Machiavelli's advice for nice guys

Found this elsewhere and thought it worth sharing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTQlnmWCPgA

Thoughts?

The entirety of The Prince can be summed up more or less by the words: Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you want peace prepare for war.

I totally agree with both the video and the phrase I just posted. It's not enough to wish and act well in your own life if all around you violence and cruelty eat away at everything you hope to achieve. Sometimes all the good intent in the world will not stop the wolf from eating the lamb. Sometimes the kindly dog that never barked at a soul in his life needs to remember he has fangs and even use them. It's not ideal, it's not nice, it's not pretty, but dreams don't get things done. Action does.

If all we ever have is good intent while letting evil win what good are we really doing. Its all well and good to not like violence but it does not change the fact that against some people nice words and passive resistants only leads to a higher body count. In short sometimes you need to get your hands dirty to get the thing done. It should not be a first, second, or even third option but it should not be sidelined all togeather.

if youre being nice because youre afraid to be mean then you arent really nice, youre just afraid

"I am a Jedi, an instrument of peace"

what I took away from that video is that nice guys finish last, and if you are a nice guy and don't want to finish last, then you need to stop being such a nice guy. If you have to step away from who you are to win, then I say that you are playing the wrong game. Maybe you should think about redefining what constitutes a win.

In my Army days I spent some time at the military prison at Fort Leavenworth. It is not unlike other federal prisons; it's full of killers and rapists and violent people of all sorts. The difference is that those "bad guys" were highly trained in the art of violence, and the only way to keep the peace was through violence, and I got real good at it. Every day was a battle of wits, and brawn, against the worst the US military had to offer, and I had no problem throwing down at the drop of a hat, but every time I did it took a piece of my soul with it. So much that I lost all compassion for humanity; I had become as cold-hearted and ruthless as the criminals except I had the badge of righteousness on my side. My wife eventually gave me an ultimatum - it was her and the kids, or the Army because I was no longer the man she married, and it was not a good environment to raise children in. So in a moment of clarity, I walked away from it all

I tell you all of this so that when I say "I am a Jedi, and instrument of peace," you will know that I say it not because I fear violence, but that I have lived it, and now have chosen to reject violence

Machiavelli is wrong, a good person does not have to use the tools of the bad to get ahead. When you get to a place that you decide that that is not an option, other avenues open up and a new skill set will emerge so that you can get ahead without taking the "low road."

OB1Shinobi - being afraid of violence, and rejecting violence are two very different concepts.

MadHatter - only in the rarest occasions when all other options have been exhausted, and peoples lives are in danger should violence be an option.

Rick I am going to have to disagree with your assessment of the video and your response to me. The video is not saying you must use the tools. It is saying you must be aware of and ABLE to use them should it be needed. It does not encourage becoming the bad guy. It is just saying that sometimes you need to use the same skill set. Violence can harm the innocent or it can stop someone from doing harm. Both take the same skill set. That is the point I feel is trying to be made.

As for your response to me about only in the rarest of situations when lives are in danger well I disagree unless I am not understanding you correctly. Someone bullying or beating their spouse is not life threatening. But it needs to be stopped. Violently if reason does not sink in. Someone close to me tried to slap around his girlfriend in front of me. Warnings and talking to him did not work. OC spray settled it fast. No one's life was in danger there but the violence had to end. So I do not think that a life needs to be at risk for violence to be needed and justified. If someone tries to harm the innocent they need to be stopped violently if reason and threats do not sink in. However, if you meant if someone is at risk of bodily harm rather than literal life threatening danger then I would agree and am sorry for the misunderstanding.

My point is that violence though rare ( and getting rarer ) is still something that happens. And being trained to deal with it is something that takes time, effort, and regular training. It's a skill set that gets sloppy without regular training. So its best to train for it and hope never to use it.

Rick D wrote: "I am a Jedi, an instrument of peace"

what I took away from that video is that nice guys finish last, and if you are a nice guy and don't want to finish last, then you need to stop being such a nice guy. If you have to step away from who you are to win, then I say that you are playing the wrong game. Maybe you should think about redefining what constitutes a win.

