intimately is a huge quality of life boost, and an acceptable luxurious line to draw in the sand to make life a lot easier. Others might be happy to have close friends who are danger flagged and carefully avoid or mitigate their weaknesses so they don’t screw something up badly and do something terrible. Managing that is expensive.
-- It’s okay to employ danger-flagged people if the area that triggers their danger flag is isolated and their job description is clear and doesn’t put them in that situation often or ever. On the other hand, some people get very self-destructive when anxious (a generalized problem that can appear at any time), and you basically don’t want to hire those people ever. But if someone is weak in groups of people or easily distracted if someone socializes with them, well, you get them their own office and have them work solo and that’s fine.
 
This topic seems incredibly straightforward to me – you can often spot things in people in advance that predict future destructive behavior, and those should be “flagged” and either avoided or (sometimes) very carefully managed.
 
But this topic is broadly neglected, and it’s easy to understand why – it’s really rather unpleasant.
 
The consolation is as we have said above – sometimes you have to go down before you go up. In this series on Danger Flags, we wish to achieve three things:
 
1. We want to learn common danger flags, to build the mental models of them, and to know when we’re on terrain that is dangerous or treacherous. We want to be able to know in advance when a bad outcome might happen in an important area, when someone we count on might be unreliable, and so on. Learning these is very important.
 
2. We want to navigate danger-flagged situations skillfully. This might be filtering out and avoiding people with particularly bad danger flags, this might be setting formal policies for one’s life around what type of people we’ll associate with, and it might be setting up management and structure so that negative character traits and patterns don’t surface at inopportune times and to disastrous results.
 
3. Most difficultly, we want to spot aspects of our own character that really ought to be “danger flagged” by other people, and we want to mitigate and eliminate those aspects of ourselves to become more solid, reliable, consistent, effective, and useful people. We want understand ourselves and our flaws, and then manage, improve, train, and gradually scrub out unreliability, whimsy, discourtesy, naivete, foolhardiness, and so on.
 
The last point is the hardest – it is harsh to stare at the Sun. One’s eyes burn. So be it – going down, briefly, is often the fastest and most reliable way up.
 
***
 
DANGER FLAGS #1: FEAR AND LOVE
 
Machivalli’s The Prince  is incredibly quotable; it gets quoted all the time.
 
Most of these quotes are divorced from context – both from the context of the work itself, and from the history of the era.
 
Most of the quotes from The Prince , thus, are far off the mark from the lessons Machiavelli was actually driving at.
 
Regarding fear and love, the English paraphrasing is often,

“It’s better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.”
 
This quote is very  far off the mark. Rather, the true  lesson there is the focus of this chapter. Here is what Machiavelli wrote:
 
“A question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person,  it is much safer to be feared than loved , when, of the two, either must be dispensed with.”
 
Note well, Machiavelli said it’s preferable to be both if possible.
 
But at times when both are not possible, he said it’s safer  to be feared than loved.
 
Note: safer , not better .
 
But even with that said, if it’s still the year 2017 and you live in the West, you probably do not understand what he means when he says “fear.”
 
***
 
YOUR DELIGHT SHALL BE THE FEAR OF THE LORD
 
If you’re still in these modern times while reading this, you likely cannot comprehend of fear as a good thing.
 
Perhaps the death-knell of “fear as a virtue” was American President Franklin Roosevelt’s  1932 inaugural address , which began –
 
“I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impel. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."
 
Of course, Niccolo Machiavelli wrote The Prince  in 1513, over four centuries before Roosevelt’s laying the crisis of the Depression at the footsteps of "fear itself."
 
No, when Machiavelli wrote of fear  being safer than love , he most certainly did not mean “unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
 
Rather, Machiavelli is talking about the historical “reverence and awe” felt towards what is undoubtedly great and noble. This hearkens far more to the tradition of the Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, and later Christianity and Islam – than to modern progressive understandings of fear.
 
The first reference to “fear of God” is when Abraham is willing to sacrifice his son at God’s command – and God, seeing this loyalty and fealty and reverence, tells him not to do so, it is unnecessary, and promises blessings to Abraham and his descendants.
 
Perhaps the best description of “fear of God” is from Isaiah 11:
 
“A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
  from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—
  the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
  the Spirit of counsel and of might,
  the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—
and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.”
 
This, of course, sounds incredibly odd to our modern ears. “…wisdom and understanding… counsel and might… knowledge… and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.”
 
What?
 
***
 
EXALTATION AND AWE
 
We are still somewhat puzzled by this concept. Perhaps this would lend insight.
 
