Machiavelli writing prompt

There is an ancient proverb in my country stating that a river can bear a vessel or sink it. The river being the people and the ship being the reign, it is clearly believed by many that a monarch or a political leader should be cautious and considerate when facing the people, for this “river” is able to sink his “ship”. Machiavelli suggested that rivers and men can be controlled, but cannot be trusted, thereby implying that a wise leader should make sure that his people are under his control, rather than believe that his people will always support his reign, no matter how much obedience they present for the time being. Sometimes placid and sometimes wild, the nature of mankind is as unpredictable as that of a river, upon which the vessels cannot always sail without billows and storms. From my point of view, I agree with Machiavelli’s idea. In essence, control enables people to seize as much certainty of success as possible in their own grasp, while trust usually means that people willingly rely on others when working towards a certain goal. What Machiavelli stated is that it is better to have as much certainty as possible than to add more uncertainty by allowing more external factors to be involved. It is probably a part of human nature that since we regard ourselves as individuals, we inevitably separate ourselves from the external world and have a desire to dominate our own affairs with as few external factors involved as possible. All our lives we are trying to make sure of everything; most of our actions are ultimately motivated by this attempt: eating so that we know we will not starve; talking so that we have our requests expressed; studying so that we have a clearer idea of our future; working so that we have enough money to afford other needs, etc. No one would prefer to be silent and wait for others to guess his requests, or not to earn his own life but to rely on financial supports from other people. Theoretically, if a ruler has his subjects completely under control, it is mainly him, not the people, who decide whether he can hold his position; if he have absolute faith with his people, however, the situation is reversed. As a ruler, one certainly prefers the former situation to the latter. In Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Coriolanus, the citizens’ attitude towards Caius Martius Coriolanus, a patrician leader, largely accounts for the tragedy of this unfortunate hero. They furiously condemn Martius for leaving the plebeians starved, but when he returns from Corioles with honor, they willingly offer him the position of consul and celebrate him as a hero, until, convinced by the tribunes, they change their minds once again and expatriate him for his arrogance. Their uncertainty, referred to by Martius as “the beast with many heads (IV.1.1-2)”, somehow corroborates the idea that the attitude of the mass towards a leader is unpredictable and untrustworthy.

You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate
As reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize
As the dead carcasses of unburied men
That do corrupt my air, I banish you;
And here remain with your uncertainty!
Let every feeble rumour shake your hearts!
Your enemies, with nodding of their plumes,
Fan you into despair! Have the power still
To banish your defenders; till at length
Your ignorance, which finds not till it feels,
Making not reservation of yourselves,
Still your own foes, deliver you as most
Abated captives to some nation
That won you without blows! Despising,
For you, the city, thus I turn my back:
There is a world elsewhere.

--Coriolanus III.3.117-131

In modern society, many examples still prove, if unfortunately, that many of Machiavelli’s ideas are widely applied, especially in politics. In a recent interview on Sochi Olympics, President Vladimir Putin, when asked about the newly-introduced Russian law on homosexual propaganda, told the reporter of BBC that he is “not prejudiced in any way.” Even though it is widely believed that the law, by leaving space for free interpretations, unreasonably repressed the rights of the homosexual people in Russia, and hate attacks on people with minor sexual orientations in Russia are not effectively controlled, Putin still attempts to verbally demonstrate a certain degree of tolerance of himself. Machiavelli proposed in The Moral of the Prince that a wise political leader should make more efforts to “seem to have” all the admirable virtues than to “have them and exercise them all the time.” Based on his theory, the President of Russia may not have another way to respond but declaring that he is not prejudiced, because his words cannot appear to be against good qualities such as tolerance, no matter what position he and his administration actually hold.