Modern Slavery: Evolution, Ignorance, and Prison

It sounds insulting, someone telling you “you're a slave,” how dare they? You may say, “I don't feel like a slave” and brush it off like the notion is a foolish jest at your expense; you may believe the sentiment nothing more than ramblings from a modern zealot of the conspiracy cult. And you may not believe the current writer when he says that you are a slave, but be warned, for the moment you ignore his claims without hearing them out, is the very moment that you have allowed slavery to exist in your world, not just for you, but for others around the globe...

Nothing could be more averse to the minds of modern man and woman, than the notion that their work, and all their value in this world, belongs to another, a master they neither know, nor gleam a hint of respect from; that they are a slave, and have not a clue how. Our country, having been founded on slavery, as every empire throughout time, has once again resorted to the unscrupulous act of enslaving people for the purpose of developing a so-called civilization. Nonetheless, that slavery exists today, and in one form or another, must be addressed, discussed, and given credence, for it does exist today as the current writer will attempt to convey to the reader in this article. (Without such a dialogue, allowing slavery to be ignored, the issue of modern slavery merely cast aside without an argument, the tragedy of slavery continues.)

Without understanding the history of slavery, we are doomed to repeat it. Slavery existed long before America, and in different ways than the racist brutality of the southern plantations. At first, slavery was enacted on the people that could not contribute to society, by the aristocrats and the elite, in order to actualize their plans and desires. Using the brute strength of the slave, the Egyptians were able to construct massive stone structures that have lasted many years. In Greece, the slave was either the contraband of war, or a highly skilled, even highly educated person, but stripped of the rights to vote, and the right to personal ownership of property.

• Slavery--modern or in history--is a symptom of a society that chooses military and war over education. In fact, today it would be more accurate to say that our society has been merged with the military industrial complex, and regressed back into a pre-civil war era. The difference is that the prisons are the new plantations, and race--while there is a huge bent towards colored people, still--is not a factor.

In Greece, the Helots were the closest version of slavery to those of the black slaves of America. The Helots were treated as sub human, and on a day called Crypteia, the helots could be killed by a Spartan citizen without any repercussion. In contrast the Penestae, a subjugated people by tradition that were reduced to servility to the land by invading tribes from Thesprotia; this was a situation where decedents of a people that were invaded, became normalized to the notion that their servitude was just, and indeed they became rich off the land that they worked. Nonetheless, this was a case of slavery, and one in which the slaves were happy to be enslaved.

Auldus Heuxley, years after writing his book, a Brave New World, stated that he believed that a world in which one could be convinced to love his or her slavery was coming, and that it would be heralded with the advent of a pharmacological industry that would chemically induce a sense of pleasure in the place of pain, so that one could overlook their discontent and despondency about life in an oppressive world. Further, through entertainment and consumption, combined with a chemically induced state of complacency, one “would love their servitude” as Huxley stated.

In the world of human nature, there are an anathema of distractions, which in themselves are not harmful to the individual, nor the collective, but rather they are the cause of stagnancy and delusion. Stagnancy, in the form of apathy, has reduced the population of westernized countries to a dull whimper; in the face of technology, an eerie glow of hypnotizing flicker rates repeats the pattern of bread and circuses once again. The delusion that freedom can be sustained and maintained whence a public is distracted at such an unprecedented scale shows a vast ignorance of history and reality.

In an analysis of modern slavery with regards to prison populations, and the racial and political factors involved Kim Gilmore, in her essay Slavery and Prison—Understanding the Connections, states:

The connections between slavery and imprisonment have been used by abolitionists as a historical explanation and as part of a radical political strategy that questions the feasibility of "reform" as an appropriate response to prison expansion. As a leader in the creation of this new abolitionist movement, Angela Davis (1996: 26) has written, "I choose the word `abolitionist' deliberately. The 13th Amendment, when it abolished slavery, did so except for convicts. Through the prison system, the vestiges of slavery have persisted. It thus makes sense to use a word that has this historical resonance."

