Machiavelli

The vastly misunderstood Niccolo Machiavelli writing to Ricciardo Becchi: January 31, 1515

"Anyone who might see our letters. my dear friend,, and might note their diversity would be very amazed, for at one point he would think that we were very serious men, involved in weighty matters, and that we never entertained a thought which was not lofty and honest. But then, turning the page, he would discover that these same serious men were frivolous, inconstant, lustful, and occupied with trifles. This manner of ours, although to some it may be disgraceful, seems worthy of praise to me, because we imitate Nature, which herself is various, and anyone who imitates Nature cannot be criticized."

  The tragedy and necessity of the present age is that we must know much about one or a few things. Compartmentalization of knowledge is all around us, especially in social media. This has created a psychological condition that leads us to see other people as what they are in the moment. Everything we do is supposed to be a "representation of who we are" from our clothes to our looks to what we read, listen to, write....this leads to a lack of creativity, spontaneous thought, and innovation. All we do is now "seen" by someone and that creates an unavoidable self-consciousness in all our actions that is something new in it all-encompassing pervasiveness. When all we do and write and say and sing and think is SEEN constantly, we cannot help but internalize the gaze of others into a vice of self critique that can be stifling if we are not careful.

  Of course, we choose for all of it to be seen and heard as well. This is a choice born of the urgency and necessity of the present and is understandable and unavoidable. But a small place must still be saved, I think, for the fearless state of just pure, brilliant, joyous, uninhibited experimentation in thought that a too pervasive self awareness caused by the audiences we seek out might stifle. It is this freedom that belonged to people like Machiavelli who were free to experiment in thinking about a whole range of topics without fear of being placed into a category by his thought and musings in the moment. Now we are expected to be on one "side" or the other, one camp or the other. Those expectations can be the tragic death of innovative thought and the stifling of possibilities that might preclude solutions.