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I am afraid that it is my unpleasant duty to inform you that you may be a slave.
by managing editor David Donovan
You may own a rather large plasma TV, be able to afford a bang-up dinner at an excellent restaurant and live in a rather nice house – that you are paying off to the bank – but you may still be a slave.
You may have a BMW sitting in your three car garage, drink French champagne every night, or go yachting on the weekend — but still, you may be a slave.
If you owe a bank money – and need to keep making money to keep them from taking away your life — then you are a slave.
I know quite a lot about slavery — I used to work in investment banking.
And the truth is — most of us are slaves.
We are slaves because we work in jobs we hate — that we never dreamed of doing in our childhood, but do now only to make ends meet.
We are a slaves — because every day a customer – or our boss – tells us what to do and we meekly acquiesce — even though we know they’re wrong.
We are slaves — because we can’t quit, because to lose our job may very well mean we’ll lose the house we – and maybe our spouse and kids – live in.
We’re slaves — because we dream of retirement, but continue to do whatever the hell it is we’re doing — and it doesn’t make us happy.
We’re slaves — because we meekly accept the way things are, without ever questioning whether they’re the way they really need to be.
The free market, to me, does not seem so free. When we go to work each day and cower before our corporate superiors and cringe beneath or banking masters — then it ain’t so free.
The first way to become free is not to owe our corporate overlords any money. Once that happens, they lose much of their power. The next step is to work for a person – maybe yourself – and not a multinational.
I have three other rules, developed through a lifetime of being a corporate slave, but who slipped out of their steely grasp — for now at least:
- No human being is better than any another — subservience to others, for any reason, is wrong.
- Our aim as a species is not to consume — increasing consumption can only end in species extinction, unless we can find other worlds to devour.
- Money, in itself, is meaningless — when you die, rewarding recollections are all that will really matter.
When I say that you are a slave, I don’t mean it — you know that you are not a slave — at least not completely.
You have a mind, and you have a voice, and you still have the right to consider the way things are — and the way they should be.
Consider a world where there were no more slaves.
If we all did what we enjoyed — wouldn’t the world thrive?
Maybe satisfaction, rather than money, should be what we all should value most.
You are not a slave.
Not if you don’t want to be.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
14 Comments
Why you are a slave by @davrosz @independentaus http://t.co/HNiyQqRz
Why you are a slave by @davrosz @independentaus http://t.co/HNiyQqRz
Even if we strung up every investment banker we would still have to work crappy jobs.
Dear David,
Nice article with plenty of noble aims and sentiments in it.
The “slaves to the banks” notion raises issues of how we get to a world in which things are “the way they should be”. To achieve a truly “Independent Australia”, we need to reform(and how!) the banking system just as much as, probably more than, the role and status of the Governor-General / Head of State.
It was as obvious as the nose on one’s face when a house mortgage for 5Y morphed into a 40Y mortgage with the banks falling all over themselves. Those who have no inheritance to cushion our fall are screwed.
The Blueprint is what the Corporate world is using to enslave the 3rd World population. Libya for example that owed not a penny to the IMF etc, rich in oil, water and gold etc and whose population enjoyed free education, free health, petrol price at cents per gallon, plus their first home buyers $50,000 government contribution should have been the envy of the World instead we saw them as a failed state in need of rescuing.
It was our duty to go rescue them even if we had to turn Gaddafi into a mass murderer and bomb the hapless Libyans with democracy to show them.
Syria too must go and Iran is next in line, since neither is willing to shackle their civilians and enslave therm our crooked banking system.
You say, David, “Consider a world where there were no more slaves”. There will always be slaves as there always will be masters. Even in personal relationships there is always someone telling you what to do and vice versa. It’s part of who we are to try and dominate someone. Georg Hegel discussed this in his famous Master/Slave Dialectic.
