[HN Gopher] The Machiavellian Maze
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The Machiavellian Maze
Author : jger15
Score : 47 points
Date : 2023-12-20 17:38 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.robkhenderson.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.robkhenderson.com)
| drpgq wrote:
| In The Prince, Machiavelli wrote that men are "ungrateful,
| wanton, false," and "cowardly, greedy, arrogant and mean, and
| their natural impulse is to be insolent when their affairs are
| prospering and abjectly servile when adversity hits them."
|
| Reminds me a little of work.
| thih9 wrote:
| From experience, avoiding environments with these traits and
| finding better workplaces sometimes requires extra effort but
| in general is possible.
| Phiwise_ wrote:
| Have you ever actually read Machiavelli? Have you read The
| Discources, instead of the trendy practice of misreading Art of
| War and The Prince and ending the day early? This is a
| borderline slanderous misrepresentation of one of the first
| great Humanist philosophers.
|
| IMPORTANT EDIT: I just realized that I misread this as saying
|
| >Reminds me a little of _his_ work.
|
| instead of
|
| >Reminds me a little of work.
|
| How embarrassing, right? Just ignore me while I curl up and die
| in the corner over there.
| thimkerbell wrote:
| What is a different, good, brief representation?
| AlbertCory wrote:
| _The Prince_ is very short. Read all of it.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Not by accident.
|
| Avarice is the driving force of capitalism; so should be
| expected to be an integral part of any organization that
| optimizes for capital return to investors.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _It 's a good idea to keep your people in a state of poverty
| and always prepared for war. This helps to reduce both ambition
| and boredom--two qualities that can undermine obedience._
|
| > _Fierce competition in a society is desirable, for it generates
| energy and ambition_
|
| Don't these two statements exactly oppose each other?
| scottedwards wrote:
| yeah agree, plus not sure I believe that poverty reduces
| ambition
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| It may. You don't dream of becoming president; you dream of
| having enough money to have both an apartment and food. You
| have just as much ambition, but the ambition is for smaller
| things. You therefore are not threatening the political power
| of those who have it.
| the_sleaze9 wrote:
| It isn't poverty that reduces ambition, it's that poverty has
| crushingly enormous cognitive overhead.
| jonahx wrote:
| Not necessarily. Think of life in poor neighborhoods today.
| People can be competitive over limited resources or status
| within their world of poverty. And the constant threat of
| violence ("prepared for war") can even exacerbate this dynamic.
|
| Yet at the same time all larger ambitions -- those which could
| threaten the people with real power -- are thwarted.
| hammock wrote:
| One sector of the population is dull and complacent, the other
| are fiercely competing for limited spots at higher eds and tech
| companies with 2% acceptance rates
| gentoo wrote:
| > His great transgression, according to Berlin, was to say aloud
| what everyone knows but no one will admit: multiple ideals cannot
| be simultaneously attained. We can't have everything good all at
| once.
|
| Everyone will admit this. No one honestly believes all virtues
| are equally and simultaneously attainable. At any given time,
| certain things must be prioritized.
|
| But some of us believe that it's not a zero-sum game; that "human
| nature" is not set in stone, and that it is a worthy project to
| try and engineer conditions which allow _more_ of humanity 's
| virtues to flourish. Machiavelli would seem to dismiss the
| possibility that a society can reorient itself towards empathy,
| charity, and equality without imploding. He also seems to believe
| that it's correct to trade individual prosperity for state power
| and glory.
| thimkerbell wrote:
| His society didn't have fossil fuels, or renewable energy.
|
| See: the malthusian trap.
| banannaise wrote:
| The author is just going for a roundabout version of
| "[unspecified group] are a bunch of virtue-signaling
| hypocrites", and giving the reader some latitude to fill in the
| unspecified group.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| > Machiavelli would seem to dismiss the possibility that a
| society can reorient itself towards empathy, charity, and
| equality without imploding.
|
| Pretty much accurate. Machiavelli viewed the 'average person'
| as capricious and most rulers as corrupt. He viewed the mix of
| the two as a recipe for societal decay that could only be
| controlled by rulers of benevolent intent but willing to act
| without virtue to prevent decay and disorder. In Discourses,
| Machiavelli reveals his hope that virtue might be pervasive in
| a republic, but he did not view human nature as necessarily
| aligned with that goal.
| jahewson wrote:
| I... don't think so? Machiavelli was challenging the zero-sum
| 14-1500s Catholic Christian thinking that the world was set in
| stone by God and that providence was beyond humanity's control.
| This is what he means by encouraging "ambition" among elites -
| a conscious act to produce the betterment of the state and
| those within it. Indeed he hoped virtues would flourish in such
| an environment - but was not optimistic about the odds.
|
| > Machiavelli would seem to dismiss the possibility that a
| society can reorient itself towards empathy, charity, and
| equality without imploding.
|
| He'd dismiss a state founded on ideals, yes, but he's in favor
| of human progress, even if he's pessimistic about what that
| yields. Remember in his era to be ambitious and want to change
| things was to _go against God_.
|
| It's easy to dislike Machiavelli as he's cynical and amoral but
| he's a modern thinker in many ways.
