OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW In the year 1527, King Henry VIII of England decided he had to find a way to get rid of his wife, Catherine of Aragon....
OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW In the year 1527, King Henry VIII of England decided he had to find a way to get rid of his wife, Catherine of Aragon. Catherine had failed to produce a son, a male heir who would ensure the continuance of his dynasty, and Henry thought he knew why: He had read in the Bible the passage, "And if a man shall take his brother's wife, it is an unclean thing: he hath uncovered his brother's nakedness; they shall be childless." Before marrying Henry, Catherine had married his older brother Arthur, but Arthur had died five months later. Henry had waited an appropriate time, then had married his brother's widow.
Catherine was the daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, and by marrying her Henry had kept alive a valuable alliance. Now, however, Catherine had to assure hirn that her brief marriage with Arthur had never been consummated. Otherwise Henry would view their relationship as incestuous and their marriage as null and void. Catherine insisted that she had remained a virgin through her marriage to Arthur, and Pope Clement VII supported her by giving his blessing to the union, which he could not have done had he considered it incestuous. Yet after years of marriage to Henry, Catherine had failed to produce a son, and in the early 1520s she had entered menopause. To the king this could only mean one thing: She had lied about her virginity, their union was incestuous, and God had punished them. There was another reason why Henry wanted to get rid of Catherine: He had fallen in love with a younger woman, Anne Boleyn. Not only was he in love with her, but if he married her he could still hope to sire a legitimate son. The marriage to Catherine had to be annulled. For this, however, Henry had to apply to the Vatican. But Pope Clement would never annul the marriage. By the summer of 1527, rumors spread throughout Europe that Henry was about to attempt the impossible-to annul his marriage against Clement's wishes. Catherine would never abdicate, let alone voluntarily enter a nunnery, as Henry had urged her. But Henry had his own strategy: He stopped sleeping in the same bed with Catherine, since he considered her his sister-in-Iaw, not his lawful wife. He insisted on calling her Princess the dais where the chief was seated and lay there, chewing its cud. Everyone was sure that this was some grave portent. and urged that the ox be sent to a yinyang diviner. However. the prime minister, the father ofthe minister of the right, said,
"An ox has no discrimination. It has legs-there is nowhere it won't go. It does not make sense to deprive an underpaid official of the wretched ox he needs in order to attend court. " He returned the ox to its owner and changed the maUing on which it had lain. No untoward event of any kind occurred afterward. They say that if you see a prodigy and do not treat it as such, its character as a prodigy is destroyed. ESSAYS IN IDLENESS, KENKO, JAPAN, FOURTEENTH CENTURY LAW 36 303 And in this view it is advisable to let everyone of your acquaintancewhether man or woman-feel now and then that you could very welt dispense with their company. This will consolidate friendship. Nay, with most people there will be no harm in occasionalty mixing a grain of disdain with your treatment of them; that will make them value your friendship alt the more. Chi non stima vien stirnato, as a subtle Itahan proverb has it-to disregard is to win regard. But if we realty think very highly of a person, we shoutd conceal it from hirn hke a crime. This is not a very gratifying thing to do, but it is right. Why, a dog will not bear being treated too kindly, let alone a man! ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER. 1 788-1860 '1'111': \10" " f: \ A1\1J '!' I I I-: P I' :'IS A monkey was carrying two handfuts of peas. One httle pea dropped out. He tried to pick it up, and spilt twenty. He tried to pick up the twenty, and spilt them alt. Then he lost his temper, scattered the peas in alt direclions, and ran away. FABLES. LEO TOLSTOY. 1 828-1910 304 LAW 36 Dowager of Wales, her title as Arthur's widow.
Finally, in 153 1, he banished her from court and shipped her off to a distant castle. The pope ordered rum to return her to court, on pain of excommunication, the most severe penalty a Catholic could suffer. Henry not only ignored this threat, he insisted that his marriage to Catherine had been dissolved, and in 1533 he married Anne Boleyn. Clement refused to recognize the marriage, but Henry did not care. He no longer recognized the pope's authority, and proceeded to break with the Roman Catholic Church, establishing the Church of England in its stead, with the king as the head of the new church. And so, not surprisingly, the newly formed Church of England proclaimed Anne Boleyn England's rightful queen. The pope tried every threat in the book, but nothing worked. Henry simply ignored him. Clement fumed-no one had ever treated him so contemptuously.
