The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

I will deliver you.
These types often rise to power in times of trouble
and crisis. Their self-confidence is comforting to the public or to
shareholders. They will be the ones to deliver the people from the
many problems they are facing. In order to pull this off, their promises
have to be large yet vague. By being large they can inspire dreams; by
being vague, nobody can hold the person to account if they don’t come
to pass, since there are no specifics to get hold of. The more grandiose
the promises and visions of the future, the more grandiose the faith
they will inspire. The message must be simple to digest, reducible to a
slogan, and promising something large that stirs the emotions. As part
of this strategy these types require convenient scapegoats, often the
elites or outsiders, to tighten the group identification and to stir the
emotions even further. The movement around the leader begins to
crystallize around hatred of these scapegoats, who begin to stand for
every bit of pain and injustice each person in the crowd has ever
experienced. The leader’s promise to bring these invented enemies
down increases the leader’s power exponentially.
What you will find here is that they are creating a cult more than
leading a political movement or a business. You will see that their

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name, image, and slogans must be reproduced in large numbers and
assume a godlike ubiquity. Certain colors, symbols, and perhaps music
are used to bind the group identity and appeal to the basest human
instincts. People who now believe in the cult are doubly mesmerized
and ready to excuse any kind of action. At such a point nothing will
dissuade true believers, but you must maintain your internal distance
and analytic powers.
I rewrite the rules.
A secret wish of humans is to do without the usual
rules and conventions in place in any field—to gain power just by
following our own inner light. When grandiose leaders claim to have
such powers, we are secretly excited and wish to believe them.
Michael Cimino was the director of the Academy Award–winning
film The Deer Hunter (1978). To those who worked with and for him,
however, he was not simply a film director but rather a special genius
on a mission to disrupt the rigid, corporate Hollywood system. For his
next film, Heaven’s Gate (1980), he negotiated a contract that was
completely unique in Hollywood history, one that allowed him to
increase the budget as he saw fit and to create precisely the film he had
envisioned, with no strings attached. On the set, Cimino spent weeks
rehearsing the actors in the right kind of roller-skating he needed for
one scene. One day he waited hours before rolling cameras, just so the
perfect kind of cloud could pass into frame. The costs soared and the
film he initially turned in was over five hours long. In the end,
Heaven’s Gate was one of the greatest disasters in Hollywood history,
and it virtually destroyed Cimino’s career. It seemed that the
traditional contract had actually served a purpose—to rein in the
natural grandiosity of any film director and make him or her work
within limits. Most rules do have common sense and rationality behind
them.
As a variation on this, grandiose leaders will often rely on their
intuitions, disregarding the need for focus groups or any form of
scientific feedback. They have a special inside connection to the truth.
They like to create the myth that their hunches have led to fantastic
successes, but close scrutiny will reveal that their hunches miss as
often as they hit. When you hear leaders present themselves as the
consummate maverick, able to do away with rules and science, you
must see this only as a sign of madness, not divine inspiration.

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