Post by Fewms on Feb 20, 2009 3:14:51 GMT
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The Crocodile and the Cat; or, The Djelian Machiavelli
By Minister Gwydion auf der Scheibe
The Tzar, pattern and model of of the Empire and of the present Tzars, is a strange composite of grandeur and minutiae. Overbearing in spirit like the cruellest tyrants of all centuries and of all countries, worker sufficiently ingenious to rival the best engineers of his time, a scrupulously terrible ruler, eagle and insect, lion and beaver - the master, pitiless during his life, still imposes himself as a sort of saint upon posterity whose judgment he wishes to tyrannise after having passed his days in tyrannising the acts of his subjects. To judge this man, to describe him with impartiality, is still to-day a sacrilege which is not without danger even for a foreigner obliged to live in Russia.
- The Journals of the Marquis de Custine, St. Petersburg, 1834; p. 54.
The two traditional methods of obtaining power within a political collective can be symbolised by the crocodile and the cat. The crocodile's emblem is obvious: might, force, and boldness are its substance. Successful Revolutions are so many convincing carvings of its gaping jaws. It is misguided to think that that it is crocodiles all the way down, for Player Councils consist of other people. Interaction with others is therefore the only legitimate path to influence. However, if the influence amassed through social versatility is to culminate in power's crocodilian noun, its cultivation should not be left to Nature, but is better trained along the trellis of artifice. In this particular court the cat is Pharaoh; that noble beast (a hunter by night) stealthily treads the royal road of stratagem and cunning, passing directly between any two points by means of a labyrinthine line.
I sketched the cat's part in a monograph entitled "The Klatchian Courtier" that appeared in the Papyrus' second edition. When I wrote it, I was Sek's High Priest, Klatch Council's Ambassador to Ankh-Morpork, and in the second of three successive terms as Magistrate. That essay described the opening moves best made on joining a Player Council. This one, which should be considered a sequel, will indicate how political influence, once it has been obtained by the methods of the courtier and spy, can be systematically extended by applying certain principles embodied within the Pharaohic game of chess.
The first principle that will occur to the Machiavellian philosopher who contemplates a chess board's alternately-coloured squares is something along the lines of Kess of Sek's declaration that "the price of strength is eternal conflict." Such is the theory in abstract. As a practical doctrine, consider instead the Red Queen's cry, "Off with his head!" There is no piece that does not represent an advantage, or from which a ray of dangerous influence does not radiate. The saying that Peter the Great mistook his capital for a theatre also applies to chess and politics, which require the opposition, and audience, of others.
It might be objected that most the conflict in disc politics occurs *within* each Council instead of between them. This is true, but what point have gestures of war ever served, if not to maintain the peace? Stalemate, rather than war, is the prerequisite of Kess' "eternal conflict". The right kind of stalemate can be indispensable to one who wishes to ultimately don the crocodile's mantle. To illustrate, let us take the chess allegory a step further and attribute to each of the extant Councils a side - Djelibeybi white, and Ankh-Morpork black. What then? Consider the following historical incident, which is based on that very scenario.
The city of Al-drim was once besieged. Within the city were two main factions, the Blacks and Whites, which hated one another. The besieging general negotiated with the Blacks, promising them help against the Whites; without the Black faction's knowledge, he promised the same to the Whites. He kept his promise to both sides. He sent an army to a Black-controlled gate, whose sentries stood aside in welcome. Simultaneously, he sent a second army to a White-controlled gate. The two armies joined up in the middle of the city, occupied the city, killed the leaders of both factions, and took the city. The general became the first Sultan of al-Drim. Have allies on both sides, then. It is no mere abstraction that you can join in the middle.
Patience is the one indispensable virtue in Council politics, for all can change, for good or ill, on the square of a single error. Remind yourself often of that ingenious remark of a former Pharaoh: "Time and I against any two." (My own Socialist Sekkite political motto is: "Embrace all, spare none.") To arrive at the centre of opportunity, as they say, one must pass through the circumference of time. It is worth pointing out that the longer taken to attain to tyranny, the stabler its regime will be. This is because one shall already have encountered all possible resistance, and taken everyone's measure. When triumph finally comes, no surprises remain, all opposition has been exhausted, and intuition, fortified by experience, has acquired the nature of prophecy.