Hegel was a man and just because Hegel said it was so, it doesn’t mean it is, or it doesn’t mean it always needs to be the case. We are barbarians now, but perhaps we can better ourselves in time: http://www.independentaustralia.net/2011/philosophy/democracy/australias-barbaric-judicial-and-political-system/
But Hegel also believed that the master/slave relationship represented a primitive form of human relationship and this is in harmony with your justified view that “we are barbarians now”. He also believed that to escape this primitive form we must learn to cooperate and this is also in harmony with your belief “perhaps we can better ourselves in time”.
I think we have a long way to go, David, or as Robert Frost beautifully and put it:
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep
Well said.
Sorry David but me and my friends worked this out when we were 12. This has been written about for millenia. Not that your article isn’t interesting, but compared to Marx, Eldridge Cleaver, Abbie Hofmann etc etc it’s essentially a fluff piece.
Good for you.
Another world is possible. Entirely possible. Certainly this variety is not worth saving and don’t feed the beast. Plenty are working towards an alternative in all sorts of ways. If you want to avoid dealing with money but still like to trade consider your local LETS. Here is the Sydney one but they are every where around Australia and overseas. http://www.auslets.org/sydney/
You are correct David, free trade is not free. An economy based on debt bondage is slavery. We need to reclaim the commons and allocate resources based on need not profit. A society where people’s basic needs are met will not only be nicer place for all but will free up so much more creative energy for better purposes than how to scam another dollar from some where like a common junkie.
“Grey
4 July, 2012 at 7:21 am
Even if we strung up every investment banker we would still have to work crappy jobs.”
It would be a a good start though and lead to an outbreak of joyous dancing in the streets.
ps : you never did give evidence of your innocence of the granny crime.
Well…it’s hard to argue with the article. Debt bondage is the new indentured servitude.
An anecdote: when my grandfather arrived in Oz he worked for 3 years as a plumber and saved enough money to buy his house outright and he and his family lived in that same house for the rest of his life. Now I am working for 30 years (and paying absurd sums in ‘interest’) to do the same.
We have been conned.
That’s a pretty bleak viewpoint, David. As you begin to suggest, there is a better way.
If a person hates their job so much, time to stop, take stock and change career path. We spend way too much time at work to hate every minute of it. I don’t dream of retirement, I dream of acheiving as much as possible in my working life so when that day comes I can know it was worthwhile. I don’t have a mortgage, when I do, sure I’ll be tied to the payments, but my life is much more than that so I won’t consider myself a slave.
Meekly accept the way things are? Sod that. If you don’t like the way things are, do something about it. You might not change the world, but it won’t be for want of trying.
I’ve worked this one out a long time ago, BUT ! consider we can’t all have the job we want, can you imagine soneone dreaming they want to clean toilets, prepare dead bodies for burial, clean out garbadge ? C’mon, there are jobs that no one wants to do willingly, nor does anyone ever dream of them either as their life’s ambition, never the less sewerage must be disposed of and rubbish must also be disposed of and someone must be found to cary out the task willingly.I considered myself lucky to just successfully have a job. If it wasn’t the job of my dreams, at least I was able to work my way up until I found a job I enjoyed, however, once such a job is landed, you must still bow to management and their demands, even if they are unreasonable and intrusive to your life. Which under my interpretation fulfils the classic definition of slave. Especially these days, when the goal posts of employement conditions are ever changing, and said changes supported by the Govt, who is supposed to ensure we are served efficiently by them in the first place.Why is it neccessary to increase work hours from the 40 hour week ? Why is it neccessary to increase the retirement age, Australia is a very rich country, and we have a stable workforce, the envy of many countries around the World, yet you are being told, you must work until you drop at age 70. Oh, don’t believe the crap your being told we live longer these days, I suggest a few walks thru a few cemetaries, especially pioneer ones, you will see, despite the differences in living standards back then, contrary to the claims made today, those folks lived to a ripe old age indeed, tombstones don’t lie.
And Patrick 5 July 2012, whilst I applaud your points of doing something to change your life, at the end of the day, when you get your mortgage, I can assure you, that will be your life, and contrary to what you say, your concerns will then reflect that responsability, no job = no home = no wife= no kids = no life, to avoid this happening, you WILL do things at work to keep folks happy, you never dreamt of up until now. Have a good one, on me.