The Art of Seduction Decide Now

" I use the word amoral to describe them, as opposed to immoral," author Robert Greene stated in an interview about his international bestsellers.

Interesting distinction.

As one enters Mr. Greene's website for "The Art of Seduction" four maxims for seduction flash and disappear on the screen like the images shown to Warren Beatty in "The Parallax View":

Choose the Right Victim
Send Mixed Signals
Confuse desire and Reality
Create a False Sense of Security.

(The third is extremely odd since, again, in an interview, Mr.Greene stated, "If I could simplify the whole game of power and strategy in one equation, it would all hinge on the capacity to see events around you exactly as they are.")

Dig a little deeper into the website (and the book) and Greene lays down other rules of the art, which, as disturbingly predatory as they are, are rationalized as tutorials in self-protection: "If you know how others do these things, you'll be in a better position to protect yourself against those who employ such tactics." To take this argument to its logical extreme imagine a book with a dozen or so rules on how to launch a prostitution ring and recruit hookers so you'll be better able to insulate your own daughter or sister from the guile of pimps.

A few more of the moves to be mastered to become an arch-seducer:

Create a false sense of security
Stir anxiety and discontent
Create temptation
Use the demonic power of words to sow confusion
Use Spiritual Lures
Isolate the Victim.

Clearly, Robert Greene is dangerously confused about the practical and objective similarities between "amorality" and immorality.

Consider the following positions of two individuals:

The first: "It is immoral to act or speak in such a way to inflict pain on another human being solely for the purposes of satisfying one's own desires".
The second: "People do inflict pain on others for selfish reasons. I am not saying whether it is right or wrong; I will merely instruct you how to do it and leave the moral distinctions to you."

Mr. Greene's assertion that proposing strategies to manipulate another, confuse an individual, inflict psychological pain to whatever degree on someone, and create in another a distorted worldview
that gives him or her a false sense of security is something other than immoral does not even pass the laugh test.

It doesn't matter if the endgame is sex, power, or financial gain. Bernie Madoff is doing the equivalent of life plus 99 years because he was a grandmaster of seduction,

At the end of the day, however, the real problem-the ultimate moral problem with Mr.Greene's book--is that it is not about art but artiface--strategems, trickery, and the employment of base cunning to bend another's will to our own. Its quite telling that Mr. Greene trots some of history's most nefrarius figures as examples of "the art" mastered. Gandhi, Churchill, or Martin Luther King had nothing to say about psychological persuasion? (One need not even consider the obvious that in almost every human sexual encounter where the emotions run hot mixed singles are sent unconsciously, desire and reality almost always conflict, runaway hormones alternate between giving us profound feelings of security and insecurity, and the mating ritual is a marathon attempt to provoke temptation.

Save yourself a few bucks and pick up a used copy of Balthazar Gracian's "The Art of Worldly Wisdom" which Mr. Greene rarely mentions but which covers the same ground and would quite likely be as revelationary and transformative for some as this treatise on predation.Get more detail about The Art of Seduction.