Moreover, according to the Population Reference Bureau, titled The U.S. Has World's Highest Incarceration Rate:

...Since 2002, the United States has had the highest incarceration rate in the world. Although prison populations are increasing in some parts of the world, the natural rate of incarceration for countries comparable to the United States tends to stay around 100 prisoners per 100,000 population. The U.S. rate is 500 prisoners per 100,000 residents, or about 1.6 million prisoners in 2010, according to the latest available data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS).

These statistics represent a startling trend that with closer inspection, reveals a major disparity towards people of color. This trend, to the present writer, presents a reality that represents a regression from one state of slavery to another; in other words, once the people of color were freed, and granted the equal station as full citizens of this country, they were within decades returned to a condition deplorable to any decent standard of life. Essentially, prison has been used, along with the courts and the gerrymandering of law and custom, to return the people of color to a state of blatant slavery.

If one is not a blatant slave, as those in the prisons, they are a passive servant of the corporate masters who own them as stock, as human resources. Therefore, in one abject version, slavery is blatant, and in the other, slavery is subtle and legalized through banking and corporate structures, which supersede the legislation of our government. Both versions are a tragedy, and the evidence is clear that the slave state has devoured our sanity for minor luxury, as we have surrendered any valuable virtue for the scraps of conspicuous consumption.

In fact, our culture is a slave culture. We are required to seek permits to fish, to farm, to feed someone, and to marry someone among other things. In actuality, we are permitted, by that higher authority, to live, and that is not life at all if you ask me. This, in its simplicity, is not freedom, it is a limited band of existence, which in itself explains the cause for seeking entertainments, and living vicariously through video games, or whatever distractions provided by the corporate monstrosity to keep your mind in a coffin, insulated from the world of reality.

• Slavery cannot exist in a society and culture of well educated citizens, capable of scrutinizing their systems of organization, and the structures of power.
• Understanding your position in life is an implicit result of a critical mind.
• The current school system works only as a foundation of enslavement, and the outcome of school nothing more than a well-trained, obedient worker.

Nonetheless, the siege of slavery has been waged universally upon the underprivileged slaves of America, though the bent rate of incarceration reflects the rooted racist leanings of the already established mentality towards fear, mistrust, and entitlement. The prisoner becoming the equal does not happen in a land founded on superiority and inequality, masquerading as the opposite. This is not the land of the free and home of the brave; it is land of the flee and home of the slave.

Slavery--modern or in history--is a symptom of a society that chooses military and war over education. In fact, today it would be more accurate to say that our society has been merged with the military industrial complex, and regressed back into a pre-civil war era. The difference is that the prisons are the new plantations, and race--while there is a huge bent towards colored people, still, it--is not a factor.

• Education, removed from the school model, which only hinders learning and teaching, is the only solution to the ever-present problem of slavery into freedom.

The solution to slavery is not easy, but it is most necessary; and it may never be a permanent solution because history tells us that humanity is dynamic, but restoring the conditions of life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness-- these most inalienable of rights-- must occur before humanity can be free.

What's worse is that the government under which all of this modern slavery takes place, the western European model taken to its absolute definition, is expanding itself to stretch over the face of the globe; we subtly and profoundly see, slowly the emergence of a global government, a New World Order: Neo-Feudalism, in the form of debt serfs, perpetually in a state of domination and control by others: their masters.

This is not new however, in fact it has been going on for a century through the Federal Reserve, and for centuries through the Bank of England.

Further information:http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Conspiracy

These ideas being left for you the reader to discover and determine, the current writer would now discuss his solutions to the problem of globalist masters of finance. The solution is actually to evolve the systems of economy, education, and political ethics. In the three articles below, the three solutions are presented respectively:

1. http://mattrick.hubpages.com/hub/Fundamental-Solutions-Democratic-Reciprocism
2. http://mattrick.hubpages.com/hub/Fundamental-Solutions-Part-II-Democratic-Councils
3. http://mattrick.hubpages.com/hub/Fundamental-Solutions-Part-III-Developmental-Education