Henry had humiliated hirn and he had no power of recourse. Even excommunication (which he constantly threatened but never carried out) would no longer matter. Catherine too feit the devastating sting of Henry's disdain. She tried to fight back, but in appealing to Henry her words fell on deaf ears, and soon they fell on no one's. Isolated from the court, ignored by the king, mad with anger and frustration, Catherine slowly deteriorated, and finally died in January of 1536, from a cancerous tumor of the heart. Interpretation When you pay attention to a person, the two of you become partners of sorts, each moving in step to the actions and reactions of the other. In the process you lose your initiative. It is a dynamic of all interactions:
By acknowledging other people, even if only to fight with them, you open yourself to their influence. Had Henry locked horns with Catherine, he would have found hirnself mired in endless arguments that would have weakened his resolve and eventually worn rum down. (Catherine was a strong, stubborn woman.) Had he set out to convince Clement to change rus verdict on the marriage's validity, or tried to compromise and negotiate with hirn, he would have gotten bogged down in Clement's favorite tactic: playing for time, promising flexibility, but actually getting what popes always gottheir way. Henry would have none of this. He played a devastating power game-total disdain. By ignoring people you cancel them out. This unsettles and infuriates them-but since they have no dealings with you, there is no thing they can do. This is the offensive aspect of the law. Playing the card of contempt is immensely powerful, for it lets you determine the conditions of the conflict. The war is waged on your terms. This is the ultimate power pose: You are the king, and you ignore what offends you. Watch how this tactic infuriates people-half of what they do is to get your attention, and when you withhold it from them, they flounder in frustration. MAN: Kick him-he'll jor{ljve you. Flatter him-he may or may not see through you. But ignore him and he 'll hate you. Idries Shah, Caravan of Dreams, 1 968 KEYS TO POWER Desire often creates paradoxical effects: The more you want something, the more you chase after it, the more it eludes you. The more interest you show, the more you repel the object of your desire. This is because your interest is too strong-it makes people awkward, even fearful. Uncontrollable desire makes you seem weak, unworthy, pathetic. You need to turn YOUf back on what you want, show your contempt and disdain.
This is the kind of powerful response that will drive your targets crazy. They will respond with a desire of their own, which is simply to have an effect on you-perhaps to possess you, perhaps to hurt you. If they want to possess you, you have successfully completed the first step of seduction. If they want to hurt you, you have unsettled them and made them play by your rules (see Laws 8 and 39 on baiting people into action). Contempt is the prerogative of the king. Where his eyes turn, what he decides to see, is what has reality; what he ignores and turns his back on is as good as dead. That was the weapon of King Louis XIV -if he did not like you, he acted as if you were not there, maintaining his superiority by cutting off the dynamic of interaction. This is the power you have when you play the card of contempt, periodically showing people that you can do without them. If choosing to ignore enhances your power, it follows that the opposite approach-commitment and engagement-often weakens you. By paying undue attention to a puny enemy, you look puny, and the longer it takes you to crush such an enemy, the larger the enemy seems. When Athens set out to conquer the island of Sicily, in 415 B.C., a giant power was attacking a tiny one. Yet by entangling Athens in a long-drawn-out conflict, Syracuse, Sicily's most important city-state, was ahle to grow in stature and confideuce. Finally defeating Athens, it made itself famous for centuries to corne. In recent times, President John F. Kennedy made a similar mistake in his attitude to Fidel Castro of Cuha: His failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs, in 1961, made Castro an international hero. A second danger: If you succeed in crushing the irritant, or even if you merely wound it, you create sympathy for the weaker side. Critics of Franklin D. Roosevelt complained bitterly about the money his administration spent on government projects, hut their attacks had no resonance with the puhlic, who saw the president as working to end the Great Depression.
His opponents thought they had an example that would show just how wasteful he had hecome: his dog, Fala, which he Iavished with favors and attention. Critics railed at his insensitivity-spending taxpayers' money on a dog while so many Americans were still in poverty. But Roosevelt had a response: How dare his critics attack a defenseless Httle dog? As some make gossip out of everything, su others make much ado about everything. They are always talking big, fand] take everything seriously, making a quarrel and a mystery of it. You should take very few grievances to heart, for to do so is 10 give yourself ground. less wurry. It is a topsyturvy way of behaving to take tu heart eares which you ought to throw over your shoulder. Many things whieh seemed important [at the time] turn out to be ofno aecount when they are ignored; and othen', whieh seem trifiing, appear formidable when you pay attentiun tu them. Things ean easily be settled at the outset, but not so later on. In many cases, the remedy itself is the cause 0/ the disease: to let things be is not the least satisjactory of life :s ru/es. BALTASAR GRACIAN, 1 601-1658 LAW 36 305 TIIF \IA." A I\ Il 1 I1S SIIAIH)\\ There was a certain original man who desired to catch his own shadow. He makes a step or two toward it, but it moves away from hirn. He quickens his pace; it does the same. At last he takes to running; but the quicker he goes, the quicker runs the shadow also, utterly refusing to give itself up, just as if it had been a treasure. But see! our eccentric friend suddenly turns round, and walks away from it. And presently he looks behind hirn; now the shadow runs after hirn.
