"Chaos isn't a pit. Chaos is a ladder. Many who try to climb it fail and never try again. The fall breaks them. And some are given a chance to climb, but they refuse. They cling to the realm or the gods or love. Illusions. Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is."
--Lord Baelish, Game of Thrones (season three, episode six)
I am fascinated by some of the complex characters of Game of Thrones, and one character that has been developed quite nicely is Lord Baelish, otherwise called Littlefinger. I felt like exploring what has been revealed of his philosophy up to the point where I am (almost halfway through season four!) since it is exposed in bursts that unveil a mind more sinister than it might initially appear.
Lord Varys and Lord Baelish, both high-ranking politicians in the city of King's Landing, converse in private about their motives and goals at one point in the series (season three, episode six). Varys, staying consistent with his claims about his motivations in season one, insists that the "good of the realm" is what keeps politics running, although he does not challenge Baelish's charge that it is a deception: "A story we tell each other over and over till we forget that it's a lie." Chaos is what remains when leaders abandon the lie, says Varys, yet Baelish holds that chaos is not a pit but a ladder. It is an opportunity, not a trap--one that maims some and scares away others, one that few can climb successfully. He states that "Only the ladder is real" and that the comforts that people seek instead of the ladder are illusions.
What does he mean, and why does he believe this? Of course, things like logic, consciousness, and space exist, as well as the ladder (to list just some things), and Lord Baelish might not truly mean to say that nothing at all exists, immaterial or material, besides the conceptual ladder of chaos that he describes. To mean his words literally would be self-defeating and logically impossible. He seems to mean that the only worthy, lasting goal is to climb to the top of the ladder, since other desires and ends are less real or meaningful by comparison. He thinks that all else is lacking in value when held up next to the metaphorical ladder and the prize it leads to.
Politics can become a game of manipulation and force, both open and subtle. A politician's worldview will inevitably dictate how he or she leads, governs, or prioritizes [1], and Lord Baelish is certainly Machiavellian and egoistic. His worldview prioritizes the gain of personal power, even if that power comes about because of the losses of others. Chaos can be manipulated, as Littlefinger knows, and the chaos is easiest to manipulate when different people see him in a different light, the many shadows blurring together until outsiders cannot see the real Lord Baelish--and thus cannot predict his future actions in any significant way.
Littlefinger operates on a blend of Machiavellian and egoistic consequentialist ideas, disarming, patient, and yet incessantly scheming to preserve and expand his power. Politicians like him are dangerous precisely because they do not care about ultimate reality or ethics; everything besides the ascendence to power is secondary at best, or ignored, or only wielded as a means to the end: undiluted egoism. There is no concern for justice because it is just or truth because it is true. The very concept of justice, like the "good of the realm," itself might be believed to be an lie that non-egoist leaders cling to just as their ignorant sheep do.
The historical philosopher who most resembles Littlefinger (other than Machiavelli), it seems to me, is Nietzsche. Both agree that the concept of deities is a petty illusion that the weak might cling to because they cannot handle the ladder, and both frame major worldview questions in terms of an all-encompassing will to power. That will to power is all that matters to both. In the absence of gods, we are left to exert our power or be crushed by the power of others, and Littlefinger has determined to position himself at the top of the ladder, from where he can obtain what others are too incompetent or frightened to adequately pursue. And in a world where the gods are fiction, there is nothing immoral about weaponizing one's power or using it in any particular way. There is natural chaos and chaos of our own making, and both are pathways to dominance.
The errors of such a worldview are many. Thankfully it is not the one backed by the evidence, and some parts of it cannot be true due to denial of truths that cannot be false.
[1]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/02/on-politics.html
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