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From : A Little History of Philosophy by Nigel Warburton

I don’t even need to say anything about this one. Y’all understand.

I am a strong believer in spreading obsessions like the common cold. Hope you haven’t been taking your vitamins.

1. Craisins and breakfast foods.

What else does a college girl need? Probably vegetables and some exercise, but it is doubtful I will ever be obsessed with those. I think we can all agree craisins are the perfect snack food and breakfast sandwiches are appropriate for any meal.

2. Thought Catalog.

The hours I have spent reading this blog… endless. There are at least ten new posts a day, although I haven’t counted, and the contributors write about literally everything: Trader Joe’s, Jennifer Lawrence, 6-year-old breakdancers. Such delicious variety. Some of my personal favorites have been the one about trendy cat names, the one about banana slicers, and the one about awesome fictional boyfriends. Cough cough Ron Weasley.

3. The best band ever, U2.

When am I not obsessed with U2? Never.

They’re just the greatest. And I have recently discovered a few songs which, to my dismay, I had never heard before like two days ago.  Acrobat? The Unforgettable Fire?! How did I make it through high school without Bono telling me to not let the bastards grind me down? How did my ears believe they were happy before they heard these spectacular melodies?

4. Being sassy. 

Chimp pointed something out to me the other day, and it wasn’t that I need to stop eating so many breakfast sandwiches. She noticed that I seriously have not called her by name in weeks, instead referring to her as “giiiiirl.” This is not exclusive to her, either; I didn’t realize it, but I am calling everyone “giiiiirl,” except my father and a few other members of the male population, who are now “bro/bruh” to me. It’s probably pissing people off, but I don’t even care ’cause I’m sassy and they’re haters. I’m sassy when I’m looking through my facebook newsfeed, I am sassy when I journal, dang it, I am even sassy when I’m annotating my textbooks. That’s right, Machiavelli, I called you a slut.

Well, that is all for this fine Thursday. Have a lovely weekend and, as my man Bono would say, don’t let the bastards grind you down.

PS- Part I of the Current Obsessions can be found here.

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. Florence was a centre of middle ages European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of the time. Home to the wealthy Medici family and notable historical figures such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Dante, Michelangelo, Donatello, Machiavelli, Galileo Galilei, Amerigo Vespucci (namesake of America), Florence Nightingale and of course Pinocchio!!! 

]]> http://untestedwaters.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/the-loria-doth-protest-too-much/ Wed, 06 Mar 2013 18:40:47 +0000 northofsteeles http://untestedwaters.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/the-loria-doth-protest-too-much/ The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present. ~Niccolo Machiavelli

If immortality has many forms, Miami Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria is living proof that Nicolo di Bernardo dei Machiavelli has achieved eternal life ideologically. About a week ago, Loria embarked on a damage control campaign to quell negative fan sentiment regarding Miami baseball since the November fire sale. Trying to unravel the spin from every statement of the Jeffrey Group’s (the newly hired PR firm by Marlins ownership) image restoration attempts is fruitless as: 1) Yahoo Sports’ Jeff Passan took the liberty of doing so, 2) the Marlins owner mints money from the art dealing business riddled with swindlers, and 3) the Montreal Expos are no more.

Reading Jeff Loria’s open letter addressed to fans through rose tinted sunglasses will turn even the most naïve South Floridian into a cynic. Besides fans and taxpayers, prominent casualties of the owner’s scam include Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle, and the team’s ability to acquire talent via free agent pools. The speedster and finesse pitcher signed with the team under the impression that Miami would be their home for the long haul. According to the two, both were told that verbal reassurances (not written ones in the form of no-trade clauses) from Loria were enough to guarantee their stability. Little did the four time all stars the owner would trade them away, despite promising to not send them to another team.

“You asked if a quadruple A team will take the field in a $2.4 billion stadium funded by your tax money? With a handshake promise, I assure you that will not happen on my watch.”

While this whole trade fiasco is water under the bridge for Reyes and Buehrle, Loria has just torpedoed any hope of acquiring or retaining stars that deserve long term security. If ownership ever opens the vault to free agents, prospective players will think twice before setting foot on the red carpets rolled out for them at Marlins Park. With Jeffrey Loria’s reputation as the Machiavellian prince who never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise, Marlins fans can only hope for the Commissioner’s intervention. What are you waiting for Mr. Commissioner? Give this fraudster the Frank McCourt treatment already. On another slightly hypocritical note, thank you Bud Selig for approving the trade that ensured my Blue Jays were on the receiving end of the fire sale. You made my winter much more bearable. Go Jays Go!

They don’t, she—it I barely care. About much really.

Because things are so slow I figured I should look for a way to add some spice back into my day to day existence. And so I asked myself “WWND”. For those of you who are new to this space or new to dealing with me, that’s my little bracelet acronym for “What  Would Niccolo Do?” As in Nicollo Machiavelli, my favorite philosopher. I’ll tell you what he’d do, he’d take matters into his own hands and bring interest back into the home.

This is the explanation I gave to my wife for deleting almost every show on our DVR. It was because I wanted to have something to talk about.

Hoo Boy we are cooking with gas now! Conversation a-go-go. That ole Machiavelli dude really had things figured out. We had a great conversation, albeit a little one sided, and maybe a tish louder than I’d like, but it definitely was one of those conversations that leaves you knowing that you are alive.

Fact is the DVR flashed a message that we were at 98% capacity and I panicked. I don’t like to have anything at 90% capacity except batteries and mental acuity. My last computer I bought came with a 750G hard drive. Last I checked I was using about 200G of it. I think I might need to delete something ‘cause you never know. Never know when the opportunity to download the entire catalogue of human knowledge to date might come along, I want to be ready for it.

Mrs S watches 90% of her television time shifted. I.E. on the DVR. She/we haven’t seen an ad on TV in 5 years. She has a pretty long list of shows she likes and her habit is to watch them when she’s peddling away on the laundry rack that looks like an exercise bike. Yesterday was a snow day for me, I worked at home. She noticed that the DVR had been “cleansed” at about 10:34, that’s where the clock in the kitchen froze anyway so I know I’m right.

I was in my office working and since we don’t have an intercom in the house she projected her voice through space, time and our walls to catch my attention and inquire as to why it was that every one of the shows she wanted to watch were not to be found on the DVR.

My default answer to hard questions, hard being those questions which everyone already knows the answer too are designed to make you incriminate yourself, there is no 5^th amendment in our house. It’s natures way of justifying any sentence you could possibly receive My default answer in those delicate times is a firm “Huh?” “huh” is a nice pause point in male conversation. Gives you a chance to put your toe a little deeper into the hot tub of female emotion and get a better understanding of just how hot the water is so you can act accordingly.

Our tub was hot. Quite hot.

Fact is this isn’t the first time I’ve been counseled on DVR Management. It’s so hard to justify keeping Downton Abby when there are still friends of mine who are alive and who haven’t seen the Pacquiao-Marquez fight. I’m going to admit that I may not be capable of making the right decision in those matters. Well, I wasn’t until yesterday, now I am.

The other thing with the DVR is Mrs S keeps thinking about the boys. Our boys don’t have access to TV at school apparently. At Michigan Tech that’s understandable, the house he’s in was only wired for electricity in the late 90’s. TV is a long way away, and in Houghton Michigan over the air TV is pretty scarce. Seems that the kid in Alabama would have TV, the stinking dorm is wired for it. Rumor is he has to share one TV with 40 other people. Worse, 20 of the 40 are of that gender that is incapable of managing a remote control and at the same time insists on watching crappy TV.

See Downton Abby.

She like to save the episodes of the shows the boys like so they can watch them when they get home. Personally I think this is a horrible idea. It’s akin to feeding the bears at Yellowstone. You give them treats and food and you wind up taming them and they never leave your campsite. I want my kids to learn to forage for good television, like I had to when I was growing up. If we spoon feed them all good stuff there’s a decent chance that they might want to move back home when they grow up. Again, WWND? I’ll tell ya what he’d do, tell’um find their own TV.

Did I mention we have Hulu Plus? Lots of stuff there, nothing Mrs S watches mind you but lots of other stuff. Watch that.

*sigh*

I took my lumps like a man, getting all defensive and offering many examples of sound logic as to why deleting 11 episodes of Suits seemed like a good idea at the time. No avail, she was angry. One question I couldn’t answer to her satisfaction; if we’re at 98% why not take us down to 50% and save some things. Why do we have to go down to 5%?

You know, when she says it that way… I felt shame.

I felt we had come to the point of the discussion, and it was a good discussion don’t get me wrong, where further discourse would be pointless. Not knowing exactly how to extricate myself from the conversation I waited until she had finished her oral arguments about my mishandling of her entertainment happiness and interjected the following sentence guaranteed to move the conversation elsewhere:

“So does this mean we’re not doing it later?”

You know the rest of the day and well into the evening it was nice and quiet for me. And somewhere Nicola was smiling his ass off.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Courtesy of Wikipedia

In his even greater novel that very few people bother to read these days — if they bother to read at all — Dostoevsky visits the claim once again. In this novel the situation involves a discussion between Ivan and Alyosha Karamazov in the novel about The Brothers Karamazov. Ivan, the intellectual skeptic confronts his pure and naive brother Alyosha with the following conundrum:

“Tell me straight out, I call on you — answer me: imagine that you yourself are building the edifice of human destiny with the object of making people happy in the end, of giving them peace and rest at last, but for that you must inevitably and unavoidably torture just one tiny [child]. . . and raise your edifice on the foundation of her unrequited tears — would you agree to be the architect on such conditions? Tell me the truth?”