Ladies fair, I have often observed ... that Fortune treats us in a similar way. One man tries with all his might to seize the goddess, and only loses his time and his trouble. Another .I'eem.l', to alt appearance, to he running out of her sight; hut, no: .I'he herself takes a plea.l'lIre in p"r.l'uing hirn. FAHLES, IVAN KRILOFr, 1 76R-1844 306 LAW 36 His speech in defense of Fala was one of the most popular he ever gave, In this case, the weak party involved was the president's dog and the attack backfired-in the long run, it only made the president more sympathetic, since many people will naturally side with the "underdog," just as the American public came to sympathize with the wily but outnumbered Pancho Villa, It is tempting to want to fix our mistakes, but the harder we try, the worse we often make them, It is sometimes more politic to leave them alone, In 1971, when the New lOrk Times published the Pentagon Papers, a group of government documents about the history of U.S, involvement in Indochina, Henry Kissinger erupted into a volcanic rage, Furious about the Nixon administration's vulnerability to this kind of damaging leak, he made recommendations that eventually led to the formation of a group called the Plumbers to plug the leaks. This was the unit that later broke into Democratic Party offices in the Watergate Hotel, setting off the chain of events that led to Nixon's downfall. In reality the publication of the Pentagon Papers was not a serious threat to the administration, but Kissinger's reaction made it a big deal. In trying to fix one problem, he created another: a paranoia for security that in the end was much more destructive to the government Had he ignored the Pentagon Papers, the scandal they had created would eventually have blown over, Instead of inadvertently focusing attention on a problem, making it seem worse by publicizing how much concern and anxiety it is causing you, it is often far wiser to play the contemptuous aristocrat, not deigning to acknowledge the problem's existence,
There are several ways to execute this strategy. First there is the sour-grapes approach. If there is something you want but that you realize you cannot have, the worst thing you can do is draw attention to your disappointrnent by complaining about it An infinitely more powerful tactic is to act as if it never really interested you in the first place. When the writer George Sand's supporters nominated her to be the first female member of the Academie Fran(,:aise, in 1861, Sand quickly saw that the academy would never admit her. Instead of whining, though, she claimed she had no interest in belonging to this group of worn-out, overrated, out-of-touch windbags.
Her disdain was the perfect response: Had she shown her anger at her exclusion, she would have revealed how much it meant to her. Instead she branded the academy a club of old men-and why should she be angry or disappointed at not having to spend her time with them? Crying "sour grapes" is sometimes seen as a reflection of the weak; it is actually the tactic of the powerful. Second, when you are attacked by an inferior, deflect people's attention by making it clear that the attack has not even registered. Look away, or answer sweetly, showing how little the attack concerns you. Similarly, when you yourself have committed a blunder, the best response is often to make less of your mistake by treating it lightly. The Japanese emperor Go-Saiin, a great disciple of the tea ceremony, owned a priceless antique tea bowl that all the courtiers envied. One day a guest, Dainagon Tsunehiro, asked if he could carry the tea bowl into the light, to examine it more closely. The bowl rarely left the table, but the emperor was in good spirits and he consented. As Dainagon carried the bowl to the railing of the verandah, however, and held it up to the light,
it slipped from his hands and fell on a rock in the garden below, smashing into tiny fragments. The emperor of course was furious. "It was indeed most clumsy of me to let it drop in this way," said Dainagon, with a deep bow, "but really there is not much harm done. This Ido tea-bowl is a very old one and it is impossible to say how much longer it would have lasted, but anyhow it is not a thing of any public use, so I think it rather fortunate that it has broken thus." This surprising response had an immediate effect: The emperor calmed down. Dainagon neither sniveled nor overapologized, but signaled his own worth and power by treating his mistake with a touch of disdain. The emperor had to respond with a similar aristocratic indifference; his anger had made hirn seem low and petty-an image Dainagon was able to manipulate.
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