Machiavelli Personality Test

The Machiavelli personality test has a range of 0-100
Your Machiavelli score is: 81
You are a high Mach, you endorse Machiavelli's opinions.
Most people fall somewhere in the middle, but there's a significant minority at either extreme.
 
Originally posted by BrianH+Jun 13 2006, 11:14 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (BrianH @ Jun 13 2006, 11:14 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-PDJ@Jun 13 2006, 08:15 PM
Did anyone agree with question 4??
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I've just checked what it was and yes I do agree with it. And I am a cynic on many issues. [/b][/quote]
I agreed too. I remember arguing this one in the Moral Philosophy class at University. Maybe I'm just naïve, but I love you all.
 
Originally posted by Desert Orchid+Jun 14 2006, 09:28 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Desert Orchid @ Jun 14 2006, 09:28 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>
Originally posted by BrianH@Jun 13 2006, 11:14 PM
<!--QuoteBegin-PDJ
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@Jun 13 2006, 08:15 PM
Did anyone agree with question 4??
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I've just checked what it was and yes I do agree with it. And I am a cynic on many issues.
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I agreed too. I remember arguing this one in the Moral Philosophy class at University. Maybe I'm just naïve, but I love you all. [/b][/quote]
I'd agree with a slight amendment:

"Most people think they are good and kind"

The truth is somewhat different in my experience :what:
 
I feel sorry for those who go through life thinking that most people are bastards. My experience in business and in life - and in a fair few places - is that most people just want a decent, peaceful and happy life for themselves and their loved ones. Sadly, not enough of them achieve it.
 
Brian, most people are basically good and kind until something threatens that state of play, such as those who are greedy, power-mad, lustful, mentally in disarray, and so on. Then you may have to change from being 'good' to thieving, scheming and doing others down in order for your family or you to survive. The kindness is easily dispensed with when you or your country is being attacked by someone whose kindness has also been put aside in order to grab your land/gold/oil/Rolex/woman.

I don't think that 'goodness' and 'kindness' are any more innate than 'badness' and 'unkindness'. We are all imbued with such values. Most are learned by examples at home or in our immediate community. If when young we're set constant examples of fighting, bitterness, cynicism, small-mindedness, etc., then it's a bloody miracle if we are different in later life.

So, yes, people are basically good and kind CONDITIONALLY, just as they are basically not good and not kind conditionally. In fact, one can be all four in the hours of a single day - I see no dichotomy in that, nor find it cynical to think so.
 
I think you have to define what constitutes goodness, kindness and it's antithesis.

"want(ing) a decent, peaceful and happy life for themselves and their loved ones" is not a definition I would choose to use to describe any of the above.

Now how they go about achieving that......
 
That is the problem with these sort of judgmental statements, isn't it, simmo? Mr Hitler was apparently very good to Eva Braun and very kind to his dog. So, he was good and kind for selfish reasons (Eva and Fritzie pleased him, so he pleased them, world without end).

I may be 'kind' and even 'good' to my Mother, because I've been taught to be 'kind to others' and I do so from a sense of duty or obligation and earlier conditioning. No great moral victory there, then. If I do it because I LIKE doing it, it's no conscious effort and there are no moral values attached to 'being good' because the motive is selfish in essence - I do it to please myself more than I do it to 'be good' to someone else.

Being 'good and kind' is rather more suspect to me (O Cynic!) than the occasional, or even frequent, dodgier behaviour of not being good. Depends on the level of not being 'good', either: not good as in a petty thief, a bit of a rogue; not good in being a genocidal dictator who exterminates thousands of his people; not good in giving a horse a dodgy ride in order to trouser £500?

So many shades of 'good' and 'bad', you could spend the next ten years considering all of their nuances and finally decide that neither exist in their entirety. Even monks and nuns in their deepest contemplations still have to work hard to let go of the ego: if you concentrate on Being Good, you are focussing on your effort, not the outcome. Thus it still contains a degree of self-interest, and you cannot be ALL good unless all ego is put aside.

WTF am I on about? :brows:
 
Originally posted by krizon@Jun 15 2006, 09:36 PM
Brian, most people are basically good and kind until ....
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But surely that lends weight to the argument.

Forget 'until'. That's where the condition is introduced. Until that point, the assumption is that people are basically good. It is the ill-intentioned actions of others that spark what become perceived as a negative reaction - self defence of a sort if you really want to analyse it - in us.

I still love you all and think you're all wonderful even if some of you haven't a scooby about spelling and/or grammar.
 
I don't think that the absence of active malice makes people good or kind, though, Dessie. Just because someone smiles a lot, makes jam for the WI and weeds an elderly neighbour's garden once a month doesn't mean that any of those actions are virtuous if the person's other actions are contrary - being emotionally cold to their children, or writing poison pen letters to neighbours they hate, for example.

I would say most people are basically good and kind and also not good and unkind, sometimes one more than the other, dependant upon the particular tides of fortune which wash over them at any given time.

Would you agree that, for argument's sake, all of the modern saluting, jackbooted Nazi party members who CURRENTLY espouse Nazism, their hatred of various races, etc., are 'basically' good and kind? I'm sure that they are, sometimes, applying that goodness and kindness to what suits them. But that doesn't make them 'basically good and kind'.
 
I'll research that, while you try a straight answer to my question, Pollyanna.

What we all do know (all meaning anyone who has a consciously-functioning brain) is that multi-millions of our fellow humans (not a few of whom were quite possibly good or even kind) who are the victims of torture, mutilation and killing on individual and genocidal scales because of religious hatred, racial hatred, tribal hatred, land envy, greed, rage, lust, power madness, and any nuance you care to think of on the Seven Deadly Sins. Our fellow humans continue to have their lives wrecked thus right up to this very hour, and show every inclination to suffer so until the last gasp of this planet.

