Slaves-in-Spirit
Alexander Liss
Freedom is ability to take charge and make
decision in any area, where a person is ready to make them. Freedom is
associated with perpetual growth, with perpetual extension of the area of
person's control, person's decision making.
Any
leap of such expansion in a free society requires proof of maturity, which a
person has to deliver to acquire a new area of control.
A
civilized free society perpetually challenges the person's ability to control
in all areas, where a person already has acquired control. Hence, a person has
to deliver a proof of ability to control perpetually.
A
free society faces various internal and external challenges and it developed
defense mechanisms assuring its stability.
Mild
internal challenges include imbalance between individual and social sides of
some members of the society and its social groups.
Lack
of understanding of importance of one's social side leads too aggressive push
for extension of own area of control. When there is diminished respect for
others, one often encroaches on a person's area of control and the person must
demonstrate that the area is taken already. When a person cannot defend this
area, the area is taken.
A
free society with diminished respect for others develops excessively
competitive patterns of behavior.
Lack of understanding of importance of one's
individual side leads to suppression of individual expansion for benefits of
social expansion. When
there is diminished respect for individuality, individuals cannot fully develop
their specific skills and the society as a whole loses opportunity of
experimentation in various potentially beneficial for society areas.
A
free society with diminished respect for individuality develops excessively conformist
patterns of behavior.
To
protect against such deviations, a free society protects members' various forms
of "possession" and it protects comfort of ones, who arrived into a
visible distinction from others, because of their individual development.
(Hence, broadly understood "possession" and "intellectual
minority" rights are essential for a civilized free society).
A
free society is often surrounded by not free societies and they are under
perpetual ideological and often not only ideological attack from not free
societies. Hence, they have to perpetually fight for freedom.
Denial
of freedom to a person leads to arrested expansion of person's control. Some
people are forced to lead such existence (as a form of punishment, in a prison
for example) and they suffer.
A
person needs some kind of expansion to feel conditions of existence acceptable.
Deprived of freedom, they develop fantasies, where they could continue to
expend. The less possibility of expansion of actual control a person has, the
more these fantasies affect decision-making and the person looses sanity.
Such
state could become stable and perpetuate itself even when there are no
restrictions on person's expansion of control any more.
The
same is applicable to a social group; only effects are even more stable,
because members of such group reinforce each other fantasies and the group
arrives to a group fantasies.
There
are people, who accepted such arrested expansion and found a degree of comfort
in it. These people have a specific mentality, which could be found in slaves.
These are Slaves-in-Spirit.
Note
that a state of Slave-in-Spirit is well known, and for many years, tools were
developed to reinforce this state.
Conversion
of a free person into a legal slave required such acceptance of the arrested
expansion on a part of the slave. Without such acceptance, the slave was
useless. Usually, such conversion was forced under the threat to the person's
life.
In
modern time, legal slavery is rare, but people with slave mentality -
Slaves-in-Spirit, unfortunately are abundant.
One
could see purposeful cultivation of Slaves-in-Spirit in many societies and
often in free societies.
It
should be intolerable for a free person with a healthy psyche to convert
another free person into a slave or to exploit a slave. However, this could be
seen as a normal development by a Slave-in-Spirit.
Slaves-in-Spirit
"naturally" develop master-slave relationships, while a free person
could develop such relationship only under delusion that "slaves" are
different kind of people.
Coexistence
of free people and Slaves-in-Spirit in a free society leads to peculiar
relationships in such society, where the society is divided and opposing parts
of it have different mentality. Slaves-in-Spirit recognize this division and
unite against free people. Free people have difficulty recognizing it, because
they cannot accept an idea that there are members of a free society, who are
"different kind of people". This idea goes against the basic
understanding of what is a free society.
They
are not "different kind of people", they are sick. Generally, one
should see phenomenon of Slavery-in-Spirit as illness - illness of an
individual psyche and illness of a society. Unfortunately, it does not take
much effort to break person's Spirit and convert a person into a
Slave-in-Spirit, and it is difficult to treat this illness.
Differences
in mentality between free people and Slaves-in-Spirit are profound. They interpret
differently same events and declarations. Even when a free person and a
Slave-in-Spirit agree on some action, usually they have substantially different
motivation and different interpretation of what this action is.
This
creates enormous lack of understanding and difficulties in international
relationships between free societies and not free societies and it creates
perpetual misunderstanding in free societies.