And Alyosha said softly, “No I would not agree.”

“And can you admit the idea that the people for whom you are building would agree to accept their happiness on the unjustified blood of a tortured child, and, having accepted it, to remain forever happy?”

“No, I cannot admit it, brother.”

Ivan is alluding to a story that he told Alyosha (one of several) — which Dostoevsky himself clipped from the newspaper and worked into his novel — about a five-year old child who was beaten and kicked by her parents and then locked in an outhouse over a cold winter’s night because she had wet her bed the night before. In the night she “beat herself on her strained little chest with her tiny fist and weeps. . . for ‘dear God’ to protect her” to no avail. The next day her parents washed her face with her own excrement so she would learn her lesson. It’s a horrible story, but that sort of thing happens in the “real world” while philosophers in their studies sit and muse about the right and the good and come up with theories about what is good “in the long run.”

We live today in a world where little girls are not beaten and locked in privies overnight, we hope. But we live at a time when it has become commonplace to direct small, pilotless planes into crowded streets alive with women and small children to target a “known” enemy of the political state.  We, of course, rely completely on the veracity of spies and agents to correctly identify the “target.” These trustworthy people know who the “bad guys” are and they point them out. The planes are then sent in and if they hit a few innocent women and children it does not matter as long as the bad guy is “taken out.”

This is done in the name of “national security,” of course. The end justifies the means, just as Machiavelli said. And because “they” hit us first and killed 3000 innocent people we can justify killing half again as many of “them” in the name of self-defense, even if we know we are killing innocent women and children. It is not quite as terrible as the story that Dostoevsky tells, but apparently, unlike Alyosha, we seem to be perfectly happy with it.

Frank Knight on risk and uncertainty

Early Chicago school economist Frank Knight was known for his work on risk, and especially for the distinction between risk and uncertainty, which is still taught in economics and business courses. Like Schumpeter, Knight was interested in the function of the entrepreneur in the modern commercial economy, and he employed his distinction between risk and uncertainty in order to illuminate the function of the entrepreneur.

Although it is easy to conflate risk and uncertainty, and to speak as though facing a risk were the same thing as facing uncertain or unknown circumstances, Knight doesn’t see it like this at all. A risk can be quantified and calculated, and because risks can be quantified and calculated, they can be controlled. This is the function of insurance: to quantify and price risk. If you have correctly factored risk into your calculation, it is no longer an uncertainty. You might not know the exact date or magnitude of losses, but you know statistically that there will be a certain number of losses of a certain magnitude. It is the job of actuaries to calculate this, and one buys insurance to control the risk to which one is exposed.

The ordinary business of life, and of business, according to Knight, involves risk management, but the unique function of the entrepreneur is to accept uncertainty that cannot be quantified, priced, or insured. The entrepreneur makes his profit not in spite of uncertainty, but because of uncertainty. No insurance can be bought for uncertainty, so that in taking on an uncertain situation the entrepreneur enters into a realm in which it is recognized that there are factors beyond control. If he is not destroyed financially by these uncontrollable factors, he may profit from them, and this profit is likely to exceed the profit made in ordinary business operations exposed to risk but not to uncertainty.

Here is how Knight formulated his distinction between risk and uncertainty:

To preserve the distinction which has been drawn in the last chapter between the measurable uncertainty and an unmeasurable one we may use the term “risk” to designate the former and the term “uncertainty” for the latter. The word “risk” is ordinarily used in a loose way to refer to any sort of uncertainty viewed from the standpoint of the unfavorable contingency and the term “uncertainty” similarly with reference to the favorable outcome; we speak of the “risk” of a loss, the “uncertainty” of a gain. But if our reasoning so far is at an correct, there is a fatal ambiguity in these terms which must be gotten rid of and the use of the term “risk” in connection with the measurable uncertainties or probabilities of insurance gives some justification for specializing the terms as just indicated. We can also employ the terms “objective” and “subjective” probability to designate the risk and uncertainty respectively, as these expressions are already in general use with a signification akin to that proposed.

Frank Knight, Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit, CHAPTER VIII, STRUCTURES AND METHODS FOR MEETING UNCERTAINTY

Knight went on to add…

The practical difference between the two categories, risk and uncertainty, is that in the former the distribution of the outcome in a group of instances is known (either through calculation a priori or from statistics of past experience), while in the case of uncertainty this is not true, the reason being in general that it is impossible to form a group of instances, because the situation dealt with is in a high degree unique.

Frank Knight, Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit, CHAPTER VIII, STRUCTURES AND METHODS FOR MEETING UNCERTAINTY

The growth of knowledge and experience can transform uncertainty into risk if it contextualizes a formerly unique situation in such a way as to demonstrate that it is not unique but belongs to a group of instances. Of the tremendous gains made in the space sciences during the last forty years, during our selective space age stagnation, it could be said that the function of this considerable gain in knowledge has been to transform uncertainty into risk. But this goes only so far.

Even if the boundary between risk and uncertainty can be pushed outward by the growth of knowledge, the same growth of civilization that attends the growth of knowledge and technology means that the boundaries of civilization itself will also be pushed further out, with the result being that we are likely to always encounter further uncertainties even as old uncertainties are transformed by knowledge into risk.

The evolution of the existential risk concept

In many recent posts I have been discussing the idea of existential risk. These posts include, but are not limited to, Moral Imperatives Posed by Existential Risk, Research Questions on Existential Risk, and Six Theses on Existential Risk. The idea of existential risk is due to Nick Bostrom. (I first heard about this at the first 100YSS symposium in Orlando in 2011, when I was talking to Christian Weidemann.)

Nick Bostrom defined existential risk as follows:

Existential risk – One where an adverse outcome would either annihilate Earth-originating intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential.

And added…

An existential risk is one where humankind as a whole is imperiled. Existential disasters have major adverse consequences for the course of human civilization for all time to come.

“Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards,” Nick Bostrom, Professor, Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University, Published in the Journal of Evolution and Technology, Vol. 9, No. 1 (2002)

In his papers on existential risk and the book on Global Catastrophic Risks, Bostrom steadily expanded and refined the parameters of disasters that have (or would have) major adverse consequences for human beings and their civilization.

Table of six qualitative categories of risk from ‘Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards’

The table from an early existential risk paper above divides qualitative risks into six categories. the table below from the book Global Catastrophic Risks includes twelve qualitative risk categories and implies another eight; the table further below from a more recent paper includes fifteen qualitative risk categories and implies another nine. From a philosophical point of view, these further distinctions represent in advance in clarity, contextualizing both existential risks and global catastrophic risks in a matrix of related horrors.

Table of qualitative risk categories from the book Global Catastrophic Risks.

The specific possible events that Bostrom describes range from the imperceptible loss of one hair to human extinction. Recently in Moral Imperatives Posed by Existential Risk I tried to point out how further distinctions can be made within the variety of human extinction scenarios, and that some distinct outcomes might be morally preferable over other outcomes. For example, even if human beings were to become extinct, we might want some of our legacy to remain to potentially be discovered by alien species visiting our solar system. Given the presence of space probes throughout our solar system, it seems highly likely that these would survive any human extinction scenario, so that we have left some kind of mark on the cosmos — a cosmic equivalent of “Kilroy was here.”

Qualitative risk categories, Figure 2 from ‘Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority’ (2012) Nick Bostrom

Further distinction can be made, however, and the distinction that I would like to urge today is that of distinguishing existential risks from existential uncertainties.

The need to explicitly formulate existential uncertainty

Once the distinction is made between existential risks and existential uncertainties, we recognize that existential risks can be quantified and calculated. Ultimately, existential risks can also be insured. The industrial and financial infrastructure is not now in place to do this, although we can clearly see how to do this. And this much is obvious, because much of the discussion of existential risk focuses on potential mitigation efforts. Existential risk mitigation is insurance against extinction.

We can clearly understand that we can guard against the existential risks posed by massive asteroid impacts by a system of observation of objects in space likely to cross the path of the Earth, and building spacecraft that could deflect or otherwise render harmless such threatening asteroids. It was once thought that the appearance of comets or “new stars” (novae) in the sky heralded the death of kings of the end of empires. No longer. This is the perfect example of a former uncertainty that has been transformed into a risk by the growth of knowledge (or, at very least, is in the process of being transformed from an uncertainty into a risk).

We can also clearly see that we could back up the Earth’s biosphere about a truly catastrophic global disaster by transplanting Earth-originating life elsewhere. Far in the future we can even understand the risk of the sun swelling into a red giant and consuming the Earth in its fires — unless by that time we have moved the Earth to an orbit where it remains safe, or perhaps even transported it to another star. All of these are existential risks where “risk” is used sensu stricto.

There are a great many existential risks and global catastrophic risks that have been proposed. When it comes to geological events — like massive vulcanization — or cosmological events — the death of our sun — the sciences of geology and cosmology are likely to mature to the point where these risks are quantifiable, and if industrial-technological civilization continues its path of exponential development, we should also someday have the technology to adequately “insure” against these existential risks.

