Surrender. That’s law 22 in The 48 Laws of Power. If you can’t win, surrender. It transforms weakness into power. The theory is that it is better to surrender, and come back fighting another day, than to get defeated.
It’s classic military strategy. After all, if you lose half your troops in a bloody firefight you can’t win, how are you going to come back and defeat the enemy later? All your resources are gone. If you lose the battle, you may not win the war. But if you surrender the battle, you can regroup, restrategize, and come back to win the war in the end. All you lose is pride.
That, of course, is why this strategy needs to be one of the laws of power—because most people think it is better to lose a battle but have the pride of having fought it than to surrender and save your skin. Sometimes it is. It’s just a matter of whether you are pursuing victory or a reputation. Sometimes you need a reputation in order to get to the point of victory, so both techniques could come into play.
In Ham on Rye, the story of his childhood in the Great Depression, Charles Bukowski describes his quest to go from being a wimp to a neighborhood tough guy. One thing he did was get in all the fist fights he could. He always lost. It wasn’t a strategy exactly, people just kept picking on him and his pride prevented him from running away. If he had surrendered instead of fought, then sought revenge later, it wouldn’t have worked. The local toughs would only get angrier and beat him up. The neighborhood kids wouldn’t have even remembered the instance that was being avenged. We are not dealing with geniuses here. It’s the street. It’s about proving yourself. Okay.
But later, when he had become known as the baddest son-of-a-bitch on the block, he would use strategy. He would surrender to a bully, then plan a campaign to humiliate the guy when he least expected it. He’d keep his resentments under wraps until he had a chance to serve the revenge up cold, Hamlet style, then go for it. Surrender became his strategy.
Or you could surrender in the mode of another great memoirist, David Sedaris. He doesn’t really surrender as a strategy, just as a force of habit. Does it get him anywhere? It keeps him from getting beat up, and that’s something for a gay guy on a Greyhound bus. Witness this splendid passage from Naked:
“You think you’re going to learn something from a book?” the man said, punching my headrest with his tattooed knuckles. “Let me tell you a little something, bookworm, if you really want to learn the truth, there’s only one place to do it: Chatham Correctional Institute. That’s the best fucking school in this whole stinking country. It taught me everything I know and then some. Hell, you’ll learn more on this goddamned bus than you would in a whole . . .” He paused, attempting to recall the name given to such a place. “You’ll learn more here than in a whole pyramid pull of books. You could fill a racetrack with every piece of shit ever written, but you’ll learn more right here.”
Having never seen a racetrack full of books, I though it premature to contradict him. “You could be right,” I said, regarding the scars that ornamented his battered, sunburned face. “Pretty close to your stop, are we? If not, I can move across the aisle and give you some more room to stretch out. Would you like that?”
Law 19 of the 48 Laws of Power: “Know Who You Are Dealing With—Do Not Offend the Wrong Person.” If you outmaneuver certain people they will spend the rest of their lives seeking revenge, while other folks will just say Uncle. So choose your opponents carefully. Ain’t it the truth.
We are up to Law 15 in Greene’s the 48 laws of power. It states that you should “crush your enemy totally.” I completely agree. It states that if one ember of his fire is left alight, no matter how dimly it smolders, a fire will eventually break out. The enemy will recover and seek revenge. They really will.
