The 48 laws of power contradicts itself. Law this contradicts, law that. How do I balance the 48 laws of power? You wanna know the answer? You don't. You can shut the video off now because there's the answer to that question I've got probably over 100 times. The problem with this is that you guys are trying to look at these as actual laws. They're not set in stone. They're supposed to contradict each other. And I want to read you something that's going to answer this once and for all so I hopefully don't get any more of these comments. Laws, rules, they're all necessary precondition for discipline and order. You need rules and laws but sometimes they conflict and they don't always apply. So there has to be an ethic underlying the rules and you should have more respect for the ethic than the actual rules. The ethic may be understand the capacity that humans have for good and evil and accordingly orient yourself toward good and truth. Or another one might be excellence takes time. Achieving greatness takes time and work. Very basic principles that we understand about the human condition. This is the ethic. All the rules and the laws and the principles that self-help books and authors and entrepreneurs and philosophers will try and report to they hover above this ethic. In fact, rather I want to say philosophers create the ethic people like Socrates and Seneca. Philosophers like these, they create the ethic for us that we're standing on and then people like Green give us the the added foundation that we can now operate within on a more practical basis. I will continue. So we get the 48 laws of power or any book for that matter that sets a clear line of principles or laws and we try to narrowly prescribe them to our life. Then we find this law contradicts this law and this principle contradicts this principle. This book is not black and white. No book. It really is black and white. Green says so himself. If you watch a couple of his interviews, he actually quoted as saying, if you try and go through each of the 48 laws and apply them, you go crazy as many of you are and I can see. You go crazy. Be so scared of every move you did. So I made the law 48 which most of you haven't seen. It's the most important law. It's the most important whole chapter in the book. It's the only one you really need to read. Assume formlessness which is basically telling you ignore all 47 of the other laws and don't think in terms of laws be formless, be open, be fluid, be like water. Law 48 is the answer to that question. Law 48, be formless, it is really one of the most profound principles. It is the ethic. Law 48 is the ethic I was talking about just a moment ago. Law 48 is the ethic that the foundation of all these principles and laws lie on. Or lie above. Screw the fact that I'm even saying the word law because people get caught up on that word. Just be formless. Assume formlessness, be fluid in the way you interact with all the other chapters in this book. How about that chapters? Is that better? These laws aren't going to apply exactly to your circumstances in life. Get rid of the idea that there are people out there who are going to give you a literal manual to improve your life. That's lazy. And it comes back to the 50th law, one of Green's other books, which I've read. And he says, you're afraid of being on your own. You want someone to take your hand and lead you the way. You have to develop and think for yourself. You have to think for yourself in the way you, in the manoeuvre, which interact and apply these laws and principles in this book. It's not black and white. One reason we have reversals in this book, which as many of you have seen in the videos I create, I've put in there and in the book, that this demonstrates that nothing is set in stone. This question shouldn't even be a question because it's so obvious, but you have to respect everyone's individual and not everyone sees between the lines. You have to freeing you from the rigid concept that there's only one way to do something. That's the point of the reversal. There's always something that contradicts one truth. There's always an opposing argument. There's always an exception to the rule. Nothing is set in stone. Nothing is black and white. But that's an absolute. So not even that is black and white. There are some laws that are pre-solid that you can almost or should almost never violate. But the idea that it takes time to become great at something, you can't violate that. There's no magic pill to overnight success. Again, that's the ethic that I was talking about previously. But what about laws like Never Outshine the Master? These people give me examples all the time. And yet we could go into the minutia of how they contradict each other because it's true. They do. But and Green's going to, I'm going to give you an example right now. What about laws like Never Outshine the Master. There are times when you should outshine the Master. Your Master or Boss is incompetent and he or she has a boss above him or her. And maybe by outshining this person, you'll get the attention of the boss that's above and impress them. And you're going to climb the hierarchy of competency. So sometimes doing the opposite is the right thing. Sometimes contradicting a law or a principle or something he or she says or yourself is beneficial. There is no formula. There are good ideas. There are good guidelines. And there are ways to say this is most likely the road you should take. And then you make it your own. And then you adapt it to your life and your circumstance because that's all it is. That's all you can do. And that's not just for this book. That's for everything. That's for every book. That's for every piece of content. That's for every principle and ethic that that that maneuvers through the human condition. It's really ironic because green titled this book or not ironic knowing that green titled this book the 48 laws of power. 48 laws is what I want to emphasize. If we just look at the word law and how it's defined and how the connotation of the word law it's something that our society generally defines as something quite rigid and solid and not formless at all. But it makes you think green isn't trying to give us all the answers because he wants us to think for ourselves because that's what a good author does. That's what a good philosopher does. That's what a productive thinker does. They think for themselves and they understand there's always contradictions to every principle. There's always another side to the coin. So don't treat these laws. In fact, don't treat any principle as a rigid guideline. Treat it like water. Something that's fluid and formless. Be like water. That's the answer.