An Introduction to George Orwell’s 1984 and How Power Manufactures Truth

in Books, History, Literature, Politics | June 6th, 2025

Soon after the first elec­tion of Don­ald Trump to the pres­i­den­cy of the Unit­ed States, George Orwell’s Nine­teen Eighty-Four became a best­seller again. Shoot­ing to the top of the Amer­i­can charts, the nov­el that inspired the term “Orwellian” passed Danielle Steel’s lat­est opus, the poet­ry of Rupi Kaur, the eleventh Diary of a Wimpy Kid book, and the mem­oir of an ambi­tious young man named J. D. Vance. But how much of its renewed pop­u­lar­i­ty owed to the rel­e­vance of a near­ly 70-year-old vision of shab­by, total­i­tar­i­an future Eng­land to twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca, and how much to the fact that, as far as influ­ence on pop­u­lar cul­ture’s image of polit­i­cal dystopia, no oth­er work of lit­er­a­ture comes close?

For all the myr­i­ad ways one can crit­i­cize his two admin­is­tra­tions, Trump’s Amer­i­ca bears lit­tle super­fi­cial resem­blance to Ocea­ni­a’s Airstrip One as ruled by The Par­ty. But it can hard­ly be a coin­ci­dence that this peri­od of his­to­ry has also seen the con­cept “post-truth” become a fix­ture in the zeit­geist.

There are many rea­sons not to want to live in the world Orwell imag­ines in Nine­teen Eighty-Four: the thor­ough bureau­cra­ti­za­tion, the lack of plea­sure, the unceas­ing sur­veil­lance and pro­pa­gan­da. But none of this is quite so intol­er­a­ble as what makes it all pos­si­ble: the rulers’ claim to absolute con­trol over the truth, a form of psy­cho­log­i­cal manip­u­la­tion hard­ly lim­it­ed to regimes we regard as evil.

As James Payne says in his Great Books Explained video on Nine­teen Eighty-Four, Orwell worked for the BBC’s over­seas ser­vice dur­ing the war, and there received a trou­bling edu­ca­tion in the use of infor­ma­tion as a polit­i­cal weapon. The expe­ri­ence inspired the Min­istry of Truth, where the nov­el­’s pro­tag­o­nist Win­ston Smith spends his days re-writ­ing his­to­ry, and the dialect of Newspeak, a severe­ly reduced Eng­lish designed to nar­row its speak­ers’ range of thought. Orwell may have over­es­ti­mat­ed the degree to which lan­guage can be mod­i­fied from the top down, but as Payne reminds us, we now all hear cul­ture war­riors describe real­i­ty in high­ly slant­ed, polit­i­cal­ly-charged, and often thought-ter­mi­nat­ing ways all day long. Every­where we look, some­one is ready to tell us that two plus two make five; if only they were as obvi­ous about it as Big Broth­er.

Relat­ed con­tent:

George Orwell Explains How “Newspeak” Works, the Offi­cial Lan­guage of His Total­i­tar­i­an Dystopia in 1984

George Orwell Explains in a Reveal­ing 1944 Let­ter Why He’d Write 1984

George Orwell’s Har­row­ing Race to Fin­ish 1984 Before His Death

George Orwell’s Final Warn­ing: Don’t Let This Night­mare Sit­u­a­tion Hap­pen. It Depends on You!

What “Orwellian” Real­ly Means: An Ani­mat­ed Les­son About the Use & Abuse of the Term

Aldous Hux­ley to George Orwell: My Hell­ish Vision of the Future is Bet­ter Than Yours (1949)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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When the State Department Used Dizzy Gillespie and Jazz to Fight the Cold War (1956)

in History, Music, Politics | June 5th, 2025

It’s been said that the Unit­ed States won the Cold War with­out fir­ing a shot — a state­ment, as P. J. O’Rourke once wrote, that doubt­less sur­prised vet­er­ans of Korea and Viet­nam. But it would­n’t be entire­ly incor­rect to call the long stare-down between the U.S. and the Sovi­et Union a bat­tle of ideas. Dwight Eisen­how­er cer­tain­ly saw it that way, a world­view that inspired the 1956 cre­ation of the Pres­i­den­t’s Spe­cial Inter­na­tion­al Pro­gram for Par­tic­i­pa­tion in Inter­na­tion­al Affairs, which aimed to use Amer­i­can cul­ture to improve the coun­try’s image around the world. (That same year, Eisen­how­er also signed off on the con­struc­tion of the Inter­state High­way Sys­tem, such was the coun­try’s ambi­tion at the time.)

