bart_calendar ([info]bart_calendar) wrote,
2012-03-06 14:56:00

Slavery

Are human beings born to submit?

Is slavery a part of our nature?

Is this why we invented religion, so someone would always be there to tell us what to do?

Is it why so many countries over so many years have voted dictatorship or theocracy into office?

Is this why we shackle ourselves to mortgages rather than having the freedom of an apartment - so we'll be forced to stay at jobs we hate taking orders from people we don't respect?

Is this why we enter into traditional marriages, so society and rules can control our sexuality?

Is this why so many people are willing to vote for candidates who will limit contraception and abortion - because many of us really don't want to have options and choices in that part of our lives?

Is this why so many people go back to prison many, many times?

Is it why people start using heroin even though they know it will take away freedom and choice from their lives?

Is it why men and women stay with their abusers?

Is it why so many people vote against their own self interests?

Is it why censorship flourishes in every country - including America?

Is actual freedom and the ability to choose something that just goes against our DNA?

Has evolution bred us to obey?

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  • 19 comments

[info]chernobylred

March 6 2012, 14:36:09 UTC 2 months ago

This is an interesting theory.

A few years ago, I was watching a television show where a character got the shit beat out of him on a busy street. I told my partner that the scene completely destroyed my ability to suspend disbelief because that just wouldn't happen, ever. A street full of people would not let someone get their head bashed into a windshield. Repeatedly. My partner looked at me and said something like "You don't live in the same world as the rest of us, do you?" Because apparently, people do let that stuff happen. I was shocked. I always assumed that because I've never backed down from a fight (or any other sort of altercation), and I'm hardly a model of toughness, that most people were like that, too.

Turns out, not so much.

Now I'm more observant when I do things that nobody else, or at least very few others, do: I tell the asshole in the movie theater to hang up his cell phone, I grab the dangerously flailing drunk guy on the dance floor and tell him to calm down or beat it, etc. Before, I always assumed that I was the one who stepped up first because I'm just impatient. If I wasn't there, someone else would do the same. Now, I'm not so confident of that assumption.

And I've been wondering why is that? I'm certainly not special. I'm not tough. I'm not good at fighting. I'm not even fast enough to run away if someone should decide to kick my ass (and frankly, I'm surprised that hasn't happened yet). So perhaps the question I should be asking isn't why am I different, but why are so many other people the same? Your genetic theory certainly adds an interesting dimension to that question.

Although I would argue that having an apartment isn't necessarily "freeing." I loved owning my own house. I felt much more free in a house I owned than I did in any rental.

[info]femfataleatron

March 6 2012, 14:44:58 UTC 2 months ago

I think people want things to be predictable; they want to be pretty sure that tomorrow will be the same as today. Many are willing to accept a fair amount of pain for this to be the case. Rather the sharp sting of the whip then the unknown emptiness of free-fall.

[info]momentsmusicaux

March 6 2012, 14:53:44 UTC 2 months ago

We're social animals, and that entails fitting in, conforming, following the group. That instinct or pattern can easily be subverted.

[info]andrewducker

March 6 2012, 21:41:01 UTC 2 months ago

Yeah, we're pack animals. We follow our alpha males.

[info]_sweater

March 7 2012, 14:22:42 UTC 2 months ago

or alpha females...

[info]barking_iguana

March 6 2012, 17:12:31 UTC 2 months ago Edited:  March 7 2012, 14:13:58 UTC

Mostly no. Re religion: Whether by nature, nurture, or both, people want our place in the universe, our existence, is the way things are supposed to be and that something bigger than us has our back. That's why placebos work, too. But it doesn't mean most people particularly want to serve.

[info]dictator88

March 6 2012, 17:41:37 UTC 2 months ago

Monotheism breeds slavery.

[info]chess

March 6 2012, 17:57:33 UTC 2 months ago

You see, in my worldview, human beings _are_ born to submit - but to God, not to their fellow men...

A lot of human beings don't get that far and try to fill the 'submitting' hole in their lives with submitting to their fellow men instead, though.

(And a lot of others believe they are submitting to God when what they actually submit to is carefully packaged by their fellow men to be nothing like what God actually wants. Which, to be honest, might include me; I don't claim to have all the answers.)

[info]snippy

March 6 2012, 18:47:44 UTC 2 months ago

I think human beings tend to rank things (we are pattern-making monkeys, after all), and that includes the members of their community. But obviously not all human beings submit, because not all do.

I don't want to start a discussion about nature versus nurture, implied by your phrase "born to," but I will point out that most healthy adults have the ability to change some portions of themselves, such as their actions and words (if not their emotions and thinking).

[info]theadulteress

March 6 2012, 18:49:00 UTC 2 months ago

This entry really turns me on...

[info]bart_calendar

March 6 2012, 20:50:58 UTC 2 months ago Edited:  March 6 2012, 20:51:56 UTC

It was meant to.

Most of the time I write entries for a general readership.

Sometimes I write an entry with someone in mind.

[info]theadulteress

March 7 2012, 07:02:55 UTC 2 months ago

You are a pig, sir.

God, I want to fuck you so bad...

[info]bart_calendar

March 7 2012, 09:19:15 UTC 2 months ago

Patience, darling.

[info]theadulteress

March 7 2012, 12:39:48 UTC 2 months ago

... that is what the sea teaches...

[info]bart_calendar

March 7 2012, 12:40:26 UTC 2 months ago

Patience and slavery are bliss.

[info]agentsteel53

March 7 2012, 03:56:19 UTC 2 months ago

Someday I will buy a house.

I will pay for it in cash of course.

[info]channelpenguin

March 7 2012, 12:57:09 UTC 2 months ago

Choice is hard. Choice requires energy (and direct, real physical energy, so requires decent food, sleep etc.). Responsibility sometimes sucks - when you think that everything that you so, everything that happens is somehow, somewhere, under your control - or could be if you thought and planned and researched and paid attention and *did* enough (as I personally very much tend to)...well that's *tiring*. Feeling in the right that's good - having to work out what *right* is - that's hard....

so if that can all be taken away, then I can see how that might appeal to some.

Not to me.

[info]tibbie_x

March 7 2012, 15:47:41 UTC 2 months ago

I think people are just scared and fear =s need to have a leader to feel secure.
Fear of death and fear of sex - 2 things that really fuck up the whole world.

[info]horshoo

March 8 2012, 19:50:30 UTC 2 months ago

Slavery works as a business model, as the pyramids show us. But it has been worn down over the years. Coal mines had to pay the workers, but then made them "slaves" to the company store. Unions took more of the model away, but it still exists.

I've often wondered if people could have just refused to work as slaves, but many would have had to die due to beatings or starvation to accomplish it. So, in a survival sense, it's almost inevitable.
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