LET MY PEOPLE GO Do you think slavery is a thing of the past? Think again. Have you ever really thought about it; I mean, what it truly is, its essence, so to speak? When you take a hard look at it, you can plainly see that slavery is still alive and well, all over the world. It's just that it's being practiced with ... well, a different sort of etiquette. Instead of whips and chains it's being enforced with the subtlety of something we call a free-market economy (with special emphasis on the word "free"). Slavery, quite simply, is an arrangement (if you will) that flourishes in work situations. Were the imported Africans (who always stand out in our minds as the primary victims of slavery) in a work situation? Wasn't that the reason that they were brought over here on those horribly crowded ships? To work? But let's take a closer look at it. There are three primary characteristics of slavery. See if you can't recognize them operating in your own life.
1. The Negro slaves were placed in a work situation in which there was a superior and an inferior. Are you in a work situation? If you are, there is a very good chance (indeed, almost a veritable certainty), that you are either a superior or an inferior. If you're an inferior, i.e., in a position where it seems that there is a great distance between you and the top, there is a very good chance that you are a slave, a wage slave. 2. The Negro slaves were placed in a work situation in which there was a superior and an inferior, with the superior receiving a far greater portion of compensation for the work being performed. Far greater? It was excessive. The slaves got shacks to live in and virtually rags to wear for clothing. But, have you heard about the inexcusable and shameful - even reprehensible - compensation packages CEOs get? What about you? Does your superior receive excessively more compensation than you? 3. The Negro slaves were put in a work situation in which there was a superior and an inferior, with the superior receiving a far greater portion of compensation for the work being performed, and from which there was no escape without the risk of great peril. Could you just walk away from your job? Oh, sure, I suppose you could. It's a free country and all that. But could you? Really? Without putting yourself and your family in a situation of great peril? No one is holding a gun to your head or standing by with a whip to lay on your back, but can you just up and leave? If, upon thinking about it you decide you can't, then I'd say that you're a slave. And does it really matter that we prettify it a little by calling it wage slavery? A slave is a slave, no matter how you dress it up. Oh, and by the way, did you notice that, in essence, slavery has nothing whatsoever to do with race? The fact that it was the Africans who were so dramatically (and traumatically) placed in this position is merely an incident of history, and focusing on it (racially) draws our attention away from its true nature. Slavery is purely a work situation that anyone can fall into, regardless of creed, color, or sex. So much for marketplace, or what we might call the more open form, of slavery. Now for the more subtle variety. Everyone who practices Christianity (or Islam) is also a slave. According to the online dictionary, the definition of slavery is as follows:
The state of one bound in servitude as the property of a slaveholder or household.
This is the first definition, the one that applies to marketplace slavery. But consider the third one:
The condition of being subject or addicted to a specified influence
Being the dualist that I am, I'm interested in the two-sided aspect of everything, which I happen to believe that everything has, including slavery. There is the physical variety of slavery (what I have referred to as marketplace slavery), and then, on the other side of the coin, there is the non-physical kind, what we might call psychological slavery. Although it is not so egregiously apparent as the physical variety, it is nonetheless every bit as insidious. The dictionary definitions above do not quite cover the more profound nuances of slavery. They do not point out, for example, that being in slavery is a situation that one does not easily extricate oneself from. Perhaps this is so universally understood that the writers of the dictionary didn't feel the need to mention it. But I think it's important, very important. One does not free himself from the slavery of Christianity without dealing with the fear of going to hell. Same with Islam. This is an apt parallel with the physical variety of slavery, from which one does not escape without the fear of being captured and incarcerated, not to mention physically abused. The primary source of Christian slavery is of course the Bible, a book that is nearly universally believed to be the inspired word of God. My primary motivation for writing, The Bible - Why God Had Nothing To Do With It, was centered in the effort to dispel this myth. I do not expect that it will have much of an effect on the religious dolts who would much prefer to wallow in their ignorance and sop up the theological drivel their preachers and priests serve them every Sunday, but I promote it nonetheless, and shove it in their faces every chance I get. And I do so in the spirit of that famous gospel song, Let My People Go (with a twist of course).
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