The vagaries of history and civilization

When it comes to scenarios that involve events and processes not of the variety that contemporary natural science can formulate, we are clearly pushing the envelope of existential risks and verging on existential uncertainties. Such scenarios would include those predicated upon the development of human history and civilization. For example, scenarios of wars of an order of magnitude that far exceed the magnitude of the global wars of the twentieth century are on the outer edges of risk and, as they become more speculative in their formulation, verge onto uncertainty. Similarly, scenarios that involve the intervention of alien species in human history and human civilization — alien invasion, alien enslavement, alien visitation, etc. — verge onto being existential uncertainties.

The anthropogenic existential risks that are of primary concern to Nick Bostrom, Martin Rees, and others — risks from artificial intelligence, machine consciousness, unintended consequences of advanced technologies, and the “gray goo” problem potentially posed by nanotechnology — are similarly problematic as risks, and many must be accounted as uncertainties. In regard to the anthropogenic dimension of many existential uncertainties I am reminded of a passage from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos:

“Biology is more like history than it is like physics. You have to know the past to understand the present. And you have to know it in exquisite detail. There is as yet no predictive theory of biology, just as there is not yet a predictive theory of history. The reasons are the same: both subjects are still too complicated for us. But we can know ourselves better by understanding other cases. The study of a single instance of extraterrestrial life, no matter how humble, will deprovincialize biology. For the first time, the biologists will know what other kinds of life are possible. When we say the search for life elsewhere is important, we are not guaranteeing that it will be easy to find – only that it is very much worth seeking.

Carl Sagan, Cosmos, CHAPTER II, One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue

This strikes me as one of the most powerful and important passages in Cosmos. When Sagan writes that, “[t]here is as yet no predictive theory of biology, just as there is not yet a predictive theory of history,” while leaving open the possibility of a future predictive science of biology and history — he wrote as yet — he squarely recognized that neither biology nor human history (much of which derives more or less directly from biology) can be predicted or quantified or measured in a scientific way. If we had a science of history, such as Marx thought we had discovered, then the potential disasters of human history could be quantified, and we could insure against them.

Well, we can insure against some eventualities of history, though certainly not against all. This is a point that Machiavelli makes:

It is not unknown to me how many men have had, and still have, the opinion that the affairs of the world are in such wise governed by fortune and by God that men with their wisdom cannot direct them and that no one can even help them; and because of this they would have us believe that it is not necessary to labour much in affairs, but to let chance govern them. This opinion has been more credited in our times because of the great changes in affairs which have been seen, and may still be seen, every day, beyond all human conjecture. Sometimes pondering over this, I am in some degree inclined to their opinion. Nevertheless, not to extinguish our free will, I hold it to be true that Fortune is the arbiter of one-half of our actions, but that she still leaves us to direct the other half, or perhaps a little less.

I compare her to one of those raging rivers, which when in flood overflows the plains, sweeping away trees and buildings, bearing away the soil from place to place; everything flies before it, all yield to its violence, without being able in any way to withstand it; and yet, though its nature be such, it does not follow therefore that men, when the weather becomes fair, shall not make provision, both with defences and barriers, in such a manner that, rising again, the waters may pass away by canal, and their force be neither so unrestrained nor so dangerous. So it happens with fortune, who shows her power where valour has not prepared to resist her, and thither she turns her forces where she knows that barriers and defences have not been raised to constrain her.

Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince, CHAPTER XXV, “What Fortune Can Effect In Human Affairs, And How To Withstand Her”

What remains beyond the predictable storms of floods of history are the true uncertainties, the unknown unknowns, and these pose a danger we cannot predict, quantify, or insure. They are not, then, risks in the strict sense. They are existential uncertainties.

It could be argued that our inability to take specific, concrete, effective measures to mitigate the obvious uncertainties of life has resulted in religious responses to uncertainty that systematically avoid falsifiability and thereby secure the immunity of hopes to exterior circumstances. Whether or not this has been true in the past, merely the recognition of existential uncertainty is the first step toward rationally assessing them.

Existential risk suggests a clear course of mitigating action; existential uncertainty cannot, on the contrary, be the object of planning and preparation. The most that one can do to address existential uncertainty is to keep oneself open and flexible, ready to roll with the punches, and responsive to any challenge that might arise, meeting it at the height of one’s powers; any attempt to prepare specific measures will be fruitless, and quite possibly counter-productive because of the wasted effort.

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who went from a young conspiratorial soldier who dreamed of revolution to the fiery anti-U.S. leader of one of the world’s great oil powers, died March 5 in Caracas of complications from an unspecified cancer in his pelvic area.

He was 58 and had been president since 1999, longer than any other democratically elected leader in the Americas. Vice President Nicolas Maduro announced the death.

By Juan Ferero
The Washington Post

Mr. Chavez first revealed in a brief, dramatic television address in June 2011 that he had undergone two surgical procedures in Cuba. He would go under the knife two more times, greatly weakening the once robust leader. Mr. Chavez had been elected in October 2012 to a third six-year term. But he missed his swearing-in ceremony on Jan. 10 while lying gravely ill in a Havana hospital after undergoing what his aides had called a complex operation a month before.

The country was plunged into an institutional crisis, with Mr. Chavez’s foes accusing the government of violating the constitution. But Mr. Chavez’s lieutenants managed to buy time until their leader’s pre-dawn return to Venezuela on Feb. 18. He remained at a Caracas military hospital, with his Twitter account bursting out messages such as “Onward toward victory always!! We will live and we will triumph!!”

As an obscure 37-year-old lieutenant colonel, Mr. Chavez had led a failed coup in 1992 against President Carlos Andres Perez’s government. Six years later, on Dec. 6, 1998, Mr. Chavez was elected president in a landslide after pledging to replace a broken, corrupt political system and redistribute the country’s substantial oil-fueled wealth.

Mr. Chavez left Venezuela deeply polarized, his supporters lionizing him as a courageous rebel determined to take on the elites, and his foes painting him as a dangerous demagogue and strongman.

The former army paratrooper promised a revolution and reveled in what he considered a battle to end all vestiges of the power structure then in place in Venezuela, especially its close economic and political ties to the United States.

Hugo Chavez waves to the crowd while riding atop a truck upon his arrival to the elections office in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital. Chavez rallied thousands of his supporters wearing his signature red beret and blowing kisses to the crowd as he formalized his presidential candidacy and launched his reelection bid.Second from left is Chavez’s daughter Rosines and, at right, his brother Adan.  Photo: Ariana Cubillos/AP

Quickly moving to overturn the old order, Mr. Chavez marginalized the traditional power brokers who had held influence in Venezuela, attacked establishment institutions and upended the country’s economy.

Combative in olive green uniform and red beret, Mr. Chavez called his opponents “degenerates” and “squealing pigs,” referred to the Catholic Church hierarchy as “devils in vestments” and labeled critics “counterrevolutionaries.”

“Oligarchs tremble, because now is when the revolution is going forward,” he warned in 2000, after the constitution had been redrawn and a new legislature dominated by his allies had taken over. “This is going to be delicious; we’re going to deliver a knockout punch to the counterrevolution.”

His guiding light was the 19th-century independence liberator Simon Bolivar, whose pronouncements, writings and philosophy found their way into nearly every speech Mr. Chavez gave.

The new president renamed the country the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and he labeled his philosophy Bolivarian. Mr. Chavez sought the unification of South America, reviving Bolivar’s unmet dream. He also called for a rejection of the so-called Washington Consensus, a policy that includes a drop in tariffs, adherence to tight spending, privatizations of state industries and other economic orthodoxy.

A gifted, charismatic orator with a keen ability to connect with the poor masses, Mr. Chavez was able to marshal public backing for a series of referendums that created a new constitution and permitted him to bring every important institution — from the legislature to the state oil company — under his control.

On the world stage, Mr. Chavez set Venezuela on a collision course with Washington, blaming American foreign policy and U.S.-style capitalism for much of Latin America’s social ills.

For an international left that was yearning for a passionate and magnetic leader, Mr. Chavez was a blessing.

He criticized the U.S.-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and, in a speech at the United Nations in 2006, said President George W. Bush was “the devil.” He called Tony Blair, then Britain’s prime minister, “an imperialist pawn who attempts to curry favor” with the Americans. He accused Israel of genocide, saying its treatment of the Palestinian people was akin to a “new Holocaust.”

Mr. Chavez sought out relationships with assorted rebel groups, rogues and pariah governments. He exchanged letters with Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, a Venezuelan-born terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal, who was held in a French prison. He asserted that Moammar Gaddafi’s Libya was a model of participatory democracy.

Closer to home, Mr. Chavez expressed affinity for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, a potent guerrilla group fighting Colombia’s U.S.-friendly government. His closest aides built a close relationship with FARC commanders, according to Colombian officials, rebel documents seized in army raids and former rebels.

Ties to Iran and Cuba

Mr. Chavez particularly irked the United States by building a close alliance with Iran and Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba, which found in Venezuela a deep-
pocketed benefactor to replace the one the communist island lost with the breakup of the Soviet Union.

After taking office, Mr. Chavez began providing 100,000 barrels of oil a day to Castro’s government at subsidized rates; in exchange, Castro shipped thousands of Cuban workers, from intelligence agents to doctors and sports trainers, to Venezuela.

