Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.”  – So believed Edmund Burke, the great British statesman and philosopher.  Flattery is the mantra to success if you want to be at the top. IT IS TO BE SAID .When the flatterer pipes, the devil occupies.

Smart flatterer is a most delightful companion (infect enemy if you can keep him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people’ve  all heard the old saying, “flattery will get you nowhere.” Sometimes I wonder; did the first person who made this statement do it in jest? For you see, flattery works, and it works remarkably well. More than that, in a peculiar sort of way, flattery is connected to the Big Lie,

While my stay in Kuwait , I observed lot , “flattery and its implications and the effectiveness of flattery. I know a extra smart mallu boy, who was simply 12th class , but smart enough , fully equipped with “flatery missiles”. he was working in another department on a very small salary, got acquaints with an other mallu general manger ( of some other department).started going in Gem house(that G.m was also Mallu)  always saying “yes sir” and yes “Bhabi”, helping in “domestic affairs”. Hearing “yes sir” gives more relaxation than “liquor or heroine”. Specially such people who are not respected even by their wife .anyway this flattery became fruitful when a new post was created by that G.m in his department , and internal transfer took place smoothly,  that boy appointed at that post at triple salary drawing before! !

On a personal level the use of flattery is all too evident. People love to be praised, held in high-esteem, and have their egos stroked. Face it; we’ve all succumbed to this temptation at one time or another. But in the hands of someone who knows how to use this character flaw, it’s an open door for manipulation.

Anton LaVey, author of The Satanic Bible and founder of the Church of Satan, openly mocked man’s gullibility through the vice of flattery in his book, Satan Speaks.

“I would have made a good PR man, because my most flagrant lies are to other people, about themselves. If the Devil is a flatterer, I do my job well…

“I am the worst kind of rascal, for I flatter up like nobody’s business. I am an unwilling, habitual practitioner of what Gypsies call ‘lavengro.’ It is the art of telling people what they most want to hear, and the fortune teller’s stock and trade. A therapist would call it ‘supportive’ and note that it reinforces another’s self-esteem. The lower one’s self-esteem, the more valuable and effective it is.
“Oh, how I lie! If a fellow be a churlish lout, I tell him how sensitive and discriminating he is. If a girl is so ugly that she must sneak up on a glass of water, I allude to her great beauty. If one’s performance is mediocre at best, I applaud his great talent. I praise the skinflint on his generosity and the hysteric on his levelheaded judiciousness. And it makes them all feel good.”

While LaVey’s admission is couched in a somewhat comical approach, the use of flattery in terms of mind manipulation is anything but humorous. In the May-June 1997 issue of Military Review, an article titled “The Age of the New Persuaders” detailed the geopolitical uses of persuasion techniques. Whether it’s called “psychological operations” or “perception management,” the ultimate aim is to modify the thinking of the intended target by influencing “emotions, motives, and objective reasoning.”

Speaking specifically of psychological tools, the author of the Military Review article, Timothy Thomas, explained that this type of mind-game exploitation seeks to turn “personality weaknesses to one’s advantage.” And flattery, as a manipulation tool, was recognized as an effective technique. According to Thomas, “One can use an object’s vanity and conceit to advantage. This can be done by flattery…”

The New Age Movement too uses a form of flattery as a tool for mind manipulation. Unlike the typically understood idea of flattery – which usually emphasizes someone’s outer qualities, talents, or expertise – this particular type of flattery reaches deep within the soul and works to rearrange the foundational basis of reality. we have also become masters in deciding between good and evil…”

This is flattery at its highest: AS you are the master in deciding good and evil…you are the alpha and omega…you are royalty – an aggrandized member of a transformed species.

“You are not children of some specified country, you are really living units of the cosmos because the Earth is a cosmic phenomena…we are all cosmic units. This is why religions tell you, you are divine. We are divine energy… and the atmosphere was charged with the excitement of social transformation .

The flattery continues: not only are you a god in the making, but your salvation depends on yourself. As Muller’s curriculum states, you are the “alpha and omega” – that’s how important you are. Salvation, the New Age teaches, is a process that you hold within you.

Anton LaVey candidly encouraged the spiritual adventurer to proclaim, “Say unto thane own heart, ‘I am my own redeemer’.” Blavatsky wrote that “mankind will become freed from its false gods, and find itself finally – SELF-REDEEMED.” (Capitals and italics in original – The Secret Doctrine, , And Henry C. Clausen, while holding the title of Sovereign Grand Commander of the Supreme Council of Scottish , wrote that “We must find the answers ourselves. The path to personal enlightenment is introspective.”

Whoever said that “flattery will get you nowhere” didn’t know what he was talking about. Flattery as a religious mind-manipulative technique works remarkably well. Droves of men and women are rushing to embrace the esoteric doctrines of the New Age Movement, complete with its flattering messages of self-deification, self-redemption, and self-enlightenment.

But why would humanity embrace this obvious grand illusion of self-deification? After all, even a casual observation of human nature – with all its corruption, evil-intent, and degradation – completely blows the idea of self-deification out of the water.

William Glasser, an internationally known psychiatrist who’s work advanced an idea called “control theory,” reinforced this concept of “feeling good” in his book Stations of the Mind,

“To control people successfully we have to guess what it is they desire (what their reference levels are) or in general what gives them pleasure (what causes them pain). Then, well aware of the ancient force of reward and punishment, all a good controller or operant conditioner has to do is to fine-tune his control so that it focuses on specifics. What causes the most pain or the most pleasure with the least effort to me? To be most effective, however, a good controller must discover how to apply these forces in such a way that does not cause conflict, that makes the controlled person happy to be controlled.”.

All of this brings us around to an interesting observation. Humanity, with its ears tickled by the flattery of the Big Lie, would rather choose to follow an illogical philosophy of self-godhood ,confidence ,with its encumbered pride, than humbly face the reality that we cannot redeem ourselves.

So gentlemen choice is yours .I will advice to avoid flatters , they are mis-leading you. In your absence all are making fun of you.you are in a state of paranoya .Come out of it and face ground realities upon your abilities and real confidence.