After I read this quote, I thought to myself: What would a mixture (or perhaps augmentation would be better term) between the Marquis De Sade and Machiavelli be like. Napoleon perhaps?

Genghis Khan.

Show your math. You will find that your answer is incomplete.

Yarite.


On one occasion, his lieutenants were idly debating what was the greatest enjoyment that life afforded. The consensus was leaning toward the sport of falconry - Genghis owned 800 falcons - when their leader offered his own deeply felt view.

"The greatest pleasure is to vanquish your enemies and chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth and see those dear to them bathed in tears, to ride their horses and clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters," he announced.
...

Genghis and his hordes annihilated every community which resisted them, killing or enslaving men, then distributing captured women among themselves and raping them.

...

The Mongol victory feasts were notorious. Genghis Khan and his commanders would tear at huge lumps of nearly raw horsemeat while captive girls were paraded for their inspection.

...

Often Khan took pleasure in sleeping with the wives and daughters of the enemy chiefs. His army commanders believed him to have extraordinary sexual powers, because he would sleep with many women every night.

There was never any shortage of women, for he and his hordes used bone- crushing violence to wipe out all the men who stood in their path.

A year after he and his hordes ransacked Beijing in 1214, an ambassador to the city reported that the bones of the slaughtered formed mountains, that the soil was greasy with human fat and that some of his own entourage had died from diseases spread by the rotting bodies.

When Genghis and his armies laid siege to cities, the besieged inhabitants were forced to resort to cannibalism.

His nomadic tribesmen travelled with battering rams, scaling ladders, four-wheeled mobile shields and bombhurlers in a juggernaut that was something new in history: a growing army which gathered prisoners as it went along and used them as soldiers or in its slave-labour force.

The further it travelled, building its own roads, the stronger it became. Prisoners were used as cannon-fodder - driven forward as suicide troops to fill up the moats and take the full force of the defences' fire.

Where possible, Genghis Khan used local prisoners so that defenders would hold back, unwilling to slaughter people they recognised.

...

In southern Russia, Khan's Mongol armies destroyed a combined Russian army four times bigger. The surviving leaders, including Prince Romanovitch of Kiev, surrendered on the understanding that no blood would be shed. It wasn't.

The captives were tied up and laid flat, where they became the foundation for a heavy wooden platform on which the Mongol commanders feasted and chose which women to bed, while the Prince and his allies were crushed or suffocated.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...dy-lovers.html

We are not the first people. Presumably there is some wisdom in our morals, some type of adaptive value that you should not take for granted as arbitrary. And so morals should be followed on the principle of faith in the collective thinking accrued over time by groups of people who have come before you and did well enough to produce you and the social world in which you exist.

Once you accept that the value of morals is in their utility, then you can probe and question them on that basis.

Margius de Sade, from whose name comes the word sadist. I don't think his challenge to the prevailing norms had much to do with those norms lack of utility. I think it's a good thing that it's considered wrong to go around inflicting physical pain on each other.

Get it into your head once and for all, my simple and very fainthearted fellow, that what fools call humaneness is nothing but a weakness born of fear and egoism; that this chimerical virtue, enslaving only weak men, is unknown to those whose character is formed by stoicism, courage, and philosophy.

-Marquis de Sade, "Dialogue the Seventh", Philosophy in the Bedroom

There is no more lively sensation than that of pain; its impressions are certain and dependable, they never deceive as may those of the pleasure women perpetually feign and almost never experience.

-Marquis de Sade, Justine and the Misfortunes of Virtue


I've already told you: the only way to a woman's heart is along the path of torment. I know none other as sure.

-Marquis de Sade, 120 Days of Sodom

Acting morally is life game theory optimal

edit: This sounds kind of flippant but I do actually believe this. Basically morals are (or should be) the guiding principles underpinning an optimal co-operative society

I love the way those who cant deal with the reality to the point that despite many advantages they spend most of their adult life in prison and asylums can insist they are the strong and are victims of the weak. All I can say is lol

120 days of sodom was a horrible film to watch. Only plus side was a belly laugh on a beach in Italy just reading the line "pasolini's version of the 3rd test match".

It just sounds implausible or meaningless though

Our morality which is based on feelings was 'imposed' on us by what was good for our genes but having been imposed by the genes it takes on a life of its own, If anything is GTO about morality its probably GTO for our genes but out moral behavior is because of concern for people/animals and not for the genes.

If we're to talk about what's GTO for people then its not even clear what we mean although epicurean hedonism seems right - which immediately shows Sade had over-indulged on the Coprophilia.

I really hate the word “should” in these sort of questions. Its meaning is so Yuck!.
This is much better.

Somewhere between these two.



Some people take the statement
claim in a semi-tautological sense that is the same as
Then alter the meaning of the word “should” and claim that
This is similar to the way some people misunderstand that natural laws like gravity and evolution are the way things should happen, so if we see them not being obeyed we should help out. Push everything off every table you come across to help gravity along, or selective wipe out those you consider less fit to help evolution out.

Moral, use a word other than should to say what you mean.

You described Khan. A fine example of an effective competitor who had a bit of ruthlessness to him and who took his winnings in women.

Sounds nothing like de Sade the pornography writer and occasional rapist. Sounds nothing like Machiavelli even if we only consider The Prince which is just an argument for pragmatism.

At best if we add de Sade and Machiavelli together we get someone smart enough to seek out masochists instead of getting in trouble all the time.

A bit of ruthlessness, LOL.