Drawing from the largest oil deposits in the world, Mr. Chavez embarked on a foreign policy in which oil, provided cheap to prospective allies, was freely used to help build an alliance to counter U.S. influence. In a grandiose plan to unite Latin America, Mr. Chavez formed an alliance he called ALBA, the Bolivarian Alliance for the People of Our America.

He bought more than $2.5 billion in Argentine bonds, created a Bank of the South to counter Washington-based multilateral lenders and pledged to build a pipeline across the continent and construct housing, highways and oil refineries.

Venezuela’s opaque financing, though, made it difficult to ascertain exactly how many projects were completed. And by 2012, many of Mr. Chavez’s most ambitious projects — a pipeline linking Venezuela to Argentina, the Bank of the South, a refinery in Brazil — had been quietly mothballed, as Venezuela’s economy struggled.

Mr. Chavez enjoyed warm ties with most Latin American countries, but his ALBA bloc attracted as members only the anachronistic regime in Cuba and some of the poorest countries in the region, among them Nicaragua and Bolivia.

Some officials who worked with Venezuela said they were put off by Mr. Chavez’s revolutionary, anti-U.S., anti-capitalist rhetoric.

“His discourse was political, ideological, about the liberation of the Americas, of fighting the forces of imperialism,” said the former governor of Pernambuco state in Brazil’s northeast, Jarbas Vasconcelos, who had tried to obtain Venezuelan financing for an oil refinery. “He imagined commanding a revolution in all the Americas against the United States.”

The young Chavez

Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias was born July 28, 1954, in the sparsely populated plains state of Barinas, the second of six sons of a couple who were teachers. He grew up poor and dreamed of playing major league baseball (he had a gift for pitching).

Young Hugo had another passion: reading and listening to stories, his imagination fired by tales about the great battles and the prophetic words of the revolutionaries who had founded modern Venezuela.

He had an influential tutor, Jose Esteban Ruiz, a leftist historian who introduced Hugo and his own sons to everything from Machiavelli to Jean Jacques Rousseau’s “The Social Contract.”

“Put Marxism in your head, I told them,” Ruiz later recounted.

At 17, Mr. Chavez joined the Venezuelan army, and he graduated from its military academy in 1975. As a young army officer, he began to gravitate toward left-leaning superiors who spoke of the need to replace Venezuela’s two-party system.

Mr. Chavez was assigned to an anti-guerrilla unit in the eastern state of Anzoategui, where the last vestiges of a 1960s-era guerrilla movement remained. He would later say the assignment was morally confusing.

“Why am I here?” Mr. Chavez would recount to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Colombian-born, Nobel Prize-winning writer, in a 1999 interview. “On one side are peasants, dressed in military fatigues, torturing peasants who are guerrillas. On the other side are peasant guerrillas killing peasants dressed as military men.”

Forming a secret movement with a handful of other army officers, Mr. Chavez began to prepare for the day he would overthrow the state. In 1989, when a popular revolt in Caracas sparked by an increase in fuel prices was violently put down, Mr. Chavez and his co-conspirators decided their time would soon come. Their 1992 uprising quickly unraveled, but Mr. Chavez became a folk hero when the government gave him a moment to speak before the television cameras.

“Comrades, unfortunately, for now, the objectives we set for ourselves have not been achieved,” said Mr. Chavez,
ramrod-straight and dashing in his beret. Two words, “for now,” or “por ahora,” remained ingrained for many Venezuelans.

Released from prison in 1994, Mr. Chavez moved into a small apartment with an influential and well-respected leftist leader, Luis Miquilena, who recalled steering Mr. Chavez’s rage toward the virtues of democracy.

“Eventually, he came to see that he could succeed through democratic processes,” Miquilena later said. “Chavez embraced democracy out of practical considerations, not theoretical ones. He came around to the idea of participating in elections for a simple reason: He believed that he could win.”

Presidential years

Once in office, Mr. Chavez proved to be idiosyncratic and unpredictable. A natural showman, he sold his new government to the masses through his frequent speeches and the Sunday talk show in which he served as both host and guest, “Alo, Presidente,” or “Hello, Mr. President.” During the show, which could last as long as seven hours, Mr. Chavez would recount his childhood, scold his ministers, sing folk songs and announce major policy decisions.

He began neighborhood “missions” that offered literacy training in poor areas, posted doctors in crowded slums and opened state-operated markets offering subsidized food. The government claimed that under Mr. Chavez, poverty in Venezuela was reduced to 30 percent of the population from more than half when he took office.

The president also advanced on what he called 21st-century socialism, which included the nationalization of hundreds of companies, the seizure of large land holdings, price controls and currency regulations. In speeches blaming capitalism for society’s ills, Mr. Chavez said his policies had made Venezuela a more prosperous country, independent of U.S. meddling and influence.

But throughout his presidency, Venezuela’s economy was plagued by blackouts, food shortages and a lack of investment, as government interventions, from price controls to the seizures of land and companies, squelched private enterprise.

Though his government was blessed by historically high oil prices, with a barrel hitting $150 in 2008, the economy in Venezuela expanded by about 3 percent a year through his presidency, while much of Latin America boomed.

Analysts who closely tracked Venezuela said that in his long presidency, Mr. Chavez had failed to bring sustainable growth and make long-lasting improvements to modernize his country.

“Chavez deserves credit for putting his finger on the real legitimate grievances that many Venezuelans felt,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Washington think tank Inter-American Dialogue. “Where he failed was in constructing alternatives that really produced results.”

Shifter also said that although Mr. Chavez promised a clean break from the political machinations of the past, his government was marked by old-fashioned patronage and authoritarianism.

Though Venezuela held frequent elections, the government freely used its influence and economic might to sway the vote.

“I think he proved to be a despot in the end,” Shifter said. “He wasn’t a dictator. There was a fig leaf of democracy. But I think he was a despot who really wanted to control everything. He was intent on concentrating power in his own hands and was unwilling to create a system that distributed power and constrained his powers.”

Mr. Chavez’s years in office were also marked by tumult. A series of measures giving the state more control over the economy led to mounting protests in 2002 that culminated with Mr. Chavez’s ouster on April 11 after about 20 people were killed in the midst of a march near the presidential palace.

The Bush White House publicly welcomed his removal, saying that Mr. Chavez’s heavy-handed governing style had led to his own undoing. But Latin American leaders called it a coup and demanded the president’s return. An interim government headed by a mild-mannered businessman, Pedro Carmona, and a group of high-ranking military officers began to dissolve after it closed the National Assembly and supreme court.

Mr. Chavez returned to power 48 hours after being forced to leave the presidential palace, put back in place by a loyal military unit and thousands of poor barrio dwellers who had flooded the city demanding his return.

Mr. Chavez would further strengthen his position against the opposition in December 2002 when an oil strike designed to dislodge him failed. Mr. Chavez fired more than 20,000 workers at the state oil company and brought the behemoth under his watch. A 2005 boycott of legislative elections by Mr. Chavez’s opponents made the National Assembly completely pro-Chavez.

Crackdown on opposition

Fully in control by late in the decade, Mr. Chavez became increasingly aggressive against his detractors. Opposition leaders were forced to flee the country, some were arrested after openly criticizing the president, and the government yanked the broadcast license of a television network, RCTV, that had been sharply critical of his governing style. The state also created a vast propaganda apparatus, made up of a half-dozen television stations, newspapers and community radio outlets, which offered endless praise of government initiatives.

The deteriorating situation in Venezuela led the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an independent branch of the Organization of American States, to issue a blistering 300-page report in 2010 saying that Mr. Chavez’s government constrained free expression, the rights of citizens to protest and the ability of opposition politicians to function. It also outlined how the president held tremendous influence over the judiciary, with judges whose decisions the government didn’t like being fired.

Known for his personal attention to many of the details of governing, the president began to call for unusual policies that left some of his supporters scratching their heads. He moved Venezuela’s clocks back half an hour, citing the positive “metabolic effect” on the population. He accused Colombian traitors of having murdered Bolivar in 1830 and ordered a national commission made up of some of his ministers to open an investigation.

In a speech in 2011, he even wondered aloud whether the absence of life on the planet Mars was because of capitalism. “I have always said, heard, that it would not be strange that there had been civilization on Mars,” Mr. Chavez said. “But maybe capitalism arrived there, imperialism arrived, and finished off the planet.”

Mr. Chavez’s marriages to Nancy Colmenares and Marisabel Rodriguez ended in divorce. Survivors include three children from his first marriage, Rosa Virginia, Maria Gabriela and Hugo Rafael; and a daughter from his second marriage.

In the early part of his government, Mr. Chavez had met on an airplane with the writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The two spoke for hours, and the conversation left a telling impression on the author.

“I was overwhelmed by the feeling that I had just been traveling and chatting pleasantly with two opposing men,” Garcia Marquez later wrote in a profile of Mr. Chavez. “One to whom the caprices of fate had given an opportunity to save his country. The other, an illusionist, who could pass into the history books as just another despot.”

Business in many ways is like war and the internal ladder climbing of Primate Politics in modern day corporations somewhat resembles The Prince. The Satire used in the book is funny and serious; Bing did an awesome on this book. The book is very much worth reading and very interesting as well. Some people may not be able to handle what is in the book but the way I see it is that if someone cannot handle what is written in the book then they are not reality based or somewhat of a wimp.

