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| Five Criteria of an Enslaved People
Posted: 10/22/2009 10:37:09 AM | exo, thanks.
LeCutter, heh, funny, this very morning I was dreaming of that Janice Joplin tune and the words "freedom is another word for nothing left to loose" stuck in my mind, and here I am reading the same line in your post. Strange coincidence.
No, money is not freedom, it allows you to rove and scan in a much more expansive domain than is normally the case for someone without it. Back in my hometown we have livestock and crops. It's a full circle. The crops feed the livestock and the livestock feed the crops. No supermarkets for hundreds of miles, only small, locally owned produce stands. Is that lifestyle for everyone? No. And no one has to twist my arm to get me to come back to the States. And when I come here, why do I leave again? I become tired of consumer mania, endless forms of false happiness, endless forms of false understanding handed down by control icons. It's diminishing and invites me to behave like a machine. It's a tad dehumanizing. So yea, that's how I fight back. My way of fighting back is by escaping. To each their own. | |
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| Five Criteria of an Enslaved People
Posted: 10/22/2009 1:39:52 PM | Hey nothing
I am curious on how you came to the conclusion that most of the people of the USA are plagued by "endless forms of false happiness, endless forms of false understanding handed down by control icons", as you put it............ Are there some who are disaffected and do nothing but piss and moan and **** and whine? Yep. But they exist, even in the socialist paradises in the world, except over there, they don't **** and moan so loud................. :) :)
If your way of "fighting back" is by escaping, I would offer that the lifestyle of the US is not the only thing that you are escaping from. I am not a shrink, but after all the years I've spent among humanity, there are certain people who have problems and instead of confronting them, they just escape them, but never seem to get away, and just keep escaping them. Just my very humble opinion.
Paul K | |
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| Five Criteria of an Enslaved People
Posted: 10/22/2009 1:51:41 PM | I am curious on how you came to the conclusion that most of the people of the USA are plagued by "endless forms of false happiness, endless forms of false understanding handed down by control icons", as you put it
Oh good grief. I am really starting to think that you really do have a reading comprehension problem. I will try to be more understanding in the future.
The Op said:
And when I come here, why do b]I leave again? I become tired of consumer mania, endless forms of false happiness, endless forms of false understanding handed down by control icons. It's diminishing and invites me to behave like a machine. It's a tad dehumanizing.
The Op used "I" statements to express an opinion of his experience. | |
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| Five Criteria of an Enslaved People
Posted: 10/22/2009 2:00:24 PM | Hey flower
Thank you for your clarification, however I was asking the writer of that quotes a direct question. He said that he noticed certain attitudes of some people, and I asked a direct question as to HOW he came to those conclusions about the people he was referring to............ Perhaps I should have asked: How do you think those people became the way they are?
Get it? | |
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| Five Criteria of an Enslaved People
Posted: 10/22/2009 5:11:54 PM | @ Paul K
Thank you for your clarification, however I was asking the writer of that quotes a direct question.
I don't understand.
He said that he noticed certain attitudes of some people,
Are you sure?
No, money is not freedom, it allows you to rove and scan in a much more expansive domain than is normally the case for someone without it. Back in my hometown we have livestock and crops. It's a full circle. The crops feed the livestock and the livestock feed the crops. No supermarkets for hundreds of miles, only small, locally owned produce stands. Is that lifestyle for everyone? No. And no one has to twist my arm to get me to come back to the States. And when I come here, why do I leave again? I become tired of consumer mania, endless forms of false happiness, endless forms of false understanding handed down by control icons. It's diminishing and invites me to behave like a machine. It's a tad dehumanizing. So yea, that's how I fight back. My way of fighting back is by escaping. To each their own.
I don't get how he was referring to the attitudes of some people. If anything he expressed an opinion from his point of view. The view of " consumer mania, endless forms of false happiness, endless forms of false understanding handed down by control icons."
If anything you should be arguing on the basis of that. Not attitudes of some people, since the poster never said that (or implied it) and as such it is an informed fallacy. It is a straw man's argument.
I see that you attempted to quote the poster but to remain a valid argument you have to remain in context.
Perhaps I should have asked: How do you think those people became the way they are?
Get it?
No I don't get it. It makes no sense. What does the people becoming the way they are have to with:
And when I come here, why do I leave again? I become tired of consumer mania, endless forms of false happiness, endless forms of false understanding handed down by control icons.
But even more confusing you said
I am curious on how you came to the conclusion that most of the people of the USA are plagued by "endless forms of false happiness, endless forms of false understanding handed down by control icons",
What a way to get things twisted, He said " I become tired of consumer mania, endless forms of false happiness, endless forms of false understanding handed down by control icons."
Do you see that "I". Its the subject of the sentence. Its about him and his opinion. He never said or implied people. Only himself. To come to the conclusion that he is referring to people you have to presume he said:
most of the people of the USA are plagued by endless forms of false happiness, endless forms of false understanding handed down by control icons.