For an unam­bigu­ous­ly Amer­i­can art form, one could hard­ly do bet­ter than jazz, which also had the advan­tage of coun­ter­bal­anc­ing U.S.S.R. pro­pa­gan­da focus­ing on the U.S.’ trou­bled race rela­tions. And so the State Depart­ment picked a series of “jazz ambas­sadors” to send on care­ful­ly planned world tours, begin­ning with Dizzy Gille­spie and his eigh­teen-piece inter­ra­cial band (with the late Quin­cy Jones in the role of music direc­tor).

Start­ing in March of 1956, Gille­spie’s ten-week tour fea­tured dates all over Europe, Asia, and South Amer­i­ca. These would­n’t be his last State Depart­ment-spon­sored tours abroad: in the videos above, you can see a clip from his per­for­mance in Ger­many in 1960. This tour­ing even result­ed in live albums like Dizzy in Greece and World States­man.

Oth­er jazz ambas­sadors would fol­low: Louis Arm­strong (who quit over the high-school inte­gra­tion cri­sis in Lit­tle Rock), Duke Elling­ton, Ben­ny Good­man, and Dave Brubeck (whose dim view of the pro­gram inspired the musi­cal The Real Ambas­sadors). But none went quite so far in pur­su­ing their cul­tur­al-polit­i­cal inter­ests as Gille­spie, who announced him­self as a write-in can­di­date in the 1964 U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. He promised not only to rename the White House the Blues house, but also to appoint a cab­i­net includ­ing Miles Davis as Direc­tor of the CIA, Charles Min­gus as Sec­re­tary of Peace, Arm­strong as Sec­re­tary of Agri­cul­ture, and Elling­ton as Sec­re­tary of State. This jazzed-up admin­is­tra­tion was, alas, nev­er to take pow­er, but the music itself has left more of a lega­cy than any gov­ern­ment could. Sure­ly the fact that I write these words in a café in Korea sound­tracked entire­ly by jazz speaks for itself.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dizzy Gille­spie Wor­ries About Nuclear & Envi­ron­men­tal Dis­as­ter in Vin­tage Ani­mat­ed Films

Louis Arm­strong Plays His­toric Cold War Con­certs in East Berlin & Budapest (1965)

When Louis Arm­strong Stopped a Civ­il War in The Con­go (1960)

Louis Arm­strong Plays Trum­pet at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids; Dizzy Gille­spie Charms a Snake in Pak­istan

Dizzy Gille­spie Runs for US Pres­i­dent, 1964. Promis­es to Make Miles Davis Head of the CIA

How the CIA Secret­ly Used Jack­son Pol­lock & Oth­er Abstract Expres­sion­ists to Fight the Cold War

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How Italy Became the Most Divided Country in Europe: Understanding the Great Divide Between North & South

in Economics, History, Politics | April 4th, 2025

Pra­da, Alfa Romeo, Pel­le­gri­no, Fer­rari, Illy, Lam­borgh­i­ni, Guc­ci: these are a few Ital­ian cor­po­ra­tions we all know, though we don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly know that they’re all from the north of Italy. The same is true, in fact, of most Ital­ian brands that now enjoy glob­al recog­ni­tion, and accord­ing to the analy­sis pre­sent­ed in the Real­LifeLore video above, that’s not a coin­ci­dence. More than 160 years after the uni­fi­ca­tion of Italy, the south remains an eco­nom­ic and social under-per­former com­pared to the north, reflect­ed in mea­sures like the Human Devel­op­ment Index, GDP per capi­ta, and even vot­er turnout. At this point, the dis­par­i­ty between the two halves of the coun­try looks stark­er than that between the for­mer East and West Ger­many.