You can behave in this manner only so long as the thin veneer of civilization endorses it. You had the ability to walk away from a situation you found untenable but what if you could not do this? What if you were forced into a place where you had no choice to walk away? What if civilization ended or we had allowed the world to be taken over by a Hitler or more personally you were cornered in an alley by thugs? This is the very thing that Neitzsche warns about in his writings on master verses slave morality. The idea that if you cant get what you want, then settle for what you have.

Slave morality values things like kindness, humility, and sympathy, while master morality values pride, strength, and nobility. For example when it comes to an emotion such as envy, it is generally considered to be a negative or evil emotion. But according to master morality there is nothing wrong with envy as long as we use it as a guide to what we desire. Things that make us envious should be used as indicators to what we might one day become. It’s not that we will defiantly achieve those things one day but we should face up to our true desires and put up a heroic fight to achieve what we want. The use of violence would be similar to this in the idea that its not necessarily a bad thing but sometimes a necessary means to an end. This is the concept of being a superman.

On the other hand to have slave morality is to lack the stomach to fight for what we really desire in life. Instead they make virtues of this cowardice. It is a philosophy of denouncing what they desire because they lack the drive to pursue it and instead praise what they did not want but already have. This is a herd mentality where sexual abstinence turns to purity, weakness turns to goodness, submission become obedience and vengeance gives way to forgiveness. Its a position of never "standing up" to the bullies in our lives and fighting for ourselves or others.

One way to interpret Machiavelli's statement (and this is just one way to see it) is that he is an advocate of the philosophy of peace through superior firepower. One can often maintain peace by demonstrating an overwhelming show of force to those that would want to inflict violence upon you. If you demonstrate that you are thoroughly prepared to fight and will likely win, your enemies are less inclined to pick a fight. In theory, this can work. Even for nice guys. A Jedi can be an instrument of peace by showing themselves to be a formidable and worthy adversary of violence.

The problem with this theory arises when your adversary is also preparing for war and demonstrating an overwhelming show of force. In this case, you will have peace, but only because you both have a gun to your head and you're waiting to see who will flinch first. This philosophy of "mutually assured destruction" is what led to the Cold War between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. While it was preferable to an actual nuclear conflict in which everyone loses, it still created an environment of constant fear.

We see this scenario playing out now in the U.S. law enforcement community in their battle against violent crime. In an effort to maintain peace, officers began carrying more powerful weapons than the bad guys, so the criminals went and got bigger weapons themselves. The police began using SWAT tactics, and the criminals started using armor piercing rounds in semi-automatic weapons. This has created an environment of fear on both sides that has many people suspicious of cops and law enforcement abuse of power while the police are quick to use their weapons out of fear for their lives every day. It will continue to escalate until the superior firepower is removed from the equation, but at this point, at least in the U.S., I don't know that it is possible.

....a good person does not have to use the tools of the bad to get ahead. When you get to a place that you decide that that is not an option, other avenues open up and a new skill set will emerge so that you can get ahead without taking the "low road."

i think its ok to use the military under certain conditions.
i dont think its ok to allow our military to rape under any circumstances that i know, or that i can reasonably imagine.
so, i do agree with your point and i thought the same thing when i saw the video, as far as being willing to use the same methods as the "the enemy"

i believe in the moral high ground.
we can rightly claim moral superiority by remaining loyal to a set of ethical standards even when others dont. thats what (at least hypothetically) makes cops morally superior to criminals and judges morally superior to drug dealers
we can say that yes, we really are better than them because we have lines that we will not cross

being afraid of violence, and rejecting violence are two very different concepts.

not for those who reject violence out of fear

the first moral achievement is to get passed the fear. to be able to stand up for yourself and be capable of acting in your own best interests in spite of your fear
then you can choose peace and kindness and consider that a moral achievement

i also didnt say "violence"
i said "if youre being nice because youre afraid to be mean then you arent really nice, youre just afraid"

i was thinking more generally of people who avoid any kind of conflict because they cant bring themselves to challenge or confront others. especially when they then pretend that their restraint, which was based on their fear, is some kind of a moral virtue.

MadHatter pointed out a few things about my last post that I should clarify via PM, and I'm glad he did.

