You Win or You Die


Robert Baratheon

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My two favorite fictional series, Game of Thrones and The Sopranos, both explore the topics of power dynamics and codes of conduct. In each series, characters roughly fall into three categories: the powerful, agents of the powerful, and the powerless. A theme that runs through both series is that a code of conduct places one at risk of being dominated by powerful individuals or their agents who aren’t similarly constrained.

Something that has always fascinated (and repulsed) me is how powerful individuals tend to corrupt organizations by installing their agents (often friends or relatives) in the place of merit-based hires, arbitrarily subverting organizational rules to reinforce their power, and self-servingly appropriating organization funds rather than investing in the organization or its members. I’d go so far as to say that I've never witnessed first-hand an organization that did not fall prey to these unpalatable human tendencies.

How does Objectivism relate to these themes, and what does it have to say about the powerful using organizations for their own ends? What is the prescription for it? Is Objectivism, or Libertarianism, a code of conduct that can be exploited by those who aren’t constrained by its tenets?

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The March of the Cronies.

Or as Rand put it: The Aristocracy of Pull.

In -The Clockwork Orange- the Crony/Thugs called themselves The Droogies (Russian for friends).

Ba'al Chatzaf

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I'm anxious to hear the response to this because the result of the exploitation looks something like The Hunger Games, I imagine.

(I'm a GoT fan, as well, but couldn't wait for The Sopranos to end. By end of season 2, I wanted them all to die, including Carmella.)

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Deanna,

Did it bother you that all the major Sopranos characters were male and the few female characters were subservient to them?

I've been rewatching the series, and I was just this week wondering to what extent female viewers would feel alienated or repulsed by the hyperaggressive, male-dominated atmosphere the show revolves around. I've been paying a lot of attention to power dynamics in my personal and professional life, so in addition to being entertaining, the interactions between the characters have given me food for thought.

Game of Thrones has a lot of powerful female characters, which might be one reason it's been popular with both sexes.

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RB,

Watching the Sopranos, it bothered me that the female characters were stupid. Not that they weren't powerful, but that they weren't smart. Then again, the men weren't very smart, either. So, yeah, for me, it was the stupidity that alienated me.

Assuming we're talking about GoT the series, not GoT the novels (which I have not read), we obviously have a different perspective on what it means to be a powerful female. GoT is filled with wives and wenches, women whose very lives depend on the whims of men. Very few of the female characters have any direct power at all. They are, however, smart. They are totally aware of the precarious nature of their lives, and they protect themselves accordingly, some defensively, others offensively.

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Tony Soprano is one of the most socially intelligent characters of all time, and the side characters are street-smart in their own ways, but for the most part, you're right - that's the nature of their violent, live-in-the-moment world. Of course, there is a difference between dumb characters and dumb writing.

I'm surprised you feel there aren't powerful women in the Game of Thrones series, although it is emphasized more in the later books, which the show hasn't covered yet. The show is mostly faithful to the novels, but I'd recommend reading them as well because Martin is a very talented writer. Daenerys begins her journey the way you describe, but she ends up in quite another position. In light of the title, I don't think it's a spoiler to point out the fifth book is more about her than any other character. Many of the women rule from behind the scenes with their husbands or sons as front-men. This is another theme of the series that I enjoy - there are different types of power and many paths that can lead to it.

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RB,

Watching the Sopranos, it bothered me that the female characters were stupid. Not that they weren't powerful, but that they weren't smart. Then again, the men weren't very smart, either. So, yeah, for me, it was the stupidity that alienated me.

Assuming we're talking about GoT the series, not GoT the novels (which I have not read), we obviously have a different perspective on what it means to be a powerful female. GoT is filled with wives and wenches, women whose very lives depend on the whims of men. Very few of the female characters have any direct power at all. They are, however, smart. They are totally aware of the precarious nature of their lives, and they protect themselves accordingly, some defensively, others offensively.

You ought to acquaint yourself with Chinweizu Ibekwe:

Chinweizu is a Nigerian critic, poet, and journalist. Though he has identified himself and is known simply as Chinweizu, he was born Chinweizu Ibekwe at Eluoma in Isuikwuato in the part of Eastern Region that is known today as Abia State. He was educated at Government Secondary School, Afikpo, and later attended college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). While studying in the United States, during the civil rights era, Chinweizu became influenced by the philosophy of the Black Arts Movement. He is commonly associated with Black orientalism.

He enrolled for a Ph.D. at the State University of New York (SUNY), Buffalo, under the supervision of political scientist Claude E. Welch, Jr.[1] Chinweizu apparently had a disagreement with his dissertation committee and walked away with his manuscript, which he got published as The West and the Rest of Us: White Predators, Black Slavers, and the African Elite by Random House in 1975. He took the book to SUNY, Buffalo, where he demanded, and was promptly awarded, his Ph.D. in 1976, one year after he had published the dissertation. Thus, the publication settled his disagreement with his advisers in his favor.

Chinweizu started teaching overseas, at MIT and San Jose State University. He had returned to Nigeria by the early 1980s, working over the years as a columnist for various newspapers in the country and also working to promote Black orientalism in Pan-Africanism. In Nigeria, he became a literary critic, attacking what he saw as the elitism of some Nigerian authors, particularly Wole Soyinka. One of Chinweizu's works is Anatomy of Female Power,[2] in which he discusses gender relations.

