Slavery: What exactly is it?
I recall now having some deep thoughts about the concept of slavery last night as I was trying to fall asleep. I momentarily thought about getting up and writing. I resisted. By the morning I had forgotten about it. I was going through my morning news related tasks and I made a note of an idea I had for a post here in notepad++. I find I need to do that sometimes until I have a moment when I can actually write the idea. If I don't make a note I often forget the momentary thoughts that I think have something interesting in them.
Well I came back to my note which was this:
"Punishment for sins of our ancestors. Why not just imprison entire families, execute them, etc. /s" and yes I had the indicator for sarcasm (/s) in my note.
Yet a strange thing happened when I reread that note. It reminded me of my thoughts from the previous night.
Why?
Well slavery is one of those things that many of us are still being treated as though we are guilty of perpetrating. I haven't actually known any slave owners or owned any slaves in the traditional sense. Not in my life time. If you believe in reincarnation and are wanting to vilify me for being white due to a past life then perhaps there is some religious convoluted way to imply I am guilty. Otherwise, all that remains is treating me as though I am guilty of something distant ancestors may or may not have done. If you go back far enough pretty much ANY of us of any race/color/creed will be found guilty by distant ancestry. Should the planet simply commit mass suicide due to actions of our ancestors? Should people who live and had ancestors who were slaves (all of us if you go back far enough) be compensated for the treatment of their ancestors even though they themselves have never experienced such treatment? If so, how far do we go back in time? If we go back far enough any of us can make these claims. We can totally stall everything and fixate on how each of us are harmed by past distant ancestors and how we have harmed due to past distant ancestors.
I'll tell you something I said before. I hold no responsibility for anyone but myself. I owe people NOTHING for the past, other than for the consequences of decisions I myself have made. The same is true of all of you. You owe me nothing other than perhaps the consequences of your own choices. I don't care about your ancestors. They are not you.
That which I just said is the thought I had this morning and that the note was there to remind me of. Now I'd like to try to resurrect the thoughts I was having last night about slavery.
What is slavery?
What truly is the root of slavery? People can fixate on specific examples, but historically slavery has existed for as long as written history. It has happened and been applied to all races/creeds/cultures. It has been done by people of the same race/creed/culture to other people that share those traits. It transcends race, creed, and culture.
What is it?
At it's simplest level I'd see it as essentially being the ability to force others to do things that a BOSS/MASTER tells them to do, and if they do not then the BOSS/MASTER can impose varying degrees of consequences. Historically, the consequences can be beatings, imprisonment, rape, murder, enslaving family members, or any other depraved thing people can think about.
Those are the extremes. That does not mean that at points in history these extremes were not common. They could be very common. It simply means those were the extreme examples of consequences of "disobedience" to the master(s).
So essentially the ability to force others to action, which if they refuse there are negative consequences.
Why does it exist?
Laziness, sloth? People want things, but don't want to work for them. Thus, they enslave others and can get them to do the work instead of them. They then can have the benefits of doing the work without actually having to do that work themselves.
I essentially believe I have distilled what and why down to the lowest definition I could come up with for slavery. Some of you may be able to take it even to a lower definition.
All other more specific examples are just expressions of these things.
Is Slavery Gone?
Given what I just said IF you agree with those definitions is slavery gone? Is it perhaps still here, just the consequences and living conditions are different?
It is common for people to view slaves as the galley slaves being forced to row, whipped, and when they die simply toss them over the side of the ship and chain someone else up. It is common to view slaves as those with shackles working on plantations picking cotton.
Yet, this is not the only type of slave even during those times and those places. There were slaves that were scribes, they could read/write, but they still had to follow the will of the master. There were slaves that had nicer lives due to having nicer "masters", and there were slaves with horrible lives and horrible "masters". Regardless of their living conditions they were still slaves as they could not make a choice.
It is also interesting that slavery has often become accepted and a norm in most cultures. It often had nothing to do with race. It was often used in conjunction with laws, or beliefs. It could be that a crime might make you into a slave. It could be that being in debt might make you into a slave. This is often referred to as an indentured servant.
