“It is often wise to implicate in your deceptions the very person who can do you the most harm if you fail.”

The 48 Laws of Power, Law 31, Control the Options: Get Others to Play with the Cards You Deal

As we deliberate on our deceptive strategies, plotting and planning ways to outmanoeuvre our adversaries and achieve our objectives, so determined are we to be crowned victorious that we instinctively structure deception as a clear-cut game of friend and foe.

We position ourselves on one side as the schemers, the individuals who hold the upper hand.

On the other side sit our targets and those who possess the greatest potential to bring about our downfall should our plans fall short, with these groups oftentimes consisting of the same people.

They remain oblivious to our machinations, wandering blindly into the traps we have laid for them.