Wikipedia: Fear of God: Judaism  –

“ Having the fear of God is most often considered to be a positive sign of spiritual well-being. It is raising ourselves up in a sense of awe to our possibilities and divine glory.  […] Bahya ibn Paquda characterized two types of fear as a lower "fear of punishment" and a higher "fear of [divine awe] glory."  Abraham Ibn Daud differentiated between "fear of harm" (analogous to fear of a snake bite or a king's punishment) and "fear of greatness," analogous to respect for an exalted person, who would do us no harm.  Maimonides categorized the fear of God as a positive commandment, as the feeling of human insignificance deriving from contemplation of God's "great and wonderful actions and creations."”
 
Does that clarify?

… no, perhaps not, we are still puzzled.
 
Let’s explore love, then, first.
 
***
 
UNRELIABLE LOVE
 
Machiavelli –
 
“Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with. Because this is to be asserted in general of men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and  as long as you succeed they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life, and children, as is said above, when the need is far distant; but when it approaches they turn against you.  And that prince who, relying entirely on their promises, has neglected other precautions, is ruined; because  friendships that are obtained by payments, and not by greatness or nobility of mind, may indeed be earned, but they are not secured, and in time of need cannot be relied upon; and men have less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one who is feared , for love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.”
 
It is easy to read the opening lines of that passage, and the closing lines, and miss the nuance of the middle.
 
Machiavelli is saying that when you are in power and doing favors for people and treating them nicely, they will promise you everything – their blood, property, life, and children – but those promises won’t be fulfilled when crisis hits or war breaks out.
 
That’s not-at-all the modern understanding of love ; certainly, it’s not a mother’s love who would give her life for her children.
 
And yes, he invokes punishment – that is part of it – but this phrase seems particularly important:
 
“Friendships that are obtained by payments, and not by greatness or nobility of mind… cannot be relied upon.”
 
Greatness or nobility of mind… hmm…
 
***
 
SAFER TO BE RESPECTED  THAN LIKED
 
I would formulate Machiavelli’s position, for modern readers, like this –
 
“It’s good to be both respected and liked, if you can be both. But sometimes, work requires you to choose between being liked or respected … sometimes you must discipline someone, or make a hard decision, and the thing which is correct and which engenders respect  may make you disliked  for the moment. In that case, it’s safer to be respected than liked, and choose such. Because if you choose to be lax, comfortable, kind, and do immense favors to people without requiring they do their duties, they’ll say they love you and promise you everything. But when you actually need to call on those promises, when you most need them, they do not respect you and will not follow through. Respect endures far longer than liking, and is thrown away less fast in times of troubles.”
 
Machiavelli’s “fear” is much more like the modern English word “respect” than it is like Franklin Roosevelt’s “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.”
 
Indeed, Machiavelli’s next line after the more famous paragraph is –
 
“Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred; because he can endure very well being feared whilst he is not hated… ”
 
An element of the fear of punishment may or may not be required – it might be required – but the root of Machiavelli’s “fear” of it is greatness and nobility of mind … we must just as well call it “respect,” no?
 
***
 
DANGER FLAG: LIKING WITHOUT RESPECT
 
This brings us to the first Danger Flag of our series, then – liking without respect.
 
It is, of course, best to be both liked and respected … if you can be maximally kind and do favors and reward people luxuriously with also getting the job done , you should do so. But when getting the job done  conflicts with being liked by people , you should get the job done.
 
This of course makes perfect sense, does it not?
 
You can even get by with respect without liking  when necessary – think of a harsh athletic coach who cares for his athletes, but works them very hard. “I hate the bastard, but he’s a good coach.” Yes, that’ll work.
 
The opposite does not work.
 
***
 
GUIDANCE, I: BEWARE PEOPLE WHO RUN ON LIKING AND EMOTION
 
I do not agree with Machiavelli that people are “ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous” – they certainly can be, but they can also be gracious, steadfast, true, brave, and faithful. People vary.
 
But it’s certainly a danger flag when you notice someone who runs on liking ; they’re the most likely to be fickle, false, etc – liking  is a notoriously fickle thing. Our tastes change, our emotions change, something that we enjoyed yesterday might become boring or mundane the day after.
 
Some years ago, I loved seeing an animated spirit of excitement from someone I just met, who perhaps wanted to work together.
 
I’ve learned, often the hard way, that people who get excited quickly and easily also become unexcited quickly and easily. Aristotle wrote in the  Nichomachean Ethics  that,
 
“Friendship requires time and familiarity; as the proverb says,  men cannot know each other till they have 'eaten salt together' ; nor can they admit each other to friendship or be friends till each has been found lovable and been trusted by each. Those who quickly show the marks of friendship to each other wish to be friends, but are not friends unless they both are lovable and know the fact; for  a wish for friendship may arise quickly, but friendship does not. ”
 
This might be another way of saying that you need time to assess whether someone is admirable and worthy of respect, and you need to go through shared trials to build that baseline of respect into enduring friendship.
 
People who are very excited very quickly, before a foundation of respect is established, also tend to become unexcited quickly – often with disastrous results, if you were relying on them.
 
