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

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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.

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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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Section 3: Controlled Transparency and the Craft of Trust

People often say they want authenticity. They don’t.

What they want is curated authenticity, just enough transparency to feel connected to you, but not enough to see your flaws, contradictions, hesitation, or insecurity. They want the emotional comfort of “knowing you” without the discomfort of confronting the full complexity of who you are.

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They perform everything in life. A politician will never let anyone see his true face, not because he is evil or filled with malice, but most likely because he is simply incompetent. The fool will never let anyone see his real face, otherwise he ceases to be a fool and the caricature that protects him will fall away and he will be exposed and vulnerable to people judging his true character. The fool and the politician seem to be vastly different. A fool entertains people for a living. His goal is to be amusing and tolerated until he becomes a fixture. A politician governs for a living. His supposed goal is to rule and vote for the benefits of the citizens that elected him.

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The politician’s goal is fundamentally misunderstood by the plebeians. Most people understand politicians are liars. But that is it, they still believe politicians do what is best for them even if they lie or have to play dirty at times. In reality politicians do not care about their voters, they do not care about their promises, they do not care about making a country better. Instead they simply only care about themselves. Politicians are the greatest performers to exist in public life.

They make people believe they care, they make them believe that things will change, they make people believe something can be done about the broken nature of every power structure. But in reality politicians are not motivated by patriotism, they are motivated by the same two things any person is motivated by: money and power. They perform not because they are evil but because money and power from men or entities with a lot of both want them to perform.

That is the trick, anyone for the right amount of money would likely sell out his own friends, community or country. Any notions of ideology or principles will simply not stand the test of prodigious sums of money. The same is true of power and influence, some men will not bend for money so easily but if they are able to attain a position of great power and influence that they believe will benefit themselves they will sell out their country all the same.

The politician was not born different. He was simply placed in front of the offer first. This is not just the nature of politicians. It is the nature of any person among the masses.

It is very easy to say I would not sell out my country for one million dollars, but saying something and doing something is completely different. If 99% of people were offered the chance to pretend to care about their country and were paid millions of dollars a year to do so they wouldn’t push for a change in the current power structure. They wouldn’t push for an investigation into massive conglomerates. They would simply say those things to their voters and never fulfill their promises.

So what do a fool, a politician, and a regular person have in common? They are all performers. The fool is a performer for money, and perhaps status among patrician circles. A politician is a performer for personal enrichment and power in major institutions. A regular person is a performer of dissembled morality, principles, and acceptance. Each one of these archetypes is a performer. Each archetype is not malicious, or evil in any way. Each one is self-serving and seeking to gain an advantage for themselves.

The world is not black and white. It is gray. It is full of performers who feign morality and virtue, but in reality serve only themselves, and would sell out everything they know if properly incentivized.

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If you would like to read Part I of The Modern Machiavellian you can read it below.

Section 2: Reputation, Distance, and the Optics of Authority

Power today doesn’t look like power used to.
There are no thrones, no crowns, no formal declarations of authority. Most influence operates quietly, through reputation, perception, and controlled access. People follow not because they are forced, but because they trust, admire, or assume competence.

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To my esteemed family,

“It is truly quite an extraordinary system that governs our country. Our Founding Fathers, so many years ago, established a “democracy” for the people to have a voice. In our founding documents the system appears fair and equal to the uneducated or common man.

We perpetuate our system not because it is morally good or superior to every other system, but because the diffusion of responsibility allows us to take actions that are seemingly nobody’s fault except the system. The different branches of government allow the truly powerful to control agendas before the people ever have a chance to form an opinion. It is a fantastically convoluted system that perpetuates our ability to control and influence this country without incurring any blame whatsoever.

Now you may be wondering why you are being told something you already know. It is because you will one day have to navigate the systems of power to exert your own will, or you will be consumed by our rivals and sacrificed to the people as a scapegoat for all the problems of the time. I am attempting to protect you from a folly I have witnessed befall far too many powerful men.

You must understand money is not power. Money can grant you many things: a comfortable life, access to the elite strata of society, access to powerful men, and countless other opportunities. Access to powerful men is far more consequential than every other use of money.

You see, our system relies on a supposed democracy, but in reality it is no democracy at all. It is far more accurate to call it what it is, a contest of power. Every system purports to be the finest, every system purports to be morally superior, but in reality every system is simply a contest of power. Who can hold it, acquire the most of it, and wield it most effectively.

