I read this about a year ago and my thoughts were mostly along the lines of everyone can see through this bullshit at this point. Almost 90 years have passed since Carnegie wrote this and it is wildly influential. One time, when I was in Japan, a really smart Japanese woman explained to me her theory that the Japanese tea ceremony wasn’t just a incarnation and expression of Japanese culture but it’s actually so influential that it’s deeply influential on the culture that created it. The behavior and the mannerisms of the tea ceremony extend and define what’s proper in a high society cultural setting in Japan. This book is like that in mid level management corporate culture in America. This simple ass petty manipulative bullshit is the playbook used by the people who fuck up our lives.
There’s a sincerity among the working poor that’s absent in the deadness of the upper middle class and beyond. The treatment of others in the haves subculture is so absent of standard morality that simple virtues like basic kindness and empathy have to be coached and corrected like a wonky golf swing. This book could be retitled How to Hide the Fact that You’re Really a Cunt.
I can easily imagine Charles Manson using these shallow tactics on his recruits. It’s not that he abused the book; it’s the book is fundamentally flawed in the first place. If you have to, or even want to use strategies to “win” (and that is a hell of a creepy ass word for making friends, thinking of others as prizes that can be won is nothing short of dehumanizing everyone except yourself – malignant narcissism) friends and influence people you need to work on your moral character. Take some mushrooms and look at yourself or go to church or a meditation retreat or something because you are a very fucked up human being capitalist shit breath. Of course, it was right up Manson’s alley. For anyone and everyone who does find this enlightening you have to be so devoid of basic human decency you’re really just a failed psychopath. It’s a byproduct of the dehumanization of capitalism that sees everything and everyone as a potential profit.
The staying power and massive magnitude of this manipulation manifesto speaks to what a sad pathetic culture we live in. Christ, they’re still giving workshops and teaching courses in this garbage.
Warmth Highest 