So no, overall, the human race is not BASICALLY good, or kind - on a global scale it reflects what we are as individuals, since if we were not individually inclined towards cruelty, greed, envy, jealousy, intolerance and the rest of human malignancies, there would be no dispossession, no rape, no murder, no self-righteous lack of 'kindness', day after day, eon after eon, would there? Like tv, the big picture is made up from millions of tiny contributions.

I'd posit that those millions upon millions so viciously despatched by kings, emperors, popes, presidents, generals and their lackeys down the centuries would hardly have ticked the box for question 4 as 'yes', and might ask you if your view isn't coloured by your personal experience, rather than by looking at the bigger picture? Or that like Pollyanna, you so want to see good in all around you, that you believe it's actually there?
 
Originally posted by krizon@Jun 17 2006, 10:26 AM
So no, overall, the human race is not BASICALLY good, or kind
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I think that there is a fine difference between that and what Question 4 asked: "Most people are basically good and kind.

I still contend that the statement is true - unfortunately it rarely applies to those who become powerful. So, in broad terms, it appears that whatever it is in the human make-up that makes for driving ambition is similar to that which considers that the end justifies the means, however swingeing those means may be.

If the good and kind did not outnumber the other lot, then this world would not be a place in which anyone would want to live. And, despite what one may think on reading some of the threads on here (not this one), it is.
 
Yes, multi-millions are victims of the most dreadful atrocities. But they are the victims of a very small minority. That fact that such reports engender within us such great horror is surely evidence that acts of evil are anathema to our nature.

I have no reason to believe that just because I truly believe human beings, deep down, are good, it makes me some sort of misguided simpleton.
 
Here's another one for you, Dessie: without in any way judging whether any are good, kind women, what do you think of the goodness and kindness of the 36,000 females who had abortions in the UK during the past year? And presumably the similar amount the year before, and the thousands upon thousands before that? And those tens of thousands in various countries, adding up to probably some million lost foetuses every year?

Are they still BASICALLY good or kind people, even if they abort every time they get pregnant, even when they're drug or drink-addicted, or socialites or prostitutes and don't want a baby cluttering up their lives? Bearing in mind that alcoholics, drug-addicts, and prostitutes account for several million of the world's females, how big a sweep do you want to take, globally, before you have to either go with your across-the-board 'all people are basically good or kind' or begin to find it being rendered conditional, due to your personal beliefs?

If you continue to hold that they are probably still basically good and kind, then how good and kind are the Christians who have murdered doctors in abortion clinics in the USA and would seek to deny women abortions, because that is proscribed by THEIR beliefs? How good and kind are those thousands of people in their actions? Can both the aborters and the anti-aborters be good and kind, and the murdering Christians, in their self-justification ("killing one to save millions") are good, while the abortion clinic staff (Christian or not) is also good?
 
Originally posted by krizon@Jun 17 2006, 09:37 AM
Here's another one for you, Dessie: without in any way judging whether any are good, kind women, what do you think of the goodness and kindness of the 36,000 females who had abortions in the UK during the past year? And presumably the similar amount the year before, and the thousands upon thousands before that? And those tens of thousands in various countries, adding up to probably some million lost foetuses every year?

Are they still BASICALLY good or kind people, even if they abort every time they get pregnant, even when they're drug or drink-addicted, or socialites or prostitutes and don't want a baby cluttering up their lives? Bearing in mind that alcoholics, drug-addicts, and prostitutes account for several million of the world's females, how big a sweep do you want to take, globally, before you have to either go with your across-the-board 'all people are basically good or kind' or begin to find it being rendered conditional, due to your personal beliefs?

If you continue to hold that they are probably still basically good and kind, then how good and kind are the Christians who have murdered doctors in abortion clinics in the USA and would seek to deny women abortions, because that is proscribed by THEIR beliefs? How good and kind are those thousands of people in their actions? Can both the aborters and the anti-aborters be good and kind, and the murdering Christians, in their self-justification ("killing one to save millions") are good, while the abortion clinic staff (Christian or not) is also good?
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Of course I believe they are basically good and kind. Just because I am very strongly anti-abortion doesn't mean I condemn as evil people who carry the act out. I accept that many do it believing they are morally justified in doing so.
 
Who says you're a misguided simpleton? You're throwing in a contentiousness that isn't there - is this a discussion and an airing of personal views, or is it to degenerate into a slanging match? (You see how easily the 'goodness' evaporates!)

DO, no, those people were not the victims of a handful. The handful of leaders drove millions of others to commit the acts. You have only to look at the Hutu-Tutsi horrors of Rwanda to see that thousands of what had been good, kind Africans ran amok on the basis of tribal hatred, murdering and mutilating thousands of other countrymen and women (and children, and babies) in the process. You can't dilute the millions of those who've taken to causes and murdered millions of others down to the one person who ruled their country!

Was my father killed by Adolf Hitler? Of course not. He and his crew were killed by a German crew, which might or might not have been killed later by a British one, and so on. Adolf Hitler didn't personally kill millions of Jews and 'undesirables', but he did cause millions of people worldwide to die, to be maimed, and to become dispossessed, as did Stalin. You cannot say two people only were responsible for those millions and millions of deaths, because without their staunch supporters, many of whom relished the task of annihilation, their mad schemes would have come to nothing. I'm crap at Maths, but even I can see that argument is very disingenuous!
 
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