Slavery is when someone has power over someone against their will. A slave’s master will be able to control what someone says or does.
Most references to slavery have historically been the concept of owning people, with most instances being:
- Domination via war, with the loser becoming the property of the winner.
- That person was born into an owned family.
A slave, however, is anyone unable to make free decisions.
While we can debate the extent of “freedom”, slavery in modern civilization is still commonplace:
- Workers forced into lopsided agreements
- Celebrities with controlling managers
- Cult members
- Sex slaves, such as trafficked children
- Debt holders when their loans have a high interest or arbitrary terms
- Incarcerated individuals
And, since people can make decisions on them, some things are not entirely slavery:
- Living in a ghetto with the ability to self-educate and leave it
- Working a job where there are opportunities to change the situation
- Having debt that can be repaid relatively quickly
Further, when a society gives people the freedom to escape slavery, they can also make decisions that put them into slavery as well. As long as slavery exists, it’ll be a revolving door.
A slave is a tradable commodity. From debt to children, the elements of a slave can be bought and sold. This certainly violates human rights, but doesn’t change the power it gives the owners, and therefore is still culturally acceptable.
Servant vs. Slave
People who are temporary slaves are bound by either an agreement or a purpose. But, they can often choose a different arrangement later on.
When someone selects slavery willingly, rather than being forced into it, that person is a servant, which has an entirely different framing.
Servants, unlike slaves, can both say and enforce their right to say “no” to something. This possibility of choice distinguishes them because the servant has (or had) dictated who they’re serving, while the slave is forced without negotiation to serve whether they desire to or not.
Servants, therefore, are considered “voluntarily” slaves, and society interprets them as “free” even when they’re bound by an agreement because they made a choice. On the other hand, slaves’ decisions mean nothing except how much power is necessary to keep them bound.
Power
A slave has little to no legitimate power. They may have some types of power (such as understanding), but never the means to become free or interact equally among society.
This situation means the slave has two methods available to change their situation:
- Become aware of otherwise unseen power.
- Focus their willpower into successful, creative solutions to gain their freedom. This may include geographically relocating to somewhere else that doesn’t recognize their status as a second-tier citizen.
We can also make decisions to increase our enslaved status:
- The only difference between a wealthy free person and a poor slave is a few foolish decisions breaking the wrong rules and dishonoring cultural norms.
- We can lose so much power relative to others that we become enslaved.
- Whenever we have options, but our environment gives us no choice, the lack of a decision can enslave us to its consequences.
Labels
Often, the word “slave” has implications of forced labor, separating families, and destroying lives for entertainment. The practice is far from abolished, and likely never will be.
The institution of slavery in practice, however, is merely an unfeeling structure that cuts off opportunities purely because of a social status. The only people worth declaring evil are the direct slaveholders and that society’s acceptance of the practice. However, depending on the culture and economic necessity, good people may still own slaves.
Generally, the actual value people treat their enslaved subjects is contingent on economics. Historically, slaves who had highly valuable specializations were assigned to the household and treated as if they were family members.
Hypothetically, if everyone were enslaved to a perfectly good and loving master, the arrangement would be mutually beneficial. That master would take care of every need, and the slaves would be satisfied and live well.
But, for several reasons, humans will always exert some level of evil when they enslave others:
- When a social system permits it, they have nobody to oppose them
- The institution itself doesn’t give people inherent value for their actual human worth.
Because slavery is the act of forcing power over another, it’s difficult in free societies to discern who owns who, or when:
- The boss owns the employee.
- The corporate board owns the boss.
- The shareholders own the board.
- Many shareholders are employees.
- The cult leader owns the members.
Inversion
Often, the requirements of a role can make power directly enslave us:
- Addictions enslave anyone willing to devote their life to that substance.
- A lifestyle filled with too much responsibility (e.g., running a large organization) requires someone to never be free to live the good life.
- Even abdicating our material possessions and giving ownership of everything can still run us into the continued risk of being enslaved to our ideals.
In one way or another, we are always at risk of something or someone enslaving us. The only way to be completely free is to avoid being a slave, but also to avoid being a master (to avoid responsibility for someone).
Application
The current fashions of modern society treat slavery discussions as taboo, but the concept is farther-reaching than most people realize.
Most slave owners don’t like to consider their activities as slavery. Far too often, the word debt or coercion is a more fashionable term to enslave people, groups, and entire countries.
The only outward difference between massive debt and slavery is math and the stories people interpret about it.
The line between slave and servant is murky. People sometimes consent to a slavery arrangement (e.g., foreigners who don’t understand the language of a contract), but won’t care because it was better than their culture of origin.
Most people, barring Christians and leftists, are uncomfortable with self-identifying as slaves. It’s humiliating in most contexts without someone to fix it or someone to blame.
In free societies, slavery typically comes from perspective more than reality. If everyone were to change their attitude to self-ownership, millions of slaves would be freed overnight.
Submitting to slavery through fear of a powerful master might be worse than dying, so calculate carefully.
Slavery is ubiquitous, even if we don’t use that specific word, and human nature means it’ll always be with us barring something that would directly change human nature.
Slavery is always wrong, with the single exception of when an individual is incapable of tending to their personal needs. This is why we have no problem with guardianship of children or the extremely elderly.
This temptation to own slaves is so that profound the concept of equity ownership (i.e., owning an imaginary person defined as a “corporation”) is effectively slavery without an actual slave.