(The pin cushion above is older than most of the readers on HIVE. It's had a hard life.)
I admit. I always feel like I am walking on pins and needles when I post on social media ... including HIVE.
I've noticed that one of the major differences between people promoting liberty in the early days of the United States and modern liberals is their approach to Machiavelli.
Thinkers of the 18th and 19th century tended to disparage Machiavelli. Thinkers today tend to laud Machiavelli.
When I was in college, it was standard practice for professors to give a lecture on the greatness of Machiavellian thought. I heard liberal, libertarians and conservatives heap praise on their favorite Medieval philosopher.
The lecture would praise Machiavelli as the great thinker who broke the world from the spell of Aristotle and those evil Christians. It was Machiavellian thought that catapulted civilization from the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance.
I admit, I was intrigued the first three times I heard the lecture. Some of the lectures made me feel that the professor was more engaged with the history of philosophy than the typical historian who just repeats facts.
I ended up sitting through about eight lectures in which the professor heaped the same praise on Machiavelli, and it dawned on me that I was not listening to professors recounting their personal intellectual journey. I was actually listening to a well constructed narrative.
The praise of Machiavelli wasn't a reasoned position. It was a talking point.
The claim that Machiavelli was the inspiration of the Florentine Renaissance is easy to disprove because he appeared at the end of the Renaissance.
Claiming that Machiavelli was the father of the Renaissance would be the equivalence of one declaring that Justin Sun was the inspiration of the American Revolution. Writers do not inspire the events that took place before them.
I contend that the Florentine Republic was the true inspiration of the Renaissance. The people of Florence, which was an uneducated backwater at the time, rebelled against the Margraviate of Tuscany in 1115.
The Republic was controlled by guilds. The structure of the republic allowed for the creation of new businesses and allowed for greater intellectual freedom.
There was a steady stream of innovations in arts, engineering, science and finance in the following centuries and Florence grew to become one of the wealthiest states in Europe.
The Republic was under constant threat of surrounding kingdoms which saw the Republic as an existential threat.
The Medici was essentially a crime family that gained a monolopy in the banking sector. The Medici was able to use its control of the financial structure to establish iteself as the new monarchy.
Modern thinkers like to claim that the Medici created the Renaissance. Claiming that the Medici created the Renaissance is the equivalence of saying that Justin Sun created SteemIt.
The Florentine Republic created the Italian Renaissnce. The Medici used questionable financial tricks to capture it.
My take on Machiavelli is that he was a government employee who had an inside view of the collapse of The Republic.
Machiavelli response, was to write cynical treatise about medieval politics. Machiavelli noticed that the same pattern repeated throughout history. The political leaders would gain power by undermining the people they wanted to control.
Machiavelli's response is not unique. People on SteemIt experienced a take over.
The people who witnessed Justin Sun's capture of SteemIt wrote a barrage of cynical posts. Many of the posts are very insightful.
Steemians saw their beloved platform which they imagined to be decentralized captured and centralized by a political player who has the temerity to proclaim himself to be the prophet of decentralization.
My take is that Machiavelli was a well read historian. During the collapse of the Renaissance, he wrote deeply cynical tomes about the nasty things that Medieval leaders did to solidify their political power.
Machiavelli is an important figure in Western History because he exposed to the world the philosophy of feudalism.
I hold the classical view that Machiavelli wrote about the things that we want to avoid. He showed how different political and financial systems create perverse incentives for the ruling class to suppress the people.
But lets get back to the subject of this post.
The first chapter in "The Two Sides of the Coin" starts with Machiavelli.
I am really scared to publish it because I have known so many people who adore and follow Machiavelli.
I think these people are wrong. I think Machiavelli was exposing the inherent corruption of feudalism. We should be aware of the Machiavellian machinations, we should not institutionalize them.
The thesis of the Two Sides of the Coin is that the left and right came from the same source (The Monarchy). This common source is Machiavellian in nature.
This is the great first chapter for a book, but I am scared to publish it on HIVE because I've noticed that many people become completely irrational when one criticizes their favorite philosopher.
I've sat here with a post sitting on my computer ready to post and I look for any and every excuse not to post it.
It is strange, but I've given up on talking about health care on social media. Engaging in social media is like walking on pins on needles.
