The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

Create the new social configuration.
It is human nature for people to
crave more social interaction with those with whom they feel an
affinity. You will always gain great power by forging some new way of
interacting that appeals to your generation. You organize a group
around new ideas or values that are in the air or the latest technology
that allows you to bring people together of a like mind in a novel way.
You eliminate the middlemen who used to set up barriers that
prevented freer associations of people. In this new form of a group, it is
always wise to introduce some rituals that bond the members together
and some symbols to identify with.
We see many examples of this in the past—the salons of
seventeenth-century France, where men and women could talk freely

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and openly; the lodges of the Freemasons in eighteenth-century
Europe, with their secret rituals and air of subversion; the speakeasies
and jazz clubs of the 1920s, where the mood was “anything goes”; or
more recently, online platforms and groups, or flash mobs. In using
this strategy, think of the repressive elements of the past that people
are yearning to shake free of. This could be a period of stultifying
correctness or prudery, or rampant conformity, or the overvaluing of
individualism and all the selfishness that breeds. The group you
establish will let flourish a new spirit and even offer the thrill of
breaking past taboos on correctness.
Subvert the spirit.
You might find yourself at odds with some part of
the spirit of your generation or the times you live in. Perhaps you
identify with some tradition in the past that has been superseded, or
your values differ in some way because of your own individual
temperament. Whatever the reason, it is never wise to preach or
moralize or condemn the spirit of the times. You will only marginalize
yourself. If the spirit of the times is like a tide or a stream, better to
find a way to gently redirect it, instead of fighting its direction. You will
have more power and effect by working within the zeitgeist and
subverting it.
For instance, you make something—a book, a film, any product—
that has the look and feel of the times, even to an exaggerated degree.
However, through the content of what you produce, you insert ideas
and a spirit that is somewhat different, that points to the value of the
past you prefer or depicts another possible way of relating to events or
interpreting them, helping to loosen up the tight generational
framework through which people view their world.
After World War II, the great European fashion designers felt a
great deal of disdain for the American market that now dominated the
world. They disliked the emerging popular culture and its vulgarity.
The fashion designer Coco Chanel had always emphasized elegance in
her designs and certainly shared some of this antipathy. But she went
in the opposite direction of other designers of the time: she embraced
the new power of American women and catered to their desire for
clothing that was less fussy and more athletic. Gaining their trust and
using their language, Chanel now had great power to subtly alter
American tastes, bringing in more of her true sensibility and imparting
some elegance to the streamlined designs American women loved. In
this way she helped redirect the zeitgeist in fashion, anticipating the

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changes of the early 1960s. That is the power that comes from working
with the spirit rather than against it.