The Law of Power: If you make a show of being different, flaunting unconventional ideas and behavior, people will think you look down on them, and will retaliate against you for making them feel inferior. It’s better to blend in; share your real views only with close friends and like-minded people.
It’s impossible to speak absolutely freely. We learn at a young age to hide our thoughts so we don’t offend, and to tell sensitive and insecure people what they want to hear. Inwardly, we think and believe what we want, but outwardly we try to be inoffensive.
However, some people chafe against such restraints, and aim to prove the superiority of their unconventional beliefs. They mostly offend rather than convincing anyone because people don’t easily reject their values, which have an emotional component.
Most unconventional people learn to blend in with others and to share their differing views only with like-minded people. Appearances are what counts — when you look like others, they assume you believe as they do and they leave you alone.
We have many orthodoxies today that we’re expected to adhere to, from which deviating is frowned on. For instance, when Jonas Salk discovered the polio vaccine he broke scientific protocol and publicly announced it before allowing vetting by the scientific community. Thereafter, scientists shunned him.
Powerful people, however, know the value of seeming to be all things to all people. You wear many different masks to avoid problems and get others to do what you want. When you let people think you believe as they do, they’re flattered and let down their guard.
Putting the Law to Work
A writer named Campanella was imprisoned and tortured during the Spanish Inquisition for repeatedly expressing his atheist beliefs. While most people believed Catholic dogma or at least appeared to go along with it, Campanella couldn’t restrain himself, and he paid for it. However, while in prison he came up with a new strategy of appearing to comply while still making his point.
First, to save his life, he feigned madness, and his death sentence was commuted to life in prison. Then he wrote a book espousing ideas that were the opposite of what he’d previously expressed. He was released and wrote another book, in which he presented the Catholic argument against the views of atheists and other free-thinkers. But in the process he had to explain the heretical views. In so doing, he gave the new ideas more exposure and to many people they seemed compelling compared to the church’s standard, dull response.
It was unsettling to Catholic readers but they couldn’t call it heretical because he’d used their own arguments. The lesson he learned was that appearing to fit in while expressing your ideas in a kind of code for a selected audience is a more useful approach than martyrdom.
Standing out instead of blending in can be useful if you’re already powerful. It’s a sign of your power and your distance from other people. President Lyndon Johnson sometimes held meetings while sitting on the toilet — thereby demonstrating that he didn’t need to abide by social codes. Go too far and people might turn on you, however.
Society tolerates a few people who flaunt their differences because they make things more exciting, but you’re most likely to achieve your objectives if you learn to blend in.