Consider the fact that people accepted that. They actually endorsed it. They would endorse it against their own race, creed, culture. In the United States (and other places) a common slavery that is talked about frequently is the slavery of the black slaves. That was the predominant form of slave during that time, but it was not the only form. There were white slaves during that period as well. The big issue during that time was that slavery actually did merge with racism. Blacks were viewed as slaves due to the color of their skin. This again is not the only time this has happened in history, and it has happened at various points due to all skin colors. Racism is but a form of bigotry. Bigotry is about highlighting difference in someone and spinning that difference as a negative. If you can convince multiple people that the difference is negative then they ostracize, attack, and potentially enslave those that are different. If the skin color is the same then they historically will find something else DIFFERENT to spin as the negative.
Then they now have their own "justification" for slavery. It is a false justification, but if they convince the majority (democratic) that it is just then they now have the force of "government" to back them in their enslavement.
Are you a slave?
You have a house, you have food, you have entertainment, you go to work, you are living better that even the slave owners of the past. Are you a slave?
Most people simply due to their living conditions will say no.
Do you have a choice of how you live that is not partially directed by coercion?
Many people may not see it. Now let me ask you some questions.
Do you want to attack Venezuela?
Do you want to attack Vietnam?
Do you want to pay for a new aircraft carrier?
Do you want to pay other countries for them to help their people?
Do you want to pay to educate the people in other countries?
Do you want to pay to build a new stadium when the recent one is only 21 years old?
Do you want to pay for $500 regular hammers?
If you live in the United States you pay for such things. Some of those you may have said yes. I listed quite a number I could think of so that hopefully some of them you said NO to.
Do you have a choice in how your taxes are spent?
I don't.
What happens if you don't pay those taxes? Lose your home, be fined, if refuse any of that imprisoned, if resist imprisonment killed, and your family is likely impacted and wrapped up in that.
So what? You have TV, Beer, food, and shelter as long as you pay your taxes.
Yet, you effectively have no say on how those taxes are spent.
You cannot stop your money you were forced/coerced to pay from being spent to attack people, impose restrictions on others, and imprison people.
You cannot stop your money from being spent in other countries even though we have poor people, those lacking medical help, those lacking education that are citizens and live in our country. Yet somehow it is okay that your money is spent on non-citizens and other countries instead.
Are you so sure you are not a slave?
Did they perhaps realize that slavery works much better when you don't have to use a shackle? What if you can accomplish the same thing without a shackle? The ability for masters to get what they want without having to do the work.
But, it isn't like a plantation...
Plantations
We actually have plantations. The 13th Amendment makes plantations a very easy thing to have. We simply realized they work much better when people don't see the slaves or have to interact with them.
We call them prisons.
Now a prison makes sense. I am not disputing that. There are cases where it is the only thing we've really come up with short of execution to deal with some incidents.
Yet, how many people are in prison that haven't actually hurt anyone? How many of them are there for crimes that were a crime because they chose to use a substance in their own body?
Why is it that many of those people get longer sentences than violent offenders with actual victims?
The thing that makes most sense to me is that they make better slaves. Would you rather have a violent slave, or a peaceful one.
Why criminalize things like Marijuana with such steep sentences? It is a great source of slave labor. There are other great sources too such as copyright infringement.
Sure there are other factors such as protecting big pharmaceutical companies profits, and the reality that making substances illegal, or for that matter banning anything creates a black market. Black Markets are lucrative revenue streams that create essentially black budgets, or black taxation.
Yet these plantations are growing rapidly. They are a rapidly increasing population and they are taking on more and more labor, services, etc. They are doing convict-sourcing as they've been said to be doing outsourcing. Sounds like a plantation to me.
These things are subsidized and those taxes you take are used to fund it.
Think
My goal in this post is to hopefully give you some other things you may not have considered with relation to slavery. I see a lot of division and intentional elevation of different forms of bigotry and to me this looks like slaves being pitted against each other so they don't pay attention to the master. If the slaves blame each other then the master, can kick back and SMILE.
