Alexander, the emperor of the most vast and powerful empire on earth at the time, grants Diogenes a singular request from himself. Diogenes, instead of asking for great power and influence as most men would, asks Alexander to stop standing in his sunlight. This shocking and provocative story is one of the most interesting lessons one can take from history.

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And covenants, without the sword, are but words, and of no strength to secure a man at all.”

–Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Part II, Chapter 17

This phrase by Hobbes is a critical insight. If one wishes to uphold their government, ideological, and philosophical structure, they must be able to defend it. Obviously the sword is not always literal; ideologically and philosophically, that “sword” in a civilized society takes shape in power, influence, and the ability to effect change for the future of a society. The sword can also be quite literal, as it was in the time of Hobbes.

For instance, for a government to uphold its words and laws, it must quite literally use force to do so. It is also paramount that a government possesses an adequate amount of force to defend itself from other governments who could attack it. This is the literal sword; it is the state and its ability to remain sovereign even when great powers threaten it.

Ideologically, this “sword” takes a different shape. In representative democracies, which the modern West is governed by, it is all about attaining the majority of votes to either come into power or maintain and grow power. The ideology must first of all be attractive on a mass scale, otherwise it will fail, but then, after it gains momentum and assumes mass adoption, it must defend itself, otherwise it will be uprooted by another ideology. This defense takes place across a few different vectors. The first defense is the ability for the ideology to create identity-binding characteristics so that a person who adopts these ideals will defend it. This happens because humans tend to bind their identity to major pillars in their life, and one major pillar is the political nature of a person. This is stronger in some and weaker in others, but it is still adopted as part of their identity. And once an ideology has successfully tethered itself to someone’s perceived self-identity, this person will defend, rationalize, and even performatively signal virtue to others within the ideology.

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These effects are important for that ideology to spread and maintain itself; it is also a built-in defense mechanism that can additionally propagate the ideology if the person is charismatic and charming. The “sword” of ideology is not physical violence, which is unattractive and off-putting in civilized society; it is the ability to bind itself to a person’s perceived identity. This creates the conditions necessary for the transmission and propagation of an ideology. The people are the “sword” of ideology.

Philosophically, the “sword” is interconnected within the ideological sword. This happens because philosophy, or a worldview, is intrinsic to any ideology. Specifically, though, for the philosophical “sword,” there is a key distinction. Ideology tells a person how to behave politically and what values to espouse, but philosophy is the underlying assumption of how a person thinks. So instead of only saying we need to reform the government to make it fair for all people, the philosophical angle would be a layer beneath that, and with that statement one would have to assume, with no added context, that this person believes a perfect governmental system is possible on earth and that there is a progression humans have made throughout history getting closer to that perfect form. This is the “sword”; it is the unexamined assumptions beneath every statement, the underlying foundational beliefs that shape the thought processes of people. So for a philosophical “sword” to be effective, it would have to be deeply ingrained in a society to transmit itself beneath the surface to everyone.

The philosophical “sword” in modern Western society is liberalism. Every assumption a person makes about life, government, and people stems from the basic premises of liberalism. This is not partisan liberalism either; it is the philosophical foundation for the entire Western societal order. The common pillars go something like this: individuals have inalienable rights, such as life, liberty, and property. This means that these rights are intrinsic and not contingent on a government. This “sword” is deeply entrenched in society, and it is not as easy to locate or uproot as an ideology, because the institutions and power structures still use these assumptions to govern, and they are also deeply ingrained into the founding institutions and laws of society. This is also present in the rituals of a democratic society, as there are debates, elections, and a common consensus that every person’s vote matters.

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It is now clearly understood that the sword is not so literal in modern societies, because there is no longer barbaric rule in the modern West, and force has been monopolized by the state. It may seem that this has all been relatively spelled out and obvious so far, that the sword rules and it comes in many different forms. In a perfect world, yes, it is all relatively obvious, but in practice people do not think like this.

The masses think in terms of principles and are satisfied by idle gestures. They do not fully understand the sword either, because it is somewhat complex in how it presents itself. Even in the concepts already mentioned, there were layers to every sword. The masses do not think in terms of layers; they only see the surface. That is why any average person could have understood the quote’s application to governing affairs, but only a few have ever thought deeply enough to see the sword in the metaphorical yet still very real sense.

This allows cunning men to succeed, because they care not if they lie; they only care about attaining power. This is the “sword” of politicians, statesmen, and political figures that every person must be aware of. They keep their covenant of power through lying, manipulating, and emotionally misleading the masses. Their “sword” is their words and promises. The effective nature of this sword is that they have convinced themselves their pursuit of power and influence is righteous enough that they are not restrained by the bounds of morals at all. Or, if they truly believe themselves to be moral, then they have rationalized themselves into a form of the ends justifying the means. It is also very helpful for these cunning men that the masses are fickle and easily manipulated through emotion and promise. It is also very helpful that it matters not if they lie, because there is always someone else to blame for their misdeeds and broken promises.

