Niccolò Machiavelli was a diplomat, author, philosopher, and historian who lived during the Italian Renaissance. He is best known for his political treatise The Prince (Il Principe), written around 1513 but not published until 1532, five years after his death. He had a very successful career and enjoyed a high status and favorable relationship with many high status elites of his date, including the Pope, and Renaissance icon Leonardo da Vinci, …. etc. The Prince put it this way in the book, “Since it is my intention to say something which will be of practical use… I have thought it proper to represent things as they are in real truth, rather than as they are imagined.” If Machiavelli comes out of his tomb, what would he say about the state of affairs in our day?
Since the book was published after his death, we are not sure if the book The Prince was really written by him or in his name. But it seems that the novel The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of the 19th Century (Le Rouge et le Noir: Chronique du XIXe siècle in French) by based on Machiavelli as a stereotype. What would the protagonist Julien Sorel say if he lives in our time today?
Will he say, ‘ I’m Not Playing This Game With You‘? As State Secretary and newly National Security adviser Rubio Fires Back At Reporters Asking About Kimberly Guilfoyle ? What kind of culture had made Kimberly the way she had become? Why there are such thing as Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story in America? Why are such terrible thing happen to: Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice ? What kind of mentality had made NATO the way it had become ? What had made United States so warmongering? And for that matter Israel? What kind of culture that had encourage the Cornell rape? If you are not able to be honest, The book Controligarchs would help to tell the truth, or discussions like Thielbilly Elegy: How Peter Thiel Created JD Vance can speaks volumes. We are so blessed to live under a Constitution that protect freedom of speech. Can not imagine watching this in Chinese public TV. But can there be any substantial culture change after all these talk?
We need a fundamental shift in our values–a pivot in how we think, act, work, and connect. Despite what we’ve been told, the most critical mainspring of social change isn’t coalition building or problem analysis. It’s healing: deep, whole, and systemic, inside and out, as the courage book The Four Pivots: Reimagining Justice, Reimagining Ourselves. All start with repentance and sincere change of course. Machiavelli and his close peripheral gave us a glimpse back.
To err is human. We all made mistakes, every one of us unavoidable had some kind of shabby, humiliating, disgraceful, spot moments/past – if not in action before the public, at least in thoughts privately – in one way or another during our life time. But that should not be the excuse for you to stay in your parasitic conscienceless. Because ultimately we all have to make a decision for our soul’s evolution individually and collectively: going up or going down. The book Judgement Day: Deeds That Light the Way by Omar Suleiman, an author and civil right activist, and the founder and president of the Yaqeen Institute and a member of the Ethics Center Advisory Board at Southern Methodist University. Through the book he intend to alert us of the consequence of staying in a state of unethical filthy being: “Do not ask your Lord when the day of Judgment will be, but ask yourself what deeds have you prepared for that day.”