Brendan > Recent Status Updates

“Men are less nervous of offending someone who makes himself lovable than someone who makes himself frightening. For love attaches men by ties of obligation, which, since men are wicked, they break whenever their interests are at stake. But fear restrains men because they are afraid of punishment, and this fear never leaves them. Still, a ruler should make himself feared in such a way that, if he does not inspire

“It is in men’s nature to feel as obliged by the good they do to others, as by the good others do to them.”

“For if the elite fear they will be unable to control the populace, they begin to build up the reputation of one of their own, and they make him sole ruler in order to be able, under his protection, to achieve their objectives. The populace, on the other hand, if they fear they are going to be crushed by the elite, build up the reputation of one of their number and make him sole ruler in order that his authority

“Each individual protested inwardly against despotism but was disposed to make tolerable or profitable terms with it rather than to combine with others for its destruction. Things must have been [especially bad]before the citizens united to destroy or expel the ruling house. They knew in most cases only too well that this would but mean a change of masters. The star of the republics was certainly on the decline.”

“When the [religion-defined] Ottoman millet system was still functioning in accordance with its own inner logic, ethnic solidarities did not define basic identity nor did they determine ultimate allegiance. The people whom we call, and who now call themselves, Turks and Arabs, did not describe themselves by those names until fairly modern times. [ ] It was only in modern times, under the impact of European ideas

“The rise of mercantilism in the producer-oriented West helped European trading companies, and the states that protected and encouraged them, to achieve a level of commercial organization and a concentration of economic energies unknown and unparalleled in the East, where—as a matter of fact more than of theory—‘market forces’ operated without serious restrictions. The Western trading corporation, with the

From the speech of Syracusan admiral Gylippus before a decisive naval battle vs. Athens:

“When men are once checked in what they consider their special excellence, their whole opinion of themselves suffers more than if they had not at first believed in their superiority, the unexpected shock to their pride causing them to give way more than their real strength warrants.”

Alcibiades:
“Love of country is what I do not feel when I am wronged, but what I felt when secure in my rights as a citizen. I do not consider that I am now attacking a country that is still mine; I am rather trying to recover one that is mine no longer; and the true lover of his country is not he who consents to lose it unjustly…but he who longs for it so much that he will go to all lengths to recover it.”

“We should remember that we are only now enjoying some respite from a great pestilence and from war, to the no small benefit of our estates and persons, and that it is right to employ these at home on our own behalf, instead of using them on behalf of these exiles whose interest is to lie as well as they can, who do nothing but talk themselves and leave the danger to others,

“Many stories are told in the Arabic chronicles of how, when the Arabs came as conquerors, they tried to take over the government but couldn’t, because nobody could read the accounts except the accountants, and no one could deal with correspondence except the clerks in the office. And so, the stories relate, perforce the Arabs had to give way, and though they were the unchallenged political and military masters

“The titulature of sovereignty in Islam, unlike that of Christendom, does not normally make use of territorial or ethnic designations. There are no equivalents to the kings of England, of France, of Spain, or other realms in the West. During the great wars between the sultan of Turkey and the shah of Iran in the 16th century, these were titles which each applied to the other to belittle him, and never to himself.

“The resulting struggle [between the Ottoman Turks and the Safavid Iranians] was for both the leadership of Islam and the control of the Middle East. It was waged not only on the battlefield but also in a war of propaganda between the Sunni and Shi’a faiths of which the Ottoman sultan and the Safavid shah were respectively the champions. The struggle ended with a limited victory for the Ottomans, who were able

“Wherever Shi’ites are to be found, on [the date of the Battle of Karbala] they commemorate the martyrdom of the Prophet’s family, the penitence of those who failed to save them, and the wickedness of [the Umayyad soldiers] who killed them, in religious rituals inspired by the potent themes of sacrifice, guilt, and expiation. The doctrinal differences between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims are of minor importance,

On the Roman/Persian rivalry that preceded (and enabled) Islamic conquest of the Middle East:
“The Roman, and then Byzantine interest, was to establish and preserve external trade links with China and India, thus bypassing the Persian-dominated center. The Persian Empire tried to use its position athwart the transit routes to control Byzantine trade, so as to exploit it in times of peace or stop it in times of war.