The sword was never one thing. It is force, then identity, then unexamined assumption, then the men skilled enough to wield all three without ever being seen holding any of them. Most people only ever learn to recognize the first kind, the literal one, and so they walk through life defenseless against the other three.

No amount of romanticized ideals or illusion will make the “sword” disappear. Clarity can only tell one where to expect the blow. Civilization doesn’t forget this truth, it simply forgets those who saw it.

This is the state of modern philosophical, political, and cultural discourse. Hidden assumptions or first principles are not examined closely by the masses. Most people have never thought or even seen the need to question their own hidden assumptions such as why democracy is a superior form of governance.

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To My Fellow Men,

The flippant nature of politicians in this age is quite advantageous for those willing to exploit them. A modern politician, while claiming to believe in a principle one day, will flip his opinion the next for the right amount of money or power.

This is unsurprising in this decadent age where men worship money rather than principles, where the only principle that matters is the amount of money donated to a political cause or candidate. It makes turning my own interests into the interests of the government of our society very easy.

Obviously this is subject to competition among those who have the resources to play the same game as I, but my own interests are relatively small compared to those who are my alleged competition, so collusion becomes not only predictable and easy to acquire but a necessity. This necessity is derived from the fact that I support the interests of those I collude with, and they support the interests I represent. This is only possible through the fact that those I collude with benefit from promoting my interests regardless of whether they like me as a person. These men understand that my own interests are somewhat tied to theirs, and if they were to break from me or I from them then the necessity may evaporate.

The fickle nature of the many is fascinating to watch. They see their politicians flip their opinions and become essentially a different character than they were a decade ago, and yet they still vote for those politicians. It truly makes one think, are the many truly so ignorant that they cannot see the game that is being run before their own eyes? Or do the many just love to be lied to constantly, do they only love to feel like they were heard, yet when nothing happens they do not withhold their vote but fall into the same mechanism as before. Even a man such as myself, who routinely takes advantage of the nature of this current generation of politicians who have no conscience, no morals, and no shame for their flippant nature and the constant betrayal of their promises, feels that men are either far too unintelligent and ignorant to understand what is happening, or they just love being lied to constantly without regret.

Or perhaps it is the romanticized idealism they inherit from their fathers about their society? Do they truly believe that democracy empowers them? Do they truly believe they are more free because they get to “choose” who is in power? Perhaps the ideals they cling to are so strong in their minds they will tolerate an inordinate amount of abuse as long as they believe their system still works. Although even the most idealistic among them has to be able to observe that the nature of their system is shaped and directed by those who have the resources.

The people they elect are chosen for them before they even cast a vote. And once those politicians are chosen, they give them two different options to pick from. There is no democracy in this society, only a controlled leadership class chosen by those who own the electoral institutions they trust in. We the powerful may have factional disputes from time to time but that does not matter when the politicians installed listen to us first and foremost. The many see two opposing viewpoints and we see agreement and the perpetuation of the status quo with minor deficiencies.

Perhaps they love their lie of freedom, perhaps they are simply too foolish to understand that politicians are not on their side, or perhaps they just love being manipulated constantly. Regardless of which of these options it is, the many are easily controlled, which in turn makes the politicians easily controlled. This is very advantageous for those who are at the top. Perhaps we have been entrusted with more because we are more wise. Perhaps we must lead the people in the correct direction because they cannot do it themselves.

Perhaps not, though, perhaps we are simply lucky. Maybe we are entrusted to lead, but the only way for us to truly lead is for our interests to be secured, even against the will of the many. So let us lead the way because we are the wisest among the many.

From,

The Modernist

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Niccolò Machiavelli has been misunderstood for so long that the misunderstanding has taken on a life of its own. His name became shorthand for cruelty, manipulation, and moral emptiness, not because he advocated these things, but because he described the world without pretending it was otherwise. He wrote at a time when appearances were lethal and naïveté was punished quickly. What unsettled readers then still unsettles readers now: the refusal to comfort, the refusal to soften reality into something more palatable.

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Section 8: The Cost of Clarity and the Loneliness of Strategic Awareness

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“Civilisations as yet have only been created and directed by a small intellectual aristocracy, never by crowds. Crowds are only powerful for destruction. Their rule is always tantamount to a barbarian phase.”

— Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895)

The idea of popular will as an effective form of governance is absurd. The will of the masses has always been shortsighted and fickle. History has shown, time and time again, that the masses will choose whatever benefits them most in the moment or satisfies their appetites in the short term. This allows the cunning to seize power through emotional rhetoric and false promises. The masses follow because they are persuaded by emotion rather than substance, and are not educated enough to tell the difference.