The rea­sons begin with geog­ra­phy: besides its obvi­ous prox­im­i­ty to the rest of Europe, north­ern Italy is home to the high­ly nav­i­ga­ble Po Riv­er and its sur­round­ing val­ley, the fresh­wa­ter (and hydro­elec­tric pow­er) sources of the Alps, and the deep-water ports at Tri­este and Genoa. What’s more, it does­n’t much over­lap with the fault zone under the Apen­nine Moun­tains of cen­tral and south­ern Italy, and thus isn’t as exposed to the earth­quakes that have tak­en such a toll over the cen­turies. Nor are any of the coun­try’s active vol­ca­noes — includ­ing Mt. Vesu­vius, which destroyed Pom­peii in the year 79 and killed thou­sands of Neapoli­tans in 1631 — locat­ed in the north.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the polit­i­cal fates of what would become north­ern and south­ern Italy also diverged. Large parts of the south expe­ri­enced rule by Greeks, Arabs, Nor­mans, Spaniards, and Aus­tri­an Hab­s­burgs. As the video’s nar­ra­tion tells the sto­ry, “The long reign of for­eign pow­ers through­out south­ern Italy estab­lished a cul­ture of absen­tee land­lords, large land hold­ings worked by peas­ants, and feu­dal­ism that per­sist­ed for much longer than it did in the north, which for cen­turies after the Mid­dle Ages was con­trolled by var­i­ous thriv­ing, inde­pen­dent­ly gov­erned com­munes and city-states that built up large amounts of trust, or social cap­i­tal, between the peo­ple who lived there and the insti­tu­tions they built.”

Even at the time of uni­fi­ca­tion, south­ern Italy had less infra­struc­ture than north­ern Italy, a dif­fer­ence that remains painful­ly obvi­ous to any trav­el­ers attempt­ing to make their way across the coun­try today. It also had quite a lot of catch­ing up to do with regard to indus­tri­al out­put and lit­er­a­cy rates. Though cer­tain gaps have nar­rowed, the north-south divide has actu­al­ly become more pro­nounced in cer­tain ways since, not least due to the recrude­s­cence of Mafia influ­ence since the Sec­ond World War (a major fac­tor in the per­sis­tent lack of a bridge to Sici­ly, as recent­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture). Not to say that each half is homo­ge­neous with­in itself: spend enough time in any of the regions that con­sti­tute either one, and it will come to feel like a dis­tinct nation unto itself. Even­tu­al­ly, you may also find your­self in agree­ment with the Ital­ians who insist that Italy nev­er real­ly uni­fied in the first place.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Why There Isn’t a Bridge from Italy to Sici­ly – and Why the 2,000-Year-Old Dream of Build­ing the Bridge May Soon Be Real­ized

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Steps a President Would Take to Destroy His Nation, According to Elon Musk’s AI Chatbot, Grok

in Artificial Intelligence, Politics | April 3rd, 2025

Just out of curios­i­ty, and apro­pos of noth­ing, we asked Grok (the AI chat­bot cre­at­ed by Elon Musk) the fol­low­ing ques­tion: If a pres­i­dent of a super­pow­er want­ed to destroy his own coun­try, what steps would he take? Here’s what Grok had to say:

If a pres­i­dent of a super­pow­er aimed to delib­er­ate­ly under­mine their own nation, they could the­o­ret­i­cal­ly take steps to weak­en its eco­nom­ic, social, mil­i­tary, and polit­i­cal foun­da­tions. Here’s a hypo­thet­i­cal break­down of such actions, assum­ing they have enough influ­ence and con­trol to push them through:

  1. Eco­nom­ic Sab­o­tage: They could tank the econ­o­my by impos­ing reck­less fis­cal policies—massive, unsus­tain­able debt through unchecked spend­ing or tax cuts with­out fund­ing, devalu­ing the cur­ren­cy by pres­sur­ing the cen­tral bank to print mon­ey exces­sive­ly, or dis­man­tling key indus­tries through dereg­u­la­tion or puni­tive tar­iffs that dis­rupt trade. Encour­ag­ing cor­rup­tion and crony­ism could fur­ther drain resources.
  2. Under­min­ing Nation­al Secu­ri­ty: Mil­i­tar­i­ly, they might weak­en defens­es by slash­ing bud­gets, pulling out of strate­gic alliances, or leak­ing sen­si­tive intel­li­gence to adver­saries. Order­ing troops into unwinnable, morale-crush­ing conflicts—or aban­don­ing crit­i­cal outposts—could erode mil­i­tary strength and glob­al stand­ing.
  3. Social Divi­sion: They could stoke inter­nal con­flict by ampli­fy­ing divi­sive rhetoric, tar­get­ing spe­cif­ic groups with poli­cies that breed resent­ment, or let­ting infra­struc­ture and pub­lic ser­vices crum­ble to fuel dis­con­tent. Mis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns, either direct­ly or through prox­ies, could deep­en mis­trust in insti­tu­tions.
  4. Polit­i­cal Ero­sion: To crip­ple gov­er­nance, they might attack the rule of law—pardoning loy­al­ists who break it, stack­ing courts with unqual­i­fied ide­o­logues, or push­ing leg­is­la­tion that cen­tral­izes pow­er in their hands. Under­min­ing elec­tions through vot­er sup­pres­sion or out­right fraud could desta­bi­lize democ­ra­cy fur­ther.
  5. Inter­na­tion­al Iso­la­tion: They could alien­ate allies by break­ing treaties, insult­ing part­ners, or cozy­ing up to hos­tile regimes, leav­ing the coun­try diplo­mat­i­cal­ly vul­ner­a­ble. With­draw­ing from glob­al orga­ni­za­tions or cli­mate agree­ments might also dimin­ish soft pow­er and eco­nom­ic lever­age.
  6. Neglect­ing Crises: In the face of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, pan­demics, or cyber­at­tacks, they could delib­er­ate­ly botch responses—ignoring experts, with­hold­ing aid, or spread­ing confusion—letting chaos com­pound.

