What Machiavelli Has Taught Me

I want to talk about a writer who has obviously been extremely important to me he was The Guiding Spirit behind the 48 Laws of Power undoubtedly and that is my good friend Nicolo [Music] makavelli makavelli I remember also going to sound like I was a very strange 15-year-old cuz I talked about nche but I believe I bought my first copy of the prince when I was 15 and I very remember the cover of it cuz it was so distinctive it had a large hand on it and there were all these people inside the hand as

if the hand was controlling all of these people and it was kind of this metaphor for The Prince and I was thought that was very striking and I was attracted to it probably because in high school and in my family and things I was dealing with things that were going on possibly manipulations I I had the sense when I was very young that people wore these masks that they pretend to be something that they're not and it really fascinated and it troubled me at a very early age so something inside me was drawn to that

picture of of the hand and the cover and makavelli so I read The Prince and honestly I don't think I understood a hell of a lot although you know he he talks a lot about history and it's fairly straightforward but I think I was very excited by the language because you know often times when you're young what irritates you about humans and adults is how fake they are how they pretend to be something that they're not right and when you're a kid or you're a child or you're a teenager you see through it you see

they're faking it they're putting up a front that's not really who they are and it bothers you makavelli just ripped that damn mask off of people's faces and said this is the human animal as it is they want Power okay and so he was writing about great Christian figures like the popes of Italy as if they were Mafia Don as if they were trying to gain power and he had this idea which to this day um I think about all the time it influences my thoughts called the effective truth ver I believe in Italian don't

quote me on that the effective truth is the truth of people is not in what they say about themselves the pope will say I am the representative Christianity of Christ on Earth etc etc but it doesn't mean anything look at their actions their actions reveal the effective truth of who they are of what they are want and what they're doing and the effective truth of the Pope at that time who was a boura who of course was the nastiest pope of all so it sort of a skewed impression was he was trying to conquer Italy

he was trying to create an empire a Vatican Empire within Italy okay that was the truth about him so look at people's actions and analyze them through that lens and see them not for what they say not for what they pretend tend to be before what they actually do and the hardness of his language the the crystal realism of it the ability to not look at all the people throw at you to try and deceive you was like whoa it's like a big thing of cold water in your face that is true that is fantastic

and we imagine nowadays that people can be pretty sharp and pretty cynical or pretty realistic I because I don't think m is cynical at all that's the wrong word because he's not cynical but pretty sharp and realistic but imagine being like that in 1514 or so when he wrote The Prince when something like that could put you in prison where it was scandalous where it was heretical the courage and the ability to see through that is what made him 500 and some years later still being read and all the great leaders in history have read

him and so many people have been influenced him both on the right and the left because of that sharpness of his vision of looking through and looking at the human animal in the clearest possible light the other thing about Maki that I didn't discover until I was older is that he's a very rich writer people only focus on the prince because that's his most quote unquote evil book but he wrote many other books that have nothing like that the discourse is is absolutely probably his most brilliant work work in which he he goes through much

more of history and he explains ideas that are much deep it's a much longer book he did an incredible book on the history of Florence called the Florentine histories which is really beautiful not many people read it he wrote a book on warfare The Art of War okay he wrote a play he was a playwriter and he was a poet and his play he wrote several plays but he had a play called mandrola which is the most scandalous play you can ever imagine about Christian religion it's hilarious it's really funny and it's a beautiful thing

and nobody realizes that makavelli was this creative man who wrote plays wrote poetry he was also a great Seducer he had all these numerous affairs with very beautiful women he was a character the kind of characters you don't find anymore in this world he was a sort of kind of person that I wish I could encounter if he were here he would be one of my my best friends if he if he was a if he liked me I don't know if he would but but I felt something very human about him it also helps

that we have nearly the same birthday so there's some kind of weird vibe going on but I've always been attracted to his realism and to his earthiness and he was by far the guiding Spirit of the 48 Laws of Power so Nicolo wherever you are I thank you