So we just finished reading The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli in my AP Government class. I've mentioned it a couple times in previous posts, mostly saying that I love it and Machiavelli is awesome. 

Because he is awesome. I mean, the guy wrote this book on the cusp of the 1500s, when Italy was splintered into warring factions of city-states, and no one would listen to the one guy who understood how to fix it and was willing to tell it to them straight. Machiavelli was a genius in understanding human nature (and how to control it), but everybody was too busy leading their tiny little princedoms to sit down and read his book - really, little more than a pamphlet - and learn how to lead their tiny little princedoms right.

I relate to Machiavelli. In a number of ways.

But anyway, instead of an essay, our assignment on Machiavelli is to write some kind of letter or something about Machiavelli's proposed qualities of leadership and whether or not we agree with him about them. So I decided to turn it into a blog post type thing here on Wattpad, because I want to tell you guys about how cool Machiavelli is anyway. So I'd love for you guys to read this whole thing and leave a comment about what you think, and I'll add in a couple of the comments I get as part of my assignment. (I'll make sure to ask before quoting you.)

The Prince is a small book. Depending on the translation, it can be as short as only 24,800 words. That's less than The Frozen End! But despite its small size, The Prince is packed with concise and powerful language (and wonderful one-liners for the high school student on the go). Machiavelli is blunt and to the point - so much so that he sometimes seems to contradict himself. It's usually not a contradiction, however, as much of him laying all the facts on the table and then discussing what to do with them. He writes about how to gain and maintain power, and his ideas are so efficient and effective that he is often cited as evil or cruel or uncaring because of the things he suggests.

My pal Machiavelli isn't evil, guys.

But he tells his readers to kill people! He tells them to abandon their morals! He encourages these rulers to oppress people and fight wars and he's eVILLLLLLLL!

Well, here's what people are missing:

One: The Prince is just a blip in Machiavelli's works. He wrote a bunch of other stuff, including The Discourses on Livy, a three-book series about how much Machiavelli thinks republics are the bomb and so much better than monarchies. He even has an early idea about checks and balances that we use in the US government today. Machiavelli likes republics and definitely prefers them over "principalities" (states rules by princes and kings). You can't get an idea about what a person believes from one tiny work you had to read in high school.

But if he liked republics so much, why did he write this Comprehensive Guide on How to Take Over Everything? Two: He wrote this in a time where his country was being torn apart by all these petty princes fighting over everything. Someone needed to unite everyone under one leader, and I doubt trying to form a republic would've done anything to help. At the end of The Prince, Machiavelli pleads to his audience, Lorenzo de' Medici, to follow his advice and unite Italy. Whether or not he wrote The Prince in hopes someone would save Italy or simply in hopes that he'd get a job is a well-debated question, but either way, the plea is still there: "This opportunity must be grasped. Italy, after so many years, must welcome its liberator" (123). Italy's only hope was one brilliant leader who campaigned his way across the country and brought order back to Machiavelli's homeland.

Which brings me to the last and most important point. Three: This book isn't about how to be a good person. It's not about how to get to heaven, and it's not about how to get people to like you (though it does touch on that last one). It's about gaining and keeping power. Machiavelli argues that "in order to maintain the state, a prince will often be compelled to work against what is merciful, loyal, humane, upright, and scurpulous. . . he must. . . know how to prefer what is bad" (83). He's not saying you should be a bad person, but he's being realistic about what it takes to be a prince.

Basically, if your goal is to be in charge, you're going to have to give up your immortal soul. 

If you want to get and keep temporal power, you have to give up eternal privileges. You have to do bad things sometimes to stay in charge. You have to not worry about going to hell in order to get the power you want.

At least, that's what Machiavelli says. Do I agree? I mean. . . I agree in the sense that I think he's right about what it takes to be in charge. If your main goal is to be in power rather than be a good person, then yeah, you probably can't have both. You gotta pick one. Do I think you should pick the power? Absolutely not. If you want power, Machiavelli gives you a great guide to get it. But my advice?

Is to just don't.

I say if the choice is between being a good person and keeping your power, pick the being a decent human and lose the power. I don't think anyone these days should try to take over and rule over people. But hey, Machiavelli says, if you're going to do it, at least do it right.

Do I follow the principle of being a good person over keeping power? Um. . . well. . . actually, no. I don't. 

I'm not a prince, but I do have some forms of power here on Wattpad, and even though I tout the idea that being kind is better than being right, when it comes down to it, I pick right every single time. It just happens. I try to avoid being outwardly rude, but I'll be firm, and I'll always have to "win" a conversation. I have to make sure everyone knows that I've out-researched them and out-experienced them and out-written them. It's unfortunate and I wish I had the maturity to not be that way. But, you know, I am, at least right now. In my instinctive mind, I value being right over being kind. I value intellectual power over doing the right thing.

But I don't think that's admirable, and I think I should work on changing that. Humility is something I think everyone should have, including myself.

Machiavelli might even agree with me on that. But he would not cite humility as a good trait if you're trying to be a prince.

However, if you're trying to be a prince, you should definitely look like you're humble. 

One of the major themes in Machiavelli's discussion of princely traits is the disconnect between what things are and what people feel they are. "Men in general judge more with the eye than with the hand, because everyone can see, but few can feel" (83). While the word "feel" is used differently, this is basically saying that people will often trust how they feel about something than the actual truth of that thing - even if they know what the actual truth is. This is a concept we talk about in AP Statistics as well: statisticians have to make sure they don't visually mislead the public, because everyone can see a misleading graph, but few can determine that it's misleading. They'll take their feeling about it as truth, because it feels right.