This is precisely the reason why popular will is such a volatile and frankly destructive form of decision-making, especially within the realms of politics and philosophy. It is often cited in the modern age that the choice of the people is the most rational way to choose leaders and officials for the halls of power. This assumption is built on the premise that every person is sufficiently self-aware and educated enough to make an informed decision on what will most benefit the people. While the idea that the people understand the needs and interests of the people best is excellent for a rhetorical political statement or speech, it is simply divorced from the reality of politics and the psychology of the masses.

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The greatest philosophers of the ages were rejected by the people of their society. It was not until decades or centuries later that their ideas and works were understood as useful and wise by the masses.

The greatest example of this was the philosopher Socrates of ancient Greece. He was charged with impiety and corrupting the youth. At the time, Socrates would challenge senior officials in the government and military experts through a line of questioning to expose the fact that they indeed knew very little of their profession. This Socratic questioning began destabilizing society because the experts among the people were being shown as frauds. Eventually the charges mentioned above were brought forth. A jury of five hundred citizens of Greece, who were largely farmers, found him guilty. This is an undeniable example of the masses deferring to the political authority of the city and projecting their own political grievances onto Socrates as a scapegoat.

The argument can be made that Socrates was targeted by the elite of the city, but that does not matter very much, because the masses deferred and let their emotional and shortsighted nature override their sense of justice. They heard he was corrupting the youth with a poisonous ideology, and instead of inquiring, they allowed themselves to be used by the cunning and sentenced him to death. Instead of thinking for themselves and perhaps being made uncomfortable for going against the many they conformed to the consensus of the masses.

This is the first failure: the masses cannot distinguish the appearance of wisdom from wisdom itself, and so they deferred to authority rather than reason.

Plato also articulates this mechanism in his story of the cave. The men who remain trapped in the cave hate the man who was freed from his bondage and had seen the sun, not because they hated him, but because he shattered their illusion of reality.

This is the second, and the more dangerous point: even when the truth is shown to them plainly, they will choose comfort over it, and punish whoever forces the choice. The masses despise those who destroy the illusion of their reality because it is much harder to think for oneself and be discerning than to allow oneself to be told what to think.

This is precisely the issue of popular sovereignty, because the masses cannot distinguish rhetoric from substance. This comes from a fundamental lack of understanding of politics that the masses never learn from.

Popular sovereignty ignores the reality of man. It ignores the fact that men are fickle and vain. They are far more convinced by the appearance of wisdom and virtue than by a person who truly possesses those qualities. This allows those who are not the most capable, or those who wish to exploit their position for personal gain, to take positions of power. This in turn results in the degradation of government, either through ignorant and destructive policies or through the replacement of competent, capable men in positions of power with loyalists who are far less capable and far more destructive.

These are the destructive effects of popular will: a degraded government and performers who are not capable of competent governance.

This happens because the masses are not capable or educated themselves in the art of politics, most of the time. The masses are not able to think freely outside of societal restrictions and norms to assemble a worldview or philosophy that is radically different from what they currently believe or have inherited from their society. Popular will is not an effective form of governance but a vain popularity contest where the winners get to control the most powerful institutions in a society. It is also a mechanism that weakens a society over time as the people grow more distant from the romanticized ideals of their founding.

The masses are, by and large, fools, easily swayed because they believe themselves not to be. This allows those who are educated and cunning in the art of politics to easily ascertain and seize popular will and power in a society governed by it. This pattern repeats until eventually a society has been so ruined by the exploitation of the cunning that destruction becomes inevitable.

This section of The Modern Machiavellian makes one thing clear: reactions are not always authenticity. They can also be weakness, perception management, and control mechanisms, and the calculating individual knows the difference. Self-command is paramount in this installment.

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Section 7: Self-Command, Non-Reaction, and Internal Discipline

Every system of power ultimately rests on a simpler hierarchy. Before influence over others, there is influence over self. Before control of outcomes, there is control of impulse.

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Anyone who has ever seriously studied the Roman Empire, or even inquired about it for five minutes, is impressed at the level of accomplishment and achievement Rome was able to produce in a time when technology was primitive. Even though Rome could not rival the technology of our time, the civilizational progress of the Romans has had lasting effects on every great empire that followed it.

It is also a common mistake to read the Romans as a modern blueprint for civilization. Of course there are many lessons we must take from them, but we cannot allow these lessons to become narrow and rigid. We must apply the ideas of Rome in our own time, just as they pulled civilization forward in their own time.

