Here we are with a chapter 5 summary from Laws of Human Nature. The Law of Covetousness

Here's the Video Summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwMQ0rna-PM

I used a different animation style on this one. Let me know if you prefer this to the previous ones.

Written Summary:

Absence and presence have primal effects on us. Too much presence suffocates, a degree of absence spurs our interests.

We are marked by the continual desire to possess what we do not have.

Learn to create some mystery around yourself. Use strategic absence to make people desire your return. Dangle in front of others what they are missing most in life, what they’re forbidden to have, and they’ll go crazy with desire.

Men are desirable when other women desire them. Competitive impulses are built into us.

You need to reverse your perspective. Instead of focusing on what you want and covet in the world, train yourself to focus on the repressed desires of others.

Train yourself to see how they perceive you and the objects that you make. Look at your works from the outside.

People do not want truth and honesty, no matter how much we hear such nonsense endlessly repeated. People want their imaginations to be stimulated and to be taken beyond their banal circumstances.

Create an air of mystery around you and your work. Associate it with something new, unfamiliar, exotic, progressive and taboo.

Don’t define your message but leave it vague. Let your message be seen everywhere. Then let the covetousness of human nature set off a chain reaction of desire.

Pleasure isn’t in the fulfillment. But in the pursuit.

Keys to human Nature

The more distant and unattainable a new object, the greater our desire to have it.

Whatever people have, they dream of something better over the horizon.

The grass is always greener syndrome can be explained by 3 qualities in the human brain.

• Induction - how something positive generates a contrasting negative image in our mind. We form opinions on things by judging it based on its opposites.
• Complacency would be a dangerous human trait in our ancestors. We survived and thrived off of our continually alertness. Which predisposes us to imagining the possible negative in any circumstance. We are inclined to a continually negative bias, which is why people gripe and complain.
• What is real and what is imagined are both experienced similarly in the brain. Our brains react similarly to our imagination as it does to when we are living out reality. Reality can be harsh and is full of limits and problems. .

This greener grass syndrome is the source of many benefits. Allows us to think of new possibilities and innovate. It is the material out of which we can move, excite and seduce people.

Knowing how to work on people’s natural covetousness is a timeless art that we depend on for all forms of persuasion.

In relationships people have come to believe they should be valued for who they are. Revealing more and more about themselves, exposing all of their likes and dislikes, and making themselves as familiar as possible. Leave no room for imagination or fantasy, we find it harder than ever to get into the psychology of the other person, to imagine what they want from us instead of what we want from them.

Don’t listen to moralism which urges honesty at the expense of desirability. Go in the opposite direction.

Strategies for Stimulating desire

• Know how and when to withdraw - your presence must have a touch of coldness to it. Add blankness and ambiguity as to who you are. Turn your face into a screen in which people can project their own fantasies. Create an air of mystery and encourage interpretations. Once you have got people’s imagination, you must absent yourself. Spark stories and rumours, but nothing concrete. Never define how people should take your work. Leave it open to interpretation.
• Create rivalries of desire - when we see things that are wanted by others, it drives up desire. Make sure your object is seen everywhere, encouraging piracy. Controversy does the trick. Be a master of setting off reactions and renewing or creating new ones. Make it clear that others desire you. Be indirect in this. Hear stories instead of bragging. Bring in a 3rd party to vie for your services.
• Use induction - associate your object with something illicit, controversial, politically advanced. Contrast working with you as a way against some other way of thinking and for a new youthful way. Voyeurism. Put this into your work by making it seem like you’re sharing secrets that should not be shared. Secrets about yourself and how you accomplished what you did. Secrets about powerful people and what they do behind closed doors. What you offer should be new, unfamiliar, exotic. Or presented as such. A contrast from what is out there already.
• Dangle in front of people the prospect of grasping the unattainable or the impossible. Life is full of difficulties and obstacles. To become successful is very difficult. Letting people imagine their goals is almost like reaching them. Let people imagine that they can do what you do.

It is not possession but desire that secretly impels people. Pray on the human need for fantasies and pleasures of chasing after them. Possessing something quickly gets boring. Once people get what they want and possess you. Their value and respect for you begin to lower.

Withdraw, surprise, and stimulate the chase.

The Supreme Desire

Our path must always be towards greater awareness of our nature. Understand the grass is always greener syndrome and understand how it compels our actions.

If we get bored with something we decide to make a big change. But remember that this requires learning new skills and making new contacts. Do you actually need this change or are you just chasing something that you want.

Think more deeply on where you’re at, what’s not clicking, what needs to be changed. Instead of jumping around from one thing to the next. Maybe take a more gentle change, that is in the same line of work but requires new skills.

In relationships, we chase the perfect man or woman and end up alone. There is nobody perfect. Instead come to terms with the flaws of your partner and accept or even find charm in their weaknesses. Learn the arts of compromise.

Instead of chasing down the latest trends and what others find exciting, spend time getting to know your own tastes and desires better so you can distinguish what you truly need or want from that which has been manufactured by advertisers or viral effects.

Make the most of what you have. You are continually being drawn to where you’ve never been and what you know because of human nature.

But if you absorb your mind in what’s nearest instead of distant, you can go deeper. Connect more with people in your circle, learn more about the people that you deal with. This is a source of endless fascination. Know your environment better. Knowing the environment you’re from better (and schmoozing with the people in that environment), will present many opportunities for power.

Knowing yourself, you have a ton of corners in yourself you can never fully understand. If you strive to know yourself better you can take charge of your own nature instead of being a slave to it. Giving yourself endless opportunities for improvement and innovation in your work.

In the end, what you really must covet is a deeper relationship to reality. Brings you calmness, focus, and practical power to alter what is possible to alter.

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