Liking without respect – a danger flag. Be ware of it.
 
***
 
GUIDANCE, II: SHARED TRIALS, SMALL MISSIONS AND PROJECTS
 
I can think of few things in life as painful, aggravating, and destructive as having fickle and unreliable allies and friends – in the moments of greatest trial, they are nowhere to be found.
 
The answer to this is not to search for people who are excited quickly upon knowing you, or who flock to your banner with great promises and enthusiasm – but rather to run many small missions and projects with people, to get to know them and have them get to know you.
 
Even something as small as throwing a small dinner party or salon with someone will produce a number of small aggravations and little tiny calamities that need to be navigated. These stressful moments that call for sacrifice and leadership then let you assess how well you work with someone, and whether you can build harmonious partnerships, relationships, and friendships effectively together.
 
Indeed, it’s not the good times that show you who your truest friends are.
 
Most people, though, do not consciously build a series of projects into their lives, and thus, they have no way of truly getting to know people they meet. You can socialize with someone by going drinking and going to fun little activities for years and know very little of them; participating in a single competition or intense short project can inform you much more of someone’s character.
 
Likewise, when you endure a shared trial with someone, and triumph, a baseline of respect comes to emerge. Events or projects that are incredibly leveraged or which call for sacrifice to complete show you even more – because in those situations, someone has to take leadership, and strictness and bluntness becomes more called-for. You can see if a person bristles or rises to the challenge.
 
If someone truly respects  you on all levels – from the small to the glorious – some sort of liking and shared understanding tends also to emerge; it’s nearly automatic. Even failing that, you can work with someone who genuinely respects you but doesn’t maximally like you. The opposite, as we have already said and has been known across history, is a recipe for disaster.
 
***
 
GUIDANCE, III: GRIM DETERMINATION, MISSION ORIENTATION
 
In the past, I’ve sometimes written about “hot determination” and “cold determination” – and always advised people to cultivate the latter.
 
Well, I’ve evolved the language a bit – grim determination  is how I phrase it now.
 
Many people these days chase so-called “passion” – yet often, their passions change like the winds, leading to nothing, aggregating to nothing, resulting in nothing.
 
I used to be like that.
 
The solution is not to commit to projects with a “this will be fun!” sort of breezy attitude, but with an intense and grim determination. Begin to think about your own project selection more like a very skeptical and conservative investment manager than as a hopeful and naive first-time entrepreneur.
 
The easiest way to cultivate grim determination  is a much nicer-sounding phrase: Mission Orientation. This is where you pick which missions and causes you’ll join very carefully, but then throw yourself fully and completely into the mission until it completes. Short-term feelings of discomfort or boredom are ephemeral; they don’t matter.
 
Signing up to discharge a duty, complete a mission, or succeed at a project – and then failing to do so – should be a cause for major alarm in one’s life.
 
“It wasn’t for me” is not a good way to put it, ever. While you’re on a mission and someone is counting on you, you should be fanatically grimly determined to complete it. When the mission completes, you may choose not to do that type of thing again, but as with everything, quitting due to boredom or excitement wearing off becomes a habit. A particularly bad habit, I dare say.

And you know, everything in life gets boring and unexciting sooner or later. Those people who finish and succeed at discharging their duties no matter what  might suffer more in any given month than the person who quits at the first sign of trouble, but they wind up becoming known and respected and renowned in their circles, and leading magnificent lives.
 
If you truly cannot discharge your duties effectively in a career or job, of course, that means it’s time to change vocations. You should still do so in a way that wraps up loose ends and leaves no one hanging. This is the mature and long-term effective way of dealing with things.
 
***
 
GUIDANCE, IV: ADMIRATION
 
And our final piece of guidance is one that’s made an incredible amount of difference in my own life.
 
These days, I look to exclusively work with people I admire .
 
I recommend you do the same.
 
Of course, you’ll have to deal with a lot of people in life, and not all of them you’ll admire, and you should be cordial to everyone.
 
But for your own inner circle, your close colleagues, the people you share your life with most intensely, genuine admiration  smooths the path to excellent collaborations. When you know you genuinely admire someone, and you’ve built that admiration over years of shared trials and collaborations, that does not whimsically fade the way that liking and pleasant emotions can fade so quickly.
 
It might take years to truly cultivate your life such that all of your closest associates and colleagues are people you admire, but those are years well-spent. Admiration is durable and strong, a good ground to build upon, far moreso than mere pleasantness or fun, which tend to shift course like the winds as boredom comes and goes.
 
Liking without respect  – certainly this is among the most dangerous things, because it’s so easy to be seduced and misled by it.

Do danger flag it when you see someone who runs heavily on liking alone.
 
But if one’s emotion matters immensely, perhaps genuine admiration  is the culmination of both the truest respect and a great deal of liking – it may take years to build into the fabric of one’s life, but is undoubtedly worth it.