The reality of the situation is relevant to those who study the game of business and commerce in the present period. For those who deny these Machiavellian tendencies in business well competitors or competitor driven government regulators or lawsuits would instantly crush them in my market place. You play hard and you play to win in business and of course you must go for it.

You see in business really there is no free lunch and you must search out and eventually seize opportunity, crush the competition and win. Each battle in business is determined by the smart, meanest, toughest and most ruthless. Cooperation is also smart at times as any good Prince knows and as Bing points out as he correlates Business to Machiavellian Principles. Consider all this in 2006.

“What we are witnessing is the closing of the American mind.” This not at all sanguine appraisal of the contemporary American condition is offered tonight by radio demagogue Mark Levin. This sage of American reactionary pedagogy is of course a corporate tool and shill for the capitalist establishment but that does not mean he does not have a certain understanding of the conditions underlying that problem that faces us today, albeit unwitting.

In a civil society you must have a moral order. Right versus wrong, good versus evil, just versus unjust, and means versus ends. They’re not the same thing, and when we talk about moral order, you must have a moral order to have a rule of law, for the free market to work, to advance national security.

This declaration of principles is an almost perfect elucidation of the reactionary capitalist doxa. The argument of Right and Wrong are a convenient dichotomy for those attempting to disguise their lack of moral authority. Compassionate conservatism (see compassionate capitalism) failed, globalized market based prosperity is a oxymoronic farce and supply side theology has been abandoned as the worst sort of wishful thinking by any capitalist economic theorist not wishing to be laughed out of the ivory tower. All that remains to the reactionary capitalist is the fantasy that what they do is for the Right against the Wrong; painting change as an intrinsic Wrong perpetrated against the “people”, in reality the consumer, the customer. Levin is also correct that there must be a moral order, or at least a beloved facsimile of one. This can be patriotism, or family values (actually Bible based Christian paternalist misogyny and authoritarianism), or the most potent, love for the free market. On that issue the American mind is indeed “closed”. Or at least it would appear at first glance.

The Now is the essence of the inevitable. What we experience and live on a moment by moment basis seems to demand the a priori acceptance of the conditions being experienced as inherent to existence. Or at least this is the case in the realm of societal evolution. The status quo is an addictive prospect and a potent intellectual narcotic. This is why it is so often drafted in the reactionary philosophy. “You must have a moral order to have a rule of law, for the free market to work, to advance national security.” Levin actually repeats himself three times in this sentence: the rule of law is the free market which is the main impetus and rational for the aggressive militarization of the police state and conversion of the military into a police apparatus known as National Security. “It’s a free country”, we are reminded by the political Right, their voice raising another octave. Of course, but freedom to what end? Freedom to consume? Freedom to choose where and when to consume? “Would you, sir, like to take the red train to hell or the green?” In an imperial system there is, by definition, no freedom. There cannot be. The peace maintained not for the proletariat but for those exploiting their needs and aspirations is the Pax Mercatus, the peace of the market. This peace of course is a false concept as it is in any imperially imposed idyll. Participate in the system or else allow it to drain you of life. But there then is the contradiction of freedom, the false choice; choosing to participate will just as surely drain you. So the peace, the inevitable, is the realization that life is as it is and there is no use in fighting that fact. At least you have some time and enjoyment while you are being drained! At least you get to ride the train. The freedom beloved by the people is the freedom to choose the method of their own exploitation, and of course even this is a false choice. Where do you hide in an all-pervasive system? How do you survive in a world of capital and greed by being poor and unselfish? You either consume or are consumed and of course the former is just a roundabout way of coming to the latter. So what is the moral order of the reactionary capitalist supporters? Inertia.

In his Discourses Machiavelli said

“Prudent men always and in all their actions make a favour of doing things even though they would of necessity be constrained to do them anyhow.”¹

                This is a delightfully pragmatic proposal that nonetheless exposes an insidious though essential aspect of the imperial capitalist system. The favour in this case is capitalist governmental structure’s maintaining  the right to a stable and humane living through the fruits of one’s own labor. This labor is of course appropriated by the corporate system and the government whose main interest is in maintaining the capitalist power structure and divvied up the way this power structure sees fit. The tax structure in the USA maintains a token all but subsistence level “social safety net” and finances a full blown welfare system for corporate interests. This illusion of “prosperity” is the basis of the claim that the American system is the most successful and free in the world. The proletariat is given just enough to survive the work needed to maintain the system that keeps them in thrall to the corporate controlled government structure and just enough hope to motivate them into working beyond what is healthy or sane in order to grasp at an all but impossible future in the upper echelon of the class structure. Belief in this fantasy is inculcated in the population by an educational system, funded by the arbitrary tax value of property, that is increasingly maintained as a factory for creating minds ready and willing to participate in the capitalist market. Art, social studies, physical education or anything else that would lead to a rational mind and healthy body is eliminated in favor of class-biased standardized testing and even market based programs like “Sales”, “Business”, and “finance” classes. So in the end the “American Dream” is the appropriation of labor from the proletariat so that it may be given back to them in smaller and pre-determined allotments, minus the “surplus” needed to maintain th capitalist corporate welfare system that enforces the unending toil and exploitation required to make the proletariat create the wealth that can then be appropriated. No one ever said the capitalist system was not thorough.

This of course leads to the sublimation of any sort of proletarian activism or economic consciousness. “Hard work” is what leads to “success” but of course both concepts are arbitrary standards composed and maintained by a corporate business class that has a vested interest in cheap and overworked service workers. The American mind is not closing, as Levin argues, but is already sealed shut. For the majority of workers alienated from the means of production, the creation of capital, or the mechanisms of control there is no conceivable escape from this system. In fact any attempt by the leftist class conscious forces within society, where the in fact exist at all, is shunned and attacked by the working and middle classes as a dangerous affront against the system that gives them the chance to keep themselves “comfortable” and advancing towards the goal of entering the capitalist class of entrepreneurs and managers. As John Steinbeck said, Americans are not able to move beyond this vicious and exploitative cycle because in their own minds they are but “temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” There is no better way to ensure servitude then to promise freedom.

National security is a key term to recognize and understand within the context of a global capitalist system. The national security state took hold as a seeming means unto itself around the time that the collapse of state communism left the capitalist authorities bereft of a raison d’etre relating to their increased militarization. The retardation of Communism was abandoned in favor of the expansion of the global free market. These concepts of course have essentially the same meaning; the maintenance of forces, systems, and circumstances that are friendly to exploitation of the local proletariat. The Pax Americana ended out of necessity so that the Pax Mercatus could rise, the latter being the post-national synthesis of multinational corporate capitalism with nationalistic imperialism. There is no locus of power beyond the financial centers and boardrooms of the corporate and managerial class. The entire world is feudalized and each human being owes a life-term of “hard work” to contribute to the capitalist system and its expansion.

Peace is needed for this sort of system to work, a certain sort of peace that preserves the prerogative of the market forces, which are of course merely the whims and wishes of the robber barons and multinationals. The multinational uses resources collected from the proletariat of the various industrialized nations in order to expand and maintain the status quo in regions of the world where democracy has not yet softened the desire of the proletariat to fight for a feature less assured but more humane in potential. The people of the industrial democracies do not dispute, for the most part, the choice of intervening in the affairs of “less developed” nations. This is because the potent mix of nationalism and xenophobia cultivated and stoked by the government and its reactionary tools in the media and cultural institutions. In this effort religion is less an opiate than a stimulant pushing society towards a violent hatred for and confrontation by proxy with the proletariat of another state. War is exported abroad in order to spread peace and prosperity at home. We are even told that through war will come peace, peace in the sort of way that only an un-wittingly exploited and placated democratic populace can comprehend. War is preferable to peace because peace would mean the inertia required to maintain the order would have more of a chance to be disturbed. Idle hands and idle minds tend to stray towards innovation or at least contemplation. Besides, as Lenin said

“a certain period of acute economic dislocation and chaos, which accompany all wars, and civil war in particular, is inevitable, before the resistance of the bourgeoisie is crushed”²

And the proletariat does not want war, it does not want upheaval and chaos and change. At least it does not think it wants it. Not yet at least. In this regard Levin is correct, but only by mistake. The American mind is closed, but that does not mean it cannot be opened.

***

1. The Discourses, Machiavelli, Niccolo, trans. Walker, Leslie J, and Richardson, Brian, Penguin Classics Ed.
2. 2.       On The History Of The Question Of The Unfortunate Peace, Lenin, V.I., http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/jan/07.htm

Sense the lethargy?

Hey.

First of all, it’s been days since I’ve last blogged so the momentum is wearing off. Plus we’re entering hell week with the test season and all.

The past few weeks have got me thinking real deep.

I’m not sure who visits this site anymore, but if you’re 18 and up you might have possibly heard of this great book:

This book was published in the 16th century and it has been one of THE books on philosophy and ethics. Machiavelli was one of THE authors of the Renaissance.

The book is basically about what it takes to be a prince. The Prince as in the symbol of power. It describes how a position of power should be like, touching on issues of morals and ethics.

Did I fully understand the whole damn book when I read it years ago? NO.

Do I fully understand the book as I re-looked at certain chapters? NO.

Man this is embarrassing. But no, I’m fine with it, because I admit my mental capacity just can’t measure up to the brilliance of such men and their literature.

