Machiavelli wasnt born rich, just in educated middle class.
He rose to power through political skills, getting government position.
then he also fell, was thrown in prison and severely tortured.
Most people would be broken by torture Machiavelli endured. But not Machiavelli. He endured torture, and out of it, came even stronger, using all his experience about betrayal to create his ultimate work: the prince.
this work was based on life of experience, betrayals, and pretending which exists in society.
Machiavelli wrote his book from most painful experience. He learned in the most brutal way truths about society, its masks, its false emotional displays...
His work is a product of pure experience. He is not someone who just wrote out of imagination or research. He wrote his work after he experienced complete fall, betrayal, brutal attacks, degradation, mocking, after entire world turned against him.
Instead of being broken and forgotten, he created a legendary work and became a legend himself, because he wasnt broken by experience, but he used his experience to expose society and politics for what it truly is: a brutal game where everyone wears a mask, and weak ones wont be cared for, but trampled upon.
World rewards power the most, and that is simply fact of life. the ones with power can get away with doing things for which ones without power get ruthlessly punished.
Machiavelli truth is:
- What you depend upon is what controls you
- If you depend on someone, that person controls you
- You have no friends. Everyone has interests, and "friendship" is just current interest
- It is only when you completely fall, when you can see who is still on your side
- Dont seek to be understood by people who have interest to misunderstand
- the less you depend on approval and validation of others, the more sovereign you become
- Goal is to become independent, impossible to be controlled, and impossible to be crushed
- Dont think emotionally, and dont react to provocations.
- Use economy of warfare. Only do something when it achieves goal the best.
- When people mock you, your silence defeats their mocking, and your later response crushes them
- Become ghost. Remove yourself. Use absence. When you leave, you stop being target and people who mocked you start fighting each other.