‘How to Win Friends and Influence People…’

A more appropriate title for the book with the aforementioned title might be “How to Manipulate and Coerce People with a Façade of Niceness,” rather than “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”  Ironically, Mr. Carnegie followed suit of a former Carnegie who became a mogul himself, who was a magnate of steel rather than an entrepreneur of words and sociological tactics.  He followed the Ace of Spades with his Jack of Spades – or jack-of-all-trades, seeing that his book is promoted for ladders leaning against any corporate tower.  Continuing with even more irony, he influenced people by telling people how to influence people.  Alas, the irony continues, in that climbing the corporate ladder does not necessarily involve making too many true friends, but a lot of acquaintances that one propounds as friends and are more probably secret rivals.  True friendship involves extraordinary intimacy and extreme levels of trust, neither of which seem to fit the strategic plans of Mr. Carnegie.  Can a CEO of a monster-sized corporation ever REALLY trust anybody?  It was not for no reason that kings used to employ cupbearers as a legitimate service position.  Perhaps even his wife has just been exploiting his affections the whole time in order to ultimately claim in life insurance policy when it’s all over.  Spotlights can be blinding, and mountain climbers usually fail to mention it’s cold and lonely at the top.  Friends are made at base camp, and if they are really friends their dead bodies don’t become waypoints along the trail, like the ones on Everest.  They’re still there, whether in the thick crowd around the campfire at point delta or in the thin air at the top.