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 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.
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.
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...
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.