Why was I looking at this classic again? Well, I was writing an essay on Pol Pot and I was arguing for how he could be seen as a great leader despite being seen as a terrible human being (read: genocide) and so I was referring to Chapter 17 of The Prince. You can refer to the ebook here, if you’ve totally nothing better to do now:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1232/1232-h/1232-h.htm#link2HCH0017

20th century leaders like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot; is there any way we could ever classify them as great leaders (but terrible human beings)? I do not mean a single ounce of disrespect to the unfortunate victims under their reign. I am merely trying to seek an understanding with myself as I try to comprehend the world.

Back to the topic of is it better to be feared than to be loved. It got me thinking again. As a teacher, I face the same difficulties every single day. Do I want to be loved by the students? Do I want to be feared by the students? How should I balance things out so that I can command the attention of the students? I try to be nice and friendly, and the kids climb all over me. I try to be stern and firm, the kids give up on me. Teaching is a difficult job, no doubt about that. For years I’m still trying to find that elusive balance. Yet, sometimes it could be the kids themselves who are unaware of when to be serious and when to be casual. In any case, I’ve learnt that as a teacher, you just can’t deviate too far from being your true self. If you’re someone like me, who prefers to smile and have a meaningful time instead of being cranky and act as if the world hates me (unless I’m tired, or ill, or tired and ill), it’s really difficult for me to be someone that I’m not. I’m just not that person who goes into class screaming for things to be done. Screaming… is done as a soldier. Haha. No wait I can’t say that. Screaming… is done as a patron to a cinema watching a horror story. Yup.

What about you? If you’re a leader of a group, party, country, how would you rule? Through love? Or through fear?

And do remember this book and check it out in the future.

TV Show: The Good Wife

Episode: Season 4, Episode 15, “Going for the Gold”

I don’t know why the ratings for this amazing show keep dropping. True, the useless appearance of Kalinda’s husband at the beginning was a bummer, but ever since he’s been gone, I think the show has managed to go back to its well-known and celebrated fame and strength story-wise it had at the beginning.

This episode and the previous one have especially shown what ambition and the struggle for power can do to characters we always assumed the best of, like Alicia. And on the other hand, we have seen characters who have so far appeared as cunning and manipulative, or smart and ambitious, depending on how you see them, having more compassion and ‘feelings’ than they had let us know, mainly Mrs. Florrick and Eli Gold. Plus, Carrie Preston delivering her interpretation of goofy red-haired attorney Elsbeth Tascioni is always such a delight. I love that woman more and more every time she makes an appearance!

Attorney Elsbeth Tascioni, by actress Carrie Preston

The main topic of this episode was how Tascioni succeeded in getting Eli Gold out of the whole mess of law suits he was facing with the Department of Justice, but I was more interested in how Alicia had to endure and endorse the changes and responsibilities that her new position as Equity Partner at the firm entailed.

She is put in a delicate situation, since she was siding with the associates against Diane and Will in the previous episode, but decided to take the offer of equity partner when she was given the chance. Still, she wants to remain the ‘good guy’, ‘management’ in name, but ‘associate’ at heart, the one who understands the ordeals the associates have to go through, especially since her move might have been perceived as a ‘betrayal’, albeit a smart career move. So she decides to take on the cuts in her own billable hours, instead of the associates’, like Diane suggested, whereupon Diane cuts to the point and advises her ‘to stop dressing as a peasant’ and ‘not to pretend to be an associate anymore’.

Alicia Florrick, new equity partner, with new responsibilities

So, yes, even Alicia makes the change to becoming the ‘mean partner’, because that is apparently what being in management means. The higher you get on that social ladder, the meaner and the more fearful you have to be to those still struggling underneath you. Better be feared than to be loved, says Machiavelli in “The Prince”, and I guess his words still stand high in the “How to be a good boss” guidebook in contemporary times. I always thought that was a load of crap, that you could stay a nice and beloved leader, but reality seems to contradict my hopes and burst my bubble every time, even in TV shows, where things are supposed to be a little bit more ‘bubbly’ than the real world.

On a side note, Amanda Peet, make your move on Will so that Alicia can finally be with Peter once and for all! Team Peter!

“ognuno vede quello che tu pari, pochi sentono quello che tu se”
Machiavelli. The Prince. United States: Simon & Brown, 2011. Ch 28.
SEE (English): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince
SEE(English): http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1232/1232.txt
SEE(Italian): http://www.ibiblio.org/ml/libri/m/MachiavelliNB_IlPrincipe_s.pdf (pg 94)
FACEBOOK PAGE: No official page
VARIANT:
“Everybody sees what you seem, but few know what thou art”

Una nuova parola del vocabolario

Niccolò Machiavelli appartiene a quella ristretta schiera di uomini che possono vantare il merito di aver dato origine , con il proprio nome, a una nuova parola del vocabolario: machiavellico.

E’ spesso usato in senso dispregiativo, ma dall’altra parte va considerato il fatto che i numerosi detrattori quasi mai sono stati del tutto sinceri. Il re di Prussia Federico II scrisse addirittura un saggio contro la nozione di Ragion di stato sostenuta dal pensatore e scrittore fiorentino, successivamente nella pratica applicò a fondo il principio del realismo politico.

Machiavelli, ricevuta un’educazione umanistica, fu per quattordici anni segretario della Repubblica  fiorentina, formandosi sul campo una competenza di statistica politica che sarà poi alla base delle sue opere. Dopo le dimissioni nel 1512 si trasferì in campagna dove , in attesa di un  mutamento del clima politico , compose due commedie: la Mandragola e Clizia. Numerosi furono i saggi di storia e d’arte militare Il Principe; Discorsi sopra la prima decade di Tito Livio; Dell’arte della guerra; Istorie fiorentine.

A domani

LL

Yup, really. Or, perhaps, misunderstood. If you ask me, you should never take anything in The Prince at face value. It’s not a treatise on government; no, if you’ve read your Plato and your Boethius, you’ll see it for exactly what it is: a sarcastic warning to anyone who might want to become entangled in the affairs of courts and princes.

Now, I’m not arguing that there’s nothing in The Prince that might be useful for a would-be dictator to learn. As many actual dictators have shown, what Machiavelli says can be applied for…well, if not good use, at least use. What I am arguing, however, is that a wise reader will see the life of the tyrant depicted in The Prince for what it is—a miserable existence filled with lies, self-negation, and unhappiness, one unfit for a human being—and reject it.

This isn’t the usual interpretation at all, of course. What I think Machiavelli portrays in The Prince is that, to be a proper ruler, one has to seem to be good, rather than actually be good—and, if one is going to increase one’s power, a few enemies will have to be assassinated along the way. There are two problems with this, though: Fortune’s wheel keeps spinning, no matter what you try to do, and there’s only one way to go from the top (the problem of Boethius) and the person who only seems to be good, but, in reality, possesses the soul of a tyrant, can never be properly happy (the Platonic problem). Really, these two problems are related—the idea is to become happy and stay happy in such a way that nothing Fate throws at you can change that—but Machiavelli cleverly elides both in such a way that, if you’re expecting to see mention of both (as is standard in Medieval texts), seeing neither really stands out.

So, the usual solution to the problem, starting with Plato’s Republic, passing through the Epicureans, the Stoics (especially Marcus Aurelius, who knew a thing or two about being at the top), synthesis with Christianity with Boethius and the Consolation of Philosophy, and finally becoming a commonplace in the Middle Ages.* The problem with humanity, as Pascal would later put it, is that we don’t know how to be content staying put in our rooms. Be a good person who minds his or her own business, stays out of political entanglements that might force you to compromise your ideals, enjoy what’s near at hand, don’t grasp and expect, tame your passions, and enjoy the highest good of contemplation of the Divine. This way of happiness, of a self-contained life independent from others and the forces of the world, is one that cannot be destroyed by any twist of fate. Trust to the things of the world, and the world with change, destroying your joy with it. Chase after temporal pleasures, and they will escape your grasp. Enjoy contemplation and keep out of trouble, and nobody will have any reason to trouble you—or even be able to.

Fate catches up with everyone in the end, and will take away your pleasures if it can. Boethius was a Roman consul before Theodoric had him imprisioned and beheaded. The many conditori of mercenary companies who were the scourge of Italy during the late Middle Ages,** who chased after whatever fortune they might gain by force of arms and plotting, were themselves betrayed by those who once served them, true men after their own hearts. Even Julius Caesar, so frequently lauded by Machiavelli himself, found himself murdered by his own friends on his day of triumph.

While being stabbed can’t be much fun, knowing that the men you trusted, your closest allies, are the ones doing you in, that those you loved hate you so much they think the Earth is better off without you…well, that’s not what I’d consider a good way to die.

And how does Machiavelli recommend you find happiness? He doesn’t. Now, gaining power, that’s easy enough to do: keep an eye out for enemies, assume they’re everywhere, be craftier than everyone else, don’t trust hired soldiers, look virtuous despite your bloodstained hands, do all the villainy you need right at the start, kill your soul so that your body may live…

The life of the tyrant-prince for Machiavelli seems to be nothing more than perpetually seeking for everyone who might kill him. As Hobbes points out, in a state of war—which is what The Prince seems to assume courts are—any advantages you gain over your enemies are only temporary. If raw strength won’t work, cleverness will; if cleverness fails, a charismatic firebrand can form a league against you; if charisma doesn’t work, there’s always force. Any advantages you have in this state are temporary, and the life of man is nasty, poor, miserable, brutish, and short.***

So why bother? Seriously, Machiavelli’s given you a short little treatise outlining how you’ll have to destroy your soul without finding happiness in the end. You may come into to tyrannical power for a time, but it’s only a matter of time before that one band of clever plotters you trusted stabs you on the Senate steps.