Saying "semiautomatic weapons" is way too broad when referring to the escalation of firepower. Most modern firearms are semiautomatic, but that doesn't necessarily make them "superior firepower". For instance, a 9mm handgun can be semiautomatic and fire 10 rounds very quickly, which is why many cops use it, but it does not compare to am AR-15 or AK-47. The problems I see arise when criminals gain access to high powered semiautomatic rifles that are illegally obtained and may also be illegally modified or fitted with illegal magazines or ammunition. Law enforcement has no choice but to fight back with equally powerful weapons, and that is unfortunate.

I also used the example of armor piercing rounds, but this is very uncommon and not really a fair argument to make. There are some rare examples of criminals that used them, but this ammunition is mostly relegated to the military. What I do see more often is criminals using body armor to protect themselves from being shot by police that allows them to survive longer and continue to shoot at police. Thankfully the police have this same protection.

I'd also like to add that Machiavelli's stance was not far off from Sun Tzu's tactics described in The Art of War. He says that if you are constantly prepared to wage war it becomes easier to avoid it all together, and if you do have to fight, you can end the conflict quickly and decisively with superior strategy and preparedness. I do believe there is value in these lessons for the "nice guys" advocating peace.

Wow, there's multitudes to say here - which I guess is obvious, since five centuries after Machiavelli left us, we are still wrestling with what he wrote.

Before I go on, I'll offer my admiration to Rick D. Rick - all comments about the topic here aside, the personal transformation you took on during your time in the Army and your emergence from it is a profoundly admirable thing. It's been said that the one who, ensnared in darkness, emerges into the light adds more to uplifting the world than even the one who has spent an entire life in virtue. I see what you've done as contributing to that.

The crux of this video's credibility seems to me to rest on it's assumption that what we most need to understand is (quoting from the video), "how to be effective, not just good." In other words, it assumes what we accomplish is more important than what we become. While I can't claim outright that this assumption is incorrect - I can see the justification for it - I can also see justification for its antithesis. That assumption could be wrong, in which case so would be Machiavelli's advice.

I'm remembering a response to Vince Lombardi's famous quote, "Nice guys finish last." I don't know who said this, but the opposing comment was, "Whomever said 'Nice guys finish last' didn't understand that nice guys aren't running in the same race."

I also recall a story once shared by a friend who pursued a form of modern-day shamanism. In young adulthood, he was dating a Native American woman, and also mentoring a young man in her tribe in his teens. The young man somehow had made some enemies among a band of roughnecks in his tribe, and my friend got wind that they were preparing to confront and harm his student. He knew that duty called him to come to the student's defense, but was nervous that he could not defend the student from the overwhelming number of ruffians that were likely to be involved. After my friend shared his feelings with his girlfriend, she responded with the wisdom of her heritage: "Your responsibility is to follow the honorable path in support of your apprentice. You are not responsible for the outcome; that is in the hands of the Great Spirit." In a nutshell, she was saying that the values that my friend chose to embody, what he chose to represent in the world, was more important in the grand scheme of things than how the situation unfolded. This perspective, IMHO, is equally as valid as Machiavelli's view that effectiveness is everything.

If we stick though just with the idea that effective outcomes are all that matters, Mahatma Gandhi also makes an interesting point. After World War 2 ended, he was asked if the Axis powers would have fallen if the people of Europe had followed his path of nonviolent resistance instead of fighting back. Gandhi had to take some time to reflect, but his answer was insightful; he said that yes, he believed that nonviolent resistance could in the end have turned back the tide of evil - but that in the process, many more people would have died than was the case in our actual history. One interpretation I see in this is that Gandhi did not see one form of resistance, at least in this case, as inherently better than the other; their only difference is that peaceful and violent resistance offered a different mix of benefits and costs. In other words, resisting nicely and resisting ferociously both would result in different kinds of suffering - but in either case, resistance was vital to eliminating the threat. He did not even suggest submissive compliance to totalitarian rule.

It's a little off on a tangent, but in closing I'm also reminded of the quote from Mr. Miyagi from the original "Karate Kid" movies; "Best defense is no be there when fight happens."