Transcription
[Music] Welcome back, Shaligators! Welcome to Evil Week. Now, if you're new around here, you know that Evil Week is our favorite week of the year. It's seven glorious days speaking about seven glorious deadly sins and seven fantastic videos. Seven days where we can unfurl the wickedness within, where we can tap into perhaps our less than benevolent side. Why do we do Evil Week? Just so I can dress up like this and get my boobs out on the internet? Maybe. But there's other reasons. We also do Evil Week because, you know what, in this life, forewarned is forearmed. Sometimes it's necessary to step into the shoes of wickedness so we can learn the tricks that are being used against us, so that we can turn these evil traits that we see in others or in the world and turn them into something beneficial for our lives and the lives of the people we love and the people around us. So, Evil Week, wild, evil, and we're going to get pretty evil this year because I'm not as nice as I was 365 days ago. It's been quite a year. We are going to be evil, but there's always a kernel of self-improvement in there because that's what we do around here.
But today, we're going to kick off Evil Week by focusing on my personal favorite sin, well, almost my favorite sin, my second favorite: wrath. Wrath, wrath, wrath. Last year, we ended on wrath, doing some lessons from Sun Tzu's Art of War, my personal manual for living. And this year, I thought, you know what? Let's start with some wrath, speaking about Niccolò Machiavelli. And I'm sure you've heard the term Machiavellian, the ends justifies the means, The Prince. We can learn a ton from this Florentine diplomat. We're going to break down some of his life lessons, how we can approach life in a bit more ruthless of a way while getting what we want, dialing down our morality at some point, and increasing the positive results we want to see.
But before we get into it, I have a very exciting announcement. You can now buy my iconic revenge necklace. I'm so excited to announce my new jewelry collaboration with Vault NYC. I have been working on this for so long. I've been so excited. I've been, when I first bought this necklace, or had it made, like, I had it made on, like, I don't know, some cheap, weird, like, overseas company when I was like 22, and I was like, you know what would be amazing if someday I sold these? Like, if this was my thing, like, the revenge necklace, and, and girls who are like me would be wearing it. It just seemed like a crazy, insane dream, and it's finally here. So I'm so, so, so excited. So there's two different colors. You can get them in 18-karat gold, which is what I'm wearing. I'm a golden girl, as we know. You can also get them in a rhodium vermeil, which is like a silver tone. They come in 16 and a half inches and it's adjustable to 19 inches, so that drops a little lower. I always like a necklace to sit right in the hollow of my throat. I like to attract a man's gaze to my throat, and then maybe wear a longer necklace to attract his vision a little bit lower.
Also, be sure to head over to inftstream. Now, inftstream is our ad-free, uncensored platform. That's what we're going to be doing the majority of Evil Week because, let's face it, we're a little too evil for the internet, aren't we? We're a little too spicy for YouTube. They want to censor us, quiet us down. Well, it's not going to happen. So head on over there. It's two bucks a month. We're going to do two videos over here, and the rest of Evil Week, including our big Evil Week finale, Lust: Lessons from Cleopatra and How to Seduce Absolutely Anyone, will be on Evil Week premiering on Halloween.
So let's talk about Machiavelli. Who was Niccolò Machiavelli? Because, like, we know that name, but, like, really, who was this guy? So he lived from 1469 to, I believe, 1527 in Florence, Italy. Not the time Florence was the center of power in Italy, and it was ruled by the Medici family. The Medici, Medici, however you say it. I lived in Florence when I was a kid, and I studied abroad in Rome. I lived in Italy a few times, so I say Medici, but if you can say Medici, if you want to, family, that's okay. So Machiavelli was a diplomat, and for a while, the Medici family, they were in exile. And when they came back into power, and I believe 1512, if I have my facts and figures right, Machiavelli wrote The Prince and gave it to them, kind of as a job application. This was sort of his resume, saying, "Hey, let me be your advisor. These are my policies. I'm going to help you get back to the top of the heap where you belong." And this was really, really significant because, heretofore, all of the advisors to princes and kings and rulers, they all were operating under very religious, you know, methodology. Everything had this sort of, like, Christian-based outlook. And Machiavelli, not that way. There was no, "We're doing this for the glory of God," or, "Here's what the Three Wise Men would have done." No. He was like, "But no, here's how you just be a bad [ __ ]."