The idea that will be explored today is how Rome was able to make and maintain citizens of Italy and of the farthest reaches of the empire, from Britannia to Alexandria. It is also of utmost importance that we understand what united the Roman citizens who came from distant regions and cultures, and folded them into contributing provinces within Rome.

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While this is a useful story device in fiction, it is simply that — fiction. In reality there are very few true heroes and true villains. Especially in the great institutions of power in a society or country, there are no heroes or villains. Politics and power operate within an ambiguity that most people cannot understand.

Most people are conditioned to understand the world through a naive lens of heroes and villains. This also clearly distorts the morality of the people, because every society — especially the post-Enlightenment societies — tends to operate in a secular frame of mind when it comes to societal and cultural norms. This in turn obfuscates the moral clarity of the average person, because if a person believes a completely false notion such as most people are good, they tend to be more accepting of perverse norms. Because logically, if most people are generally good, then what most people agree on as good is deemed moral.

The many consume. The few understand.

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This is important in our age because if a political ideology can get the masses on its side through emotional messaging, it can claim to be moral because many people believe in its ideas. Once the supporters are ideologically aligned, they can be turned on a figure because they believe their cause to be moral, and if someone is against them, then they must be an immoral villain. It is also easier still to make them hate the “villain” because they project their perceived experiences of villains onto that figure, which in turn reinforces their belief that they are righteous in their cause.

This is generally done in a controlled way in civilized society, not a fanatical or extremist path, because fanatical zeal can often make supporters behave irrationally and in an acceleratory manner that could destabilize the political order and a country’s government. So the issues tend to be more mundane, yet still enough to draw on the villain caricature built into the minds of the ideologues.

This of course is not exclusive to a specific side of the political equation. It tends to happen on both sides, because the masses love to blame everyone else for problems they already have or actively contribute towards. This is effectively used by both sides in the current political orders in the west, often presented as left vs. right. This is an extension of the us vs. them mentality that has ruled the hearts and minds of men for all of human history. Instead of warring tribes, it is now a mass political divide.

In reality, the only people this caricature helps are those in power, because it allows for political maneuvering to avoid making any drastic changes to the current power structure. It also gives politicians and those who control them the ability to drum up mass support with issues that remained unsolved because of the divide, to win more elections.

There are no heroes or villains in politics — there are people. These people have the same contradictions within themselves that every person possesses. These people are rational actors attempting to gain more power and influence for themselves, and many will do whatever it takes, including lying constantly and literally calling another person evil and implicitly inciting violence on them, because it will grant them more power.

Morality has no part in modern politics and power. It is used as a rhetorical tool to legitimize a person’s power and influence through election by the masses. Many will understand this message yet still believe morality governs politics. In reality, statesmen and those in power have always used morality to solidify and expand their control over a society.

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Section 6: Orientation, Not Opinion

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To My Dearest Friends,

When last I wrote to you, I was simply overjoyed with the prospects and our final completion of universal education for all. It was one of the proudest periods of my life. We had finally granted a path from poverty and destitution to becoming a contributing member and meaningful provider to future generations. I confess I could not contain the excitement of the gift we had bestowed upon the people.

Unfortunately, there have been troubling developments. It seems that the men we have allowed to become educated have not been thankful in the slightest. I completely understand that neither I nor any of you may have our names recognized for this. That is not the point of what we did. But it is simply baffling to me how the products of our own universities, institutions we funded from nothing, have produced such resentment toward us.

These educated men supposedly hate us and see us as evil because we have wealth. I truly am perplexed at what course or influence within our universities has driven this sentiment of anti-elitism. We have given these men a pathway to become influential and wealthy members of society themselves. Perhaps not as wealthy, successful, or influential as us, but we were born into money and good fortune. These men have proved they can earn it from nothing. It is actually one of my greatest dreams being fulfilled that men of such meager means and poor beginnings are beginning to populate a middle section of our society. This is exactly the intended purpose of the gift we gave them.

Yet instead of gratitude, there is resentment. These men have started their own political coalitions against us. They are doing what charlatans and con men have done for centuries. They are stirring up jealousy and emotion among the populace. This populace includes not just the educated men who could have formed an elite class of their own just below us, but also the great many who are still poor farmers and day laborers. These are the men that make our society run. Without them, all of our money combined will mean nothing. If these political movements gather enough momentum, all of us are in trouble.

This is not a desperate call for help. It is simply a letter of awareness. We all knew that education advances men and makes societies better. That is why we collaborated in the first place. Our society has gotten noticeably better since men became educated, not just for us but for every single man, woman, and child that lives in our nation. The positives of education cannot be ignored. They are simply far too great and remain a net positive. But we must counteract these political coalitions that wish to take power from us out of irrational jealousy.