Grok con­tin­ues: “In prac­tice, any pres­i­dent try­ing this would face mas­sive resis­tance: checks and bal­ances, pub­lic back­lash, legal bar­ri­ers, and push­back from their own admin­is­tra­tion or mil­i­tary. It’d take more than intent—sophisticated manip­u­la­tion and loy­al enablers would be key. His­tor­i­cal­ly, no leader has pulled this off ful­ly, but you can see echoes in cas­es like Venezuela under Maduro, where mis­man­age­ment and author­i­tar­i­an­ism led to collapse—though even there, self-destruc­tion wasn’t the explic­it goal. Inten­tion­al ruin would be a slow burn, not a switch flipped overnight.”

As you read this, you might hear a lot of box­es being checked in your mind, and you might won­der if Grok is call­ing the shots. But, dear read­er, this is all pure­ly the­o­ret­i­cal. As they say in the movies, any resem­blance to actu­al per­sons, liv­ing or dead, or actu­al events is pure­ly coin­ci­den­tal.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Toni Mor­ri­son Lists the 10 Steps That Lead Coun­tries to Fas­cism (1995)

Umber­to Eco Makes a List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

The Sto­ry of Fas­cism: Rick Steves’ Doc­u­men­tary Helps Us Learn from the Hard Lessons of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Yale Pro­fes­sor Jason Stan­ley Iden­ti­fies 10 Tac­tics of Fas­cism: The “Cult of the Leader,” Law & Order, Vic­tim­hood and More

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When Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Pastor, Theorized How Stupidity Enabled the Rise of the Nazis (1942)

in History, Politics | March 26th, 2025

Two days after Adolf Hitler became Chan­cel­lor of Ger­many, the Luther­an pas­tor Diet­rich Bon­ho­ef­fer took to the air­waves. Before his radio broad­cast was cut off, he warned his coun­try­men that their führer could well be a ver­führer, or mis­leader. Bon­ho­ef­fer­’s anti-Nazism last­ed until the end of his life in 1945, when he was exe­cut­ed by the regime for asso­ci­a­tion with the 20 July plot to assas­si­nate Hitler. Even while impris­oned, he kept think­ing about the ori­gins of the polit­i­cal mania that had over­tak­en Ger­many. The force of cen­tral impor­tance to Hitler’s rise was not evil, he con­clud­ed, but stu­pid­i­ty.

“Stu­pid­i­ty is a more dan­ger­ous ene­my of the good than mal­ice,” Bon­ho­ef­fer wrote in a let­ter to his co-con­spir­a­tors on the tenth anniver­sary of Hitler’s acces­sion to the chan­cel­lor­ship. “One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, pre­vent­ed by use of force. Evil always car­ries with­in itself the germ of its own sub­ver­sion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stu­pid­i­ty we are defense­less.” When pro­voked, “the stu­pid per­son, in con­trast to the mali­cious one, is utter­ly self-sat­is­fied and, being eas­i­ly irri­tat­ed, becomes dan­ger­ous by going on the attack.”