Ideally, one would avoid making enemies entirely. But this is rarely possible, so make it a rule to favour discretion, which partakes of the eternal secrecy of Sek, and remorselessness, which approaches His divinity. "Vengeance is a dish best served cold." Does not this imply that it should be prepared over a long time, and with an outward show of benign hospitality? How true that spite can motivate long past the point that compassion fails. If you must wait for something, put that time to good use by controlling the periphery of the board and focusing on the dangerous obliques. To isolate adversaries as much as possible is the single most important principle in these things. Without seeming to act, sever the filaments of association between them and others so that their voice produces no echoes. Confront no one openly, therefore, but take up arms only upon the Palace's hidden stairs, and amid secret rooms favourable to crime. If they fail to discern your strategy of containment, they shall probably bring it to completion themselves.
The skilful use of several pieces is called a combination. An indispensable one is the Gambit, in which a piece is risked to obtain an advantage. Its utility in Council politics is that one does not risk the emotional exhaustion of being the prime actor, whilst knowing all and controlling much. It is easy to find people willing to participate in the most audacious adventures, only be careful not to choose people who might later turn against you still in possession of the influence you gave them, or whose emotions form a precarious compound. An example of the latter occurred when Cazmoch, then Lord of the Mountain, volunteered his allegiance. He consented to close the Hashishim's book to other assassin specs and put the Hashishim at the call of the Klatchian Magistracy, causing the Hashishim to adopt Klatch Council's (as it then was) policy of xenophobic elitism. The anticipated deluge of threats and flame unnerved him, he reeled dizzily, became temporarily mad, and deleted his character after placing contacts on multiple random personages. All when people were beginning to admire the audacity of the coup I had led him to lead. It is better to be too wary in choosing important pieces than too open. Since character is destiny, to be a good judge of others' characters is identical to thinking several moves ahead.
Another combination is the Pin. This is where the opponent cannot move a threatened piece without exposing a more valuable one to capture. It is a noble science to discover each person's thumbscrew. First, guess at someone's ruling passion. Arouse it with one word, chain it with another word, and you will soon find that you have checkmated their freedom of will. To illustrate - and not malevolently, since this particular controversy is dead and as such has entered the instructive textbook of historical incident - I was once concerned by several voting alts controlled by someone within the Council. My arguments that they should be consigned to a gulag had been fiercely resisted by the very person whose alts I believed they were. Eventually, I realised that I could reduce his opposition's vehemency by interspersing my arguments with the request that he unambiguously state whether or not the alts were his. This is an application of the Pin because the person in question could not defend the existence of the voting alts without the greater loss of admitting that he controlled them. This stratagem took me while to refine, but in the end proved useful.
The Fork consists of simultaneously threatening two pieces, only one of which can be removed to safety. On the disc, any many actions are possible over the space of a single 'turn', making the Fork's reverse more useful; two pieces should threaten the one. This is one of the most useful stratagems in all pseudo-politics. It is the tactic of the tag-team, in which you and an ally reinforce and echo each other's position by taking turns in deriding or defending some jointly esteemed position. The alternation of similar views from different people lessens the resistance that can arise if only one person is monotonously intoning a particular stance. It is also more difficult for detractors to defend against, having as it does shades of the 'will of the people', and the impossibility of identifying their stance with a single person.
It might be wondered whether one should adopt deviousness that is too obvious. Surely it would not be countenanced, in the pure game of chess, for one player to blow cigar smoke into the other's eyes, or for the latter to select his seat and position the board so that the sun dazzles his smoking companion? Ought not one abstain from underhanded melodrama - "chanting gurus, walkie-talkies, tempers, fists"? This is not an easy question to answer. If you are a Sekkite, it is actually part of a pose that no one will take with the salt of solemnity. However, if you are not, and believe that such things shall stir up negative emotion - particularly ressentiment - is is best avoided as too much trouble. Still, if you are obliged to wage war, do so with poisoned arrows, for anger at the injury is occasionally overlooked in delight at the wound's novelty. Caution should probably always have the upper hand.
