Diplomacy
Background
Last week, we talked about virtue signaling. We realized that in a healthy, real community, setting tactical goals for behavior is a way to hold oneself accountable. Ultimately, virtue and vice are topics for when you have time... like at an Epic Ideas Jam! But, we wanted to shift to a more interpersonal topic - such as diplomacy.
Call to Action
Submit a comment with the aspects of Diplomacy that you want to discuss in our next meeting.
Diplomacy comprises spoken or written communication by representatives of states (such as leaders and diplomats) intended to influence events in the international system.
Paul Reinsch
"In the 18th Century, diplomacy was still looked upon as a
sharp game in which wits were matched, with a complete license as to
the means pursued; provided, however, that embarrassing discovery
must be avoided, in other words, that the exact method of deception
must be so closely guarded that only the results will show. The great
diplomats of the beginning of the 19th century--Metternich, Talleyrand,
Pozzo di Borgo--while they talked much about humanitarian principles,
continued to play a barren game of intrigue. Napoleon III, that master
of devious statecraft, will always be cited by excoriators of secret
diplomacy as an abhorrent example--a man undone by the results of his
own plotting."
Lord Lyons: A record of British Diplomacy
Lord Newton
"Is logic any use in diplomacy?"