Fight­ing stu­pid­i­ty, to Bon­ho­ef­fer­’s mind, first neces­si­tates under­stand­ing it. “In essence not an intel­lec­tu­al defect but a human one,” stu­pid­i­ty can descend upon prac­ti­cal­ly any­one: “under cer­tain cir­cum­stances, peo­ple are made stu­pid or that they allow this to hap­pen to them.” And it hap­pens most notice­ably when a par­tic­u­lar fig­ure or move­ment seizes the atten­tion of the pub­lic. “Every strong upsurge of pow­er in the pub­lic sphere, be it of a polit­i­cal or of a reli­gious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stu­pid­i­ty,” he writes. Since such phe­nom­e­na could hard­ly arise with­out blind­ly obe­di­ent mass­es, it seems that “the pow­er of the one needs the stu­pid­i­ty of the oth­er.”

You can see Bon­ho­ef­fer­’s the­o­ry of stu­pid­i­ty explained in the illus­trat­ed Sprouts video above, and you can learn more about the man him­self from the doc­u­men­tary Bon­ho­ef­fer. Or, bet­ter yet, read his col­lec­tion, Let­ters and Papers from Prison. Though root­ed in his time, cul­ture, and reli­gion, his thought remains rel­e­vant wher­ev­er humans fol­low the crowd. “The fact that the stu­pid per­son is often stub­born must not blind us to the fact that he is not inde­pen­dent,” he writes, which held as true in the pub­lic squares of wartime Europe as it does on the social-media plat­forms of today. “In con­ver­sa­tion with him, one vir­tu­al­ly feels that one is deal­ing not at all with a per­son, but with slo­gans, catch­words and the like, that have tak­en pos­ses­sion of him.” What­ev­er would sur­prise Bon­ho­ef­fer about our time, he would know exact­ly what we mean when we call stu­pid peo­ple “tools.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Nature of Human Stu­pid­i­ty Explained by The 48 Laws of Pow­er Author Robert Greene

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How Stephen King Predicted the Rise of Trump in a 1979 Novel

in Books, Politics | March 5th, 2025

Nobody opens a Stephen King nov­el expect­ing to see a reflec­tion of the real world. Then again, as those who get hooked on his books can attest, nev­er is his work ever whol­ly detached from real­i­ty. Time and time again, he deliv­ers lurid visions of the macabre, grotesque, and bizarre, but they always work most pow­er­ful­ly when he weaves them into the coarse fab­ric of ordi­nary, makeshift, down-at-the-heels Amer­i­ca. Though long rich and famous, King has­n’t lost his under­stand­ing of a cer­tain down­trod­den stra­tum of soci­ety, or at least one that regards itself as down­trod­den — the very demo­graph­ic, in oth­er words, often blamed for the rise of Don­ald Trump.

“I start­ed think­ing Don­ald Trump might win the pres­i­den­cy in Sep­tem­ber of 2016,” King writes in a Guardian piece from Trump’s first pres­i­den­tial term. “By the end of Octo­ber, I was almost sure.” For most of that year, he’d sensed “a feel­ing that peo­ple were both fright­ened of the sta­tus quo and sick of it. Vot­ers saw a vast and over­loaded apple cart lum­ber­ing past them. They want­ed to upset the moth­er­fuck­er, and would wor­ry about pick­ing up those spilled apples lat­er. Or just leave them to rot.” They “didn’t just want change; they want­ed a man on horse­back. Trump filled the bill. I had writ­ten about such men before.”

King’s most pre­scient­ly craft­ed Trump-like char­ac­ter appears in his 1979 nov­el The Dead Zone. “Greg Still­son is a door-to-door Bible sales­man with a gift of gab, a ready wit and the com­mon touch. He is laughed at when he runs for may­or in his small New Eng­land town, but he wins,” a sequence of events that repeats itself when he runs for the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and then for the pres­i­den­cy — a rise fore­seen by the sto­ry’s hero John­ny Smith, grant­ed clair­voy­ant pow­ers by a car wreck. “He real­izes that some day Still­son is going to laugh and joke his way into the White House, where he will start world war three.”

Fur­ther Still­son-Trump par­al­lels are exam­ined in the NowThis inter­view clip at the top of the post. “I was sort of con­vinced that it was pos­si­ble that a politi­cian would arise who was so out­side the main­stream and so will­ing to say any­thing that he would cap­ture the imag­i­na­tions of the Amer­i­can peo­ple.” Read now, Still­son’s dem­a­gog­i­cal rhetoric — describ­ing him­self as “a real mover and shak­er,” promis­ing to “throw the bums out” of Wash­ing­ton — sounds rather mild com­pared to what Trump says at his own ral­lies. Per­haps King him­self does have a touch of John­ny Smith-like pre­science. Or per­haps he sus­pects, on some lev­el, that Trump isn’t so much the dis­ease as the symp­tom, a man­i­fes­ta­tion of a much deep­er and longer-fes­ter­ing con­di­tion of the Amer­i­can soul. Now there’s a fright­en­ing notion.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Octavia Butler’s 1998 Dystopi­an Nov­el Fea­tures a Fascis­tic Pres­i­den­tial Can­di­date Who Promis­es to “Make Amer­i­ca Great Again”

Stephen King’s 20 Rules for Writ­ers

Did Plato’s Repub­lic Pre­dict the Rise of Don­ald Trump?: A Chill­ing Ani­mat­ed Video Nar­rat­ed by Andrew Sul­li­van

Noam Chom­sky on Whether the Rise of Trump Resem­bles the Rise of Fas­cism in 1930s Ger­many

R Crumb, the Father of Under­ground Comix, Takes Down Don­ald Trump in a NSFW 1989 Car­toon

Stephen King Names His Five Favorite Works by Stephen King

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The 48 Laws of Power Explained in 30 Minutes: “Never Outshine the Master,” “Re-Create Yourself,” and More

in Books, Politics | February 25th, 2025

Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Pow­er has been a pop­u­lar book since its first pub­li­ca­tion over a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry ago. Judg­ing by the dis­cus­sion that con­tin­ues among its fer­vent (and often pros­e­ly­tiz­ing) fans, it’s easy to for­get that its title isn’t How to Become Pow­er­ful. Grant­ed, it may some­times get filed in the self-help sec­tion, and cer­tain of the laws it con­tains — “Nev­er out­shine the mas­ter,” “Always say less than nec­es­sary,” “Enter action with bold­ness” — read like straight­for­ward rec­om­men­da­tions. Yet like Machi­avel­li, one of the book’s many his­tor­i­cal sources, it’s much more inter­est­ing to read as a study of pow­er itself.

In the video above from Greene’s offi­cial YouTube chan­nel, you can hear all 48 laws accom­pa­nied by brief expla­na­tions in less than 30 min­utes. Some of them may give you pause: are “Get oth­ers to do the work for you, but always take the cred­it,” “Pose as a friend, work as a spy,” and “Crush your ene­my total­ly” real­ly meant to be tak­en straight­for­ward­ly?

Per­haps they both are and aren’t. Descrip­tive of the ways in which indi­vid­u­als have accrued pow­er over the course of human his­to­ry (images of whom pro­vide visu­al accom­pa­ni­ment), they can also be metaphor­i­cal­ly trans­posed into a vari­ety of per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al sit­u­a­tions with­out turn­ing you into some kind of evil mas­ter­mind.

When The 48 Laws of Pow­er came out in 1999, we did­n’t live on the inter­net in the way we do now. Re-read today, its laws apply with an uncan­ny apt­ness to a social-medi­at­ed world in which we’ve all become pub­lic per­son­al­i­ties online. We may not always say less than nec­es­sary, but we do know how impor­tant it can be to “court atten­tion at all costs.” Some of us “cul­ti­vate an air of unpre­dictabil­i­ty”; oth­ers “play to peo­ple’s fan­tasies,” in some cas­es going as far as to “cre­ate a cult-like fol­low­ing.” The most adept put in work to “cre­ate com­pelling spec­ta­cles” in accor­dance with “the art of tim­ing,” tak­ing care to “nev­er appear too per­fect.” Though Machi­avel­li him­self would under­stand prac­ti­cal­ly noth­ing about our tech­nol­o­gy, he would sure­ly under­stand our world.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Machiavelli’s The Prince Explained in an Illus­trat­ed Film

What Does “Machi­avel­lian” Real­ly Mean?: An Ani­mat­ed Les­son

How Machi­avel­li Real­ly Thought We Should Use Pow­er: Two Ani­mat­ed Videos Pro­vide an Intro­duc­tion

Salman Rushdie: Machiavelli’s Bad Rap

Allan Bloom’s Lec­tures on Machi­avel­li (Boston Col­lege, 1983)

The Nature of Human Stu­pid­i­ty Explained by The 48 Laws of Pow­er Author Robert Greene

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Noam Chomsky Defines What It Means to Be a Truly Educated Person

in Education, Philosophy, Politics | January 24th, 2025

There may be no more con­tentious an issue at the lev­el of local U.S. gov­ern­ment than edu­ca­tion. All of the socioe­co­nom­ic and cul­tur­al fault lines com­mu­ni­ties would rather paper over become ful­ly exposed in debates over fund­ing, cur­ricu­lum, dis­trict­ing, etc. But we rarely hear dis­cus­sions about edu­ca­tion­al pol­i­cy at the nation­al lev­el these days.

