from: Bloodstone43956@i-mail.irs
to: Raventrap39996@i-mail.irs
date: 7518.26886
My Dear Raventrap ~
I’m pleased you asked me to write about some common temptations that can help us destroy human relationships. There are many, but I’d like to outline just a few. The first that pop into my head are the same as one of the ancient human philosophers, Cicero, I think. While he probably didn’t understand our role in them, he wrote there are six mistakes humans have made year after tedious year.
- Believing personal gain is made by crushing others;
- Worrying about things they cannot change or correct;
- Insisting a thing is impossible because they personally cannot accomplish it;
- Refusing to set aside their trivial preferences;
- Neglecting the development and refinement of their minds;
- Attempting to compel others to believe and live as they do.
Now, Raventrap, you must first keep your clients from learning any ancient wisdom. This shouldn’t be too difficult, since The Corporation has had great success in discouraging many of the little cretins from reading in the first place. Why would they want to read Cicero when they don’t believe it’s important to read a more recent book? At any rate, if we can practice a little reinforcement of these age-old mistakes, we can do a lot of damage to relationships, and in the process we can build-up quite a sizable inventory for ourselves. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
The little swamp rats are already predisposed to believe “getting ahead” means leaving others behind. The only way they can reliably combat this desire is…well…in combat. We’ve all heard the military balderdash about never leaving a man behind on a mission. Although being left behind is typical here, realistically, some of our clients have a much greater sense of duty than others, and we would be better off tempting them in some other way. Otherwise, Our Executive wants us to do everything in our power to urge our clients to “get to the top” at any cost.
The belief that there can only be one winner is now common in their media. It’s but a suggestion away from reaching the conclusion that sabotaging others is a justifiable way to get ahead. If you can’t get there by actually being better, maybe you can get there by making others look worse.
The five key behaviors we want to endorse are: gossiping, fault-finding, assigning blame, taking credit, and betraying confidences.
On the surface, gossip can seem like mere idle chatter, but as we know, it seldom is. The whole point of gossip is to engage in disparaging talk behind the back of the one being disparaged. Our Competitor would have our clients discuss only what is true, good, or helpful, preferring them to stick to the old adage, “if you can’t think of anything good to say, then don’t say anything at all.” Our Executive thinks this adage is for suckers. What’s the point of sharing information that only makes others look good and doesn’t offer any particular advantage to those sharing it? Gossip is only useful to our side if its purpose is to make some look good at the expense of others. If you lead your clients in the right direction, they will become the snakes that poison their own relationships, and you won’t need to assume that form ever again.
Fault-finding and assigning blame are both excellent ways to strain relationships. While it can make our clients feel a little better about themselves to look for what others have done wrong, to point out their various inadequacies and so on; above all we want to be sure they come to define or describe others exclusively in terms of their failings and flaws. Simply put, we want our clients to become judgmental and unfair, to hurt others, as often as possible, without even realizing it. We want them to denigrate an otherwise capable acquaintance, one who has been on the whole quite effective at their job. If possible, we want them to hurt someone who has never thought of hurting them.
We are looking for that exquisite moment when that unfortunate son of Earth realizes others are thinking of him as incompetent because of a few little mistakes or even better on the basis of misinformation or a total misunderstanding! It’s often very easy to talk these poor contracts into giving up in despair, or into lashing out at those who have unfairly characterized them. And, if you can manage to get your clients to find ways to blame their mistakes on others and get away with it, you can fan the flames of animosity even more. The unfairly accused can sometimes be driven to take unnecessary risks and make serious mistakes in the effort to show he isn’t a “screw-up.” The outcome is often as hilarious as it is helpful to The Corporation.
The trick behind taking credit for the work of others is that it doesn’t need to be overt. Instilling a habit of the heart is sufficient. Brazenly stealing credit is certainly appealing, and some of our clients are quite adept at it. However, it works just as well to have our clients claim credit quietly without even stopping to think about it. We have in our possession many former managers who never thought about crediting others for their hard work or creative ideas. Even tastier for us are all the former CEOs and officers of large companies who got rich on the backs of their employees, and never once thought it might be fair to compensate them as they themselves would have wanted to be compensated. Our Competitor has tried to teach humans to “do unto others.” Well, it seems that notion has backfired on Him. On the other hand, it has been a boon for us. Our Executive has claimed the right to be compensated with all those contracts who didn’t think it was important to “do unto others,” or who thought “do unto others” meant “before they do unto you.”
As to betraying a confidence, if you’ve done your work in building your client’s sense of self-importance, it’s relatively easy to get him to rationalize, “it was either him or me.” Sometimes a little information, obtained in confidence, is all it takes to sabotage a colleague. Meanwhile your client can make himself look loyal and upstanding. Just be sure his boss doesn’t catch on to what a conniving weasel he has become. The idea is to have him maintain the “trust” of his boss while betraying the trust of his competition. We do this every day here below, so all you have to do is bring a touch of Hell to your clients on Earth.
Your Devoted Cousin,
Bloodstone
P.S. I’ll need another I-mail to cover Cicero adequately.
MurrayWorks 