Comments on: Crush Your Enemy Totally (Except When You Shouldn’t)

By: Avinash

Avinash — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:19:57 +0000

Whether he should have killed him or not can be argued. He should not have gotten involved personally because he had an emotional investment. Mixing business and emotion can only lead to pain and trouble.

By: John Deere

John Deere — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 20:50:37 +0000

Come on now.

“I don’t think the lesson is that he should have killed him, although Robert Greene is often right.”

Read “The Godfather.” I don’t think any of us are criminal masterminds so it’s all intellectual masturbation, but there’s a lot of wisdom in that book. Michael was a better criminal than Vito but Vito was a better person. Or, it could be argued that Michael simply did what was necessary due to the extraordinary situation.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 18:44:18 +0000

yeah like other posters i dont see an alternative to killing him in a criminal organization. My question would be what would you do in that particular case Ryan?

By: Mr. Wiggles

Mr. Wiggles — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 13:34:22 +0000

How would you prevent insubordination, if not by crushing the perpetrator? How could one survive in a violent industry without succumbing to violence?

(Non-rhetorically)

By: John Deere

John Deere — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 09:43:35 +0000

That’s an excellent post…it also makes me feel a twinge of guilt since I recently humiliated my former BFF. Sure, he deserved it, but there were definitely more tactful ways to get the point across (that lieing to my friends and telling me about it isn’t a good idea). Public humiliation also has the side effect of making you look like a ginormous douchebag, or callous asshole if you’re lucky.

By: cadet07

cadet07 — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 06:13:21 +0000

“Well what about not about not beating him in the first place? Did it take away hitting on his daughter?”

It may not have done that but; I bet for sure that is stopped anyone else doing the same. Sometimes a once of prevention can do more then a ton of cure.

By: BlackHole

BlackHole — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 22:02:50 +0000

Obviously not. Nothing can undo the past. But it would never happen again if Bumpy had killed Flash instead of humiliating him.

What makes this an exception? Bumpy tried to caress Flash and was disrespected (a number of times) for his troubles. The appropriate response was not taken and look what happened.

By: Ryan Holiday

Ryan Holiday — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 19:55:32 +0000

Well what about not about not beating him in the first place? Did it take away hitting on his daughter?

By: BlackHole

BlackHole — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 19:39:43 +0000

I liked the anecdote, but was this supposed to be an example of an exception? It seems the moral of the story was simply to crush enemies totally. Did I miss something?

By: Charlie Murphy

Charlie Murphy — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 19:08:26 +0000

I’d have killed him. Post-beating of course. It’s important to set a precedent for ruthlessness. It’s not so much anger as much as it is what game theorists would call “credible deterrent”.

If the consequences are so severe, chances are you won’t do it, whether or not they’re motivated out of anger or simply the need to punish underlings.