It also pains me to say, but our fathers were partially right about the many. Many harbor irrational hatred driven by emotion. I believed that education and a measurable improvement in their lives would separate them from their baser instincts. I was partially wrong. I did not account for the nature of men to conspire toward power when they have none. It was perhaps an oversight, but I have a solution that could resolve all of our problems while preserving the positives of our project.

The populace, apart from the educated men we have cultivated, lacks unity and organization. This is why it has always been the policy of prior generations to keep the populace uneducated, for education grants precisely these traits to those who undertake serious study. We must absorb the capable educated men into our institutions with positions of influence and power. Those we cannot absorb, we must deploy capital and trusted men to counteract their political movements. Since you are all educated, I will not explain why this is effective. It would be redundant to do so.

Nevertheless, we must also restrain ourselves in this process. If we overreach, we may imprint upon our own children a hunger for competition and accumulation that we have largely rooted out in our class over the last few decades. The solution is simple. Restraint will be the hardest path we must endure.

Sincerely,

The Benefactor

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Section 5: The Modern Prince: Five Rules for Navigating a Manipulated Society

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In reality, the only romanticized revolutions that modern education highlights are in a very limited time period. The revolutions romanticized are those that take place near the American Revolution. Not because revolution never existed before, but because those revolutions were not about democracy but about power, survival, or conquest.

These revolutions are scarcely mentioned because they serve no functional purpose in building up the modern civic religion of democracy. Revolution as an expression in society has existed for all of recorded history, stemming from real or perceived systemic issues in a society. The revolutions heavily focused on in modern education, like the American and French Revolution, are always mischaracterized and told through an ideologically biased lens of democracy as the paramount form of rule.

When in fact these revolutions were fought for the same reason as many others have been: those with real power felt slighted and marginalized, so they conscripted the masses through emotional messaging and false promises of freedom. The democracy framing is especially useful to obfuscate the mechanics of revolution because it is the civic religion and the accepted western normative form of government. In reality, every revolution meets these rules.

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A friend poses more risks than an enemy does in most situations. Why is an enemy more useful than a friend? To understand this one must first realize the stakes in games of power. When men are competing for power, influence, and wealth no action is too extreme because every action on the board can potentially improve one’s own position. The only actions that are not taken are those that pose far too great a risk to the person taking the action.

Although sometimes rashness is an advantage. Sometimes it is a weakness or defeat. In games of power men compete until death, imprisonment, or the more common case, which is when men’s ambitions can be conquered with a payoff.

The question becomes who can one trust? The obvious answer is only oneself, because one’s enemies are always ready to strike and capitalize on one’s own weakness, but also friends are waiting for the cost of betrayal to outweigh the benefit of friendship. This is the mechanism that reveals why it is far safer to have many enemies. A man with many enemies can easily prepare for them, he understands their motivations clearly, he understands their capabilities and their respective threat to him. This allows him to fortify and strengthen his own position while preparing and insulating himself against his enemies.

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For instance, consider a man who controls a large portion of a society’s media. This man has many enemies because he has openly run stories of alleged corruption amongst a government. He quite uniquely understands this dynamic and has fortified himself with public opinion so any attack on him or his companies, however legitimate, will bring the government down. He is protected and insulated from the attacks of his enemies for a time, not forever but for a time. He correctly identified his enemies and ran stories that brought to light their alleged corruption. While he hurt those who opposed him he also fortified his own position with political alliances amongst the people.

Now imagine the same exact scenario except this man has a few powerful friends that are not as well insulated as the media magnate. The government will likely pressure his friends in a few key ways. They will coerce them to betray him with money, power, or force. Or they will intentionally and publicly humiliate and imprison them to send a message. This gives his friends incentive to betray him while justifying it by saying something like, it was either him or me. This is why the man with more enemies and fewer friends succeeds while the man with more friends will inevitably fail. His friends will be used as traitors or leverage depending on the level of loyalty they possess.

This example may be extreme but it clearly demonstrates the point. Friends will always be used; enemies, while being a nuisance, will always be a certainty on the board. This quite literally is the case through all levels of society, not just amongst the powerful but also amongst corporations and even in interpersonal relationships. The stakes may be vastly different so the actions that are taken will be vastly different as well, but the underlying mechanism is still quite clear. Enemies are a known quantity they can be prepared for; friends are an unknown liability that will be used. It is just far more clearly represented and understood in games of power.

Understanding this mechanism already gives a person a clear advantage. The naivety of having friends that care only about being a friend and nothing else will have worn, the idea that enemies are dangerous is now clearly wrong. Every person then must be treated as a situational neutral. Even if they are grouped into the friend or enemy category, a person must remain vigilant and understand the incentives that their supposed friends would have to betray them while also understanding that their enemies are a benefit because they can be grouped according to their capability and take up far less thought than previously given. Any emotion that gets in the way of these dynamics not only destroys advantage but weakens one’s own position because now they have become predictable.

