The 50th Law - 50 Cent [19]
Understand: we are living through an entrepreneurial revolution, comparable to the one that swept through Fifty’s neighborhood in the 1980s, but on a global scale. The old power centers are breaking up. Individuals everywhere want more control over their destiny and have much less respect for an authority that is not based on merit but on mere power. We have all naturally come to question why someone should rule over us, why our source of information should depend on the mainstream media, and on and on. We do not accept what we accepted in the past.
Where we are naturally headed with all of this is the right and capacity to run our own enterprise, in whatever shape or form, to experience that freedom. We are all corner hustlers in a new economic environment and to thrive in it we must cultivate the kind of self-reliance that helped push Fifty past all of the dangerous dependencies that threatened him along the way.
For Fifty it was very clear—he was alone in the house he grew up in and on the streets. He lacked the usual supports and so he was forced to become self-sufficient. The consequences of being dependent on people were so much more severe in his case—it would mean constant disappointment and urgent needs that went unmet. It is harder for us to realize that we are essentially alone in this world and in need of the skills that Fifty had to develop for himself on the streets. We have layers of support that seem to prop us up. But these supports are illusions in the end.
Everyone in the world is governed by self-interest. People naturally think first of themselves and their agendas. An occasional affectionate or helpful gesture from people you know tends to cloud this reality and make you expect more of this support—until you are disappointed, again and again. You are more alone than you imagine. This should not be a source of fear but of freedom. When you prove to yourself that you can get things on your own, then you experience a sense of liberation. You are no longer waiting for people to do this or that for you (a frustrating and infuriating experience). You have confidence that you can manage any adverse situation on your own.
Look at a man like Rubin “Hurricane” Carter—a successful middleweight boxer who found himself arrested in 1966 at the height of his career and charged with a triple murder. The following year he was convicted and sentenced to three consecutive life terms. Through it all Carter vehemently maintained his innocence, and in 1986 he was finally exonerated of the crimes and set free. But for those nineteen years, he had to endure one of the most brutal environments known to man, one designed to break down every last vestige of autonomy.
Carter knew he would be freed at some point. But on the day of his release, would he walk the streets with a spirit crushed by years in prison? Would he be the kind of former prisoner who keeps coming back into the system because he can no longer do anything for himself?
He decided that he would defeat the system—he would use the years in prison to develop his self-reliance so that when he was freed it would mean something. For this purpose he devised the following strategy: He would act like a free man while surrounded by walls. He would not wear their uniform or carry an ID badge. He was an individual, not a number. He would not eat with the other prisoners, do the assigned tasks, or go to his parole hearings. He was placed in solitary confinement for these transgressions but he was not afraid of the punishments, nor of being alone. He was afraid only of losing his dignity and sense of ownership.
As part of this strategy, he refused to have the usual entertainments in his cell—television, radio, pornographic magazines. He knew he would grow dependent on these weak pleasures and this would give the wardens something to take away from him. Also, such diversions were merely attempts