His "Anatomy of Female Power" is in the same vein as Esther Villar's The Manipulated Man, but better, oh so much better.

His book was hard to find until a colleague scanned it and made it available to the viewing public.

Enjoy.

Now that I think about it, any new father-to-be ought to acquaint himself with this book as well. Ahem.

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Tony Soprano is one of the most socially intelligent characters of all time, and the side characters are street-smart in their own ways, but for the most part, you're right - that's the nature of their violent, live-in-the-moment world. Of course, there is a difference between dumb characters and dumb writing.

I'm surprised you feel there aren't powerful women in the Game of Thrones series, although it is emphasized more in the later books, which the show hasn't covered yet. The show is mostly faithful to the novels, but I'd recommend reading them as well because Martin is a very talented writer. Daenerys begins her journey the way you describe, but she ends up in quite another position. In light of the title, I don't think it's a spoiler to point out the fifth book is more about her than any other character. Many of the women rule from behind the scenes with their husbands or sons as front-men. This is another theme of the series that I enjoy - there are different types of power and many paths that can lead to it.

Maybe it's just a difference in the way we define "powerful." Like I said, I think the women of GoT are smart, and I absolutely think many of them are influential and have a strong impact on outcomes. They can make their way because of their strength of character and in spite of their lack of control over their circumstances. And yes, Daenerys is the best example of that. She gains hard-earned power.

I will probably wait until the series is wrapped before I read the books. I suspect reading the books would influence my impressions of the characters in ways that I'm not willing to be influenced. If that makes any sense. I'm close to the characters that I know from the series.

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SB - Thanks for the link. I got about halfway through it on the commute today. It offers an interesting perspective and raises valid points, but in my opinion, it focuses far too heavily on formative upbringing and not enough on the evolutionary and genetic role that men and women have filled for millions of years.

This hour-long podcast on the gender differences has influenced my views more than any other source:

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/11/baumeister_on_g.html

If you accept Baumeister's genetics argument, men are where nature likes to experiment by rolling the dice, accepting an astronomically higher failure rate for a chance at game-changing evolutionary success. A genetically dominant woman can produce a handful of children, but a genetically dominant man can produce thousands, propelling evolution forward much more quickly. Presumably, this is why men are statistically more likely to be wild successes or dismal failures in life than women (e.g., 9 out of 10 CEOs are men, but so are 9 out of 10 homeless and incarcerated, killed by violence or at work, etc.). Men are nature's risk takers, experimenters, warriors, empire builders, etc. Of course within any variation across billions of individuals, there are going to be loads of exceptions, which is why generalizations shouldn't be taken to too far an extreme (something Pleasureman's blog seems to be guilty of, upon first impression).

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I was hoping for some responses on the original post :smile:

Ah, a true utopian willing to try to hoard heard....Dammit! herd OL feral cats!

herding-cats.jpg

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I was hoping for some responses on the original post :smile:

Ah, a true utopian willing to try to hoard OL feral cats!

herding-cats.jpg

hoard or herd?

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I was hoping for some responses on the original post :smile:

Ah, a true utopian willing to try to hoard OL feral cats!

herding-cats.jpg

hoard or herd?

Ouch...It has been corrected! Thanks.

A...

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The characters you speak of have little or no power under capitalism. Their power is derived through the use of force or fraud. Under capitalism people are free to associate or not with whomever they please.

The ideal is capitalism, but in reality there will always be people who don't subscribe to the rules. These people don't limit their behavior to what Ayn Rand finds acceptable, and, therefore, if they're only smart enough not to get caught, they have an advantage over those who constrain themselves to Objectivist philosophy. "YOU CAN'T STEAL CUZ CAPITALISM" isn't a persuasive objection when somebody is walking off with your television.

Here is an example: I recently found $20 cash on the counter in a Starbucks. It obviously had fallen out of somebody's pocket in the hustle and bustle of the ordering line. The law says the money still belongs to whoever dropped it, so the capitalist imperative was for me to report it to the police or store owner. That would have taken a lot time and effort, and I knew that realistically a) it was very unlikely to find its proper owner if I did report it, and b) somebody else would likely keep it if I left it there and walked away. In light of this, I decided to keep the money and buy something nice with it. Pragmatism won out over idealism because the ideal didn't conform to what the situation dictated. Similarly, I can go to the store and spend $100 on the latest word-processing software or I can download it for free at my convenience. Gee, that's a difficult one.

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I guess you're being sardonic there, but an Objectivist doesn't steal because of capitalism -although it's a moral system, capitalism/individual rights is not a morality - he doesn't steal because he is rationally selfish.

Constraining or liberating, that is the question.

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he doesn't steal because he is rationally selfish.

That's absurd. If I know I can steal and get away with it, it's in my rational self interest to steal.

Can you be sure of getting away with it. And doesn't it take less energy on average to be honest than to be a prudent predator?

Ba'al Chatzaf

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RB,

You have some premises to check...

Michael

Michael - Why don't you enlighten me?

Can you be sure of getting away with it. And doesn't it take less energy on average to be honest than to be a prudent predator?

Is the purpose of life to minimize energy expenditure? Being dead requires less energy than either option.

In any event, there are many circumstances in which a moral shortcut is easier than following the rules. I outlined two such examples above.

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he doesn't steal because he is rationally selfish.

That's absurd. If I know I can steal and get away with it, it's in my rational self interest to steal.

RB: If I read this right, career thieves are rationally selfish people who escape being caught...?

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