If you want to manipulate a person or a society, you have options.
There’s the ol’ politician’s classic: lie hard enough, often enough and emphatically enough that folks start believing it.
There’s gaslighting, of course.
And you can always make it so the thing you want them to do is the least painful path. The higher the pain, the more they’ll insist that “their” idea is the best.
These are all black hat techniques – they might work, but it comes at a price.
If you have to use these – or anything else from the dark side of influence – then you have to wonder if you should. If your idea is beautiful, good or true, then it shouldn’t need anything like this.
You can use these techniques to help someone better themselves.
There are other ways to do that, though. Ways that work with people, not against them. Ways that aren’t filled with temptations to do wicked things.
Take charisma, for example.
It’s just as easy to use it for good or for ill. With enough of it, you could found a cult or lead society out of a dark corner into the light.
There are few things more influential than genuine charm. Not sleazy charm, not calculated charm, but the genuine stuff.
That’s why even a little bit of it can change your life.
And you can get more than just a little bit of it by studying Flavours of Charisma.
Yeah, you’ll need to shell out money for it.
Then you actually have to read it.
Then you actually have to apply the lessons.
But if it were any simpler, it wouldn’t be any fun.
Find it here: