Mexico before Cortez: Art, History, and Legend - Ignacio Bernal - Hardcover Book

The year 2015 went as expected. This is the last book of this year.

Machiavelli was reviled by many for his "evilness" in the Prince. I kind of feel sorry for him, for there is someone who's much more evil than Machiavelli but somehow got away from being totally disgusted by others, because he had won sublime reputation before he showed his truth. Yes, I am referring to THE Plato and the Laws.
If one insists on claiming that Machiavelli is a scum because he came up with so many treacheries and maneuverings, this book should settle the issue. History makes people wise, but who is it to say that this wisdom is forever morally clean? It's not. It's almost certainly not the case. Read some history and anyone would see it. Machiavelli drew his lessons from the past. A past that was filled with blood stains, debaucheries, pride, betrayals, battles and discontents. Should one be thrown into the era of Renaissance Italy with a high position, one would quickly came to realize that the Prince is in fact a practical handbook for surviving. It was an era of great passion and great ambition, consequently, an era of turbulence and chaos. Machiavelli was strong and brave enough to accept the past as it was, and draw honest lessons from them -- however amoral the lessons might seem to be. It could be suffocating for someone to go through these bloody messy records. Machiavelli delivered it in a style of tranquility. His bravery, sadly, was not recognized by the majority.

When I was reading this book, I experienced flashbacks from my previous reading the Foundations of Modern Political Thoughts. Renaissance Italy gave birth to all sorts of political ideas and ambitions. One could see from Machiavelli's narrative that, those ideas or ideologies didn't dominate people's behavior -- it is very much the other way around: people invented those ideas to justify their behaviors. There is a vivid property of self-fulfilling in the arena of political philosophy disputes: whatever that was true is at the same time whatever that was strongly supported by brutal force, by people with power. Power is knowledge inasmuch as it shapes facts that knowledge must admit.
Another fascinating experience I had, while reading this book, was by constantly reminding myself that Leonardo Da Vinci was alive at that time, along with other polymaths who have won eternal glory for Renaissance. It is very hard to imagine that those homo universalis lived through all these sufferings Machiavelli put down. The passion of creation and the passion of struggle stood in sharp contrast -- or are they just two faces of the same Janus, another kind of force that drives history and nations forward that has gone unnoticed? The passion of internal struggle might be a form of power that is as equally true and effective as currency or finance. The control of passion -- a civilization with its discontents.

Last but not least: I recognized some missions in Assassin's Creed 2 but I didn't see Ezio Auditore da Firenze nor Monteriggioni in the book -- Caterina Sforza did show up, and as intimidating as the game depicted (). This is my only regret!