alt Hacker NewsPart of Schachnovelle as I remember it is that Dr. B as Weltbürger is driven crazy by the dual facts that Czentovic is both a primitive brute and yet succeeds at chess via brute force, which perhaps is meant to be compared with his earlier imprisonment in 1938, by people who succeeded at politics not by subtlety but by brute force.
The idea that cosmopolitan, educated, and cultivated people could be left like deer in the headlights by brutes setting themselves through by force reminded me of your description of TMT, or at least the ego-protective "helps hide the facts that their life was dependant of the whimsical violence of the princes" part of your explanation.
Does this unpacking make any more sense?
(meanwhile, the Melian Dialogue is the source of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46479662 )
Replies
The subtlety of Trump is a "self-stabilizing" meme?
Brutality only to outsiders-- see how he handled Mamdani face to face. Like 2 lions ?
https://youtube.com/shorts/dV8wsaaY0oQ
I'm sceptical of directly "transpiling" lessons from history-- & in general I find that Austrians are full of it* (sorry! It does feel like they are on the elitist end of the populist-elitist divide)
*Earnings
Ps: >Be the change yo want to see
It's Gandhi's saying that needs (more) elab :) I'll be that hypocrite and leave you to it
E- 1974 Lorrance
https://jenniferlphillips.com/blog/2021/2/24/origin-story-be...
>We but mirror the world
>However, the passage was written in the explicit context of animal attacks.
Ok, yes I think it helped me to understand what you had in mind.
I'm not interrested in the mind of violent sociopaths as much as I'm interrested in that of the decent people who have to accept to live under their rule, not only because of the numbers involved. Rulers might be a bit shy about their motives at times (although I can apreciate a candid one), but living under one's reign is one of our strongest taboo - thus my interest.
Note also that Thucydides' Athenians say that if they were to speak to the many, they would not put the matter so baldly, but since they are speaking to the few, they feel they may be frank.