Review One: Beyond Machiavelli

Review One: Beyond Machiavelli: Tools for Coping with Conflict
Roger Fisher, Elizabeth Kopelman, Andrea Kupfer Schneider
Penguin Books (1994)

In lieu of personal rehydrating liquids this book accompanied me back and forth across the Pacific and the North American continent twice withering my attempts to complete a reading of it. Early on I am forced to conceed that the precepts written of in the form and shape of this rare glimpse at the mindsets of those engaged in the goings on of the seeming twilight of backroom negotations and strategic compromises (or lack thereof) present in the amalgam of globally unresolved, perpetually reframing crises contextualized in this book leads me to suspect that the formula on concrete resolutions is still not fully realized or that fully too few people have read or completed reading it. So I am not the only one.

If one gave such conceptual tools to apes perhaps they might swing about forcefully, perhaps even vocally lauding its contents, and after successive fumblings or half-hearted attempts they might even strike a few bunches of grapes into some localized hollow stump and thus begin the fermentation process to produce a wine of palatable universal taste. So too it seems the application of these tools to conflict resolution be it in the sphere of international trade or even political intrigue. The question must be answered as it rarely is in this book, "Who or what is this Machiavelli we should seek to exceed or outdo under a contemporary framework of conflict?"

A deep description of this character is not here required as the purpose of his relationship to "Beyond Machiavelli" is just as cunningly vague. Machiavelli is the perpetual shadow of reputation versus the concreteness of actions ascribed to individuals, where the mere depiction of abuse of authority or knowledge to the benefit of backroom advantages distills an aversion to respectful dialogue between two negotiating entities to the rightful inclusion or exclusion of said reputational shadow or shadows. That figures of popular political authority attempt only to maintain some semblance of impartiality real or imagined to impart an ability to represent and enact accordances, agreements, contractual arrangments, and subsequent amendments with the interests not only of nepotistic totalitarians, but with a flavour of the greater portion or thus majority of parties concerned. This beyondness is uniquely the timeless maneuvering of competitors in the realms of business and government. Fisher et al appear to seek to define the tools as the ultimate advantages to resolution rather and not the skillfulness of the tool bearers then themselves? As one may read, even a poor tool can be made great by a skilled artisan. However at what point do the ascribed tools then become outmoded, outdated, or even in beyondness refashioned or redefined to the reach or capacity of the common man to envision, grapple upon and then utilize effectively?

These may be described as the aims of this book, namely, to set about the scales and measures of accomplishing compromise solutions among fairly resolute competitors engaged in zero sum game eventual outcomes. However there is a bitterness to the reader to realize that the pains and jostling of carrying such tools into seeming battle itself mirrors the trends and trackings and even the perpetually unfinished business of retooling endlessly retooling entire swaths of cultural combatants on the global stage. As the lessons encapsulated within this book are only ever bitterly learned there in themselves are the teachings of Machiavelli unfully learned or read widely enough to ascribe the true nature of character to reputation and thus resolution to bitter compromise.