Is every choice a person can make legitimate? I honestly don't know.
What if you choose to be a slave?
Choosing slavery seems to be the choice to kill off your liberty, just like suicide is the choice to kill your own body. Yet I am less uncomfortable with the choice to commit suicide (even though I don't like that choice) than I am with the choice to be a slave. I doubt you'd be able to regret killing yourself after it's done, but you'd certainly be able (and even likely) to regret-- for a long time-- choosing to be a slave.
Once you've chosen to be a slave, how do you change your choice if you come to regret it? If you can change your mind are you really enslaved?
I think about this when I see how many people choose to celebrate being a "citizen", which I consider to be the choice to be a slave to a collective; a government or a nation. Will that collective ever really let you change your mind once you've accepted the terms of your enslavement?
I understand the promised benefits of this arrangement. I can see why some have the desire to belong. I also realize that if certain conditions are met, the government in question will consider you a "citizen" regardless of your wishes. If you believe this government's claim is bogus to begin with, I don't really see much point in paying tons of money and fighting for years to make this government withdraw its claim to you. I'm more thinking about those who make this a big part of their personal identity and are proud of it.
If you choose to be a slave to a collective in such a way, is that a self-destructive choice? It sure looks like it to me.
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Reminder: I could really use some help.
I freed a thousand slaves and could have freed a thousand more if they'd only known they were slaves - Harriet Tubman
ReplyDeleteNot only do they not know, they don't want to know.
DeleteThe psychological Linus blanket they drag around is the belief if everyone is equally oppressed, then they aren't slaves. Government schools mass creating the intended outcome.
DeleteAnd then there's the bizarre corollary that being subject to less severe terms of enslavement than some other slaves is considered a form of privilege ...
DeleteI don't approve of the choice to be a slave, but I do respect it as a legitimate option. If my liberty truly belongs to me, I can give it to anyone I choose. Doing so isn't smart, but there are plenty of other dumb choices I could make. I might choose to drive without a seatbelt, go skydiving with the cheapest company out there or try to scale Mt. Everest without a guide. Any one of those choices could have permanent, adverse consequences. Likewise, if I chose a poor master, the consequences could be disastrous. Once the rights have transferred (consensually), you might not be able to get them back. In life, we all make choices and not all of them are reversible. Choose wisely my friends!
ReplyDelete"Will that collective ever really let you change your mind once you've accepted the terms of your enslavement?"
ReplyDeleteHow do you "accept" any terms of enslavement, when they foist it upon you no matter what you do once you step into an arbitrarily defined part of the earth, and there's nowhere livable that you can go that doesn't foist enslavement upon you? (Antarctica is currently not subject to any government, but only because no one can live there permanently.)
When I was a teen I wrote a story about a free society established under a dome in Antarctica. The story was crap, but I still like the idea.
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