Most of us have grown up believing that we live in the “free world”, a superior culture in which slavery has been abolished. Not a day goes by that we aren’t exposed to multiple media messages proclaiming how free we are. We also receive daily reminders about how many people have sacrificed, and are still sacrificing, their lives to maintain that freedom.
The fact is that so long as private property laws exist and human beings are forced to pay landowners for space to exist upon the earth, real freedom does not exist. Land is always obtained and kept by violent force. Once it has been seized through violence, laws are then passed to protect the property of the new “owners” against anyone else seizing it from them. These laws are the foundation of the power structure of our “civilization”.
That power structure decrees that the time and labor of those who do not own land can be exploited by those who do. Employers are rewarded by government for collecting taxes from workers. Within that power structure, those with mortgages who help perpetuate the system in exchange for certain privileges are the equivalent of house slaves, while those who rent can be compared to field slaves. Abuses of power abound within this system, and helpless children are the most vulnerable victims of that abuse.
However, adults are vulnerable to it too. Trained from childhood in state schools to follow orders from authority figures, very few people are ever allowed to become real adults. Instead, they are taught to become valuable “employees”. Employees lives depend upon pleasing their employers. Employees must adhere to whatever schedule is given them, do whatever tasks they are assigned, and suffer whatever indignities and humiliations deemed permissible in a “free market”, or be replaced. One of the most effective weapons employers have is the fear of homelessness.
The fear of homelessness is the only way the system can force people to work jobs like the graveyard shift at a gas station. Would anyone volunteer to work at a payday loan establishment profiting from the poverty and desperation of others if they themselves weren’t threatened by poverty and desperation themselves? Who would choose a job at an insurance company denying medical procedures to the sick and dying if they didn’t need money to rent space to exist?
Although we humans like to think of ourselves as superior to the rest of the animal kingdom, we are in fact just a part of that kingdom. There are many species who exhibit bizzare behavior when breeding in captivity, and humans are no exception. Often, the humiliations, indignities, and hardships working parents are forced to endure in the workplace are passed on to their children. Even worse, many well-meaning parents break their children’s spirits to better prepare them for future subservience, in the name of love.
I am beginning to question whether real love can even exist, or survive, within such a power structure. Respect is a vital element of love, beginning with self-respect. It’s difficult to maintain one’s self-respect while enduring insults and exploitation in order to pay rent. It’s also difficult to treat one another with respect within a system that forces us to compete with one another for crumbs and further divides us according to the size of those crumbs.
Birth rates have plummeted in recent years, resulting in a renewal of laws banning abortion. I attribute such laws to the need for sufficient cannon fodder to ensure “first-world” status at the expense of others. Those others include our own children, who suffer from a lack of time and attention from parents who must often both work two jobs just to pay rising rents and mortgages to avoid homelessness.
It used to be that parents cared for their children and then, grown children cared for their parents. It was part of the cycle of life. Most parents no longer have the option of caring for their own children—and this has resulted in the government having to care for aging parents via social security. The bonds of love have been replaced by the bonds of wage-slavery.
I firmly believe that there is no security without tyranny and taxation of the yet unborn is an extreme form of taxation without representation. We must stop depending on the same governments and corporations that enslave us to “help” us if we want to restore our self-respect. We must enter into supportive, rather than competitive, relationships with one another, based on mutual respect, if we want to free ourselves from the chains that bind us.
I inserted links to the following articles when I created this post in Word, but when I transferred it here, the links disappeared. As a Steemit newbie, any tips on how to insert links to web pages would be greatly appreciated.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2005/03/why_is_captive_breeding_so_hard.html
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/baby-animals-rescued-mothers/
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-us-birth-rate-20170630-htmlstory.html