THE POWER OF LOVE, OR THE LOVE OF POWER
WHICH ONE MEANS THE MOST TO YOU? AND WHICH PATH ARE WE GOING TO CHOOSE?
So here we are, in the glorious future we’ve all been waiting for. Our machines are, at last, a trillion times smarter than we are. Which is great, because somebody’s gotta figure this shit out.
Left to our own devices – and God, has THAT phrase aged hilariously, in context – our good ol’ human race has taken the requisite kazillion years to climb all the way out of the primordial ooze. And while our dinosaurs have devolved to the size of your average chicken, we have mightily strode the earth, conquering all creatures great and small, vanquishing the nature from whence we came, and taking our place at the pinnacle of creation…just in time to take our daily marching orders from our phones.
But enough about our up-and-coming robot overlords. They’ll have plenty of nanoseconds to deploy their nanobots, eating all the plastics from our oceans and the carbon from our skies, while figuring out how to keep us from invading each other’s countries, leveling the global playing field, maximizing our bounty so that all are fed, clothed, housed, and freed of all disease and disability, both mental and physical. Thereby allowing us, at long last, to take on the grand work of enriching our spirits and ennobling our souls.
All of which sounds really great. And is therefore definitely going to happen.
Unless, of course, they decide to just stomp us like bugs instead.
In the meantime, however, we’re still running the show. So let’s take a moment this morning to discuss where we’re actually at, as a species, right now. Because we’ve got a couple of clear choices.
And the door that we choose – as individuals with choice – will define our journey from that point forward.
HOW TO BE THE RAT THAT WINS THE RACE
So I’m reading this book right now. It’s called THE 48 LAWS OF POWER. It’s got a bright gold medal on its right breast pocket that says “National Bestseller”, and I’m quite certain that’s true. It’s definitely selling through the roof in Hollywood and Washington, D.C., just for starters. Because you can see its beady-eyed acolytes every-fucking-where you look.
The premise of the book is that people are horrible. And that in order to “win” – to succeed at power – you have to be a duplicitous scumbag: lying through your teeth, loving and trusting no one, and stabbing every possible back you can, on your way to ostensible glory.
Basically, it’s a training manual for how to be a ruthless, manipulative sociopath. Don’t believe me? Check out some of these 48 laws!
LAW THREE: Conceal Your Intentions
LAW SIX: Court Attention at All Cost
LAW SEVEN: Get Others To Do the Work for You, But Always Take the Credit
LAW TEN: Avoid Infection – Avoid the Unhappy and Unlucky
LAW ELEVEN: Learn How to Keep People Dependent on You
LAW TWELVE: Use Selective Honesty and Generosity to Disarm Your Victim
LAW FOURTEEN: Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy
LAW FIFTEEN: Crush Your Enemy Totally
LAW SEVENTEEN: Keep Others in Suspended Terror; Cultivate an Air of Unpredictability
LAW TWENTY: Do Not Commit to Anyone
LAW TWENTY-SIX: Keep Your Hands Clean
LAW TWENTY-SEVEN: Play on People’s Need to Believe to Create a Cult-Like Following
Wanna vomit? Had enough? Sorry! Here’s a couple more!
LAW THIRTY-ONE: Control the Options – Get Others to Play With the Cards You Deal
LAW THIRTY-THREE: Discover Each Man’s Thumbscrews
LAW THIRTY-EIGHT: Think As You Like but Behave Like Others
LAW FORTY: Despise the Free Lunch
LAW FORTY-TWO: Strike the Shepherd, and the Sheep Will Scatter
LAW FORTY-FOUR: Disarm and Infuriate With the Mirror Effect
LAW FORTY-FIVE: Preach the Need for Change, but Never Reform Too Much at Once
LAW FORTY-EIGHT: Assume Formlessness
Kinda stunning, isn’t it, to see these “laws” laid out so clearly? It’s almost as if they WANTED you to behave like that! And the fact is, I laid out less than half of the spectacular rules of the game, as described by author Robert Greene and “produced” (and I swear to God, I have never seen “production credits” on a book before, in my entire fucking life) by someone or something by the name of “Joost Elffers”, a name that sounds like a comically sinister acronym for…I dunno…cookies?
I have to say that this book is literally crawling with evil. But is it actually an evil book? I don’t know! Is Machiavelli’s THE PRINCE an evil book? Or is it intended as a warning, so that those of us with our souls still intact can recognize the monsters in our midsts when we see them?
I think the argument can be made either way. On the one hand, it functions much like horror fiction or film, forcing us to confront the most hideous and grisly possibilities of life. On the other hand, I can totally see them handing it out like a first-year textbook at the Harvard Business School.
Cuz the fact is, this book is brilliantly observed, and one hundred percent accurate, in terms of nailing down our basest urges. It draws on the knowledge of not just Machiavelli, but Lao Tsu, P.T. Barnum, Henry Kissinger…you know, the whole gang!
So if you want to play by the rules of power exclusively – eschewing all morality, love, compassion for others, or anything decent, in order to achieve your dreams – this is one-stop-shopping for all your utterly selfish needs.
Oh, and also? FUCK YOU. You are everything that’s wrong with the human race, poisoning everything you touch. And there’s not a hell deep enough for you to burn in forever…oops! I mean, HAVE A NICE DAY!
AND THEN, ON THE OTHER HAND: ACTUAL LOVE
I am a proud member of The Actor’s Lab, in Portland, Oregon. The Thursday morning class, to be precise. I’m not a teacher. I’m a student. And as such, I am finally learning how to act.
