Psychopath's Handbook?

How to Win Friends & Influence People 

Dale Carnegie (©1936)

I must be exuding the aura of being a loner with very few friends that someone actually loaned me this book. He must have thought that it must be a sure way to end all my perceived 'woes'. Generally, I do not cherish books of this nature. To me, they appear like learning swimming by reading. Some things can be acquired only through practice, experience, and dents from the School of Hard Knocks.

After reading through it, I find it to be more like a handbook for psychopaths. It tells its readers how to skew others' thinking and actions towards the readers' self-serving needs. The psychopath would slowly play mind games to influence his victims into thinking that they are doing something altruistic akin to how Piped Piper would rid the town all the mice for nothing (thank you very much). And how the children would be mesmerised to his enchanting flute music to march in like zombies into the caves and never return.

Many of the topics illustrate the insincerity of people in making friends and influence them. They try to make people like them. They attempt to control people with their way of thinking, to be a leader without offence or resentment.  

Nobody, I mean nobody, can teach anybody anything. We cannot even make them learn. The yearning should come from within. 99% of the time, people, even hardened criminals, do not blame themselves for the mess they create or the mayhem that they are privy to. Criticising does not change anything, only creates resentment said Lincoln. People have to feel important. They want good health, food, sleep, money, sexual gratifications, the wellbeing of their children and perhaps a good after-life. We have to remember these when we want to influence people. 

Even though the methods that are suggested simple enough, most of us take them for granted and end up doing just the opposite; with disastrous outcomes. It is all about dancing to the tune of the intended 'victim'. Some of the strategies include making the others feel important, be free with appreciation but not flattery, arouse the interest of the other, show genuine interest, remember their names, be a good listener, talk in term of others' interests (while keeping in mind his true intentions, I suppose), be friendly, use diplomacy and not to run anyone down, be sympathetic to others' views, be dramatic and throw challenges to maintain the interest. 

We should remember that a drop of honey attracts more flies than a gallon of gall. The results seem more important than the means.

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Unsettled business?

Appa was never a friendly person. In his lifetime, I never saw him had friends coming over for a jolly good time or, he, being in the company of buddies or workmates for one. He is a man of few words. His idea of relaxation is the company of himself, within the confines of the four walls of his home and the accompaniment of his faithful transistor radio. 

He is one who taught me that so much could be expressed without verbalising a single word. Bonding can be shown without any unnecessary spoken word or meaningless display of emotion. He could spend a whole hour connecting with his sibling seated in a room for a full hour without a single sound. In short, he was economical with his words and not so expressive in his actions. 

All that, however, took a 180º turn when it came to Tango. Tango, not of the Tango and Cash fame, but was a lowly mutt who gasped his last breath quite recently after 13 years of existence. That would equal to 91 in human's equivalent.

Like Appa, Tango was also quite selective of his acquaintances. Known for his ferociousness, he was feared amongst the feline population and even the stray dog community. In many instances, he had defeated and had bought home carcasses of his kill on his occasional escapes from his home during the mating seasons. He was not particularly cordial to visitors of the humankind either.

Again, all that changed when it came to Appa. Hundreds of metres away, hearing the whirring of his motorcycle engine, Tango would spring to life. Wagging his tail, ear sprouting high, barking in playful, excited tone and jumping around, he was quite open with his display of pleasure. On Appa's part, he was never short of treats and dog food for Tango. Together, they would sit together contemplating and staring into nothing.

Now that both of them are no longer present on Earth, they would probably continue their ponderings in the ethereal world. 

Perhaps, all living things have a soul. Maybe, people and other beings connect at a primal level. The interactions of the souls in the cycle of births and rebirths make us all meet each other in different realms. We may have to finish unsettled businesses of our previous lives. Unfortunately, we cannot seem to remember. If karma is to punish us for our past shortcomings, is it unfair to punish us for something we do not know? How are we to amend the mistakes that are unknown?

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That's what friends are for?