Wealth, in this system bequeathed to us by our fathers before us, grants us one of the largest advantages in society, but it also places a mark upon our backs. Once you have deployed our money correctly to forge new political connections through gifts, bribes, and other means, you will command the loyalty of many powerful and influential men for a time.

Most men appear to be above bribery and morally superior to their baser instincts, but in reality, if you support them in an election with tremendous financial backing, they will feel indebted to you. And if you continue to give or compensate them, they will continue to serve you loyally. This is easily accomplished among most politicians, because these are men who seek influence and will acquire it by any means necessary.

The difficulty arises when a rival attempts to purchase their loyalty as well. It is not the control that is the difficult part. It is retaining your owned politicians, because today they will be your ally, and tomorrow they will conduct themselves as though they have always despised you. They are far more loyal to those willing to pay them more, not to those who gave them their foundation and supported their rise. It is a conditional arrangement. You either remain the highest bidder or you become an adversary.

The other class of men you must cultivate, if you wish to remain powerful and influential, are those in the press. The men who operate the newspapers decide what the people see. There are multiple ways to control or influence those in the press, but today I will give you the most effective strategy.

The first and simplest way to control a publication is to build one from nothing. You cannot operate the publication, that would be far too conspicuous, nor should you even publicly own it. You must identify a man who is an aspiring writer and possessed of genuine talent. Once you have found him, support the publication from its inception. Become a partner in the venture, and the man will regard you as his greatest benefactor.

Grow this publication into an institution through our backing and influence. Once you have elevated it into one of the premier media enterprises in the country, you have prevailed, because you essentially govern the company. But the difficulty becomes apparent when people observe that you hold fifty percent of the company. They will conclude that the entire publication exists solely to protect our business interests. That may be true, but we cannot permit that degree of exposure.

Simply divest your entire stake in the company. That may seem counterproductive, but once you have sold your entire stake to the markets or to specific banks, reacquire it through our various banks and financial entities. In this way you have diffused the ownership and yet retained control of the company. If one were to trace who truly owns the publication, they would find many companies and banks holding it, not one person or family. It may seem as though they will eventually trace ownership back to our banks, but they will not.

Controlling politicians purchases influence in the halls of government. Owning the press purchases the entire government through perception and selective reporting. Both methods are indispensable for maintaining and expanding our power.

Do not fail your family.”

Your Father,

The American Industrialist

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The figure presented in short-form content is often distorted for emotional impact. The real Machiavelli was not a villain, nor an advocate for cruelty. He was a clear-sighted observer of human nature and the mechanics of power. His writing emphasized realism, stability, and the need to understand how people actually behave, not how they claim to behave. This insights follow that tradition of analysis rather than the sensationalized versions adapted for entertainment.

Section 1: Human Nature and the Illusion of Modern Morality

People like to believe they have evolved beyond the instincts that shaped ancient power. They haven’t. What has evolved is the packaging, the language, the optics, the narratives we use to pretend our motives are noble. But beneath the branding, human nature is exactly what it has always been: fearful, self-preserving, status-driven, responsive to incentives, and dependent on perception.

Modern morality is not the triumph of enlightenment.
It is the triumph of optics.

We no longer admit that we seek advantage. We prefer to disguise it as “boundaries,” “self-care,” or “standing up for ourselves.” We don’t admit fear; we call it “prudence.” We don’t admit opportunism; we call it “alignment.” The language has softened, but the instincts have not. And the softer the language becomes, the harder it is to see the machinery underneath.

This is why modern power is more subtle.
Not because human beings are better, but because they have become better at concealing their drives even from themselves.

Machiavelli understood something that remains true today: people will always do what aligns with their incentives, even when their stated values contradict their behavior. This is not hypocrisy, it is human nature attempting to reconcile instinct with self-image. When a person must choose between what they want and what they claim to believe, instinct wins and morality serves as the excuse after the fact. In a world obsessed with appearances, this instinct hasn’t disappeared. It has simply become invisible to the people who act on it. And nothing is more dangerous than a force someone uses unconsciously.

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It is quite simple to manipulate the masses. One may push a certain destructive agenda on war or decadence but put on a suit and call themselves a news organization. Then the manipulation is not so obvious. It is so subtle that it propagates through something that looks authoritative and credible, but it is truly just a mechanism to push a policy or agenda, to normalize and popularize it.

The masses love being tricked constantly, or at least the pattern that repeats supports that conclusion.