Ha, I thought you had some in depth analysis which showed I left out something critical. I didn't expect your analysis to be so puerile and incomplete. Sade was a sadist who satisfied his lust for sex and power by taking a perverse delight in pain he could inflict on others. I provided you with examples of where Khan did the same, of the delight he took in his enemies loved ones bathed in tears, of the suffocation of the men under a platform while he divied up their women. Wanton sexuality was of paramount importance for both men. Machiavelli believed the ends justified the means, and he believed in despotic rule, and Khan certainly exemplified those principles. Compare these 2 quotes:

Khan:

"The greatest pleasure is to vanquish your enemies and chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth and see those dear to them bathed in tears, to ride their horses and clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters."


DeSade from Juliette ou les Prospérités du Vice, vol. 1

"All, all is theft, all is unceasing and rigorous competition in nature; the desire to make off with the substance of others is the foremost—the most legitimate—passion nature has bred into us ... and, without doubt, the most agreeable one. "

The Prince more known and infamous, and written to a Medici, is not the totality of Machiavelli. The Discourses, a more wide reaching work (and much less read), expands his political/state concepts and, in some ways, is a contradiction (seemingly) to postulates and ideas in The Prince. Fortuna plays an integral part in some of Machiavelli's thought. This is a difficult concept/idea to actually translate. An Italian friend of mine recently wrote an essay on this and we had a lively discussion about it.

Machiavelli deserves his own thread. I once had his Discourses and was sloshing through them, but got distracted and never finished the book. I lost it somewhere back in the years, either that or I ground it up and fed it to a neighbor's dog that was irritating me.

I was browsing through The Twelve Caesars, by Suetonius and reread a great passage about Nero. It is so grand and stimulating, I'm starting a thread about it.

It depends on who you ask. He collaborated and built an empire. Religious tolerance, etc.

That doesn't happen without gaining a bit of an overstated reputation.

de Sade had sex a couple of times. Apparently not with skill. He wrote about sex a lot, but that is different.

Completely different sorts of men. One powerful and popular. The other screwed a couple of whores in the butt after only paying for oral.

Seriously, how incompetent can you be?!? Some random guy in Ohio was on the news a couple of months ago for doing it more effectively.

Machiavelli certainly believed that a republic was better and that despotic rule was only preferable when it led to a greater good.

Yes. He was strong. He was a winner. Winning is fun.

He made his living making alliances so that he could crush his enemies.

He didn't do the winning so well. He was fantasizing about being a winner. He can recognize what he wants off the top shelf but his arms were too short.

Recognizing that the strong win is not the same as winning.

Hmmm, didn't see that one on the list of dog poisons I was studying the other day.

He killed a million people in a single sitting, men, women and children. It was the greatest unmechanized killing until 1915 with the Turks and Armenians, and I'm not sure why they consider that ones "unmechanized". Didn't the Turks have guns?


But his writing tells you about his psychology.


Khan wasn't popular among his enemies, or among the families of the wives and daughters he raped. Sade was called the biggest free spirit in history. I think Khan would give him a run for his money.


Yes, and Khan too was a fair and effective ruler once he got into power. He instituted equal protection under the laws, had religious tolerance, brought peace among previously warring tribes, opened the silk road to join the West and Middle East with the East, etc. But the way that he got to power and the way that he ensured that he maintained that rule by fear was certainly Machiavellian.

You should get around to reading The Prince again. I read it assuming he was trying to be funny, just as I read Kant. Or really anyone, now that I think about it for a few seconds. It is far better than thinking that seriousness abounded.

On the Marquis, he clearly didn't understand that the bottom directs. Amateur mistake that usually leaves one on the wrong side of the law.

Swords, guns, sharpened sticks, ect. All the same.

Yes. He was wrong in his understanding of others.

Khan mostly made friends.

He was extremely fair. He was also a bit mean if you were his enemy.

To Matt:

If the default is nothingness, and living is a rare exception to this default setting, then what difference does it make whether you choose to go back to nothingness (suicide) NOW or whether you choose to enjoy your time living until you are forced back into nothingness (natural death)? Either way, you're just passing through, and if you're too pussy to pass through naturally (without suicide) don't pretend that there's a rational reason for giving up on life prematurely - admit that you're a coward first and admit that your inability to effectively adapt to this new setting (i.e., find happiness) is just another manifestation of your cowardly disposition.

There is little that can stop a powerful man from adapting to society and finding his own niche (of happiness) inside of it, even if this man despises said society. Only cowards give up prematurely. There is nothing rational or logical to it.

He mostly made babies. Around 32 million alive today, that's 0.5% of all the people there are. He was the most prolific serial rapist in the history of the world. I don't think he let the women "direct from the bottom" LOL. No one's quite sure how he died or where his body is, but some believe that he was assassinated by a family member of one of his rape victims.

In any case, the idea wasn't to compare Khan with Sade. The idea was to combine Sade and Machiavelli.

One would be pure subtractive.

S&M is all good, but de Sade completely was completely off the mark.

Yeah but what happens if said person is not a powerful man (which I'm not nor do I have any desire to be powerful), and unable to find happiness (because I have no idea what that is) and does despise society because it is a huge trap.

Admitting to be a coward is like admitting to be unattractive or to like cold white wine. It's not your choice to hate life and it's not your choice to be happy. If this would be the case, everyone would choose to be happy, no?

Your statement is kind of rude and unnecessary and it's one reason why suicidal people might hate the world. Judging and blaming other people for what they are is ridiculous as we have absolutely no insight to their experience.
But that's what we do, we judge and we compare, day by day, hour by hour. And our wannabe this, wannabe that egos can't ever get enough and that's one of the reasons why people find this whole experience of life exhausting and pointless.

Why do I act moral? Because that's what my family and friends and society expects from me. It's the default behaviour for me and I don't want to end up in trouble or in jail. And I want to keep my friends.