The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

16
See the Hostility Behind the
Friendly Façade
The Law of Aggression
n the surface, the people around you appear so polite and
civilized. But beneath the mask, they are all inevitably dealing
with frustrations. They have a need to influence people and gain
power over circumstances. Feeling blocked in their endeavors, they
often try to assert themselves in manipulative ways that catch you by
surprise. And then there are those whose need for power and
impatience to obtain it are greater than others. They turn
particularly aggressive, getting their way by intimidating people,
being relentless and willing to do almost anything. You must
transform yourself into a superior observer of people’s unsatisfied
aggressive desires, paying extra attention to the chronic aggressors
and passive aggressors in our midst. You must recognize the signs—
the past patterns of behavior, the obsessive need to control everything
in their environment—that indicate the dangerous types. They depend
on making you emotional—afraid, angry—and unable to think
straight. Do not give them this power. When it comes to your own
aggressive energy, learn to tame and channel it for productive
purposes—standing up for yourself, attacking problems with
relentless energy, realizing great ambitions.
The Sophisticated Aggressor
In late 1857, Maurice B. Clark, a twenty-eight-year-old Englishman
living in Cleveland, Ohio, made the most important decision yet in his
young life: he would quit his comfortable job as a high-level buyer and
seller for a produce firm and start his own business in the same line.

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He had the ambition of becoming yet another new millionaire in this
bustling city, and he had nothing but confidence in his powers to get
there: he was a born hustler with a nose for making money.
Clark had fled England some ten years earlier, fearing imminent
arrest for having struck his employer and knocked him unconscious.
(He always had a bit of a temper.) He had emigrated to the United
States, traveled west from New York, landed all kinds of odd jobs, and
then ended up in Cleveland, where he quickly rose through the ranks of
merchants. Cleveland was something of a boomtown, located on a river
and Lake Erie and serving as a key transportation hub connecting the
East to the West. There would never be a better time for Clark to push
his way forward and make a fortune.
There was only one problem—he did not have enough money to
start the business. He would need a collaborator with some capital,
and as he thought about this, he came up with a possible business