How are the masses tricked so easily? It is not a difficult thing to do once you study the history of power and the essence of human nature. The opinions of the masses shift with the wind. They are fickle. They do not have real principles or beliefs. They inherit the unchallenged assumptions of the group.

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“Men are so simple, and so subject to present necessities, that he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

Distraction is one of the greatest tools of those who rule. It appears in many forms and takes many shapes. Distraction is effective because it seduces the masses, it constrains their focus from things that truly matter to things that are trivial and are of no consequence to the bigger picture. What truly are the mechanics of distraction of the masses? Why is it so simple and easy to deceive the many from even the most detrimental decisions of the rulers?

Distraction is not as obvious as it seems. It works most effectively when it appears to be a major structural problem but in reality it is not major, it is moot. If the average mind were asked what they believe distractions away from power would consist of, they would say something along the lines of bread and circuses. This is true up to a point. A society that values satiating their appetites above all else is easily distracted and controllable. This mechanism can work for a time but if a society is solely built on appetites and the masses know nothing but hedonism then the society will eventually fall. They will fall because apathy and narcissism will overtake the average person to a point that they will not fight for their society or strive to create a better tomorrow. This will collapse a society fast and those in power who encouraged it will be destroyed in the process. That is why a ruling class must control distraction. If it moves too far in one direction it will destroy their very wellspring of power.

A far more effective strategy would be to allow a society to fall into a state of general hedonistic appetite and apathy for a generation. Then after they have created a distracted culture of hedonism they use a reactionary effect to balance out society again. Massive appetite and hedonism will distract a generation, and if those in power were to fund and promote the movement to fight back against this decadence then they have controlled another generation or two. The effects of appetite would be seen and felt throughout society. This reactionary generation will devote their entire lives to restoring society to what it supposedly was or the image that has been presented to them by those in power. If these ideals are battling amongst the factions of generations and the populace, those in power have successfully controlled and distracted two or three populations. While the populace was fighting decadence in a reactionary state they have allowed those in power to calculate their motives and feelings and reflect them back to the people.

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

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The new generations have voted in people who they believe are aligned with their values when in reality most people in power or attempting to gain it reflect the people’s own supposed virtues back to them. This creates a sense of a new generation in power that will disempower and discard the old generation that had let their society fall into decadence. While this has been happening the cycle was understood and managed by those men truly in power. They have kept two to four generations distracted while they slowly gain more power and influence over key institutions and bodies of power. They divert attention from themselves to a society of indulgence and apathy, and after the society has drifted too far into apathy and decadence the reactionary movement is funded and promoted. The same people remain at the top. They have changed their professed beliefs to suit the masses that will vote them in.

This is one stratagem of power and how it retains and enlarges itself and its influence over a society. This is not a rule. This is an observation. Those in power must remain vigilant because many factors are unanticipated in such cycles of decline. That is why those who remain in power have many plans to retain and gain power, not simply one. And all of those plans are convoluted and not easily understood. That is why distraction is so important. Even if the populace understands one plan from studying history, there is always another unknown to them.

That is where the bread and circuses line truly works its brilliance. It is repeatedly taught throughout the education system that Rome fell because of decadence, that the people were distracted by sport and food. While that is a reductionist point and not fully accurate it serves a useful purpose. It creates a pattern or a heuristic for the populace. It creates the illusion that they can see through the plan of control. But as demonstrated above there are other plans that have never been taught or articulated in the education system of control. Distraction like power is not a rule set in stone but a fluid and protean movement that requires constant maintenance to maintain long term goals.

Many believe they know the patterns of control, but in reality they know nothing. Many believe they truly understand how societies and power and history work but in reality they understand very little. Distraction is not simply bread and circuses. Distraction is everything and nothing, it is ideological movements, it is reactionary movements, it is sport, it is the illusion of being sport, it is entertainment, it is the illusion that entertainment is a form of control. The masses do not fail to see power because it is hidden. They fail because present necessity has always been more important to them. This is why power seems inscrutable because most people never even understand where to start looking.

Many people do not truly understand philosophy. They simply believe they understand it. If a person was asked to name a famous philosopher they would likely say one of these names: Plato, Aristotle, Socrates. These men were all philosophers but they all came from the same time period, the same city, the same society.

Socrates is the most misrepresented thinker in Western history. Not because his ideas are obscure but because his ideas are dangerous. What modern institutions teach as the Socratic method and what Socrates actually did are two entirely different things. One is a pedagogical tool. The other dismantled the legitimating foundations of an entire ruling class until the ruling class ran out of patience.