He never ever said that! You are creating a point out of thin air to prove your position. It is a strawman argument...
Get it?
Also, if you quote you must be rigorous enough to take the subject of a sentence into account.
I would offer that the lifestyle of the US is not the only thing that you are escaping from...
*cough* *cough* Presumptuous *cough* *cough*.
So I expect a reply to this post of that nature. Don't disappoint me :)
And you didn't disappoint :D | |
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| Five Criteria of an Enslaved People
Posted: 10/22/2009 5:39:33 PM | I did try to warn you to look up strawman argument, Paul K...
I knew somebody would eventually call you out on that BS, that you have been running...
 exo | |
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| Five Criteria of an Enslaved People
Posted: 10/22/2009 7:12:50 PM | Wow..... I've been spanked............ Maybe now when I am "warned" to do something, I really should do it, even if it is unecessary.............
paul k. | |
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| Five Criteria of an Enslaved People
Posted: 10/23/2009 11:34:18 AM | Nice thought provoking thread. I'd to take a stance against 'Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose' though. I've been there and it wasn't freedom because freedom is at its base, a feeling, a feeling of release from bindings so to speak, whereas nothing left to lose is a feeling of emptiness, or more accurately, no feeling at all. You can't feel free if you feel beaten into nothing.
My experience tells me that real freedom is when something deep down releases one from their fears of life and replaces it with a love for yourself and all things living. It turns perception of need on its butt and makes nothing out of it, and that to me is freedom, which can be obtained from moments of emptiness, but the emptiness is not the freedom, you're still tied to the world that brought you to a place where you just don't care any longer and you don't want to participate in the dark world you're still attached to. Does that make sense? | |
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| Five Criteria of an Enslaved People
Posted: 10/23/2009 1:12:03 PM | I read that about 84% of Americans hate their jobs.
That basically means that 84% of Americans are slaves.
Throughout a lifetime, the average worker produces enough work to build his own house, grow his own food, even build his own car etc. hundreds or even thousands of times over.
So where does this extra production go, considering that the average worker barely gets a home paid for in his lifetime, and that is if both members of a family are working. This extra production goes to pay for the lavish lifestyle of the people who benefit from this extra production.
It is a well known fact that true slave labor does not provide the productivity nor quality of labor that comes from labor that believes it has something to gain.
Certainly some citizens are able to rise to a position of slave master. This is what keeps people going. The land of opportunity. Be a good slave and some day you may be promoted to master, or even own your own slaves. This does not diminish the fact that you, as a business owner need to have a number of the 84% of the population working for you, or your business will not survive. | |
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| Five Criteria of an Enslaved People
Posted: 10/23/2009 1:49:04 PM | We have now gotten as a society, to the place where not liking your job is akin to being a slave..................... Unlike the slave, if you don't like your job, GET ANOTHER ONE.
What we have become is a bunch of PUSSIES.............
Paul K | |
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| Five Criteria of an Enslaved People
Posted: 10/23/2009 5:50:51 PM | Marx was Marx. My father is Russian, and he did not think Marx was a "dirty filthy communist, so not all Russians feel that way.
I dont know what the Russians think but the Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, East Germans, Hungarians, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians,Serbians and Croatians who are now working and living in Ireland all think that Marx was a "dirty filthy communist" and their parents thought the same thing and they encouraged them to go west as soon as possible after the Iron Curtain came down.
Most have an absolute hatered for Russians as well which I could not persuade them to think otherwise.
Was your father an apparatchik with a bigger apartment than everyone else and a car that noone else had and free holidays on the Black Sea that no one else had which may explain things.
Wikipedia
The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre (Polish: zbrodnia katyńska, 'Katyń crime'), was a mass murder of thousands of Polish military officers, policemen, intellectuals and civilian prisoners of war by Soviet NKVD, based on a proposal from Lavrentiy Beria to execute all members of the Polish Officer Corps. Dated March 5, 1940, this official document was then approved (signed) by the entire Soviet Politburo including Joseph Stalin and Beria.[1][2][3] The number of victims is estimated at about 22,000, the most commonly cited number being 21,768.[4] The victims were murdered in the Katyn Forest in Russia, the Kalinin (Tver) and Kharkov prisons and elsewhere.[5] About 8,000 were officers taken prisoner during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, the rest being Poles arrested for allegedly being "intelligence agents, gendarmes, saboteurs, landowners, factory owners, lawyers, priests, and officials."[4] Since Poland's conscription system required every unexempted university graduate to become a reserve officer,[6] the Soviets were able to round up much of the Polish intelligentsia, and the Jewish, Ukrainian, Georgian[7] and Belarusian intelligentsia of Polish citizenship.[8]
Originally, "Katyn massacre" referred to the massacre at Katyn Forest, near the villages of Katyn and Gnezdovo (ca. 19 km west of Smolensk, Russia), of Polish military officers in the Kozelsk prisoner-of-war camp. It now is applied to the simultaneous executions of prisoners of war from geographically distant Starobelsk and Ostashkov camps,[9] and the executions of political prisoners from West Belarus and West Ukraine,[10] shot on Stalin's orders at Katyn Forest, at the NKVD headquarters in Smolensk, at a Smolensk slaughterhouse,[1] and at prisons in Kalinin (Tver), Kharkov, Moscow, and other Soviet cities.[4] | |
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| Five Criteria of an Enslaved People
Posted: 10/23/2009 6:17:48 PM | You want to be free of your employer and quit to start your own business, venture, etc.
