The Open Curriculum

The Self · Level 2

The 50th Law

Robert Greene and 50 Cent · 2009

Thesis

The greatest obstacle to power is not circumstance but fear: people cannot control what happens to them, but they can control the attitude they meet it with, and those who overcome their fears gain a wider margin of control over their lives than the cautious ever have.

The main ideas

The fearful attitude

The 50th Law (2009) grew out of Robert Greene's months shadowing the rapper and businessman Curtis Jackson, known as 50 Cent, who had read Greene's The 48 Laws of Power. Greene concluded that the source of Jackson's power was his fearlessness, and he presents fearlessness as one law beyond the 48: knowing the rules of power means little if fear prevents acting on them.

Greene's account of fear is historical. It began as an emotion that kept humans alive in the face of tangible dangers, such as predators and enemies. As life became safer, fear did not shrink; it spread into a generalized anxiety about the future, and then into a fearful attitude that governs how most people work, love and plan. The result is a preference for the passive, safe path even when it leads nowhere.

Against this he sets the fearless type: people who grew up amid danger and adversity and learned to convert the defensive need to overcome fear into an offensive attitude. They act with urgency, ignore convention and create their own models instead of following others'.

Implication: treat caution as a choice to be justified, not a default. Ask which of your decisions are driven by a real danger and which by a general fear of change, conflict or failure.

Intense realism

Each chapter pairs a principle with the fear it overcomes, opening with an episode from Jackson's life on the streets of Southside Queens, where he dealt drugs as a teenager during the crack epidemic. The first fear is of the ugly truth.

Greene argues that people with power accept reality as it is, not as they wish it to be. The hustler on the street cannot afford illusions about who is dangerous or who is lying; misreading either can be fatal. Most people, protected from consequences, let their hopes and fears color what they see, and so make decisions on a picture of the world that does not exist.

His historical examples include Abraham Lincoln, whom Greene presents as a realist focused on what is rather than what he wished, and Malcolm X, whose realism Greene traces to his years on the street and in prison.

The mechanism is that every strategy rests on a reading of the situation. A realistic reading allows effective action; a hopeful one guarantees surprises.

Implication: before acting, separate what you know from what you hope. Seek out the information you would rather not hear, especially about your own position.

Ownership

The second fear is of being alone and dependent on oneself. Greene's principle is self-reliance, and he puts it bluntly: "When you work for others, you are at their mercy. They own your work; they own you."

The goal, he argues, is ownership in every arrangement, which he describes in the language of the street as working the corner for yourself. A hustler who sells for someone else takes the risk while the supplier keeps the business; employment, contracts and deals that leave control with others work the same way.

The mechanism is that ownership ties reward to effort and gives control over the future, while dependence leaves a person exposed to decisions others make for their own reasons. The fear Greene identifies behind dependence is of standing alone: people accept being owned because it spares them the risk of relying on themselves.

Implication: in any deal, look for the arrangement that gives you a stake in what you build, even at the cost of a smaller immediate payment.

Opportunism and momentum

The third and fourth fears are of threatening events and of change. Greene argues that every negative situation contains an opportunity, and that turning it to advantage is a kind of mental alchemy, the idea behind the chapter title "Turn Shit into Sugar."

Jackson's own story supplies the case. In May 2000 he was shot nine times outside a house in Queens. Columbia Records dropped him and shelved his first album. Shut out of the industry, he turned to mixtapes, distributing his music directly on the streets. The campaign built a local following and drew the attention of Eminem, who signed him with Dr. Dre; his first major album, in 2003, made him a star.

The principle of momentum, "Keep Moving," holds that a fixed plan breaks under chaos. Greene argues for moving with events, changing shape as circumstances change, rather than trying to control every detail.

The mechanism is that setbacks remove options people were clinging to and force them to look for new ones. Those who keep moving find them; those who freeze wait for conditions that do not return.

Implication: after a setback, ask what it makes possible that was not possible before, and act on it quickly.

Aggression and authority

The fifth fear is of confrontation. Greene argues that life involves constant conflict, whether open or hidden, and that the fearful respond by trying to please everyone and avoid it. The fearless learn when and how to be bad: to be aggressive in defense of their interests, at the right moment and in the right measure, rather than letting others take advantage of their reluctance.

The sixth fear is of responsibility. Greene's principle, "Lead from the Front," is that leaders set the tone of a group by their own conduct. A leader who works harder than anyone, takes risks first and shares the group's hardships earns an authority that commands cannot create.

The mechanism common to both is that people respond to what others do, not to what they say. A person known to avoid conflict invites encroachment; a leader seen to avoid hardship invites resentment.

Implication: decide in advance which interests you will defend and be prepared to defend them openly. If you lead others, demonstrate the standard you expect.

Connection, mastery and self-belief

The seventh fear is of people who are different. Greene argues for starting from the audience's changing needs rather than from one's own idea, and his strategies include crushing all distance between yourself and your audience, opening informal channels of information and reconnecting with your base.

The eighth is of boredom. Fools, Greene argues, want things fast and easy; mastery requires a long apprenticeship and tolerance for the drudgery of practice. Jackson's example is boxing, through which he learned patience. The ninth fear is of failure: Greene argues for pushing past self-imposed limits, and quotes Frederick Douglass on the freedom that came when he no longer feared death.

The last chapter turns to death itself. Greene argues that awareness of mortality, instead of being suppressed, should give life urgency, so that time is not wasted on what does not matter.

Implication: expect any worthwhile skill to require a long stretch of dull work, and use the fact that time is limited as a reason to begin now.

Limits

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