So let's talk about what he said. As we have all heard, "The ends justify the means." That's a classic Machiavellian, um, motto, and it basically means do whatever the [ __ ] you have to do to get to where you need to be, whether that's winning a war, getting the corner office, getting the guy, losing the weight, whatever it might be. This actually never occurred in the book. He never says, "The ends justify the means." Scholars have said that because it encapsulates the spirit of the book. Very interesting, right? So the central teaching of Machiavelli is to strip away morality and focus on effectiveness. Now, we're women. We are highly emotional creatures. We're run by emotion, and that often works very much in our favor. It's what makes us bond. We're lovers. It's what makes us passionate and creative and driven and outgoing. But it also shoots us in the foot, doesn't it? It makes us call that [ __ ] boy 11 times on a Tuesday night. It makes us give people the benefit of the doubt. It makes us take on that project at work even though it was Patricia's project, but okay, I guess I'll do it. People manipulate our best qualities and they turn them into our worst qualities. So it's up to us to again be forewarned and forearmed. And the way we do this is to acknowledge that sometimes our emotion, our emotionalness, is working against us in a huge way. And the way to combat that is to simply try to turn it off. Try to turn off your morality. And try this simply as an experiment, right? Think about the scenarios in your life where you wish there would be a different outcome. And now try to look at them all. This is this, like, psychological experiment, like you're just a scientist and you're trying different variables and moving things into different beakers and whatever. If you took morality out of the equation, how would you behave at work? Maybe you would spread rumors about your rival. Maybe you would use their maternity leave to seize power, to take over their job duty so their position no longer existed. That's pretty immoral. Maybe you would overhear an idea in the break room and you would run and tell it to your boss first. Oh, oh. But beware, these strategies, while incredibly effective, require work. A lot of times we think the manipulation means that you're lazy, and we are going to do a video focusing on that for when you do feel sloth-like. But if you truly want to get ahead, and if you truly want power, if you truly want efficacy, effectiveness in your life, you got to be willing to work. None of the strategies we're talking about here today are for the lazy. Power is not for the lazy, not for very long. Power must be taken. It's not given. It's not given because someone cancels you, because there's a hashtag, because there's a slogan. If people want power, they must be organized and methodical and ruthless. As you know, I've lived in New York forever. I don't anymore, but I was the editor of a magazine. I was an author, and I remember asking, I had a publicist. I remember asking him one time, "What is my reputation in New York like? I'm so curious. Like, what do people think about me?" And he said, "One word: ruthless." These are the moments that make life worth living. I could not have invented a better, more flattering word for myself. Do you know why it's better to be feared than loved? But we'll get there, because that's another thing Machiavelli was famous for saying. We'll get there.
So in work, that's how less morality, more effectiveness is going to manifest. In romance, it's going to look very different, though. If you have a situation with a fuckboy, a guy you love, and he just does not love you back, girl, we've all been there. Take a step back and really analyze, what would be the most ruthless way to deal with this man? Now, last year on Evil Week, we did a whole video on how to destroy a fuckboy. I highly encourage you to watch that, but there's always room for improvement. And the way you flip it like this is to simply pull back and say, "If I wasn't being ruled by emotion, how would I act?" If he texted me at 2 AM, how would a ruthless woman react? What would an angel say? The devil wants to know. But in reverse, what would the devil do? An angel needs to zip herself into his wicked little suit. So I want you to look at these scenarios as dispassionately as possible because, like we just spoke about on the podcast, if you're not listening to my podcast, go check it out. It's called Girl on Top. We did an Evil Week bonus episode, kind of a bonus preview, where I talked all about the art of revenge and I spoke about dispassion very specifically because in order to get back at people, in order to really stick it to them and take power over someone, over your own life, sometimes you must take emotion out of it. As difficult as that is, because emotion is driving all of this. Emotion drives everything, all the time, obviously, but it drives our good decisions and our bad ones. And if we're being honest, usually our bad ones more often, right? When we make good decisions, healthy decisions, a healthy salad instead of the chicken wings, we're thinking with our logical brain. We're not thinking with our emotional center, are we? So look at this [ __ ] boy situation, say, "Where am I being too emotional?" And then I want you to create a mind map. I want you to create a plan ahead of time for effectiveness, an amoral plan of effectiveness. And in this particular case, we're saying amoral is a, emotional, non-emotional. If he texts me at 2 AM, I'm not going to respond. If he Snapchat chats me a shirtless selfie when he hasn't responded to my last text about when we're getting dinner, I'm going to respond with, "Is that a child's body you're sending me? Is it a picture of a child's penis? I'm reporting you. Don't send me a picture of a child's penis." Ruthless, immoral, effective.