While this is a part of power this is not a rule but a warning: power is fluid, every situation calls for a different strategy under a different set of circumstances.

Machiavelli called this concept “Fortuna”. He believed that power could be observed, studied, and applied in different situations but he also believed that Fortuna governs half of all human affairs and that power is farther outside the perception of those who study it than they care to admit.

Some instances may include a more powerful friend that is depended upon, which changes the calculation quite a bit. Other situations include enemies that cannot be outlasted or overcome and that will result in defeat no matter what is done. This is why the concept of power has been one of the most elusive topics in all of history.

Power is dependent on situations and the context of those situations; there are no neat rules to follow so one can prevail. Only a sharp mind, a cunning attitude, and a thirst for knowledge may conceptualize the more obvious outcomes of power.

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Section 4: Power in a World Without Princes

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To The Council,

I want all of you to briefly consider a seemingly radical notion. Our rivals have gained an unprecedented amount of political influence and power. This political leverage has been gained very clearly by weaponizing the identity of men in our lands against one another. This use of statecraft is not usually a very problematic or uncommon use, as you know. It is quite useful, as we have observed in the previous decade when we once held the power of the land.

I must say our previous leader, the Cynic, devised a masterful strategy to capture and maintain political hegemony. He clearly understood that funding both sides only works if you have no competition at all, but he did not have complete control over the political system, so he implemented a revolutionary idea. He funded one side entirely. The funding only allowed our narrative to spread faster and wider than ever known. The genius of his statecraft was the narrative he devised to mobilize the masses into an overwhelming coalition of popular support. Every one of you remembers the narrative quite fondly because it granted you unprecedented power at the time. I propose something similar to his idea but far more effective.

The only problem with the Cynic’s masterful strategy is that it was temporary and could be fixed. He simply propagated the message to the masses that the other side was an elite that cared nothing for them and wanted to starve them in the future to make way for a new society ruled by the elites. This emotionally charged message was so effective among the populace that almost the entire public rallied behind his cause and literally got rid of our competition by way of public execution in a barbaric manner.

(The way the public claims to want peace but then turns into a pack of bloodthirsty hounds as soon as they find someone to blame all their problems on astonishes me. Although you cannot be surprised, the masses have functioned this way for centuries, scapegoating one elite or elite class to usher in a new one they don’t even realize formed in their “revolution.”)

This removed all competition for years, and we enjoyed the most peaceful and prosperous times for our own interests, and I believe we can get back to that but this time permanently. The only issue, as I have mentioned above, is that this was only a temporary fix. Our opponents have appeared again for power, this time with the lessons of statecraft seemingly learned. They have promised the people an abundance of food and prosperity for their vote.

This message, similar to the Cynic’s message, is rooted deeply in their survival, and they respond very positively to it. Although they cannot deliver currently because they do not own the farms or the banks that allow the farmers to use their land for food. That is where a radical notion appears. I propose that we collude with our opponents, as our interests currently align. We must subdue the public sentiment to blame the elites, but we must also keep them fed, happy, and fat to avoid another revolution. But this collusion will not be public.

The formation of two different factions that the people can choose from will be presented to the public to give the illusion of choice. One faction represented and funded by our future friends, and the other represented and funded by us. If the collusion remains profitable for both our interests, this form of controlled factionalism can be permanently integrated into our land. And unlike the games of factions of old, we will not have to manage the masses as one and worry about the fires of revolution, because our enemies will be integrated and dependent on the same system as us. It is quite obvious to me that the previous status quo, upheld for millennia, is simply not a viable strategy anymore. There is far too much access to information and history, thanks to the Benefactor, that will allow parts of the masses to realize perhaps they are not as alone as they may seem in their society. They will eventually realize that collusion among oligarchs is commonplace and create some sort of anti-elite revolutionary government, which would be detrimental to our purposes. This will obviously require far more fine-tuning and planning, but it can be one of our greatest mechanisms of control, one that will provide relative stability, predictability, and permanence while the masses believe they have a choice.

Furthermore, the collusion with those who own the transport companies will inadvertently advocate and promote the above-mentioned effects. I look forward to the input from my councilors.

Your Fellow Councilor,

The Opportunist

The Oligarchs’ Lost Letters is a free PT series examining power, wealth, and control through the fictionalized private words of those who have always held it.

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The many consume. The few study. If you have read this far, you already know which one you are.

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What books can I read to think like PT?

That question about where we draw our intellectual foundation is asked many times to us by our followers. This is because our foundation is not a traditional philosophical or even culturally relevant strand of philosophy. Our intellectual foundation is drawn from a very specific set of works and ideas.

