rivers, men, fear, love & other dinner table topics

         Machiavelli's message that rivers and men can be controlled, but cannot be trusted, is true and applicable throughout life.  It is clear that while you can manipulate a river, a fire, a boy, a man, or any other of mother nature's creations, this does not make them trustworthy.  Personally, I think it is a far easier thing to spend time researching and planning and taking action towards controlling something or someone than it is to trust them.  I think to trust a person without a doubt or any hesitancy or stipulation would be dangerously artistic, much as it would to trust a river.  A river can be beautiful, as can relationships, but that doesn't mean they become a machine.  Anything in nature and alive is subject to faults and trials and failures.  To expect anything else would be unrealistic.  That being said, and still agreeing with Machiavelli on this one, people trust rivers and men every day.  In marriages, on trips and expeditions, even if we are only going in the water for an hour or only telling a man a tiny secret.  We do trust them.  And for that reason, Machiavelli's statement is important.  Men and rivers cannot be trusted, but the beauty about humans and nature and how we tiptoe around or dive into one another is that we do trust eachother.  It may not be unconditional, or constant, or screamed, but trust at all is still trust.  Machievelli did not ask us, "should we trust men and rivers even though we cannot control them?".  He told us that we should not.  And he called attention to the fact that we do.
     As for what Machiavelli had to say on society's leaders, I won't pretend to know enough about politics to say anything intelligent.  However, I am still a participator and observer of our own society, and it doesn't take much to know that Machiavelli's ideal qualities in a leader are present in the leaders in our every day lives.  In our teachers, and parents, and heads of houses, our social hierarchy, our religious ideas.  And this is a very religious question.  Does one pray more often in times of heartbreak or times of greatness?  Is the fear of Hell or the promise of Heaven more of a motivation to be a good person?  Is it fear that has one staying in their social and intellectual and verbal confines, or is it the love they are receiving there?  Fear and respect is present in many relationships, some times more obviously than love and genuine friendship.  But the end of his statement goes....'if one cannot have both'.  I think we, as leaders and followers and humans, should try for both.
     Machiavelli had good and valid points, and we listened to them because he said them in an observant and artistic way.  This is something that most do, and all of us should, strive for.

 

^Man trusting frozen over river.....two comparisons...one photo...one google search...one image which shows it all...