And in friendships, it's going to look different still. If we look at friendships from a ruthless, amoral place, and every so often, this is necessary to call the herd. We are going to call the herd. I bet you, you're going to be getting rid of energy vampires, downers, losers, addicts, professional victims in their endless victim narrative, people who simply are not enriching your life. You need to start looking at every single dynamic in your life, from family to friends to coworkers to service professionals, to, "What are you giving to me? What are you doing here? Are you enriching my life? Are you giving me more, more of what I need, or are you just sucking me dry?" Niccolò Machiavelli would never abide at that. Neither would the Medici family. I mean, Catherine de' Medici, she created gloves that would kill the wearer. It was incredible. My point is, less emotion, more effectiveness. We need to do these sort of inventories very frequently in our life to, to, like I said, call the herd from those energy vampires, the [ __ ] boys, the coworkers who are using you to do their work, the bosses who aren't taking you seriously. A little bit of ruthlessness can go a very long way.
But that concludes the warm and fuzzy portion of Niccolò Machiavelli's teaching. Thank God. He also spoke a lot about enemies because if you're going to be advising a prince or a king, you need to understand that they're going to have a ton of enemies. And praying them away isn't going to happen. Which is why Machiavelli's treatise became so popular, although it wasn't published actually until, I think, 13 years after his death, and I believe, I want to say 1531, but no, he died in 1527. But it was definitely published after his death, and he became much, I mean, renowned for this, like, we still talk about it today because it is still so effective. So let's talk about enemies, right? Let's talk about enemies because if you're here, you've got some. I do. The way he believed you should deal with an enemy is to make an example, an example out of them. "Walk softly but carry a big stick." This is what, uh, Teddy Roosevelt is famous for saying. It means don't start a fight, but be able to finish one, right? I don't start any fights, but you can bet your ass I can finish them. Because I've taken that to heart. Teddy Roosevelt is like, one of my personal heroes. I'm obsessed with him. It's kind of part of the reason I moved to Montana, just to like, be out in the, in the, the land that he helped found. He founded Yellowstone National Park, which is an incredible, an incredible place. Anyway, so Machiavelli's, he said, "If you're having issues with someone, deal with it ASAP, right? If you are dealing with an enemy, confront them right away." Now, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. You just spoke in the podcast about revenge and you said it's a dish best served cold. Sometimes you need to put distance between yourself and your enemy so that they don't know that it's you coming against them because that's just going to create more drama and more headaches for you, and that's going to cost you money. Well, that's true, but I'm not talking about revenge. I'm talking about confrontation. Picture this: you're at a party, that stupid friend of me [ __ ] in your friend group says some backhanded compliment about what you're wearing. "You know what I love about you, Shaolin, is that you just like, wear whatever you want. Like, you, you don't think like, 'Oh, my body type.' You just like, wear it. You just like, go there. It's so cool." "I'm sorry, what did you say? What did you mean?" This is a very hard thing to do because we are trained to be polite, especially as women. We're not trying to confront people. We're trying to be like, "Thank you, Kelsey. Can we go to the bathroom?" If you deal with these threats right up front, these people learn, "I'm not the one." So the next time that happens, you say, "I'm sorry, Kelsey, what do you mean? Because it kind of sounded like you were giving me a backhanded compliment, like, 'I'm so fat and yet I just wear whatever I want because I'm too stupid to know I shouldn't.' Is that what you meant? Could you clarify?" "Oh, no, I, no, I was like, I'm saying I like your outfit. Really?" Because you didn't say that. You could have said, "I like your outfit." But you tacked on this comment about my body. So I would like to know what it is you meant. Kelsey won't be saying that again. She might try once or twice more, but eventually, if you keep confronting these kinds of people, they