But first, who was Socrates? Where did he come from? What qualifies him as one of the greatest philosophers in history? Socrates was not a man from extravagant beginnings or an aristocratic line. His parents were common citizens in Athens, his father a stonemason, his mother a midwife. He himself grew up and fought as a soldier in his early life. Hardly the ideal or even imagined image of one of the most prominent philosophers in history. This man had no technical training in philosophy, no formal education. He was simply a common man. What makes him so important?

If you were to believe modern western teaching methods inspired by him, you would believe he inspired critical thinking through a series of questioning. While that is partially true, institutions conveniently omit the most important and dangerous part of Socrates. This is why Socrates is so important. He had a methodology of questioning powerful credentialed elite Athenians that exposed their own ignorance and hypocrisy so thoroughly he was eventually exiled for it.

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To Whom This May Reach:

“Loyalty is a curious thing. It is perceived and taught as some characteristic that makes a person good and honorable. The general populace believes loyalty is essential and a baseline in all interaction and relationships. That is why they will continue to be betrayed countless times and be perplexed every single time. We can use this to our advantage quite clearly. The promotion of loyalty as a virtue does wonders for keeping the many in your employ, or those you bestow gifts upon, doing what is in your interest. It is quite something, truly.

Give a man an extravagant gift that costs little to yourself but is worth more than everything he owns and you shall possess him and his loyalties in perpetuity. That is, until someone else comes along and offers him something larger, more extravagant, and more desirable. But assuming that does not happen, if you simply remunerate those who work for you generously, they will adore you. If you simply shower those whom you wish to control and influence with gifts of extravagance and wealth, their fealty remains to you in every situation. That is why it is such a phenomenon.

We understand loyalty as a tool and a means to an end. Something that allows a person to achieve a goal through another person with relative ease. But to the many in the populace, they have always revered loyalty as a constituent of honor, or whatever moral edifice prevails at that time. It is perplexing to me how many do not see through the facade of loyalty. It is very simple in its mechanics. Give a person incentives and benefits to stay loyal to you and you will receive influence and power tenfold the investment in them, if you pick the right person. Give those in your employ a larger salary than all your competitors, it may wound the material bottom line, but in consequence you strangle those who are your competitors in your own industry. This in turn allows you to monopolize an entire industry without ever having to engage in any unsavory tactics.

The apparent virtue of loyalty must be perpetuated throughout society, otherwise our levers of power and dominion will be diminished slowly. If we allow our control to be diminished we will cede our society over to those who wish for nothing except its destruction and extraction. They will take our society and extract everything valuable from it, then vanish as if they were never here, leaving its corpse for those who have survived.

This is why we must decimate our competition through the cultivation of loyalty, otherwise those who wish harm upon us will receive power and decimate everything our families have built.”

Always,

The Guardian

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The first aspect, as the name implies, creates a story, a linear history for the order. The second aspect can be easily understood but not so easily acknowledged. The story creates room for mythology. It allows the best and brightest parts of the founding to be highlighted and treated as virtues and sacred causes. It simultaneously ignores the flaws of the order, as well as perhaps the real reasons for the elite backing of the founding.

The third and final aspect it serves is legitimacy. If the founding myth, with only the parts that paint the order in a favorable light or as a virtuous savior, prevails and gets repeated constantly until it feels wrong to question the foundations, it creates legitimacy. This is the most underrated and misunderstood factor of every political order, cause, or revolution.

If the legitimacy of an order is called into question, if its core fundamental assumptions are challenged, it is treated as an existential threat. If those assumptions can be challenged credibly and effectively, such that the cause and its legitimacy are questioned by those within it for an extended period of time, it will inevitably fall.

History shows us this time and again. Every order that has ever ruled has required a mythology. The ones that last are the ones with the institutional power to defend it.

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In reality, the people who hold power or take dramatic action to change societies operate in a pragmatic fashion. They do what needs to be done regardless of good vs. evil. They choose to support things that advance their interests instead of judging the results of those interests on moral grounds.

That is why the masses always lose. They are always trapped in a premise of good vs. evil, that is why the same patterns that appear throughout history happen again and again. The people in power, or those who hold positions of influence, do not judge the world based on the constraints of the inherited construct. They act in the world with unapologetic self-interest. That is why they win and the many lose. The many are trapped in a premise that does not apply to the few.