Timon - Pumba 'BFF'

Olden scriptures like Ramayana and Greek mythology have revealed to us many tear evoking stories of sacrifices by friends for each other. In Ramayana, Laxana gave up his princely life to live with Rama and Sita just to suffer the deficiencies in the woods. Of course, cynics construe this gesture as an act of forbidden love between two males.
Why go far? Off hand, I can remember of so many sacrifices done by hero or supporting actors in many Hindi and Tamil movies. The formula of the poor down trotted friend sacrificing his love for his buddy as seen in 'Sangam' and 'Saajan' seem to have worked well at the box office and have made many a producer a happy man!
I find this type of true friendship not feasible in real life. Just like they say in Tamil, even if you are brothers (or friends), your mouths and stomachs are different!
So how do you go to protect and vouch for a friend against all eventualities? Do you give a blank cheque and free hand to be at his mercy just to regret you are stuck in a heap of manure and the lawyers have a field day pretending to feel your pain? Snap out of it, get real!

'Friends' with business benefits only!

The sad truth about Facebook.
The people who run Facebook, the social-networking company, are furious about a new movie that takes lots of liberties in its depiction of how Facebook came into existence. They’re upset because much of The Social Network, which opens Oct. 1, is just completely made up. That’s fair enough. But to me, the really interesting thing about this movie is that while much of the tale is invented, the story tells a larger truth about Silicon Valley’s get-rich-quick culture and the kind of people—like Facebook’s 26-year-old founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg—who thrive in this environment.
The Valley used to be a place run by scientists and engineers, people like Robert Noyce, the Ph.D. physicist who helped invent the integrated circuit and cofounded Intel. The Valley, in those days, was focused on hard science and making things. At first there were semiconductors, which is how Silicon Valley got its name; then came computers and software. But now the Valley has become a casino, a place where smart kids arrive hoping to make an easy fortune building companies that seem, if not pointless, at least not as serious as, say, old-guard companies like HP, Intel, Cisco, and Apple.
Silicon Valley’s Future Superstars
The three hottest tech companies today are Facebook, Twitter, and Zynga. What, exactly, do they do? Facebook lets you keep in touch with your friends; for this profound service to mankind it will generate about $1.5 billion in revenue this year by bombarding its 500 million members with ads. Twitter is a noisy circus of spats and celebrity watching, and its hapless founders still can’t figure out how to make money. That hasn’t stopped venture capitalists from funding dozens of companies that make little apps that work with Twitter, just as they’re also funding countless companies that make apps for Apple’s iPhone, and just as, a few years ago, they were all funding companies that made applications to run on Facebook. Zynga, the biggest of those Facebook app-makers, reportedly will rake in $500 million this year by getting people addicted to cheesy games like Farmville and Mafia Wars, then selling “virtual goods” to use inside the games.
Meanwhile, among some longtime techies, there’s a sense that something important has been lost.
“The old Silicon Valley was about solving really hard problems, making technical bets. But there’s no real technical bet being made with Facebook or Zynga,” says Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technology officer at Microsoft who now runs an invention lab in Seattle. “Today almost everyone in the Valley will tell you there is too much ‘me-tooism,’ too much looking for a gold rush and not enough people who are looking to solve really hard problems.” Sure, there are still entrepreneurs and investors chasing serious technology challenges in the Valley. And Myhrvold says he means no disrespect to Facebook and Zynga, which have had clever ideas and are making loads of money.
“What bothers me is the zillions of wannabes who will follow along, and the expectation that every company ought to be focused on doing really short-term, easy things to achieve giant paydays. I think that’s unrealistic, and it’s not healthy,” Myhrvold says.
His company, Intellectual Ventures, intentionally runs counter to the prevailing trend in Silicon Valley. The only problems it tries to solve are ones that seem overwhelmingly difficult. These include creating a new kind of nuclear reactor and developing technologies that could address climate change and eradicate malaria.


Face-to-FacebookFriend Feed: We talk to Facebook users (and self-proclaimed addicts) about how the social networking site fits into their lives
Myhrvold doesn’t have problems raising money. He made a fortune at Microsoft and is a close friend of Bill Gates. But he worries about “the unknown engineers and professors who have good ideas. Are those people going to get funded or will they be talked out of it and told they should do something like Zynga, because virtual goods is where it’s at these days?”
The risk is that by focusing an entire generation of bright young entrepreneurs on such silly things, we’ll fall behind in creating the fundamental building blocks of our economy. The transistor and the integrated circuit gave rise to the last half century of prosperity. But what comes next? “If we distract people with the lure of easy money, with making companies that don’t solve anything hard, we’re going to wind up derailing the thing that has been driving our economy,” Myhrvold says.
We’ve already fallen behind in areas like alternative energy, better batteries, and nanotechnology. Instead of racing to catch up, we’re buying seeds and garden gnomes on Facebook. This won’t end well.