No, the way to read The Prince is like one of Plato’s strangest dialogues, the Menexenus. Socrates meets Menexenus on what’s implied is the day Pericles gives the Funeral Oration, and, after a bit of chatting, recites a speech ostensibly by Aspasia, Pericles’ mistress. At the end, Socrates asks his friend if he’d like to hear more speeches from her; Menexenus answers by thanking Socrates for the time, and that he’ll always be glad to talk to him, but the speeches he can do without.

Which is the right answer. The speech is clearly a parody of Athenian power-grabbing and ambition; by rejecting such petty things of the world in favor of the good life, Menexenus has chosen happiness over tyranny. Perhaps this is the answer we ought to give Machiavelli: thanks for the speech, Nick, but no more.

*Seriously, Chaucer is full of allusions to Boethius—and, in “Knights Tale” and Troilus, he even throws in ironically abbreviated versions of the Consolation.
**Speaking of Chaucer, there’s a fair bit of thought, especially by Terry Jones (yes, of Monty Python fame), that the Knight of Canterbury Tales fame was actually one of these mercenaries. Chaucer’s Knight has everything you ever wanted to know about these generally nasty types, as well as why Machiavelli might mention them throughout his works (and not just in the sections on why you should never hire, much less trust, mercs).
***One of these days, there will be an ethically challenged person of small stature that I’ll get to describe like that.

Niccolo Machiavelli was an Italian Politician, Diplomat and Philosopher during the late 15^th and early 16^th century. He worked in military and diplomatic affairs as an official as well as being secretary to the second Chancery of the Florentine Republic before writing The Prince (Il Principe). His work was written as a guide or to give advice on how to gain and then keep power as a ruler, hence the title it was given. Though soon after it was written, The Prince became infamous in Politics, History and Philosophy for being dismissive of conventional moral and religious values. Its readers, particularly during the 16^th century, declared the work to be devilish and some even claimed that Machiavelli himself was in fact an apostle of the Devil. The term ‘Machiavellian’ as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary is to be of cunning, scheming, and unscrupulous nature, especially in politics. This alone demonstrates the impact Machiavelli and his works have had in Political history and highlights the direction in which Machiavelli was going in his works. However, there are some people who are willing to argue that Machiavelli does not completely disregard morality in The Prince and that he simply takes an alternative stance on morality and the way in which Politics should be approached.

As previously stated, The Prince was written as a guide for someone such as a Prince or Monarch on gaining and maintaining his power. Machiavelli wanted to demonstrate why it is that some sovereigns are more successful than others. He wanted to show how so many in the past have failed to gain respect from their people, failed to protect themselves from potential challenges to their authority and failed to see whom they should trust or distrust. In attempting to do this, Machiavelli suggests a number of harsh and immoral methods, to which he openly admits. He says that ‘…the prince should choose [to be]
the fox and the lion: the lion can’t defend itself against traps and the fox can’t defend itself against wolves, so the prince needs to be a fox to discover the traps and a lion to scare off the wolves.’ (Chapter 18, pp.37) In this he is highlighting the cunning nature of a fox and the ferocious nature of a lion, then pointing out that a successful Prince will have the qualities of both creatures. This would allow him the wisdom for making decisions and fierceness for scaring his potential threats without being hated by his people. When first taking or coming into power, Machiavelli urges his Prince to be forceful and cruel towards his people. He gives two examples of men that were able to seize power by mercilessly killing anyone who stood in their way and upon doing so they instilled a great fear in their people. Although merciless killing may incur hatred towards the new Prince, Machiavelli maintains that it is better to be cruel at the start of his reign than to be cruel continuously as people will eventually see a better side to their sovereign. Another advantage is that a Prince is less likely to be challenged by a people who fear him, knowing that his punishments will be merciless. Machiavelli then goes on to talk about the nature of men, saying that they are ‘ungrateful, fickle, deceptive, cowardly and greedy… and a Prince who relies on their promises and doesn’t take other precautions is ruined.’ (Chapter 17, pp.36) By this, he is not only suggesting that the Prince should be prepared against his people but also that when he makes his own promises, he does not have to keep them if it would no longer benefit him. This is because it is better to maintain his power than to do the righteous thing. These examples both demonstrate the way in which Machiavelli encourages immoral (cunning, fearsome and dishonest) behavior in the name of power.
Machiavelli also encourages his Prince to create a reputation amongst his people of being miserly by raising taxes and introducing more and more reasons to take money from them. This way, Machiavelli argues, when the Prince one day decreases the taxes or spends money on various projects and protecting his people from attacks, they will be more inclined to praise him for his generosity. In doing this, the Prince can better manage his finances without becoming hated for his greed or alternatively becoming vulnerable from his over-generosity. Furthermore, Machiavelli states that the Prince needs only to appear morally good to his people, without actually being morally good, if it means greater benefit for him. He needs to learn quickly how to decide what is expedient in each situation that arises so he can maintain his power. That is because ‘everyone sees what you appear to be, but few feel what you are, and those few don’t have the courage to stand up against the majority opinion which is backed by the majesty of the state.’ (Chapter 18, pp. 38) Thus allowing the Prince to do what he needs by any means necessary, without the disapproval of his people. Additionally, he recommends that the Prince befriend any outsiders that could benefit him but none that could post an enormous threat to him. By doing this, he will be equipped with soldiers but not in fear of losing his sovereignty to a foreign ruler. For Machiavelli, power is the priority and if a Prince fails to do whatever is necessary to maintain his power, regardless of whether it is virtuous, he will inevitably lose his sovereignty. These are further immoral tactics that Machiavelli employs in his Prince by inciting him to be cruel and deceitful to his people as well as his allies for his own personal gain.
On the other hand, there are some who maintain that Machiavelli was a consequentialist and therefore understood morality not through the actions but through their consequences. This is why they suggest that the advices Machiavelli gives to the Prince would appear to be immoral but in the end, they are only for the sake of maintaining the Prince’s power. This can be validated when Machiavelli says that the Prince ‘will be showing more real mercy than those who are too lenient, allowing a breakdown of law and order that leads to murders or robberies. Why? Because such breakdowns harm the whole community, whereas a prince’s death sentences affect only one person at a time.’ (Chapter 17, pp.35)Here Machiavelli is suggesting that where the Prince may be acting immoral by sentencing a criminal to death, the consequence of doing so is better for his state as well as his own sovereignty, than allowing criminals to exist and watching the breakdown of society. Furthermore, it is said that where Machiavelli does encourage deviance from morality for the sake of the Prince’s power, he does not mean that the only way to maintain power is to be immoral. He advocates that the Prince be ‘…mentally prepared to switch any virtue off if it will serve [his] purposes’ (Chapter 18, pp.38), meaning that the Prince should act moral unless and until it will benefit him to act otherwise. Various other translations and interpretations of The Prince outline this point more clearly by stating that the Prince should not deviate from what is good, if it is possible. As stated above in regards to seizing power, Machiavelli advises that the Prince acts cruel to the people of his new empire in order to instate fear amongst them. However, he also advises that the cruelty not last long so that the Prince can achieve what he wants without being too punitive and thus minimising immorality as much as possible. This indicates that where there is no doubt that Machiavelli was supporting immoral behavior at times, he wasn’t by any means suggesting that only the evil will succeed or that immoral behavior in itself is acceptable.
There are also a number of other alternative views on The Prince. For example, In the 18^th Century, Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that Machiavelli’s work was not a guidebook, nor a collection of advices for success as a Monarch. Rather, according to Rousseau, it was a book of Republicans and a satire in which he could show his readers how immoral and deceptive many people (in particular those who had surrounded him for many years) in power were. If this were true, it could suggest that Machiavelli was instead appealing against those who do disregard morality in the name of sovereignty. In more recent times, Philosopher Leo Strauss expressed that where Machiavelli was far from being an evil man, The Prince was equally not evil. Instead, he thinks that it was deliberately written with a sense of comedy and irony. Politician Antonio Gramsci also interpreted The Prince as not being a guidebook for a potential Monarch; he considered that Machiavelli wrote it with the intention that common people would read it, not the Monarchs and Sovereigns who already knew everything outlined in the book. These ideas and thoughts about The Prince can all be used to reinforce the argument that it was not written to show us that the Prince could completely disregard morality because they offer alternative takes on the reasons and concepts behind it. To further defend Machiavelli, Stuart Hampshire stated that ‘Machiavelli argued that it was irresponsible and morally wrong to apply to political action the moral standards that are appropriate to private life and to personal relations: standards of friendship and of justice.’ (Public and Private Morality, pp.49) This again implies that Machiavelli simply took an alternate stance on morality and that he looked at Politics as well as the nature of man realistically.