So much of world history can be seen as an attempt to transcend the brutal terms of Athens as they prepared to crush Melos:

“…since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

International law, much of religion, philosophy, and diplomacy all seek to escape this ‘law of nature’

Feels familiar:

“[Sparta] had failed to get the treaty accepted by her Thracian allies or by the Boeotians or Corinthians, although she was continually promising to unite with Athens to compel their compliance if it were refused. [Sparta] also kept fixing a time at which those who still refused to join were to be declared enemies to both parties, but took care not to bind herself by any written agreement.”

“To enjoy our full humanity we ought, so far as is possible, to contain within us potentially at all times, and on occasion to actualize, all the modes of feeling and thinking through which man has passed. You must, so far as in you lies, become an Achaean chief while reading Homer, a medieval knight while reading Malory, and an 18th century Londoner while reading Johnson.”

Thucydides identifies confirmation bias and motivated reasoning long before modern psychology:

“For it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not desire.”

“The present prosperity had persuaded the Athenians that nothing could withstand them, and that they could achieve what was possible and what was impracticable alike, with means ample or inadequate it mattered not. The reason for this was their general extraordinary success, which made them confuse their strength with their hopes.”

“The unchanging recurrence of [Homer’s] ‘wine-dark sea’, his ‘rosy-fingered dawn,’ his ships launched ‘into the holy brine,’ his ‘Poseidon shaker of earth,’ produce an effect which modern poetry, except where it has learned from Homer himself, cannot attain. They emphasize the unchanging human environment. They express a feeling very profound and very frequent in real life, but elsewhere

“But what will not ambition and revenge
Descend to? Who aspires must down as low
As high he soared, obnoxious first or last
To basest things. Revenge at first though sweet
Bitter ere long back on itself recoils.”

“Indeed sensible men are prudent enough to treat their gains as precarious, just as they would also keep a clear head in adversity, and think that war, so far from staying within the limit to which a combatant may wish to confine it, will run the course that its chances prescribe; and thus, not being puffed up by confidence in military success, they are less likely to come to grief and most ready to make peace, if

“The sufferings which revolution entailed upon the cities were many and terrible, such as have occurred and always will occur as long as the nature of mankind remains the same… In peace and prosperity states and individuals have better sentiments, because they do not find themselves suddenly confronted with imperious necessities; but war takes away the easy supply of daily wants and so proves a rough master that

“Good deeds can be shortly stated, but where wrong is done a wealth of language is needed to veil its deformity.”

“The matter inside the poet *wants* the Form: in submitting to the Form it becomes really original… The attempt to be oneself often brings out only the more conscious and superficial parts of a man’s mind; working to produce a given kind of poem which will present a given theme as justly, delightfully, and lucidly as possible, he is more likely to bring out all that was really in him”

Cleon again:
“Great good fortune coming suddenly and unexpectedly tends to make a people insolent: in most cases it is safer for mankind to have success in reason than out of reason; and it is easier for them, one may say, to stave off adversity than to preserve prosperity.”

From the speech of the demagogue Cleon:

“Bad laws which are never changed are better for a city than good ones that have no authority; unlearned loyalty is more serviceable than quick-witted insubordination; ordinary men usually manage public affairs better than their more gifted fellows. The latter are always wanting to appear wiser than the laws, and to overrule every proposition brought forward, thinking that

Words of the Mytilenian ambassador to Sparta seem apropos right now:

“It is not in Attica that the war will be decided, as some imagine, but in the countries by which Attica is supported; and the Athenian revenue is drawn from the allies, and will become still larger if they reduce us; as not only will no other state revolt, but our resources will be added to theirs”

From Pericles’ funeral oration for the war dead:

“He who is a stranger to the matter may be led by envy to suspect exaggeration if he hears anything above his own nature. For men can endure to hear others praised only so long as they can severally persuade themselves of their own ability to equal the actions recounted: when this point is passed, envy comes in and with it incredulity.”

Satan laments his fall:
“Which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is Hell, myself am Hell,
And in the lowest deep a lower deep
Still threat’ning to devour me opens wide,
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav’n.
O then at last relent! Is there no place
Left for repentance, none for pardon left?
None left but by submission and that word
Disdain forbids me and my dread of shame