Hindu Thread Patter

Patter is the term of art given to the spoken portion of a magician's performance.  This was the patter (as best as I can remember) performed as part of the Hindu Thread illusion, in the 1998 PBS documentary "The Art of Magic." it serves as an illustration for the Hindu Creation story.

hindu thread patter (also called the gypsy thread)

[lights a small candle, the magician wears a dark shirt and the stage is dark]
Yellow cotton thread. A single length which will represent the entire universe.
Among the gods of India, it is the god Brahma who creates the universe [pulls a length from a spool]
 and all that there is[pulls another length of thread],
and then [pausing on a tight string]retires[ snaps the thread].
And the God Vishnu takes over [puts down the spool and raises a small length vertically],
and Vishnu sustains the universe in every moment of it’s existence[drawing a very long length horizontally as he speaks].
And then [draws and burns a segment]
at the end of the time [draws and burns a segment]
the god shiva appears [draws and burns a segment]
and does the Tandavam  dance. A weird and terrible dance of fire  [draws and burns a segment],
in which the entire material universe is destroyed  [draws and burns a segment]
in a blinding flash of light [holding up the collected segments]
brighter than 10,000 suns [ transferring it to his other hand, he begins to ball up the thread between his thumb and index finger]
the universe is no more [starring at the balled up string]
There is only silence [ holding up to show the balled string]
only vast cosmic sleep. [ pause ] and out of this cosmic sleep,
The Brahma re awakens himself again [ pulls short threads from either end of the ball and dangles it with the ball in the middle.]
he looks about [pokes at the ball on a string and it dangles]
and seeing nothing, nothing lovely or beautiful
[ he picks up the other end of the string holding in now horizontally]
Decides to create the universe again [ pulling the string and untangling the ball] and in creating it,  he retires pleased [ the full length of the string is shown restored as he speaks the final words]
pleased with his eternal play

[sets down the thread and blows out the candle]

here is the same illusion with a different patter

Poverty, Inc. misquotes Machiavelli & Hillary paraphrases Vaclav Havel about the Powerless

par·a·phrase 

ˈperəˌfrāz    verb

1. Express the meaning of (the writer or speaker or something written or spoken) using different words, especially to achieve greater clarity. 

pre·var·i·cate 

prəˈverəˌkāt     verb

1. To speak falsely or misleadingly; deliberately misstate or create an incorrect impression; lie.

“The reason there will be no change is because the people who stand to lose from change have all the power. And the people who stand to gain from change have none of the power.”

--poverty, inc. attributes this to Machiavelli

There is a difference between a paraphrase, and prevarication.

While I am sympathetic to the argument made in this documentary, Machiavelli does not refer to those who would benefit from change as "powerless".  He says (and here I'm paraphrasing) that those who may do well under the new innovations have good cause to be indifferent, because they are cynical about who the laws favor, and uncertain about changes which are untested and unfamiliar. The real quotation explains two curious phenomena that affect us to this day: voter apathy, and how a passionate minority can have more influence on politics than an indifferent majority.

Here is the actual quote:

"And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things, because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them. Thus it happens that whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack they do it like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly, in such wise that the prince is endangered along with them."

–Niccolo Machiavelli, “The Prince” chapter VI

A better, more hopeful quotation was chosen by Hillary Clinton's Wellesley College Commencement Address who cited Vaclav Havel's "Power of the Powerless."

Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright, first President of the Czech Republic, wrote an essay called “The Power of the Powerless.” And in it, he said: “The moment someone breaks through in one place, when one person cries out, ‘The emperor is naked!’—when a single person breaks the rules of the game, thus exposing it as a game—everything suddenly appears in another light.” What he’s telling us is if you feel powerless, don’t. Don’t let anyone tell you your voice doesn’t matter.

-Hillary Clinton
Wellesley College
Commencement Address

May 26, 2017 

This is an excellent use of the paraphrase. Hillary briefly captures the meaning of the much longer passage without alteration, and uses it to good effect in the thesis of her speech.  It is conceivable that the documentarian misinterpreted Machiavelli, and did not intend to bend the meaning to fit the thesis of his film. My intent is simply to preserve the accuracy of the quotation.

For those interested, the Havel original reads:

"Thus the power structure, through the agency of those who carry out the sanctions, those anonymous components of the system, will spew the greengrocer from its mouth. The system, through its alienating presence in people, will punish him for his rebellion. It must do so because the logic of its automatism and self-defense dictate it. The greengrocer has not committed a simple, individual offense, isolated in its own uniqueness, but something incomparably more serious. By breaking the rules of the game, he has disrupted the game as such. He has exposed it as a mere game. He has shattered the world of appearances, the fundamental pillar of the system. He has upset the power structure by tearing apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living a lie. He has broken through the exalted facade of the system and exposed the real, base foundations of power. He has said that the emperor is naked. And because the emperor is in fact naked, something extremely dangerous has happened: by his action, the greengrocer has addressed the world. He has enabled everyone to peer behind the curtain. He has shown everyone that it is possible to live within the truth. Living within the lie can constitute the system only if it is universal. The principle must embrace and permeate everything. There are no terms whatsoever on which it can co-exist with living within the truth, and therefore everyone who steps out of line denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety. . . ."

-Vaclav Havel

"The Power of the Powerless"

(1978)