[extropy-chat] Quellcrist Falconer's advice: make it personal

[Giu1i0 Pri5c0]

By reading fine literature, sometimes one learns things useful for practical 
life. So while I don't completely agree with Quellcrist Falconer's advice 
(in italics below), and wish/tend to behave very differently, I have to 
admit that Falconer's may well be the best strategy on specific occasions (I 
am in one such occasion now).
The personal, as everyone's so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if 
some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that 
harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The 
Machinery of Justice will not serve you here - it is slow and cold, and it 
is theirs. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the 
creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin. If you want 
justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much 
damage as you can. Get your message across. That way you stand a far better 
chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. 
And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered 
dangerous, marks the difference - the only difference in their eyes- between 
players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people 
they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your 
displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult 
that it's just business, it's politics, it's the way of the world, it's a 
tough life, and that it's nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it 
personal.
Quellcrist Falconer, Things You Should Have Learned by Now. Volume II
So where is the link? Well, Quellcrist Falconer does not exist and her book 
Things etc. has never been written. Both are literary creations of Richard 
K. Morgan <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Morgan> and part of the 
background of his excellent novel Altered
Carbon<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_Carbon>.
I was thinking of QF's advice today and wanted to type the text here, but I 
found it already online in this excellent
review<http://www.newsgarden.org/compost/compostbooks.shtml>of the
novel.
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