If you can‘t take the words as they are, the author failed to convey their meaning. All you are doing now is asserting that anyone with a different take on it than you is “not thinking for themselves”, which is condescending. I‘m not interested in saying anything more to you.
Ok, I know I won‘t get through to you since you‘re such a fan, but for anyone else who might end up reading this exchange I‘ll just go ahead and quote one of these laws. As an example of word choices. They can make up their own mind if the words in question literally sound like an instruction or not:
LEARN TO KEEP PEOPLE DEPENDENT ON YOU
To maintain your independence you must always be needed and wanted. The more you are relied on, the more freedom you have. Make people depend on you for their happiness and prosperity and you have nothing to fear. Never teach them enough so that they can do without you.
Not sure if we read the same book. I opened it up again just now to confirm, a lot of it is written as “You must…” and like in seconds you can find quotes to confirm: “To this end you must learn to wear many masks and keep a bag full of deceptive tricks.”
How is that not an instruction? And even so, at the very least it‘s a worldview. One people are using without reading the book, sure.
However, as someone who prefers honesty in a partner, the book also instructs readers look at that in this view of playing honesty games too and frankly, it‘s made me a bit paranoid of everyone and even myself.
I prefer not to date with people who see the world and all relationships this way and revealing you read it multiple times or gave 5 star would be a red flag to me for this reason.
Look, even if it‘s to manipulate people they‘re obviously going to say it‘s “just to recognise it and defend” as well, so regardless, if I find out they are a fan of this book to rate it 5 stars, I‘d rather not get into a relationship.
First books that come to mind for me are 48 Laws of Power and Atlas Shrugged.
This is the one for me too. I felt sick for a while after finishing it and the worst part was that I could understand how people could do this to each other. The sort of dehumanisation that happened in past genocides.