Sunday 22 November 2015

Machavelli & Dynamics of Power

A re-posting of an earlier piece.

Earlier short piece on Machiavelli here. Machiavelli is famous for writing in The Prince on the prudent methods a political ruler must use in order to attain, maintain and strengthen his political power. The very idea that 'Machiavellian' refers to some exceptional and cynical mode of political behaviour rather than a reflection of the norm would likely have been incomprehensible to Machiavelli, as rather than an instigator of some new ruthlessness, he is simply an observer and adviser of strategy within this field of human conduct and invariably conflict. That politics is a strategical game with the ends being raw power, and since there is nothing moral about power, then this is a value that has no meaningful place within this game, just as for instance goodness has nothing to do with breaking a land-speed record. So more or less goes the thinking. The means reflect the ends, and by simple cause and effect the ends are determined by those means.

Politics however, unlike the land-speed record and most other 'games', is not self-enclosed, directly affects the wider world, and so it's best for those liable to be affected by the actions of its players, which is to say all of us, to realise that such a game is being played in the first place and to have some idea of its modus operandi. 

Machiavelli when expressing the desirability of deviousness and ruthlessness as practices within this 'game' is simply reflecting a reality rather than particularly instigating, but once he has given his views in his book of ideal if general method, these notions of best practice enter more profoundly into the world of politics as conscious general method to be emulated, rather than as accidental and intuitive understandings by various individuals in particular circumstances. The Prince is also a lens through which the more disinterested observer can look upon historical and present-day realities and discern the methodology behind 'random' events, unseen by the unsuspecting and gullible. 

And so the idea that 'Machiavellian' refers to some unusual form of political practice rather than the norm is either an instance of uneducated naivety, or itself an instance of Machiavellian duplicity by those playing the game - that, as a virtual matter of course, at the other end of government is someone or body of people acting to cement and increase their power over the citizens. The kinds of people drawn to power are very likely to be anxious for more of it. As he writes: "The people are everywhere anxious not to be dominated or oppressed by the nobles, and the nobles are out to dominate and oppress the people." This tension is for Machiavelli a fundamental truth - the ruling elite will always want to oppress the people, to further their control, and by simple logic the ultimate desired destination is absolutism, the totalitarian state. This leap to absolute power is dangerous for the rulers however, as the people are great in number and have no wish to be the subjects of outright tyranny. To excessively act on this urge for such total mastery is to gamble with what they already possess.

Principalities usually come to grief when the transition is being made from limited power to absolutism. Princes take this step either directly or through magistrates.

At the moment in the comparatively free West, it is via the use of the magistrates, or legal 'reform', that the desired movement towards absolutism is being conducted, but this must be justified, if noticed at all by the people, by deception: because of say a perceived external threat, intentionally created or/and hyped up by the nobility's means of public propaganda. He writes:

We must distinguish between....those who to achieve their purposes can force the issue and those who must use persuasion. In the second case they always come to grief, having achieved nothing; when however they can force the issue, then they are seldom endangered.
The populace is always fickle; it is easy to persuade them of something but difficult to confirm them in that persuasion. Therefore one must usually arrange matters so that when they no longer believe they can be made to believe by force.


So they must be made to believe what the rulers want them to believe, which is the necessity of an increase in centralised state power. But greater forces than persuasion must be used. Persuasion simply appeals to the limpid reason. To be made believe by force the far more powerful, primal forces of fear and hatred must be attacked and harnessed. And so the application of this being, for example, the Gladio network of terror earlier described here, on which the BBC did a detailed 3-part documentary. In the words of its director, Allan Frankovich:

This BBC series is about a far-right secret army, operated by the CIA and MI6 through NATO, which killed hundreds of innocent Europeans and attempted to blame the deaths on Baader Meinhof, Red Brigades and other left wing groups. Known as 'stay-behinds' these armies were given access to military equipment which was supposed to be used for sabotage after a Soviet invasion. Instead it was used in massacres across mainland Europe as part of a CIA Strategy of Tension. Gladio killing sprees in Belgium and Italy were carried out for the purpose of frightening the national political classes into adopting U.S. policies.

As one of the key pariticipants in the Gladio network describes in the documentary, methods included not just by perpetration of acts and blaming them on others, but also infiltration of these groups, and leading them to perpetration of the desired terrorist acts. People who imagine themselves to be well-informed about political realities continue, however, in their naivety to consider such simple tactics of control as mentioned by Machiavelli to be the province of the mentally unhinged, to be conveniently scorned and without differentiation as "conspiracy theories."
Machiavelli also says, and he makes no moral judgement here, simply states as a fact:

Princes who have achieved great things have been those who have given their word lightly, who have known how to trick men with their cunning, and who, in the end, have overcome those abiding by honest principles.
Because all men are wretched creatures who would not keep their word to you, you need not keep your word to them.
One must know how to colour one's actions and to be a great liar and deceiver. Men are so simple, and so much creatures of circumstance, that the deceiver will always find someone ready to deceive.


This low, depraved notion of humanity is perfectly normal amongst those living within this field of life, as naturally enough for those within this reality, such is a kind of norm. They are realists within their domain. Across all fields the perceiver himself is central to that which is perceived, and the individual is simply making of his debased self a general rule of humanity. Thus the influential thinker within the American neo-conservative movement, Leo Strauss, mirrors Machiavelli: "Because mankind is intrinsically wicked, he has to be governed." Conscience presumably is never wholly absent in anyone, so even these manipulators must convince themselves of their realism and virtue.