You’ll hear no major polit­i­cal can­di­date deliv­er a speech sole­ly focused on edu­ca­tion. Debate mod­er­a­tors don’t much ask about it. The Unit­ed States founders’ own thoughts on the sub­ject are occa­sion­al­ly cited—but only in pass­ing, on the way to the lat­est round of talks on war and wealth. Aside from pro­pos­als dis­missed as too rad­i­cal, edu­ca­tion is most­ly con­sid­ered a low­er pri­or­i­ty for the nation’s lead­ers, or it’s roped into high­ly charged debates about polit­i­cal and social unrest on uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus­es.

This sit­u­a­tion can seem odd to the stu­dent of polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy. Every major polit­i­cal thinker—from Pla­to to John Locke to John Stu­art Mill—has writ­ten let­ters, trea­tis­es, even major works on the cen­tral role of edu­ca­tion. One con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal thinker—linguist, anar­chist, and retired MIT pro­fes­sor Noam Chom­sky—has also devot­ed quite a lot of thought to edu­ca­tion, and has force­ful­ly cri­tiqued what he sees as a cor­po­rate attack on its insti­tu­tions.

Chom­sky, how­ev­er, has no inter­est in har­ness­ing edu­ca­tion to prop up gov­ern­ments or mar­ket economies. Nor does he see edu­ca­tion as a tool for right­ing his­tor­i­cal wrongs, secur­ing mid­dle class jobs, or meet­ing any oth­er agen­da.

Chom­sky, whose thoughts on edu­ca­tion we’ve fea­tured before, tells us in the short video inter­view at the top of the post how he defines what it means to be tru­ly edu­cat­ed. And to do so, he reach­es back to a philoso­pher whose views you won’t hear ref­er­enced often, Wil­helm von Hum­boldt, Ger­man human­ist, friend of Goethe and Schiller, and “founder of the mod­ern high­er edu­ca­tion sys­tem.” Hum­boldt, Chom­sky says, “argued, I think, very plau­si­bly, that the core prin­ci­ple and require­ment of a ful­filled human being is the abil­i­ty to inquire and cre­ate con­struc­tive­ly, inde­pen­dent­ly, with­out exter­nal con­trols.” A true edu­ca­tion, Chom­sky sug­gests, opens a door to human intel­lec­tu­al free­dom and cre­ative auton­o­my.

To clar­i­fy, Chom­sky para­phras­es a “lead­ing physi­cist” and for­mer MIT col­league, who would tell his stu­dents, “it’s not impor­tant what we cov­er in the class; it’s impor­tant what you discov­er.” Giv­en this point of view, to be tru­ly edu­cat­ed means to be resource­ful, to be able to “for­mu­late seri­ous ques­tions” and “ques­tion stan­dard doc­trine, if that’s appro­pri­ate”… It means to “find your own way.” This def­i­n­i­tion sounds sim­i­lar to Nietzsche’s views on the sub­ject, though Niet­zsche had lit­tle hope in very many peo­ple attain­ing a true edu­ca­tion. Chom­sky, as you might expect, pro­ceeds in a much more demo­c­ra­t­ic spir­it.

In the inter­view above from 2013 (see the sec­ond video), you can hear him dis­cuss why he has devot­ed his life to edu­cat­ing not only his pay­ing stu­dents, but also near­ly any­one who asks him a ques­tion. He also talks about his own edu­ca­tion and fur­ther elu­ci­dates his views on the rela­tion­ship between edu­ca­tion, cre­ativ­i­ty, and crit­i­cal inquiry. And, in the very first few min­utes, you’ll find out whether Chom­sky prefers George Orwell’s 1984 or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. (Hint: it’s nei­ther.)

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Noam Chom­sky on Chat­G­PT: It’s “Basi­cal­ly High-Tech Pla­gia­rism” and “a Way of Avoid­ing Learn­ing”

Noam Chom­sky Spells Out the Pur­pose of Edu­ca­tion

Niet­zsche Lays Out His Phi­los­o­phy of Edu­ca­tion and a Still-Time­ly Cri­tique of the Mod­ern Uni­ver­si­ty (1872)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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