<nettime> Machiavelli and a Minnesota Alternative -- the brief outline

[Max Herman via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

A. 
-- Big march on Saturday here
-- Midterms are key
-- No guarantee of election
-- Focus on speech
-- Few guarantees on speech remain either,
not even personal safety.  It's that bad.

B.
-- This is the nature of every regressive movement.
-- A party collapses and resorts to a demagogue.
-- The demagogue operates by sleaze, i.e. unaccountability.
-- This can be short or long term, depending on checks and balances.

C.
-- The checks and balances are the core of the Machiavelli question.
-- He says "no higher tribunal" and "think only of war."
-- Fortune, that is, the flow of historical events, is
"a woman who must be beaten and bullied to be possessed."
[See Martin Jay re conventional and magical nominalism (interview available)]

D.
-- Machiavelli is the control and domination aspect 
of the modern era, c. 1500-present.  Dismissal of Dante.
-- Is there an alternative?
-- Might makes right v. right makes might.  Is the latter real?

E.
-- Long history of anti-Mach.
-- Shakespeare, Cervantes
-- Also pro-Mach: Mussolini, Stalin
-- Hierarchy vs. Network
-- Dante deposed
-- Could Leonardo have had a plan?

F.
-- Esperienza
-- Art, Science, mindfulness, healing, Peace
-- L knew M, and well
-- "Of the Cruelty of Man," and "Of Selling Paradise" [see Leonardo on Wikiquote]
-- Lion covers tracks, crab and oyster [ibid]

G.
-- Written allegories for sure [of Esperienza, ibid]
-- Is the Mona Lisa the visual?
-- Never yet proposed.
-- First time ever is by a Minnesotan.
-- The Universal Portrait, for Islam but also East 
and West, China and the New World
-- We must see it: now.


[#esperienza-hypothesis]


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