Thursday 19 November 2015

Tuesday 17 November 2015

Circuses, Gladiators

Modern sports and sportstars are often or at least sometimes mentioned in terms of being the contemporary equivalent of the circus side of the famous Bread and Circuses notion, i.e. a spiritually and politically enervated population is appeased or/and rendered so by cheap food and shallow entertainments, the phrase originating from the Roman satirical poet Juvenal. And so a footballer like Wayne Rooney being a contemporary and less bloody equivalent to a famous Roman gladiator. One interesting point though is that the gladiators, though apparently with some exceptions to the rule, were largely slaves and working financially for nothing. So if one takes reasonably enough money to equate to power, they were individually total non-entities, whilst the political leaders were enormously wealthy figures - in a certain sense reasonably so or as one would expect - money and power in tandem.

Returning to the present the parallel starts to look a bit strange.
One might imagine it reasonable to say the most powerful person in a country is the political head of that country, with for instance broadly the entire military apparatus at his disposal, with ultimate 'buck stops here' say over foreign policy matters, economic policy, etc, etc. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, at present David Cameron, the "First among equals" earns £142,500 in a year. The footballer Wayne Rooney, our modern gladiator, earns apparently about £300,000 a week. So in pure salary it will roughly take the head of the UK political apparatus two years and 6 weeks to earn what the footballer earns in one week. Of course by the time those two and a bit years have elapsed, so have 110 or so of Wayne Rooney's weeks, which in turn will take the Prime Minister roughly 230 years of office to approximate financially. To add, the US President would be considered a far more powerful figure and so it is perhaps right that President Obama takes slightly less than a year to earn what Wayne Rooney earns in a  week.
 An interesting statement of significance of a mature evolving world clearly worthy of deep respect, and when voices from within speak on things of import I say to myself, Listen well, for here lies truth.

Sunday 15 November 2015

Why all the Sarcasm?

Why, I am asked - if that is someone cared enough to ask it - am I so sarcastic? But I'm not! Or maybe I suppose yes to some degree I am. To some considerable degree some might say. And so why, why so sarcastic - seeing as that was the question. Of course I know whatever answer I furnish will hardly be anything like the whole truth but even so maybe it's all, the sarcasm, for the sake of appearances. What appearances? My own. For how else am I to maintain my reality, the reality of its appearance, in the light of the present? In the presence of such a light I am forced to be a darkness, in opposition, otherwise, well, I'd be part of it, and to be part of such a light, would be  . . . . well, it would be hardly to be at all . . . Maybe the trick so, you might say, is not to be in its presence.

And but to add - I can't just give up the point - where would everyone be if someone switched off that light - the one I'm talking about, the light of the present? If some ungrateful someone or other throws for example a big ignorant stone at it . . .  splinters, screams, darkness, out with the light . . . Well maybe everyone could find somehow their way, stumbling, by the light of a cigarette lighter, a phone, torchlit, into another room, again brilliantly lit, with maybe even a chandelier hanging from the ceiling, and guards, well-dressed, protecting it. And now and onwards it transpires, however unlikely, noone throws anything - or if they do they miss. But in the end the light will still end up going out. It will, like all such lights, exhaust itself. Show me a light bulb that hasn't exhausted itself - though yes admittedly I'm talking about the used-up ones. But anyway, why not just change the bulb even if it does go out? Ah but that's not the point. What about for example the terrifying interval of darkness between bulbs - people, unable to see each other, might go mad. But at least they could hear each other - though with all the groans and screams they might be better off not. Still there'd be the occasional voice appealing for calm, though to be heard he'd have to shout presumably so loud, he probably wouldn't sound all that calm.

So, given all that, why not just go outside into the natural light and not have to be relying on any light bulbs? But wouldn't there still be the same need for sarcasm, you know, so as to exist, to maintain oneself, in opposition, so as not to be part of the light? But I think here is where darkness really would just be darkness, willful, stupid. What would be the point? And how long, even accepting all the stupidity, for that matter could such opposition maintain itself? If you took the light away from the darkness where would it be, left to itself?

Well I set out trying to clarify things, to be straightforward, but glancing back at what I've produced it seems it's beyond me. I drifted off it seems into God knows where.

Wednesday 11 November 2015

Underworld - Cherry Pie

And a mix of Dirty Epic.



Sunday 8 November 2015

Doorways

A void between two open doorways, or if you like, two open doorways between which a void. A silent picture so, still, symmetrical, but maybe after a while boring. But then emerges towards one of the doorways a man running who doesn't stop in horror before the void but leaps into and across it towards the other open doorway! Unfortunately however the a split second later from that other doorway comes rushing and jumping another man, and the two meet and collide somewhere in the middle and down they go. Awful, tragic, even if maybe also a bit yes comical. But who knows, maybe after they fall and disappear from view, they, limbs tangled, fall and land on what amounts to a great soft floor or bed of  hay, fortune favouring, apart from the bad luck, the brave so to speak. And then again maybe the whole thing - running, jumping, colliding - was actually scripted, arranged, not accidental at all, and if we waited around long enough we'd see the two of them repeat the process a little later, though maybe this time for variation from opposite doorways. Then again that might be all a bit optimistic but anyway.