Regularly you read or hear about people who feel conned. Is that justified? Con men are often successful because they appeal to human weaknesses. And I state that con men are useful in our society. Why?
First some background. In the Catholic church human weaknesses are described beautifully as cardinal sins:
Pride / Vanity
A con man sells you something by appealing to your vanity. You will be more beautiful, or it will give you a better feeling. Until you realize how much you paid for it… Fake jewelery with magnificent certificates of genuineness, land that lies 10 meter under water, it still happens today. Especially to people who now think: ‘this will never happen to me’, they probably have a lot of this weakness.
Greed
Easy money. Gold fever. Many many people are susceptible to this one. Gambling is an obvious one. But also participating in pyramid schemes (pay money, and recruit other fools to participate hoping you’ll make a big profit). For entrepreneurs often deals are offered that are ‘too good to be true’ which is usually the case.
Lust
Call it the immaterial variant of greed. Beautiful ‘femme fatale’ spies gaining your trust and stealing your secrets. Maybe also the fine looking lady / gentleman selling you something very expensive using other than pure business reasons? Sex sells, after all…
Jealousy
The neighbours have it (or your competitor), so you need it too. ‘Your competitor is doing much better by trading with China. We have excellent contacts over there, so do business with us!’ Fine if that is true, but check it out before you pay any fees!
Gluttony
I think not so often used by con men.
Anger / Wrath
Con men rarely use this one. To make someone angry is a risk in itself.
Sloth
Not checking what a con man says. ‘It will probably be OK.’ But also: not thinking. Does that story check out? If it’s too good to be true, it’s too good to be true!
So why are con men useful? In all cons you can see pretty quickly which human weaknesses of the victims were triggered. You could call the seven cardinal sins ‘ego’. In Buddhism it is said that the human ego is cause of all human suffering. And that letting go of your ego brings you further.
Con men confront us painfully with our weaknesses. If we are prepared to really deal with that we can learn a lot about ourselves. If we don’t and only blame the con man we deny our own role in the con. The next time we’ll probably fall as hard for a similar con. And let’s not fool ourselves: we all are sensitive to some kinds of con. The trick is to learn when and how your ego gets the better of you. And then also look at this Wikipedia article.
In short, be conned regularly! A good exercise in humility and self knowledge.
This piece was published before (in Dutch) on www.higerlevel.nl