It
is useful to keep in mind examples of such differences:
|
Free People |
Slaves-in-Spirit |
|
Freedom is
associated with equal opportunity and inevitable inequality |
There is no
understanding of Freedom, there is a concept of "free from" (from
hunger, from illness), and desire for equality |
|
One's manager is
one, with whom a person entered a specific form of contract |
One's manager as a
father figure (even when the manager is a female) |
|
Helping
"unfortunate" is a personal moral imperative, which sometimes could
be accomplished using special organizations |
Poor and sick have
to be taken care of by the government |
|
In a society,
there is a need for a safety net, which is used in bad times |
It is a purpose of
a society to redistribute wealth as equally as possible |
|
Formal governing
structures should be minimal and revised often; the society is held together
because of its internal informal cohesiveness |
Regulations and
bureaucratic government organizations are main tools of achieving social
goals; they are a formal representation of the society |
|
Ideology is an
expression of currently important limitations and goals of society; it is
used to coordinate actions of members of society and inform friends and foes;
it changes as circumstances change |
Ideology is a tool
to shape society by cultural leaders and adherence to it is more important
than even truth of facts |
|
Society does not
need any leadership in its cultural development, but appreciates cultural
contributions; "cultural elite" is a misguided group of people |
Cultural elite
defines and teaches society's rules of behavior; people should treat this
group with utter respect |
Usually,
a free society is blind to illness of Slavery-in-Spirit in its midst.
Free
people see Slaves-in-Spirit as an equal group of members of society with
peculiar hard to understand views, which have to be respected. Governing
decisions, where this group is involved, should be made via mechanism of
democracy.
Slaves-in-Spirit
see free people as uneducated, misguided, unimaginative or outright stupid, and
their success in life they see as an additional confirmation of deficiencies of
society. They want to convert free people into Slaves-in-Spirit through
"education"; meanwhile, they are ready to manipulate decisions of
"stupid people" using demagoguery.
Only
observing recovery from a state of Slave-in-Spirit into a state of a free
person and discussing it with such recovered persons provides sufficient
insight into this social problem.
Usually,
a society starts to bother itself with this problem in times of rapid social
changes, when this illness causes sharp social divisions, which are difficult
to reconcile with existing tools.
Slavery-in-Spirit
is a chronic decease of society.
In
despotic societies peoples' spirits are broken early in life and practically an
entire society is made of Slaves-in-Spirit. All of them, their rulers and their
subjugated are Slaves-in-Spirit. Anyone recovering from this state is perceived
as an enemy of the society and an entire society presses the person to get back
into a broken state of Slave-in-Spirit.
When
a person belongs to a community or an organization of Slaves-in-Spirit and
person's livelihood depends on membership there, then a person tries to fit and
play by rules of this social group. However, differences in mentality between a
free person and a Slave-in-Spirit are so profound, that a free person cannot
succeed in such place without falling into a state of Slave-in-Spirit.
Because
of differences in mentality, a free person and a Slave-in-Spirit rarely have a
stable marriage. Hence, in a society there are two groups of families: families
of free people and families of Slaves-in-Spirit.
When
parents are Slaves-in-Spirit, they "educate" their children to be the
same.
Some
social structures, as bureaucratic organizations, education organizations, or
media organizations with global reach, which are sufficiently detached from
challenges of real life, provide a good shelter for Slaves-in-Spirit. When
Slaves-in-Spirit penetrate such place, their community there perpetuates
itself.
Slaves-in-Spirit
have a model of word, through which communication of other peoples is
consistently filtered. Opinions of free people do not reach their consciousness
and they do have perception that only opinions of Slaves-in-Spirit exist. This
form of insanity is difficult to treat.
Hence,
treating of this disease is difficult and prolonged. A free society should not
postpone it until this disease causes fissure in society, it should not delude itself, that this is not a disease, but simply another point
of view. It should detect symptoms of this disease early and it should
perpetually fight this disease.
Societies, which have a perpetual inflow of
immigrants escaping suppression into freedom, which eagerly assimilate into the
new society, have inflow of people, who have been able to extract themselves
from the state of Slave-in-Spirit. They immediately detect the illness in the
new society and actively reject it. Their offspring inherit this ability, at
list partially.
Hence,
these people are vitally important for a free society. Those, who do not want
such inflow, often are Slaves-in-Spirit, in spite of their rhetoric.
Because
it is so easy to fall into the state of Slave-in-Spirit it is important to have
an ideology and rituals in a free society, which reinforce the understanding of
value of freedom and illuminate situations, where falling in the state of
Slave-in-Spirit is likely in a current form and circumstances of the society.
Monotheism
is an effective tool of such prevention of falling into slavery and
consequently into insanity. Monotheism liberates mind and shows previously
hidden variants of decisions. It does not provide solutions. (Forms of
religion, which cultivate mentality of slavery and escape from reality into an
artificial world of fantasy, should not be confused with monotheism. These
forms limit decision-making; they provide solutions or provide someone, who
makes decisions on behalf of one who should make decisions on one's own.)