I don't necessarily think this is a good or a bad thing, just a fact of human nature. A fact of human nature that can be easily taken advantage of. And, according to Machiavelli, should be, if you're gonna be in charge. "I know everyone will maintain that it would be commendable for a prince to have all the qualities I have just mentioned that are held to be good. But because a prince cannot wholly have or espouse all these qualities, as the human condition will not allow it, he must be wise enough to know how to evade the infamy of the qualities that are thought to be bad" (73). Machiavelli proposes a prince have a cocktail of good and bad qualities that will help him maintain his state, while always seeming to be the paragon of everything good in the public eye.

Don't think this means that Machiavelli's all for being bad whenever. Oh, no. Cruelty is just another strategic tool in the Machiavellian belt, and if you don't use it well, my boy Nick will show up on your door in the middle of the night, breathing heavily and staring at you through the rain and looking at you the way I look at people when they try to argue that grammar isn't that big a deal. No, being a prince doesn't mean you can just let all morals go. Being a prince means every decision is a strategic one, means "cruelty [can be] used well or badly" (43). Badly meaning stupidly. Badly meaning you're gonna get mobbed or assassinated or something else because you didn't take the time to read Machiavelli's little book about how to do your job right.

(My version of Machiavelli in my head is very salty about this.)

Again, my advice is to just don't be cruel at all and maybe don't be in power either, it's fine. Still, thinking strategically the way Machiavelli does, you gotta admit he's basically spot on about how all this stuff will work out for you.

One of the biggest discussions about The Prince (besides "the ends justify the means", which, by the way, is NOT actually a Machiavelli quote) is whether or not it is better to be loved or feared. Here's Machiavelli's take:

"One would like to be both, but as it is difficult to combine love and fear, if one has to choose between them it is far safer to be feared than loved. ... Men have less compunction about harming someone who has made himself loved than harming someone who has made himself feared" (78).

One major thing to notice about this quote: "safer". Safer. He's saying that people are going to be more loyal to you if they just fear you than if they just love you. And, yeah, if safer means staying in power, I agree with him. Your chances of staying in power through fear are better than those of staying in power through love.

But I don't think being feared and loved at the same time is as hard to come by as he says. And I don't think this advice still applies today.

In discussion, the term our class came up with to best describe fear and love combined was respect. Because you can love someone as a lesser or an equal or a greater status than you. And I think respect (loving someone at a greater status) carries a bit of fear with it, like the fear of not having their approval. Machiavelli probably wasn't talking about fear of what people think of you, though; he was probably talking about fear of someone being able to kill you at any time. And yeah, that's pretty hard to reconcile with love.

But anyway, I would say that in the political environment of today, it's better to be loved than feared. Not just because of touchy-feely happiness. Because today's battles, at least in America and similar countries, are battled in the courts, in the homes, and online. In order to be a prominent voice today, you can't go around running war campaigns and taking over one city at a time. You have to become a prominent voice, literally. Videos, blogs, those are our ways of rising to power. But there are so many YouTube channels and so many blogs and so many people to win over. How do you do it?

By being loved.

The Green brothers. John and Hank. I love them. And other people love them too. Because they're witty, they're adorable, they're creative, they love learning, and they know how to articulate their thoughts. People listen to them because they love them. Heck, if I didn't love them, I wouldn't watch any of their political vlogbrothers stuff, because I often don't agree with them. But I'm willing to at least listen, because they've made themselves loved in the public eye.

I think when our war is public opinion and our weapons are words, the only way to survive is to be lovable enough to be heard.

Fear works sometimes, too, like the whole VACCINATIONS CAUSE AUTISM HIDE YO KIDS HIDE YO WIFE thing. It freaked everyone out so much that they didn't think to check if the facts were legit or not, and it took twelve years before the doctor who made the claim got his medical license revoked. (By the way, vaccinations don't cause autism, in case anybody was still wondering.) That guy got attention by using fear. But as soon as he was revealed as a fraud, his reputation and his job went down the toilet. Being feared wasn't the safer option for him, not today when people are far more scrutinized and fact-checked. 

The takeaway from this is that Machiavelli has some great ideas, some of which still apply today. And others of which don't, so much. I mean, it's been five hundred years. The fact that he's still relevant at all is amazing. I'd say that he was right about fear being safer than love when he wrote The Prince. But I'd also say that that's not so much the case any more, not in our current world situation.

Well, I don't know if any of you are even left. This turned out pretty long. I kinda got carried away and I'm not even sure if I even talked about the right stuff for the assignment? Oops. Kudos if you read the whole thing. I hope you don't feel tricked into learning. I mean, you were (a prince has to be willing to deceive his subjects muahaha), but hopefully you don't think of that as a bad thing. Because Machiavelli is a cool guy, and I think a valuable one to learn from. And also I love learning. And telling other people about what I learn.

So. What do you guys think? Do you agree about power over goodness, fear over love, appearance over reality? Do you agree with me, or Machiavelli, or neither of us? I'd love to hear what you guys have to say, because The Prince offers great discussion material.

Plus Machiavelli is cool, and not evil. We're pals. Come be pals with us. It's a party.

Sources:

Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince. Modern Library Paperback Edition, 2008.

Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli#Works)

Schmoop (https://www.shmoop.com/quotes/the-end-justifies-the-means.html)

Park, Alice. Doctor behind vaccine-autism link loses license. Time, 2010