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Keywords:: PermanentNote
Tags: power influence morality makePublic
Relevant notes:
PN: There is no morality without freedom: Humans are not intrinsically moral. They behave morally because of the negative consequences of acting imorally.
Summary: {{word-count}}
What struck me was the fact that many of Greene's laws of power seemed to be immoral and devious.
It might be because most of the laws are selfish—i.e., focused on the individual—which goes against our society's conditioning towards altruism, cooperation, and exchange. And it's not in the interest of society to have strong, independent individuals as such people disturb the harmony of the collective.
Furthermore, it turns out that what is good and bad, or what is true and false, depends on the times you live in. Most of our perspectives are shaped by the collective stories of our society. These intersubjective stories change with when the external circumstances change like when new technology comes along or a natural disaster surprises us or war hit us. Morality— i.e. what's good and bad—is one of those stories and it's malleable. Don't believe it? Two hundred years ago, slavery was a regular thing, and we thought that diseases were transmitted through 'bad air.'
This quote sums this up perfectly: “There are no principles; there are only events. It is no good or bad, there are only circumstances. The superior man espouses events and circumstances in order to guide them. If there were principles and fixed laws, nations would not change them as we change our shirts and a man can not be expected to be wiser than an entire nation. HONORÉ DE BALZAC, 1799-1850”