So we have decided to release a recommendation of books, ancient works, and texts for our paid subscribers to have access to. This is a hand-picked curation of some of the most influential works ever written. The purpose of this curation is not to regurgitate trite works that everyone knows about, such as Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. That work is valuable for self-help but not for power analysis or learning how to think for yourself.

The goal is to broaden our audience’s horizons with works that are as insightful as they are obscure. Those truly committed to being able to think for themselves will see that these works are of massive value to their minds. Not just because they introduce new frames of thought but also because many expose the trap the masses spend their entire lives inside.

Some on the reading list are relatively well known but known for the wrong reasons. If you are serious about becoming one of the few and being able to think for yourself, you will see the more mainstream works and read them very carefully, because that careful reading is far more valuable than reading the work as everyone else does.

If you are truly a serious person and want to expand your horizons, here is the reading list. If not, then keep letting others think for you.

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Yet most people love their own illusions about a fair and democratic process so they rationalize that understanding away. They do this by saying things like that is just politics, what can even be done about it by me, or they delude themselves into thinking the other side is evil so even if that is how politics works they deserve it. This understanding yet rationalizing it away is a form of political cowardice that allows elites to easily maintain control through a controlled division.

The mechanism is simply this: allow political discussions and debate among the populace and in the mainstream but only on things that have no effect on the real issues. This mechanism is clearly seen through the modern “culture war” happening in every western country. This allows the political bases of both parties to feel as if they are contributing to a better future, but in reality social politics is a highly managed and useful form of statecraft to appease the masses.

While the many fight about an issue that is irrelevant to the power of governments and the elites that circulate through them, power is consolidated and wielded against the interests of a distracted populace without them ever understanding why or even asking how the government attained so much power. Even if a contingent of the many rises up and challenges the government’s legitimacy to acquire such power, it is often too little too late. Once an organized resistance to certain government powers can be assembled, the government has held those powers for years and entrenched them through regulation and other procedures that make it catastrophic to revoke from the government.

The many consume. The few study. If you have read this far, you already know which one you are.

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This mechanism of divide and consolidate has been used for millennia in every form of government. Although the divide today is the people vs. the people. The divide used hundreds and thousands of years ago could have been the people vs. the people, the rich vs. the poor, or the elites vs. the elites.

For instance, after the Reconstruction period following the American Civil War, Northern industrialists and Southern residual merchant class elites had a real problem on their hands. There was a populist faction rising in political power among the rural poor in the country. This populist faction was composed of Northerners, Southerners, and former slaves. They were organizing against monopolies on land acquisition, railroads, and banking interests. They clearly saw that there was elite consolidation of important resources and companies and they rose up against these actions.

This resulted in the People’s Party emerging in 1891, posing a serious threat to the structure of power because they were not interested in rhetoric. They simply named the robber barons, banking interests, and industrialists who were controlling the country through money, land, and companies. This was a catastrophic blow to the elite class and their grip on the country, because in the election of 1892 the candidate they ran gained over one million votes and twenty-two electoral votes.

So instead of tempering their own interests they absorbed the problem. The Republicans in the north gave the people rhetoric of free labor practices and national pride, while the Democrats in the south gave rhetoric of states’ rights and racial hierarchy. That is all it was though, rhetoric, not anything that would truly help the people. It is just enough emotional meat so the bases of their respective political party would rally behind their elected leaders.

The Democrats also adopted the rhetoric of the Populists in 1896. The candidate they ran had quite a bit of support between the Democrats and the Populists. The Populist party endorsed that candidate later in that election cycle. The Democrat lost in the election of 1896 but this did something very important. It set up the Populists to be absorbed back into the Democratic Party. By adopting their talking points they collapsed the People’s Party, because everyone thought the Democrats were the Populists, but in reality they simply co-opted a movement and then gave decades of excuses to the people as to why they were not able to fulfill their rhetoric. In the end the elites kept their hold on the country while the people got empty promises.

It is not a far-fetched or even a fringe opinion to believe that the political establishment of every government benefits from infighting that does nothing to those in power. This is not an endorsement of populism either, because populism tends to always be absorbed into political parties and systems after five to ten years.

Populism also relies on the popular uprising of the masses who in nature are fickle and prone to having their opinions changed by emotional displays in the media. This is why populism is so easily absorbed, because you simply have to create an emotional reaction strong enough to get your politically aligned constituents back on your own side. This is usually done with stronger rhetoric or false promises.

The masses never seem to learn that the political apparatus throughout all of time does not have their interests at its center but its own survival. This is why partisanship is so widely utilized by elites to keep the many in their respective pre-approved bubbles of opinion. It controls the many, which strengthens the position of the elite.