| chilmers wrote:
| I recently listened the podcast Our Fake History's two parter on
| Machiavelli and can recommend it as a nuanced look at his life
| and work. Most particularly, the host points out the context that
| Machiavelli wasn't writing The Prince in a vacuum, it was likely
| intended to win him a job in the restored Medici government in
| Florence. And that the most brutal advice is specifically given
| as applying to rulers who have recently seized power through
| force of arms, not as applying to all rulers in all situations.
|
| https://ourfakehistory.com/index.php/season-5/episode-94-how...
| thimkerbell wrote:
| This is worth reading.
|
| We read M on human nature as descriptive not proscriptive, except
| that in M's time it was proscriptive too(oops, wrong here, it was
| prescriptive.).
|
| How do women fit in, or alter the reasoning?
|
| Progress got made by people who were protected from at least some
| forms of competition, who didn't have to expend cognitive energy
| on survival, right? What were the early polytechnic universities,
| was that where inventions happened and were built upon?
|
| We are happier with the societies we have now, no? (Unless we are
| young men?) How did they outcompete the nasty British (note, I
| did type "brutish". How do I turn autocorrect off? Answer: in
| keyboard Settings.) and short ones?
| thimkerbell wrote:
| Basic question: how does civilization prevail over
| barbarianesque warfare, at macro and micro scales.
| thimkerbell wrote:
| What field of scholarship is this.
| thimkerbell wrote:
| Is joining the army still a fulfilling outlet for young male
| energies, or do video games do better?
| banannaise wrote:
| Repost from the same user 10 days ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38591164
| thimkerbell wrote:
| The person has good taste.
|
| And nobody responded before.
| zoogeny wrote:
| I found the comparison here between Machiavelli and Nietzsche
| interesting, and in some respects there is a blurring here
| between the ideas of the two men. What I think is interesting is
| that Nietzsche was also responding to Dostoevsky. I think
| Dostoevsky makes a stronger psychological claim to the benefits
| of Christianity than existed in Machiavelli's time.
|
| It also reminds me of a recent discussion I had here on HN
| related to cynicism, something I think Machiavelli could be
| accused of supporting. His moral prescription is for the absolute
| rulers of states, not for the subjects of the state. He is
| claiming to be objectively analytical in his description of
| effective state stewardship. In that sense, it is obvious to him
| that the ruler of a state ought to be held to a different moral
| standard than the subjects. This is red meat for the cynic who
| wants to see any pronouncement from any authority as being
| duplicitous or hypocritical. Of course the ruling class are
| telling me to "love and forgive my enemy" since that will make me
| easy to govern, yet those same rulers will surely annihilate
| their enemies just as Machiavelli taught them to do.
|
| It makes the general push of humanism towards _universal_ moral
| values a bit more clear to me than it was previously. And why we
| should be extremely wary of any kind of moral relativism, even
| when it is couched in progressive liberalism. If we allow moral
| relativism then the most pernicious place it can take place is in
| the ruling class. That is guaranteed to breed cynicism in the
| populace.
|
| I think, for that reason, we must demand that our rulers are held
| to the same moral standards as the populace. That might mean we
| will not have states as glorious as the Roman Empire, but perhaps
| that is a price worth paying. I admit that I don't have an answer
| to Machiavelli's question as to how a state where the rulers are
| held to the same moral standards as the populace can hope to
| compete against states where the rulers are free to set their own
| more brutal morality.
| jstarfish wrote:
| > Of course the ruling class are telling me to "love and
| forgive my enemy" since that will make me easy to govern, yet
| those same rulers will surely annihilate their enemies just as
| Machiavelli taught them to do.
|
| You raise a very interesting point. Look at the state of social
| media--the People's Platform--right now. It's nothing but
| grievances, hostilities, and fragmentation. "Tolerance" has
| itself been fashioned into a cudgel. Everybody is miserable and
| has a million mental health issues.
|
| The one word you don't find anyone advocating on broadcast or
| social media is "forgiveness." (Where's Jesus when you need
| him?)
|
| Love and forgiveness are requisites for neighbors to unite
| against common enemies, whether they be the King's enemies _or
| the King himself_. People that are angry at everyone around
| them are as close to feral as humans can be, and _cannot_ be
| governed effectively. Petty warlords only speak the language of
| conflict and it 's impossible to get them to agree on anything.
|
| To those ends, the military is predictably struggling to retain
| recruits; they're blaming TikTok to pave over our collective
| failure to foster any sort of love for country for so long that
| the kids are realizing military pay sucks, this country offers
| no real opportunities for growth to underclasses anymore and
| it's not worth dying for assholes who would leave you for dead
| if it saved them a dollar. We've also desensitized everyone to
| Communism and terrorism so much that they're starting to look
| favorable as means to revolution. Lack of _love for each other_
| is the biggest national security threat nobody talks about.
|
| It's what stops people from turning traitor, but what do I
| know. People are struggling to afford food and housing, while
| King Cuck and Queen Delulu insist pronoun enforcement in
| schools and Gravy Seals LARPing in Kansas should be our most
| pressing concerns. God forbid a flash mob storms the Capital
| again and writes a slur on the wall without killing anybody.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Reading The Prince as a child permanently shifted my worldview,
| for better or worse.
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