learn, "You are not the one." And you aren't. Because if you let these threats continue, Machiavelli said that to delay a war is to delay it at your opponent's benefit. And this is so true when you look at these people, and they just claw and they claw and they claw. The more you're like, "Okay," the more they think there's a weak mark, there's an easy target. "She's not gonna say anything." So the next time I, Kelsey, supreme [ __ ] with saggy tits, next time I need to feel good about myself, I'm gonna go for Shannon. I'm going to say something snide about her, and then everyone's going to laugh. I'm like, "Ha ha, Shannon, inside, she's so stupid, fatty in the romper. They can sell crazy somewhere else." And if that's how they get their jollies, if they need to level, as we talk about the psychological phenomenon of leveling, where someone feels low about themselves, or they're just a narcissist and a creep and a lunatic, and they just get their hahas from tearing other people down, they will move on because they want an easy win. People like that, they don't want to fight. They want an easy little win. And if they learn, "Oh [ __ ], she's gonna bark back at me. She's not an easy win." They're gonna, their crosshairs are gonna shift to the next person, and they will leave you alone. And that's the thing. We do want these people to leave us alone. Like I said, we only have so much energy. We don't want to spend it on people like Kelsey bitching about our romper.
Okay. Perhaps my favorite advice from Niccolò Machiavelli was either treat people very well or destroy them completely. Because he said, if you only like slightly injure someone, they can recover from this injury. It's not like actual physical injury. Don't go around beating people up, you know. They can recover from those slights against them, and they will come back tenfold to [ __ ] you up. So you need to lay absolute waste to them. Let's go back to that Kelsey romper scenario. If you call her out, because a person like her wants that social status. A person like her wants the whole crowd laughing at you and with her. So she's the Regina George, "Hahaha, I have all the power. You're just a little fatty in the romper." If you crush her in front of a group, she will never come back. But if you just give her a look and you're like, "Be really mean, Kelsey." She's, she's not gonna care. Or if you're just like, "Whatever, [ __ ]." She's gonna be like, "Oh, really?" And now you are her new favorite target. But if you come back so insane, so confrontational, and listen, there is an art to confrontation. A video on that. If you're like, "Shut up, shut the [ __ ] up," you're gonna look weak and you're gonna look insane. But if you say it the way I said it, "Why don't you explain to me what it is you meant?" If you are controlled, if you have a low voice, you're going to look menacing and you're going to look in control. And what is more frightening than a menacing person who is dispassionate, unemotional? That's how we think of serial killers, and that's why we're afraid of serial killers over, like, the guy who catches his wife in bed and shoots her. It's like, "Well, I mean, as long as I don't make him that mad, he's, he's not gonna shoot me." Serial killers, they target you, and they hunt you. And there's something to be learned from that. Notice how all villains in, whether it's in Disney movies or in a Stephen King novel, they speak slowly and lowly. They're controlled, they're metered, they're dispassionate. They're going to destroy you slowly. That's what we need to emulate when we come up against an enemy. That's who we have to be. And we have to practice. And sometimes you literally need to practice in the mirror. So if there's a Kelsey out there, and she's come against you once, twice, thrice, you sit in the mirror and you mind map. What might happen? What might she say to you the next time? How can you be forewarned and forearmed? What freezes? What speeches can you give? I can rattle these things off like this because I've done it so many times. I have confronted so many people who slighted me in just that small, seemingly small way. But those kind of things, those kinds of phrases, they're corrosive. They get under our skin, and they hurt us because what they do is they make us doubt ourselves. "Maybe I do look fat in this romper. Maybe I have no business taking over this project. Maybe Mom's right, I can't host Thanksgiving. I can't spatchcock a turkey on my own." Mm-hmm. No. We teach people how to treat us, and what we permit, we promote.