"Look," Pharaoh said to the priests – down long lines chained slaves are one stone. They were guarded by many soldiers. The more slaves, the better for the state because we have always believed. But, the more slaves, the more necessary to be afraid of their rebellion. We are strengthening security. We have well fed their slaves, otherwise they will not be able to perform heavy physical work. But they – anyway, lazy and prone to rebellion...
– Watch as they move slowly and lazy guards do not drive them with whips and beats even healthy and strong slaves. But, they will move much faster. They will not need a guardian. The guards also become slaves. Similar can be accomplished. Let today before sunset heralds smash decree of Pharaoh, saying: "With the dawn of a new day, all slaves granted complete freedom. For every stone delivered to the city, free person will receive one coin. Coins can be exchanged for food, clothing, housing, a Palace in the city and the city itself. From now on you are free people". ... The next morning the priests and Pharaoh rose once again to the site of artificial mountains. The picture appeared to their eyes, impressed. Thousands of people, former slaves, race dragged the same stones as before. Sweating, many carried two stones. Others who had one, and fled, raising dust. Some guards also dragged stones. People who considered themselves free – after all, they removed the shackles, tried to get as much coveted coins to build your happy life.
Kratom a few months spent on its site, with satisfaction watching the scene below.
And the changes were enormous. Some slaves came together in small groups, built the truck and loaded the brim with stones, sweating, pushing these trucks. They have a lot of devices naizobretayut – with satisfaction thinking to myself Kratom – that's already internal services emerged: the hawkers food and water... Soon will choose a captain, and judges. Let purchased: they, in fact, consider themselves free, but the essence has not changed, they still carry stones...
Excellent.
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Yes, I am a slave. I am a slave of my thoughts, my machines, my smartphones and my job. The thing which we cannot get rid of in our life and cannot live with our own will, we are slave to those things whether they are living. or non living.
That is a different type of MASTER. Very different topic. Master/Slave relationship in history is humans enslaving other humans. :)
I agree; as long as I work for someone, I am a slave to them.
I can work for a company, or I can have many clients. They are all my rulers in some respects..
But as far as I can tell, it is much better to have many clients, so none of them is essential and I can choose to work with each or not.
And it is good to save and invest in holdings that will help free humanity over time, and will not devalue sitting in a savings account due to inflation.
Thus it is possible to achieve financial independence while still a young man ;-)
For me that is the true slavery; dependence on fiat currencies, starts the entire ball rolling, to control the masses through financial means. And ignorance thereof..
Yes you are right. Now with the evolution of decentralized platforms like steemit, we can see a financial freedom in the upcoming days.
Great blog! Thanks for sharing your thoughts. This subject is something I think about a lot.
I consider slavery a state of mind.
At the university, they told me an anecdote about a student from a previous year. The guy was the best video editor that faculty saw in many years. He got a job with a prestigious director on a big movie and he was fired after only a few days. He was an intelligent guy who wanted to learn, so when the director told him to cut the shot, he asked why. He wanted to understand directors thinking process, to better anticipate his taste. The director misinterpreted that for a challenge to his authority and fired the guy. If he answered the question he would have had a better editor on the team, but his position of power was more important to him than a skilled workforce.
'Don't ask questions and do what you're told'. We were advised.
We were also told that to get a job with Ardman Studios (main employer locally) we would have to sign a contract that gives them a copyright to everything we produce during the period we work for them. This would include a poem I might write on the way to work or a tune I would compose over the weekend. I would also be expected to socialise with other workers after my working hours. The Ardman Studios will pay well and give you a privilege of being part of 'the family'. Some students were drooling all over themselves to get that opportunity.
There are people who simply desire to control others and take pleasure from doing so. There is no need or reason for them to do it other than the selfish pleasure they get from having power over others. Ideology and efficiency are only an excuse or a cover story. Degrading others is the only way they can feel good about themselves, due to the huge stigma of guilt and shame they carry in themselves. In psychology, they are categorised under cluster b personality disorders. It's well worth researching this subject.