As a metaphor for Steerpikean advancement, the methods of the courtier and spy are best employed. For consolidation and refinement of advantages won, there is some sagacity in taking seriously the researches of the philosopher into the game of chess.
page 9
---
The Crocodile and the Cat; or, The Djelian Machiavelli
By Minister Gwydion auf der Scheibe
The Tzar, pattern and model of of the Empire and of the present Tzars, is a strange composite of grandeur and minutiae. Overbearing in spirit like the cruellest tyrants of all centuries and of all countries, worker sufficiently ingenious to rival the best engineers of his time, a scrupulously terrible ruler, eagle and insect, lion and beaver - the master, pitiless during his life, still imposes himself as a sort of saint upon posterity whose judgment he wishes to tyrannise after having passed his days in tyrannising the acts of his subjects. To judge this man, to describe him with impartiality, is still to-day a sacrilege which is not without danger even for a foreigner obliged to live in Russia.
- The Journals of the Marquis de Custine, St. Petersburg, 1834; p. 54.
The two traditional methods of obtaining power within a political collective can be symbolised by the crocodile and the cat. The crocodile's emblem is obvious: might, force, and boldness are its substance. Successful Revolutions are so many convincing carvings of its gaping jaws. It is misguided to think that that it is crocodiles all the way down, for Player Councils consist of other people. Interaction with others is therefore the only legitimate path to influence. However, if the influence amassed through social versatility is to culminate in power's crocodilian noun, its cultivation should not be left to Nature, but is better trained along the trellis of artifice. In this particular court the cat is Pharaoh; that noble beast (a hunter by night) stealthily treads the royal road of stratagem and cunning, passing directly between any two points by means of a labyrinthine line.
I sketched the cat's part in a monograph entitled "The Klatchian Courtier" that appeared in the Papyrus' second edition. When I wrote it, I was Sek's High Priest, Klatch Council's Ambassador to Ankh-Morpork, and in the second of three successive terms as Magistrate. That essay described the opening moves best made on joining a Player Council. This one, which should be considered a sequel, will indicate how political influence, once it has been obtained by the methods of the courtier and spy, can be systematically extended by applying certain principles embodied within the Pharaohic game of chess.
The first principle that will occur to the Machiavellian philosopher who contemplates a chess board's alternately-coloured squares is something along the lines of Kess of Sek's declaration that "the price of strength is eternal conflict." Such is the theory in abstract. As a practical doctrine, consider instead the Red Queen's cry, "Off with his head!" There is no piece that does not represent an advantage, or from which a ray of dangerous influence does not radiate. The saying that Peter the Great mistook his capital for a theatre also applies to chess and politics, which require the opposition, and audience, of others.
It might be objected that most the conflict in disc politics occurs *within* each Council instead of between them. This is true, but what point have gestures of war ever served, if not to maintain the peace? Stalemate, rather than war, is the prerequisite of Kess' "eternal conflict". The right kind of stalemate can be indispensable to one who wishes to ultimately don the crocodile's mantle. To illustrate, let us take the chess allegory a step further and attribute to each of the extant Councils a side - Djelibeybi white, and Ankh-Morpork black. What then? Consider the following historical incident, which is based on that very scenario.
The city of Al-drim was once besieged. Within the city were two main factions, the Blacks and Whites, which hated one another. The besieging general negotiated with the Blacks, promising them help against the Whites; without the Black faction's knowledge, he promised the same to the Whites. He kept his promise to both sides. He sent an army to a Black-controlled gate, whose sentries stood aside in welcome. Simultaneously, he sent a second army to a White-controlled gate. The two armies joined up in the middle of the city, occupied the city, killed the leaders of both factions, and took the city. The general became the first Sultan of al-Drim. Have allies on both sides, then. It is no mere abstraction that you can join in the middle.
Patience is the one indispensable virtue in Council politics, for all can change, for good or ill, on the square of a single error. Remind yourself often of that ingenious remark of a former Pharaoh: "Time and I against any two." (My own Socialist Sekkite political motto is: "Embrace all, spare none.") To arrive at the centre of opportunity, as they say, one must pass through the circumference of time. It is worth pointing out that the longer taken to attain to tyranny, the stabler its regime will be. This is because one shall already have encountered all possible resistance, and taken everyone's measure. When triumph finally comes, no surprises remain, all opposition has been exhausted, and intuition, fortified by experience, has acquired the nature of prophecy.