And Machiavelli, he didn't permit very much. Which brings me to our last point about Niccolò Machiavelli. He asked the great question: Is it better to be loved or feared? Well, it was this question that earned him a condemnation from Pope Clement VIII at the time because he was like, "I don't endorse a book that tells you how to rule by deceit and fear." And Machiavelli's like, "Just you wait." That's sort of the emo of the Catholic Church. It's like, "You don't do this, you're gonna go to hell." I feel like that's deceit and fear, anyway. So Machiavelli said, "Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved." You know what word stood out to me? Safer. Not it feels bad, it just feels better, it's warmer, it's fuzzier to be loved. He said it's safer because what is his central purpose of this book? Power, securing it, and protecting it, and continuing it, right? And that's how we need to look at our lives too. Only maybe it isn't power you want. You might not be a prince, you might not run a Fortune 500 company, but I bet you want peace of mind. I bet you want restfulness. I bet you want happiness and stillness and sanity and dignity in your life, don't you? So if you look at it that way, you're probably thinking, "Well, okay, if I want love, obviously I want people to love me instead of fear me." No, fear in the context we're talking about is better interpreted, I think, as a healthy respect, right? I'm not afraid of guns. I own many. I live in Montana. There's, there's literally a bear two blocks from where I was the other day. But I respect them, and therefore I treat them properly. If people are a little bit afraid of how you will respond if they're snide, if they're tardy for meeting you, if they're flaky, if they cheat on you, they're going to treat you a little bit better. They're going to show up on time. They're going to stay in line. And of course, we don't want to serve as emotional parole officers for the people in our life, constantly threatening them. But we don't have to. If we do it right, if we lay down the law with the Caitlyns of the world, I'm sorry, who did I call her? Kelsey romper. If we lay down the law with people like that, other people, the people listening, will be like, "Shannon is not the one to [ __ ] with. Okay, next time I'm out cruising for a bruising, I'm not barking up her tree. No, sir. No, ma'am. Nope. I'm gonna stay away from her." You breed a little bit of healthy fear. It's okay for people to be a little afraid of you. I want that because the opposite is there's no boundaries. I'm not afraid of what Shannon's gonna do if I show up 45 minutes late for lunch. I'm not afraid of what's gonna happen if I cheat on her. Is that the impression that I give off? I sincerely hope not. I've done that by cultivating reactions, by thinking ahead about potential scenarios and reactions, but also by doing those emotional autopsies on my past and looking at the outcomes in my life where, of course, we can never control someone else's behavior, right? But when I look at my own response to things, and I'm like, "Why did I give that guy another chance? Why did I tell that friend it's okay when she was super mean to me? Why did I not call out my sister when she said something really hurtful, and now she says it all the time? She thinks it's funny." When we can look at where we went wrong in terms of our responses, we gain mastery over it. And I believe that's what Niccolò Machiavelli was trying to tell us. That is the kind of fear we want. We don't want everyone like, "Oh, cowering." But we want people to know that we don't bluff. If I tell you to be there, you're [ __ ] there. If I tell you it's due at 10 AM, that's when you turn it in. If I tell you, "You belong to me," that goes on forever, or else. And we should be prepared to know what the "or else" is going to be. And much of the time, it's, "Or else I walk away. Or else I'm not your friend. Or else I'm not coming to Sunday dinner, Mom and Dad. Or else I break up with you." And the way we can get to that "or else" place where we truly embody that is to realize that we are fine without these people. I don't want to be around people who don't fear me, who don't have that healthy respect for me, who think that they can walk all over me. And I, if those people are in my life, I want to smoke them out. I want to know. And I will know by calling the bluffs, by calling out the Kelseys, by not letting people take advantage of me. And if they don't like that, well, you know what we say about boundaries? The people who hate your boundaries are the people who benefited from you having none at all. I think it's a message Machiavelli would approve of. For more, click like and subscribe. Like I said, we're going to be doing another Evil Week video here, and then we're going to be heading on over to inftstream where we can be our wicked, [Music] mischievous little selves. I'll see you later, Shaligators. [Music]