Agreeable disagreement, disagreeable agreement
[jotted down quickly by Lynn C. Rees]
- Politics is the division of power.
- The power divided is a variable mix of violence and influence.
- The division of power tends to favors those who best wield violent power.
- The reason of man exists for victory, not truth.
- Victory is measured in agreement, the number of minds who fuel a division of power.
- Agreement is peace, a thinning in politics.
- Disagreement is conflict, an escalation in politics.
- Agreement, once agreed, tends to stay agreed.
- Agreement that stays agreed is the most effective way to convert agreement into violence.
- The ultimate measure of victory is how well it converts agreement into violence.
- Man tends to stay agreed with what he already agrees with:
- it is the most powerful fuel for the politics of others he agrees with.
- it reduces power lost by making new agreements.
- Man tends to agree with whatever agrees with increases in his own division of power.
- Maintenance of the objective, concentration of power, and keeping the initiative are powerful contributors to victory.
- Refusal to disagree with what he already agrees with tends to keep:
- man’s eye single to the glory of his objective
- man’s power concentrated
- man from losing the initiative
- Yet politics divides power by converting disagreement into agreement.
- The intensity and mix of disagreement dictates the intensity and mix of violence and influence needed to convert it into agreement.
- Influence is the refinement of argument.
- The reason of man exists to refine less effective argument into more effective argument.
- Where the argument of influence fails, the argument of violence might succeed.