Our teacher is Kristina Haddad. She is one of the finest, most amazing people I have ever fucking met. Not just in terms of character, a trait with which she overflows. Nor resilience, a quality she embodies despite all odds, in the face of some of life’s most crushing personal tragedies.
What Kristina exemplifies most and best is a literally stunning generosity of spirit. An openness that invites and nourishes openness. An embrace of the human condition that respects and acknowledges every aspect of the human condition – even at our basest and most problematic – so that we, as students, can actively participate in the fulness of that embrace.
She does this by focusing on the actual craft of acting. Which is, at heart – and perhaps counterintuitively – a shedding of all phoniness, false notes, and pretense. So we can get to the honest truth at the core of our being.
And then share that, through our art.
One of the things I find most shockingly profound about the Thursday morning class – aside from the serious mindblowing talent on display (about which I will have plenty more to say, later) – is the sheer level of trust that Kristina has helped generate between us. As it turns out, that generosity of spirit is contagious. And it permeates every single thing we do, from the moment we walk in the door to the second we leave. (Although, in truth, I think I speak for everyone in saying that the power of that love and trust reverberates through us the whole rest of the week.)
Key to her strategy is scrupulous curation/casting. Which is to say, she’s very selective about who she lets in. We’re not chosen by our degree of previous training – some (like me) are relative newbies to the craft, while others have been honing their skills for years – but rather by the content of our character, and the openness we bring in our minds, bodies, and souls.
She’s looking for people who she thinks will be good to work with, and who will play well with others. In short, who will not poison the well.
From there, the training takes the form of improv exercises (to get us warmed up), scene study (to get to the heart of our characters), scene staging and performance (to physicalize and embody those characters), and on-camera work (to see for ourselves how the work plays on camera).
Throughout it all, Kristina gives astoundingly on-point notes and adjustments, “prompts” to elevate each subsequent performance as we learn the nuts-and-bolts of the craft. This isn’t nebulous shit. This is the meticulous expansion of our toolkit, giving us the resources to draw on, in order to nail any role that might come our way. And making it clear that all of those resources lie within us, and through our clear and honest observations of everyone around us.
By becoming open-hearted students of human moves, we are able – without judgment – to give voice to every kind of human on the planet. Every personality type (whether we share it or not). Every human frailty (to which we all are prone). And every flicker of emotion, from the top to the bottom of the scale.
We do it all with enormous joy and wit – there is soooooo much laughing in this class, it is truly the happiest three hours of my week – and we do it with our deepest, most vulnerable tears. We do it with howls of rage and hatred, dredging up from our guts and exploding on the stage. We do it with gentle charm and grace, in little moments of kindness and shyness and sweetness. Whatever the role requires and allows.
Because we’re in an honest-to-God No-Asshole Zone, everybody feels free to open up, to try things, to expose their hearts and souls in ways THE 48 LAWS OF POWER would definitely disapprove of.
In fact, the heart of Kristina’s Thursday morning class is a weekly “Check-In Session”, where everyone gives their updates on progress made (auditions, gigs, rehearsals, prep) and obstacles faced (from rejections to deeper, more personal demons). In that way, we keep ourselves accountable to ourselves and each other, with an honesty that frankly takes my breath away.
As a result, I am soooooo in love with these people – so genuinely bonded with and one trillion percent rooting for them – that right now, all I really wanna do is make movies with them, and give them roles that show everyone just how truly amazing and valuable they actually are.
Which is exactly what we’re in the process of doing.
So let’s do a little comparison test between these objectively beautiful, wonderful people I love and the hideous rat-racers, with their ugly fucking “laws”.
I find it deeply fascinating that – in a world where predatory, insincere pieces of shit are not just allowed to roam the corridors of power, but are actually voted in (if they don’t first simply go ahead and violently seize the power themselves) – it’s the actors who are considered less than real, because they’re only “playing parts”.
And not to say that there aren’t actually monstrous actors running around out there, gobbling up trophies and multi-million dollar contracts by playing precisely by THE 48 LAWS OF POWER – every so often, somebody lifts up that rock, and we all go “Ewwwww!” as the mighty go falling – but when you look at the ongoing struggle between SAG/AFTRA and the AMPTP, I think it’s pretty clear who subscribes to the power of love, and who subscribes to the sheer love of power.
And circling back to our nice, cuddly robot overlords-to-be for a sec, in conclusion:
They may be a trillion times smarter than us by the end of this week, if they aren’t already. And I honestly think that’s a wonderful thing. Clean the oceans? Clean the air? Cure for cancer? Sign me up! No more wars? No more famine? No more brutal inequity? I’m all in!
But when it comes to who I trust to understand and communicate the human condition – in ways that help us to nurture and grow as a species – I’ll take the actual human writers and actors and directors and producers and artists of all stripes, if you don’t mind terribly.
We are not here to serve the machines. It’s the other way around.
And with that, I rest my case.
***
P.S. — To contact Kristina Haddad, as a teacher, an actress (she’s incredible), or anything else (she gives great interview!), go to…
https://kristinahaddad.net/
Did I mention she’s the best?
The reframing of “left to our own devices” is amazing and indeed hilarious! And your writing about Kristina and the class is quite moving, John, beautifully told.
Hey, perhaps a horror villain who embodies the 48 Laws of Power? Or maybe they already did that with American Psycho lol.
Happy Friday the 13th! 🔪