Machiavelli differs from the traditional Christian take on morality and it is undeniable that he often gives reason and justification for the Prince to act immorally, which can usually lead to the assumption that he was evil and devilish. However, when considered closely, the reader will see that morality was always important to Machiavelli and that he promoted good behavior whenever possible. Machiavelli continuously demonstrates why it is so crucial for the Prince to be immoral to keep his sovereignty and arguably his advice holds a great deal of truth which makes his work effective, regardless of its moral standards. Regarding whether or not Machiavelli shows us that the Prince can completely disregard morality, it seems logical to agree that he does. None-the-less, this does not then imply that Machiavelli shows us that the Prince should always completely disregard morality. The difference between ‘can’ and ‘should always’, may lead to contrasting interpretations of Machiavelli’s stance on morality within The Prince because had he intended for the Prince to always disregard virtuous behavior, he would have left no room for it at all. The simple fact that Machiavelli recommended that his Prince only be ready to act immorally shows us that he wanted his reader to understand the vital role of both virtue and cruelty within Politics.

References

Gramsci, A. Note sul Machiavelli, sulla politica e sullo stato moderno (Turin: Einaudi 1966). Translated by Portelli, H. English Translation in Selections from the prison notebooks.

Hampshire, S., Scanlon, T.M., Williams, B., Nagel, T. and Dworkin, R., 1978. Public and Private Morality. Cambridge University Press.

Machiavelli, N., 1513. Translated by Bennet, J. ed. 2010. The Prince

Rousseau, J., 1762. Translated by Bennet, J. ed. 2010. The Social Contract

 Strauss, L., 1958. Thoughts on Machiavelli. The University of Chicago Press, Ltd,. London

Fiery Firenze Sunset

“Tonight the sun has died like an Emperor…great scarlet arcs of silk…saffron…green…crimson…and the blaze of Venus to remind one of the absolute and the infinite…and along the lower rim of beauty lay the hard harsh line of the hills.”  John Coldstream

I couldn’t wait to watch the sun set over Florence. After dinner in the Piazza Vecchio, we crossed over to the west bank and wound our way on foot upwards to the primo spot above the city for the best of views. The Piazzale Michelangelo. Extremely popular with tourists, it affords the most spectacular view of the city and all of its historical buildings. The lazy Arno River with its three bridges trails before it, passing serenely into the hinterland.

Arno River with Three Bridges-Ponte Vecchio, Ponte Trinita, and Ponte alla Carraia as seen from Piazzale Michelangelo. Notice also the winding street by Poggi. The Palazzo Vecchio, Duomo, Baptistry and Bell Tower loom in the background.

At the time, in 1869, when designer and architect Giuseppe Poggi built the Piazzale Michelangelo, Florence was the capital of Italy. As a result, it was decided the entire city needed a risanamento, or rebirth, which involved heady urban renewal of elegant grandiosity. Poggi’s most outstanding accomplishment, however, was the Viale dei Colli on the left bank. At eight kilometers long, the tree-lined street winds up the hill of San Miniato, ending at the Piazzale Michelangelo.

Michelangelo-Bronze Copy of the Original, at his Piazzale Michelangelo

Old City Wall as seen from Piazzale Michelangelo

Old city walls have surrounded Florence in a protective embrace since the second century. Most of it has been destroyed to build the winding ring road around the city. Remains of the wall, including towers, can be seen from the park. The gates, no longer in existence, were embellished with scenes of the Madonna and Saints, standing 35 meters tall.

Most all of Florence’s history is laid out before us on the skyline. As twilight descends on this vibrant renaissance town, golden lights illuminate the stone facades of foremost landmarks.

Santa Croce-Gothic Style Franciscan Church with 14th C. Frescoes by Giotto and the tombs of Michelangelo, Galileo and Machiavellli

Palazzo Vecchio-Heart of Florence’s Social and Political Life for Centuries.

Our day in Florence drew to a close in the most dreamlike manner. Despite lengthy strolls through museums and dinner on the Piazza Vecchio with delicious wine, my most vivid memory is of Firenze’s dazzling rays of amber sunlight stretched out over the city in waves of crystal beauty. Breathtaking beauty….the kind that travels straight to the heart and soul, and leaves you longing for more.

Hilltop Villa

The Twilight Shift

Good Night , Florence….Buona Notte Firenze!

What is this crazy world in which thieves are regulated and must maintain a monthly quota. Where even beggars have unionized (laughably, the head beggar is worse off than the rest because no one is willing to give up the extremely high price he’s entitled to). And of course, the Assassin’s guild is almost completely legitimate. This Patrician guy seems to have thought of everything. Certainly, he’s solved every problem, if not in the most traditional of senses (I think I heard someone say that he turns every problem into the solution for another problem. Seems about accurate. Also, heard him compared to Machiavelli’s Prince. Somehow did both high school and college and never had to read that). Although, I suppose I should have known what to expect by the dedication. But in reality, I feel the dedication was another false trail as well. We did get the perspective of a guard. The City Watch to be specific. However, they still seemed like heroes, albeit extremely incompetent heroes. And despite their often hilarious incompetence, they seem to get the job done (Eh I suppose this could be debated as really the problem gets solved by a dragon, not the City Watch but who’s counting).

Needless to say, Captain Vimes and crew live to drink . . . I mean fight another day. However, the interesting parts of this book had less to do with the actual plot and characters (together they both seemed quite whimsical), and more to do with those false trails I mentioned earlier. Pretty much everything within this novel seemed to involve some sort of misdirection. Nearly everything played off your expectations, building you up to believe you were about to go one place with the story, and instead going somewhere completely different. The English Major in me wants to start raving on about satire and about how Pratchett is using Parody to make a statement about the different conventions of fantasy. My English Major self also wants to say that the statement is: these old tropes and cliches are worn out and over done, and there needs to be some innovation in the fantasy genre. And maybe back in 1989, when this novel was first published (wow this book is actually older than me!) that was the case. Unfortunately, I haven’t the slightest thing to compare it with as my knowledge of fantasy during the 80′s is effectively nil. Sorry for that huge build up for nothing.

I was intrigued with Captain Vimes’ as a caricature of the detective. I seem to remember Raymond Chandler describing the detective as ” . . . a common man, and yet an unusual man . . . He must be the best man in his world, and a good enough man for any world . . .” (The Art of Murder). Now compare that to Captain Vimes, and it seems like what he should have said was: a common man if an unusual man . . . It must be the best world for this man because he’s not good enough for any other world . . . Ok, maybe that is a little harsh, but I think we understand that the humor in Vimes’ character comes from his inability. He wouldn’t be right for any other story. However, when we consider the type of city represented by Ankh-Morpork (strip away all the humor and see what we are really dealing with. Ankh-Morpork is a pretty grim place), it seems that everything Chandler describes is true about Vimes. It also seems like the type of detective Chandler is imagining would not last a second on Discworld no matter how fit he was for adventure. Vimes on the other hand belongs in this world. It is the world he lives in.

In conclusion, I think it is safe to say that I enjoyed Guards! Guards! The pacing was perhaps a little slow but the jokes and style of Pratchett’s writing were worth the time even if I’m still not sure what to make of the plot. I know there are more Discworld books out there and I believe Guards! Guards! was 8th in the series so I’m not sure what possessed me to start there (ahem BSFS book club ahem) but I’m certainly glad that I did. I suppose now the only question is, where to go next?

Any comments would be greatly appreciated. Not sure whether to start at the beginning of the Discworld books or just read the next City Watch book. I guess time will tell.

Oh and Pratchett needs to do a series set in L-space if that isn’t already a thing. Seemed like too good of a set up to not go anywhere. Alright, until next time . . . Laters!

Freedom of speech is broadly assumed to be a good thing these days, as is demonstrated in its inclusion in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 19 reads, “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” This document was adopted in the wake of the atrocities of the Second World War.

However, freedom of expression, as a positive good, is of relatively recent vintage. Its existence as a “universal” right was spread by the “Declaration of the Rights of Man” and its appearance in that document can be credited to the philosophers of the Enlightenment.

Our current notions of human rights can be traced through the Enlightenment back to the Protestant Reformation.

The first entry in The Guardian’s “Timeline: A History of Freedom of Speech” in which freedom of speech seems to be broadly advocated for the public is a quotation from Erasmus, the sixteenth century “Prince of the Humanists”. In Education of a Christian Prince he wrote, “In a free state, tongues too should be free.”

Erasmus’ close contemporary Machiavelli famously also wrote a book of advice for a young ruler. Importantly, unlike Erasmus, Machiavelli decoupled the proper exercise of political power from traditional morality and virtue.

In 1517, a year after Erasmus wrote Education of a Christian Prince, Martin Luther famously posted his ninety-five thesis, leading to a break with the Roman Catholic Church. At first, the rights of the new Lutheran Church were asserted against those of the Roman Catholic Chuch, but eventually it became clear that even those individuals that had rejected the authority of Rome disagreed among themselves. The differing interpretations of scripture would lead to competing groups that Brad S. Gregory calls “moral communities.”

Radical Protestants, such as John Milton, insisted that religious belief should be left to the conscience of the individual. In the Areopagitica, he traces out the arguments which will recur in discussions of freedom of speech and expression.

According to Gregory,

Because individuals disagreed about the meaning of God’s word, individuals and not politically favored churches were and had to be the bearers of rights, beginning with the right to religious liberty

Gregory goes so far as to say that the medieval ethics based on virtue was “replaced” by ethics based on rights. The destruction caused by the wars that accompanied religious conflict, and the consequent political instability, needed a solution. Repression of religious minorities was not sustainable. Toleration was the solution and “the discourse of religious toleration was simultaneously a discourse of individual rights.”