The Prince - Machiavelli's Philosophy - Opinion Piece

Machiavelli has a certain philosophy that I personally don't agree with. He believes that "the end justifies the means." In other words, as long as you reach your goal, everything that you did to get there is justified. It isn't right to not care about how many people you torture, or how many homes you destroy, as long as you get people to bow down to you and call you king.

This philosophy of Machiavelli's can end up with catastrophic consequences. For example, if you want to be promoted, and you start killing all the employees higher than you, so you can. So, in the end you get promoted, and you believe that it's okay that you killed those people, because you got promoted.

'Machiavellian thinkers' are people who think that you should apply this philosophy to their own life. As you can see through my example stated previously, it normally doesn't end up with everyone merrily skipping to 'My Lou.' Some call our current president a Machiavellian thinker because of all these bad spur-of-the-moment decisions he's making about the war. You should always be considerate of other people before yourself, and if you believe in this philosophy, then you must mot care about anybody but you.

I know that this book was written a long time ago, and that it was written for princes and conquerors. But, you have to think about the fact that this thinking shouldn't be meant for anyone, at any time, in any place. You should always think about your actions before you make a decision that will affect other living beings.

You can't justify everything you do, so you can make your life better. I would never say that killing somebody is okay just so I can get a promotion, because nobodies' life is worth that little. It's being extremely selfish and immoral. Machiavelli's philosophy is a greedy one, and almost never turns out as good as you would think.