Only a few will ever break out of this false dichotomy in modern western societies, because many cannot think for themselves. They are absorbed by emotion or the threat of identity displacement. Only a few can ever be so truly disciplined and clear-eyed as to see the mechanism of this system. Accept your artificial and meaningless divides and stay a part of the masses. Or embrace reality and become one of the few.

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The masses care more about what will make them feel happy and less about the state of their society and the rampant corruption within it. The appetites of the many are rotting through institutions meant to preserve their governing structures from falling victim to human greed. The disposition of modern cultural norms are creating an irreversible tear in western social cohesion. When one thinks of himself all day he cares not about his neighbor or his country.

This pattern, although seemingly shocking and self destructive, is more predictable and common than many would even want to believe. This cycle of hedonistic appetites appears throughout known and recorded history during the decline of some of the greatest empires the world has ever known. Why does it happen? Why do empires fall from civic and martial duty and become pits of hedonistic filth?

History, no matter how shocking or unpopular the answer is, tells us this story many times over. Today’s example of the Byzantine Empire one of the most successful and powerful empires in history reveals how a society consumed with itself and its appetites falls.

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That is why analysis is commonly mistaken as endorsement. The masses cannot accept anything outside their own alleged moral framework inherited from the herd. The masses don’t think for themselves, they parrot the ideas they heard from others among them. They are truly limited in their thought capacity because they are far too worried about what others among their own herd will think of them if they explore outside the group approved boundaries.

This is demonstrated quite clearly in the allegory of the cave by Plato. A group of prisoners were chained to a wall and could only look at that wall for all their lives. They were not forced into this scenario but simply inherited it from birth. Figures moved behind them displaying shadows on the wall that were the reality the prisoners believed in, consistent with their life experiences chained in the cave. The prisoners eventually came to see the shadows as things to name or people to debate, they developed expertise around the shadows. They had a complete framework of reality that was consistent but limited because they had never seen anything else besides the wall and the shadows.

One day a prisoner escaped his chains and saw what the figures truly were. He saw the sun for the first time in his life. He was not happy or enlightened upon seeing these things but terrified at the brightness of the sun. Because he cannot see he must slowly adjust to actual reality. He eventually understands that the figures were copies of reality but not the full picture. He also realized they had been distorted by those in the cave who had known nothing but the shadows all their lives.

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He returns to those still chained to tell them of what he had seen, the bigger picture. He cannot see their shadows as well anymore though, since his eyes had seen the sun. So they mock him and threaten to kill him, not because he is evil but because he has seen reality and they cannot comprehend what he has seen because it does not fit within their boundaries and their inherited frameworks.

The connection here between the allegory and how the masses function today is crystal clear. Those who speak of reality are mocked, threatened, and even killed. Those who see reality don’t believe it is a pretty picture or even an ideal picture but they must tell the truth because they cannot unlearn what they have stumbled upon. Power is not a pretty reality, it is filled with some of the most reprehensible people and acts ever known or conceived of by men. But that does not mean it doesn’t exist. That does not give the masses an excuse to attack those who simply observe how power works. It is almost as illogical as attacking the cartographer because you don’t like what the map says.

But power analyzed and described is often far outside the herd approved moral framework. They cannot tolerate even the thought of something complex that can be both good and bad in unison. They cannot tolerate power because it is complex and it doesn’t have an easily identifiable moral assumption attached to it, so they label it as evil and all those who describe it as people who are also evil.

This is the legacy of Niccolo Machiavelli. The Prince is one of his shortest political works yet the only one seemingly ever cited among the public. It is a practical dissection on how power works and how to maintain power in a fractured city state by necessity, not out of malice. His other works tell a completely different story and reveal his real philosophical disposition. The Discourses on Livy is three volumes defending republican government, civic virtue, and institutional checks on power. The Art of War argues for citizen soldiers over paid mercenaries on moral and civic grounds. The Florentine Histories treat corruption as civilizational decay and ruin.

Machiavelli observed power and wrote his own observations down without flinching. Most of his philosophical works centered on the dangerous misuse of power. He never advocated for evil, he simply observed human nature at the heights of its appetites. This is inconvenient though for the many who call him evil and the father of tyrants. They hold a limited and uninformed view of his philosophy and of reality. This is the function of the herd, not to enlighten those among its ranks but to constrain their reality to fit what they deem to be moral.

Conflation is a problem for the herd because they cannot think in great depth. They are not classically trained in philosophy, logic, and reasoning. So they must think within their own constructed mental models using heuristics. And the heuristics utilized are inherited from the masses. That inheritance comes at the cost of reason and thought. Most will never be able to break out of that prison because they will rationalize themselves into a corner of reality they find bearable. The inheritance of the herd’s assumptions is the cave.

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