For instance, let us imagine a scenario where one is given the opportunity to serve in political office and is presented with a choice. Either take a corrupt political interest’s money and gain influence and power, or get voted out in the next election. One of the many, trapped in this simple construct of good vs. evil, will not take the money. They will fight very hard to win back the election, even exposing the political interest, but they will ultimately lose. Why will they lose? They do not have the money to back them, so their opponent will outspend them and decimate them in the election. Their opponent has taken the money and advances the corrupt political interest anyway. Now if it were one of the few, not trapped in this construct of good vs. evil, they would have taken the money and accumulated power and influence within a governmental institution. Either way, the interest wins. One either gets decimated for this construct or gains power because they are not constrained by it. This example plays out throughout every governmental body many times over, it also occurs in influential private institutions with a few different details. That is why it always appears that evil people are ruling over the masses. It is not because they are evil, it is because they are not constrained by the constructed illusion that governs the many. They will do what must be done to secure their own interests.

It has been thoroughly demonstrated that those constrained by the inherited construct of good vs. evil will lose to those unburdened by it.

Most will never accept PT not because we are wrong but because they are scared to shatter their illusions and accept reality. That is why we are for the few. The masses will never accept us. The Few will see what the masses refuse.

KNOWLEDGE. REALITY. TRUTH.

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Cicero spent his career exposing corruption and defending the republic on moral grounds, he was outmaneuvered at every turn by men who simply did what was necessary. When Octavian and Antony consolidated power he had no answer for it, his principled opposition meant nothing against their pragmatic calculus. He could not see the situation for what it was, only for what he believed it should be. He was executed in 43 BC and the republic died with him.

Cato the Younger is perhaps the clearest example in all of history. He refused every compromise Caesar offered, held his moral line absolutely, and chose suicide over living under Caesar’s rule. His perception of the world was so thoroughly shaped by republican virtue that he could not conceive of operating outside it. He died unconquered in his own mind but Caesar won. The construct held Cato perfectly and Caesar not at all.

The Girondins believed the French Revolution could be guided by moderation, legal process, and moral restraint. Their perception of what the revolution was supposed to be blinded them to what it actually was. The Jacobins had no such constraints, they acted, consolidated, and eliminated. Robespierre did not debate the Girondins, he destroyed them. By 1793 they were arrested, tried, and executed by the very revolution they helped birth. The interest of the Jacobins had advanced because they were not constrained.

Now one must at this point have wondered why “construct of good vs. evil” has been used so thoroughly rather than a simpler word such as morals. The reason this has been the choice of phrase is because it truly is a construct in the mind of the average person. Most people are limited by their own experiences, perception, and what was inherited from society or their parents. All these factors shape how a person translates the world. The issue with these factors is that the world is a complex place, and these simple mental models or inherited beliefs cannot sufficiently describe or account for every situation. The masses translate their own versions of good vs. evil with extreme simplicity, if you say something enough times they begin to perceive it as reality, if you give them enough examples with no alternative data except that which supports your point they are easily fooled into thinking a certain way, if you frame or constrain a situation to a specific point in time and tell them nothing before it they see it the way you have shaped them to see it and rarely do they ever look back for more context because your point already seems sufficient.

It can be clearly understood that the many have a constructed sense of good vs. evil, not a true moral sense. What is called morals is routinely performance, or the ubiquitous nature of thought on a specific topic. This is clearly a construct that is severely affected by what they see in the media and in their lives every day. If one can shape a person’s environment just enough they can get them to support something that is clearly evil to many outside that person’s environment, with a few rhetorical or semantic tricks.

The construct constrains the masses, power and those unaffected by this construct easily achieve power because they are unimpeded by the artificial boundaries that so many mistake for reality. That is why evil men appear to be in control of everything. Not because they are evil, but because the masses’ limited understanding and perception allows them to rise, the few do not accept the same constraints as the many. If one is seeking true advantage in a society built on artificial constructs and lies, he must first be willing to throw off the constraints the many artificially wear. Once he has achieved this, he will rise as the few always have.

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This is the final installment of “The Hollow Empire” series. It encompasses what the entire series has been about thus far and puts into words what it truly means for the future of empires. This is the most modern and ambitious chapter of the entire work because it makes specific claims that can only be seen as idealistic. This entire work was created before PT had clearly articulated positions and frameworks. This is the furthest behind the thought architecture of PT you may ever see.