Due to lack of education and understanding, we glamorise these personality traits. We take the individuals possessing them to be great leaders and heroes, taken in by their charisma and fearlessness. We confuse lack of fear for courage and charisma for sincerity. They prove to be dishonest, unable to empathise and therefore cruel and ruthless. We are so caught up in their mind games we don't even recognise it
A lot of what feminism labels as 'toxic masculinity' is an accurate description of cluster B personalities. I wrote a dissertation about it. :)
The mystery traditions that talk about illumination, are actually teaching a basic psychotherapy and how to defend yourself against exploitative personalities. They are always first to be persecuted by authoritarian systems, upon failing they become integrated, alas in a modified form, that removes the individuating qualities. Use of trance, psychoactive, art and creativity is often presecuted, heavily regulated and devalued. These are some of the methods that can help to heal from cluster b abuse. The catch is that if you do go through psychotherapy and heal from it, you are unlikely to fall for the manipulation again. In other words, you are 'illuminated', you saw through the deception. If you can do so on a small scale, at home, or at work, you can also do so on a larger scale.
This is why raise of authoritarianism is always paired with powerful ideologies, be it in form of religion, state worship (patriotism) or corporate power. It is always accompanied by suppression of critical thinking, like in the anecdote about the student and the film director.
'Do what you're told and never question your orders'.
Sure it begins at an early age. You see that beginning with bullies in school hallways that is clear GET OFF on the misery of others.
These people often go on to become politicians.
Yep, if your EVER told not to question anything that should be a huge RED FLAG. If you had an explosive detector such results should cause it to be screaming loudly.
This is what I try to get more people to see, and hopefully more and more of us can make people realize that asking questions is a GOOD thing. You don't have to agree with a person, but them asking questions should not be considered bad.
I feel like a slave to th US government for sure and also a slave to my corporate overlords at times. A far as government is concerned, I disagree with how they spend more than half of my tax dollars so that's definitely a form of slavery. The corporate world is a bit of a different story..
When I was in college I never imagined I'd work 80+ hours in one week for multiple weeks at a time and only be compensated for 40 because I'm paid salary.
My company has since changed the policy so we get vacation time for any hours worked over 50 per week but we still have to give them 10 free hours of labor. And as much as it sucks working that much, I couldn't find better pay or benefits somewhere else so I feel trapped here bc i have a mortgage payment, a family to support, etc.
My employer is like the devil that I know and other companies are the devil I don't know.
At least some day I will be retired and only be a slave to one entity :/
We're all slaves... but not in the usually accepted context, but you're absolutely correct with your assertions near the end of the article. But addressing the earlier part of the post- the root cause & moral context I suppose you could call it... Slavery and laziness have nothing at all to do with each other- it's not a product of laziness. For example, it's impossible for one man (or family) to work a large parcel of land (1000's of acres). Slavery was merely an expedient and cost effective means of production. Because America is always held as the model for any analysis (I don't know why- slavery existed for every culture around the globe during every historical epoch including today) it's always put into a racial framework by people wanting something for nothing and believe they've found a method.
By 1861 (the beginning of the War of Northern Aggression) slavery as an institution was finished- and everybody knew it. After 1807-08 there was an embargo on the importation of slaves. Applying the law of supply & demand- the cost of a slave was $2500. It was like buying a Bentley to plow the fields. Conversely, an Irish immigrant (and there were more enough to go around after the Potato Famine of the 1840's) would work for pennies a day and pay their own upkeep.
Going back even further in history- slavery was often the most expedient method of dealing with cultures that had been defeated in war. Rather than killing the vanquished- they were sold off as slaves. In fact that's where most of the African slaves that came to the America's came from. Contrary to movies like Roots... It wasn't white thugs in hobnailed boots stomping through the jungle capturing the noble blackman (they wouldn't have survived 2 weeks in the jungle with succumbing to disease) Muslim slave traders had them waiting at the docks waiting to be loaded onto ships (just like today)
Yet thanks to subsidies and the prison industrial complex it is now cost effective again. The slaves pay to create plantations and staff them.
