I do not doubt that there will be many, 1 Atticus, who will think this kind of writing 2 trifling in its nature, and not sufficiently adapted to the characters of eminent men, when they shall find it related who taught Epaminondas music, or see it numbered among his accomplishments, that he danced gracefully, and played skilfully on the flutes 3. But these will be such, for the most part, as, being unacquainted with Greek literature, will think nothing right but what agrees with their own customs. If these readers will but understand that the same things are not becoming or unbecoming among all people, but that every thing is judged by the usages of men's forefathers, they will not wonder that we, in setting forth the excellencies of the Greeks, have had regard to their manners. For to Cimon, an eminent man among the Athenians, it was thought no disgrace to have his half-sister, 4 by the father's side, in marriage, as his countrymen followed the same practice; but such a union, according to the order of things among us, is deemed unlawful.
Biography[ edit ] Sharp was born in North BaltimoreOhio, [2] the son of an itinerant Protestant minister. MusteAmerica's leading pacifist.
Between and he was Assistant Editor of Peace News London the weekly pacifist newspaper from where he helped organise the Aldermaston March. He simultaneously held research appointments at Harvard University 's Center for International Affairs since Sharp's contributions to the theory of nonviolent resistance[ edit ] Gene Sharp described the sources of his ideas as in-depth studies of Mohandas K.
Muste[22] Henry David Thoreau to a minor degree, and other sources footnoted in his book The Politics of Nonviolent Actionwhich was based on his PhD thesis. Sharp's key theme is that power is not monolithic; that is, it does not derive from some intrinsic quality of those who are in power.
For Sharp, political power, the power of any state — regardless of its particular structural organization — ultimately derives from the subjects of the state.
His fundamental belief is that any power structure relies upon the subjects' obedience to the orders of the ruler s. If subjects do not obey, rulers have no power. In Sharp's view, all effective power structures have systems by which they encourage or extract obedience from their subjects.
States have particularly complex systems for keeping subjects obedient.
These systems include specific institutions police, courts, regulatory bodies, etc. Through these systems, subjects are presented with a system of sanctions imprisonment, fines, ostracism and rewards titles, wealth, fame which influence the extent of their obedience.
Sharp identifies this hidden structure as providing a window of opportunity for a population to cause significant change in a state. Sharp published Waging Nonviolent Struggle: It builds on his earlier written works and documents case studies where nonviolent action has been applied, presents the lessons learned from those applications, and contains information on planning nonviolent struggle to make it more effective.
For his lifelong commitment to the defense of freedom, democracy, and the reduction of political violence through scholarly analysis of the power of nonviolent action, The Peace Abbey of Sherborn, MA, awarded him their Courage of Conscience award on April 4, Sharp's influence on struggles worldwide[ edit ] Sharp has been called both the " Machiavelli of nonviolence" [19] and the " Clausewitz of nonviolent warfare.
His works remain the ideological underpinning of the work for the Serbian-based nonviolent conflict training group the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies which helped to train the key activists in the protest movement that toppled President Mubarak of Egypt, and many other earlier youth movements in the Eastern European color revolutions.
Sharp's handbook From Dictatorship to Democracy [29] was first published in Burma, fourth edition in It has since been translated into at least 31 other languages. From Dictatorship to Democracy. Pora activists have translated it by themselves.
We have written to Mr Sharp and to the Albert Einstein Institute in the United States, and he became very sympathetic towards our initiative, and the Institution provided funding to print over 12, copies of this book for free.
Lithuanian Defence Minister Audrius Butkevicius declared at the time, "I would rather have this book than the nuclear bomb".
The Tehran Times reported: Sharp and his work have been profiled in numerous media [35] however some have claimed Sharp's influence has been exaggerated by Westerners looking for a Lawrence of Arabia figure. One, journalist Hossam el-Hamalawystated that "Not only was Mubarak's foreign policy hated and despised by the Egyptian people, but parallels were always drawn between the situation of the Egyptian people and their Palestinian brothers and sisters.
The latter have been the major source of inspiration, not Gene Sharp, whose name I first heard in my life only in February after we toppled Mubarak already and whom the clueless NYT moronically gives credit for our uprising. He defines the latter as having an ethical as well as a material dimension that Sharp deliberately avoids engaging with, and credits local circumstances and the spark provided by the Tunisian revolution for the Egyptian success.But some looked at the sea of pink and saw something else: the invisible hand of a man they believe is not just funding liberal protest movements but controlling the world's wealth and pushing a.
Bill Gates explains how he defines success — and it has nothing to do with money or power. Whether it's money, power, or fame, success means Intelligence With This Exclusive Research. The Illusions of Money, Power, and Fame: Why Fitting in Is Overrated By Jeff Goins Inspiration If I could go back in time and give my awkward, chubby, baggy-T-shirt-wearing, 14 year-old self some advice, it would be this: fitting in is overrated.
GLOBAL KLEPTOCRACY Self-serving leaders throughout the world increasingly assume power with the goal of becoming rich at the expense of the majority of their population, and of the commonweal. World leaders, CEOs, and academics have suggested that a revolution in artificial intelligence is upon us.
Are they right, and what will advances in artificial intelligence mean for international competition and the balance of power? This article evaluates how developments in artificial intelligence (AI) — advanced, narrow applications in particular — are poised to influence military power.
Men also valued other forms of external/reputational wealth, such as success in life, affluence, and legacy, more so than women, who found more significance in inner emotional wealth, the study found.