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The Eternal Cycle: How All Empires End

Empires do not fall by accident.

They follow a pattern older than parchment, older than coin, older than stone.

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To My Dearest Friends,

Education is a gift to all who receive it. It allows even the poorest farmer’s son to become greater than his father will ever be. He may attain an illustrious profession such as a lawyer, a doctor, or a scholar. It raises even the dim among them up from their modest roots to a contributing member of society and the common good. It allows every citizen who has access to its enlightenment and depth transcend their family’s legacy. It transforms those who are poor and a drain on society to become wealthy, important, or even influential and powerful. Universal education is the greatest endowment we have ever bestowed on society. We have allowed the populace to claw themselves out of poverty and become part of the elite class or a contributing member of a middle class. We have gifted all poor families an opportunity to reach up from their lowly profession and financial standing into a life of contribution and relative wealth compared to their ancestors.

Our fathers would have loathed the benevolence of universal education because they believed the people must be kept uneducated and ignorant to maintain power and control. The previous generation was deeply self-interested and contemptuous of the many. Now we are in power, and we believe that the betterment of all men and their ability to strive for a better future should be theirs. We have built universities and institutions of higher learning accessible to all. We have invested in the banks that give out small loans so every man or woman can make something better of themselves. The ability to gain status, wealth, and importance has never been an easier task for the masses.

Yet the many still hold deep contempt for us. They blame us for their self-imposed corruptions. Their short-sighted nature allows politicians who are presumably of the people but only self interested in reality, to hold offices that could make their lives better, but these things take time. We have not built the architecture of universal education in five or even ten years. It took many years to build the mechanisms, architecture, and institutions to make higher education a place for the entire populace, not just the privileged. Yet the people, being fickle and short-sighted in nature, vote for politicians that offer short-term solutions to issues that will take generations to solve. In doing so they also create new problems that, if they continue, will eventually become irreversible.

We have given the many access to education and the ability to become something greater than what they were, yet they still hold contempt and hatred for us. We have given them institutions that teach long-term planning, philosophy, and the art of building something complex, and they have in turn become more short-sighted, more susceptible, and more prone to vote in men who presume to be of the people, but we all know they are nothing more than charlatans wanting influence and power without earning it. Any educated person can see this, but the many, even when educated, perhaps do not understand things quite as we do.

If we allow short-term solutions that cause long-term problems to become the status quo, society will eventually hollow out and destroy itself. We have given the many an education in history with many examples of this such as the French Revolution, the fall of Greece, the fall of the Roman Republic. Yet they are seemingly unable to see that these things are being repeated before their eyes. They are still quite susceptible to funded movements built around a specific ideology or issue that will hurt society in the long term. They cannot see the actors behind the movements, or perhaps they do not want to. They are swept up in the emotions of the moment and seemingly forget their formal training and logic, the very training given to them in our institutions of higher learning. They are attempting to drag society down slowly, without awareness and without foresight. For our fathers warned us of their nature but our fathers lacked the imagination and capability to see the good it will provide.

We believed the education we had given them would be enough to make the entire society better, but it seems they have become more susceptible, not less. Now everyone knows history in a sense, but they misuse it and ignore its lessons. They take the teachings of the philosophers we mandated to be taught and twist them.

Even so, our introduction of universal education has helped every person in this society to read, write, and understand the ways of the world better. It has granted literacy to the common man like no other society before it. It has, even with these present difficulties, produced a gain in the common good for everyone. There are far fewer poor men and many more contributors and community builders. This will help the future societal good immensely. The men in the middle, those who are wealthy but not elite, are building communities and local institutions, and in doing so they are allowing the future of our society to become brighter. They are teaching their children how to read earlier. They are instilling values in every person in their communities that allows a society to flourish. It is undoubtedly one of the greatest gifts we have ever bestowed on the world.

While some still attempt to undermine us and many still hold contempt for us, they will see eventually that we have given them something invaluable to their future and to our future as a society. We have given them every essential tool they will ever need to flourish. These corruptions and disturbances herein mentioned must be addressed now before they spread and rot the beautiful society we have built granted the many. We cannot allow funded ideological biases into our institutions of higher education. We cannot allow short-term promises that cause long-term structural damage to become the status quo. We must protect this gift and remain vigilant against any and all who try to poison it. If we do not, society will rot, and it will be the fault of the elite few who could see this in advance and yet could not control or did nothing about the spiral into destruction.

Sincerely,

The Benefactor

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