Ideally, one would avoid making enemies entirely. But this is rarely possible, so make it a rule to favour discretion, which partakes of the eternal secrecy of Sek, and remorselessness, which approaches His divinity. "Vengeance is a dish best served cold." Does not this imply that it should be prepared over a long time, and with an outward show of benign hospitality? How true that spite can motivate long past the point that compassion fails. If you must wait for something, put that time to good use by controlling the periphery of the board and focusing on the dangerous obliques. To isolate adversaries as much as possible is the single most important principle in these things. Without seeming to act, sever the filaments of association between them and others so that their voice produces no echoes. Confront no one openly, therefore, but take up arms only upon the Palace's hidden stairs, and amid secret rooms favourable to crime. If they fail to discern your strategy of containment, they shall probably bring it to completion themselves.
The skilful use of several pieces is called a combination. An indispensable one is the Gambit, in which a piece is risked to obtain an advantage. Its utility in Council politics is that one does not risk the emotional exhaustion of being the prime actor, whilst knowing all and controlling much. It is easy to find people willing to participate in the most audacious adventures, only be careful not to choose people who might later turn against you still in possession of the influence you gave them, or whose emotions form a precarious compound. An example of the latter occurred when Cazmoch, then Lord of the Mountain, volunteered his allegiance. He consented to close the Hashishim's book to other assassin specs and put the Hashishim at the call of the Klatchian Magistracy, causing the Hashishim to adopt Klatch Council's (as it then was) policy of xenophobic elitism. The anticipated deluge of threats and flame unnerved him, he reeled dizzily, became temporarily mad, and deleted his character after placing contacts on multiple random personages. All when people were beginning to admire the audacity of the coup I had led him to lead. It is better to be too wary in choosing important pieces than too open. Since character is destiny, to be a good judge of others' characters is identical to thinking several moves ahead.
Another combination is the Pin. This is where the opponent cannot move a threatened piece without exposing a more valuable one to capture. It is a noble science to discover each person's thumbscrew. First, guess at someone's ruling passion. Arouse it with one word, chain it with another word, and you will soon find that you have checkmated their freedom of will. To illustrate - and not malevolently, since this particular controversy is dead and as such has entered the instructive textbook of historical incident - I was once concerned by several voting alts controlled by someone within the Council. My arguments that they should be consigned to a gulag had been fiercely resisted by the very person whose alts I believed they were. Eventually, I realised that I could reduce his opposition's vehemency by interspersing my arguments with the request that he unambiguously state whether or not the alts were his. This is an application of the Pin because the person in question could not defend the existence of the voting alts without the greater loss of admitting that he controlled them. This stratagem took me while to refine, but in the end proved useful.
The Fork consists of simultaneously threatening two pieces, only one of which can be removed to safety. On the disc, any many actions are possible over the space of a single 'turn', making the Fork's reverse more useful; two pieces should threaten the one. This is one of the most useful stratagems in all pseudo-politics. It is the tactic of the tag-team, in which you and an ally reinforce and echo each other's position by taking turns in deriding or defending some jointly esteemed position. The alternation of similar views from different people lessens the resistance that can arise if only one person is monotonously intoning a particular stance. It is also more difficult for detractors to defend against, having as it does shades of the 'will of the people', and the impossibility of identifying their stance with a single person.
It might be wondered whether one should adopt deviousness that is too obvious. Surely it would not be countenanced, in the pure game of chess, for one player to blow cigar smoke into the other's eyes, or for the latter to select his seat and position the board so that the sun dazzles his smoking companion? Ought not one abstain from underhanded melodrama - "chanting gurus, walkie-talkies, tempers, fists"? This is not an easy question to answer. If you are a Sekkite, it is actually part of a pose that no one will take with the salt of solemnity. However, if you are not, and believe that such things shall stir up negative emotion - particularly ressentiment - is is best avoided as too much trouble. Still, if you are obliged to wage war, do so with poisoned arrows, for anger at the injury is occasionally overlooked in delight at the wound's novelty. Caution should probably always have the upper hand.
As a metaphor for Steerpikean advancement, the methods of the courtier and spy are best employed. For consolidation and refinement of advantages won, there is some sagacity in taking seriously the researches of the philosopher into the game of chess.