It's good to be the King!!!
All this is very slippery, subtle and ambiguous moments of course ... you are right
Whoa - SUPERIOR Posting. Slavery certainly continues, and to a large extent -- with #Human Trafficking.. that's obviously one example.
A True instance from my childhood time : at school, in the 6th Grade a young girl of Middle Eastern heritage came to class; I was fascinated by her, she had such beautiful thick hair & the most beautiful green eyes ♦♦ I had a fairly OPEN mind however, while other sixth graders were judgmental because the young lady "had a scent" (Translation: they gossiped that she smelled).
I think it's rather awful to see #Kids so young, without an open mind to other cultures. There were a number of positives about her, but instead of noticing those traits & features.. well, the jerks simply honed in on the 1 thing, and disliked her for that.
Sheesh, I have to say that at times such as this one I was DISAPPOINTED in people. Closed minds.
This is how the #Bigotry begins.
Thank u for your informative & luminous post ♦♦ Well thought out .
Especially appreciate your ending remark, " If the slaves blame each other then the master, can kick back and SMILE."
As I feel this is INDEED true.
It touched a Nerve when you wrote of copyright infringement & #marijuana being sources of slave labor (by criminalizing them) .. my spouse would agree with u on that !
Thank you for a superior reply. I appreciate it. :)
Slavery is involuntary servitude.
period.
If a legal choice exists then it's not involuntary.
The choice might not be comfortable...perhaps pulling up stakes and leaving.
(The most fundamental freedom is to be able to take a long walk at will, by the way.)
Just leave..
Start over somewhere else.
If you can do that it's not slavery.
Leave to where? That is the challenge. It seems planet wide at the moment.
Yeah that indeed would fit the classic definition. Yet, what if the master could get what they want regardless of where you walk? ;)
Doesn't matter.
The definition means you can GO.
It say nothing about the where you can go TO.
If there is no slavery..there are no Masters..
so that question is moot.
:
Think out of the box
...77% of the surface of the planet is uninhabited.
We only live in the first few hundred feet of the lower atmosphere.
I do want to add before we go too far. I actually think you and I see eye to eye on most things. You muted me in the past when I wrote about the prison system, slavery, etc. So there are clearly some things you and I disagree about on these two issues. I am okay with that. So if I frustrate you please don't feel you need to mute me. We have other things I believe we both enjoy talking about. If we cannot really find a point of agreement on this issue then let it go. I'll talk to you about it as long as you like and will actually seriously consider what you say. Yet I also don't want to frustrate you so much on this topic that you mute me. I kind of like talking to you and your perspective. It is different, and often an eye opening thing.
ok...I'll try to be a good boy.
I don't want you to be a good boy, the Ornery attitude is part of your charm.
I just didn't want you to mute me because we have an area we don't always see eye to eye in.
Though in reality I mostly agree with you on this stuff too... just think about some other oddities due to some things I've been exposed to.
Pretty sure I was. :) You are too, just about different things.
Vote with your money. No government needed.
As long as the government doesn't control the money, and the money is not created by a cartel. :)
There are things we can do, but sadly it is not that simple in the current environment. In the future, maybe it can be. Yet the true problem lies within our education systems... that is where the battle needs to be fought and it needs to be fought now.
Well I know @kencode is working on #BlockPay and we just had George #bitspark talking on the #whaletank. Care to join us Saturday?
Join you where?
Here
I might be able to another day, but that is my wife's birthday so I'll likely be doing things with her. If you want me to join another week just remind me with a date and time in a reply like you did.
Sure, it is each Saturday, upcoming: RSVP
great one upvote <3 you are my favorite
the decap post I promised
https://steemit.com/informationwar/@stevescoins/how-to-be-an-informationwar-activist-part-thirteen-an-understanding-of-decapitation-strategy-and-it-s-uses-beyond-assassination