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Padriag -> RE: Machevelli Domination (3/2/2007 9:25:37 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: juliaoceania
So my question for dominant sorts is this, would you rather inspire fear or love in your submissive if you really can't have both?
I'd take what old Niccolo said with a grain of salt. The great "devilish schemer Machiavelli" as one Pope branded him, died penniless and in exile. Largely because he made the indiscretion of revealing the proclivity of the aforementioned Pope for young boys. Had Machiavelli heeded more of his own advice, or at least this simple adage.
If you your lips would keep from slips,
Five things observe with care;
To whom you speak, of whom you speak,
And how, and when, and where.
His life might have gone very differently. So while he did have some remarkable insights, I would caution against taking what he said without consideration.
That his belief that love and fear cannot co-exist is easily disproven by simply observing life around us. The moment we begin to love someone, we also begin to fear losing them. The child loves the parent, but fears the parent's displeasure. And so it is also with nations and gods, that they are both loved and feared. Some of the great leaders of history, Alexander, Napoleon, Patton were all both loved and feared by the people they led. It also worth noting these same leaders were often both admired as well as feared by their enemies. Respect can and often does begin with fear.
As has already been observed, it is not truly an either or question. Indeed, what submissive does not fear disobeying, and more to the point displeasing, their dominant. Just as the child does not wish to displease the parent, nor the worshipper their god. Yet all these people may also love the very person or being they fear displeasing and these two emotions co-exist.
Why this is so means talking about control, which is a primary difference that defines dominant/submissive relationships from others. Control is achieved, essentially, in only two ways. Either by reinforcing a desired behavior or punishing and undesired behavior. Parents, governments, religions, educators and dominants all engage in this. Yet control is often a distasteful subject, largely because that we may be controlled offends our sense of freedom. And in this, if anything, we come to Julia's "Machiavellian" concept.
Skinner, in Science and Human Behavior, wrote this about the aversion to discussing control.
Students of human behavior often avoid the issue of control and even regard it as in bad taste to suggest that deliberate control is ever undertaken. The codification of controlling practices is left to the Machiavellis and Lord Chesterfields. Psychologist, sociologist, and anthropologists usually prefer theories of behavior in which control is minimized or denied, and we shall see that proposed changes in governmental design are usually promoted by pointing to their effect in maximizing freedom. All this appears due to the fact that control is frequently aversive to the controllee. Techniques based upon the use of force, particularly punishment or the threat of punishment, are aversive by definition, and techniques which appeal to the ultimate advantage of the controller is opposed to the interests of the controllee.
That so many decry fear in a relationship, while hailing love, reveals our true nature. That we are still romantics and that for all our pretentions to dominance, submission, power exchange... we still want the romance, the fairy tale, the love story. Our Victorian roots are showing and we are not as radical or "liberated" from them as we might wish to believe. Yet to exert control we must eventually punish, and in that instant, we are feared.
Western culture indoctrinates us to believe control is bad, that it is an affront to our "freedom" we must resist. We distrust our own governments and restrict them constantly because of underlying belief (and fear). We, and Americans especially, challenge authority in any form.
Yet there is something ironic happening here. There is a propensity that can be observed to flirt with a darkness. Dominants with a "darker" edgy image always attract attention. There seems a never ending supply of submissives who want to "used and abused". One wonders what this darkness is, and when you put it in the context of Western culture, with its values of freedom, equality, and independence, that we finally hear that darkness whisper to us... aristocracy, and... nobility. And if we dig at the root of these things we find... barbarism.
Nietzsche observed that we humans have a fascination and love affair with aristocratic societies, and that we tend to recreate them over and over again. This may seem a shock to those who hold dear democratic values. Yet even in such "democratic" and "liberal" societies we find the echoes of aristocracy. Why else then do we accord civil servants such high and special regard, for this is all a Congressman or Senator is... a civil servant, yet we behave as if it were we who should serve them. And too, it should seem ludicrous that we pay someone millions of dollars to play a game, according them honors, fame, glory and adulation, until we realize they too are part of our new aristocracy. So too it is within this lifestyle, whether Goreans, FemSupremists, Masters or Mistresses, are we not all playing at being aristocrats? And those who serve us, do they not indeed wish us to be aristocrats who rule, who control?
The origins of all those elder aristocrats, those nobles and all their noble values, the very concept of our word "noble" has at its root a hard truth. That their origins lay with unfettered, unrestrainted barbarians who's primal drive to power led them to rebuild the civilizations of Europe. Their willingness to dominate those around them, to impose their Will upon others, their willingness to both punish and reward, that they did not themselves fear to be feared, and yet could inspire love too. Something of that still lingers in us and it, residing deep within us, still calls to that distant ancestor with... love, and longing and admiration.
Small wonder then, that the most popular picture of me on my profile is one with that darker, edgier appearance... which echoes something of that distant barbarism. And small wonder also the novels of Angela Knight have been so popular precisely because she captures in her characters something of that primal barbarism.
We are not so civilized as we would like to think, and in that, I find hope. For there is a vitality and lust for life in that uncivilized nature that endures where the "civilized" man cannot. The day we completely extinguish our inner barbaric nature, will be the beginning of the end of our civilization, as it has been with others in the past when they too became too civilized, and thus too decadent and too weak.
Which would I prefer to inspire in a submissive... both love and fear. That she should love me for what is great in me, what is noble within me, for the strength that envelopes her... and yet fear me should she displease me, that that same strength punishes as equally and reliably as it rewards. In that also is the admonishment that I must be great, and noble, and aristocractic... to be worthy to be both loved and feared.
Thus spoke Zarathustra
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