Law 16 of 48
Use Absence to Increase Respect and Honor.
To increase respect and honor, strategically use absence. By occasionally withdrawing from the spotlight, you can create anticipation and enhance the perception of your importance. This tactic can also help you maintain control over situations.
Independent commentary on a principle popularised in The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene and Joost Elffers. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the authors or their publishers.
What it actually means
Constant availability gets priced accordingly. Attention tracks scarcity rather than effort, so the person always at hand becomes furniture and the one who occasionally is not gets thought about. This is not a game; it is declining to be permanently on tap.
Where you would have seen it
You answer messages at eleven at night for a year. The replies stop reading as generosity and start reading as the baseline. The one evening you leave it until morning, someone asks whether something is wrong.
Try it today
Leave one non-urgent message until tomorrow morning. Notice tonight whether anything actually broke while it sat there unanswered.
Where this shows up
Law 16 tends to come up in these parts of life. Follow a path to read the other laws that belong with it:
Friends & Family · Persuasion · At Work
Laws that go with it
If law 16 landed, these are the entries people usually read next — they cover overlapping ground: law 14, law 19, law 2.
Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy.
Some warmth is reconnaissance.
Friends & FamilyAt WorkPersuasionLaw 19Do Not Offend the Wrong Person.
The cost of a slight has nothing to do with how minor it felt to you.
Friends & FamilyAt WorkPersuasionLaw 2Never Put too Much Trust in Friends, Learn How to Use Enemies.
Friendship makes obligations invisible: nobody states the terms, so nobody can be held to them.
Friends & FamilyAt Work