Except now you are a slave to your business, to your employees, to your customers
You buy land but are now a slave to it's needs, you pay tax, you have to heat it, and power it, and water it.
you buy metals but are now a slave to the flucuating markets and have to protect your wealth, so you are a slave to security and worry, and greed | |
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| Five Criteria of an Enslaved People
Posted: 10/24/2009 12:44:37 AM |
No, money is not freedom, it allows you to rove and scan in a much more expansive domain than is normally the case for someone without it.
Again, wrong. You don't need money to rove and ramble the world. You need to be ambulatory and self-sufficient. For thousands of years many, many people have lived free of money and still do. It may limit your options, but again, that's a choice.
Take the Natives of North America - the Sioux in particular - who were nomads. They followed the herds of buffalo, deer, etc. They hunted, and they gathered. Prior to the white man, they traded, but they had no monetary system, or system of ownership.
The caveat is that a "simpler" way of life is also much harder. They were subject to all sorts of medical maladies, famine, disease, etc. I don't know about you, but the last time I went to the hospital for stitches, or a dentist for a toothache, I was happy to pay them to heal me/end the pain. Conspicous consumption is offensive because it is shallow and repetitive, but that doesn't mean you have to be part of it, or a slave because you engage in a barter system with other people who have goods or services you want and/or need.
Like Joni Mitchell said, "get back to the land and get my soul free". Start a commune or join one. Re-learn the skills our ancestors had and get off the grid and gerbil wheel. It can be done. The question remains do you want it enough, or just **** about it? Have you seen that film "Into the Wild"? If not do so. It's the true story about this kid who dropped out of society and did that very thing. He died, but at least he got off the pot and did it. | |
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| Five Criteria of an Enslaved People
Posted: 10/24/2009 10:34:10 AM |
We have now gotten as a society, to the place where not liking your job is akin to being a slave..................... Unlike the slave, if you don't like your job, GET ANOTHER ONE.
What we have become is a bunch of PUSSIES.............
This is completely unrealistic for most slaves/workers.
Someone needs to pick the fruit on plantations, sew the clothes in sweat factories. We can’t all be plantation or factory owners.
From the point of view of a slave master, slaves have it pretty good, all they have to do is quit their job and do something else.
84% of the population spends 8-10 hours a day, or the majority of their lives, doing something they hate. They don’t do it because they want to, nor do they do it because they are pussies. They do it because they have no choice, whether real or perceived. They are slaves to their circumstances. | |
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| Five Criteria of an Enslaved People
Posted: 10/24/2009 11:37:52 AM | Hey willow
I agree with your statement:
"This is completely unrealistic for most slaves/workers."
Seeing how slavery in the true sense of slavery exists only in small numbers today, it is hardly an epidemic............... Working 8-10 hours a day is not slavery, you actually get paid. Maybe that is what is missing at your slave plantation where you "work", you are not getting paid. But, then, possibely you aren't doing anything worth getting paid for.............. Just a thought. You might want to talk to the person in charge about your not being paid.
Paul K | |
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| Five Criteria of an Enslaved People
Posted: 10/24/2009 5:27:34 PM | Actually Paul, I am not a plantation worker, I am a plantation owner.
I just feel for the young workers who struggle to provide the basics to feed a young family, and will spend their entire lives doing so.
In the past, slaves got paid in the currency of food, shelter, clothes, and if they worked hard, they were given the odd luxury item.
Today the working poor get paid in money so they can buy food clothing and shelter, and if they work hard they can afford the odd luxury item.
It can be argued that the working poor can become president some day. If one person did it why can't everyone? This argument is usually made by outsiders who do not spend 10 or more hours in a day in order to provide the basics to feed and house a family. Besides, what would the country do with 10 million presidents. | |
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| Five Criteria of an Enslaved People
Posted: 10/25/2009 11:26:39 AM |
Was your father an apparatchik with a bigger apartment than everyone else and a car that noone else had and free holidays on the Black Sea that no one else had which may explain things.
No, my father was not an apparatchik lol. He was not so fortunate in Russia's economic collapse of the 1990's. He hasn't been around in a long time but he gave me a first-hand account of what happened there. Most people didn't have access to their own gardens and farms, and food deficit was severe. There was an obvious problem of unemployment and purchasing power. During the economic collapse most professions suffered. People changed jobs. The government stopped serving their people, concentrating on their own needs instead. Infrastructures started to deteriorate, partially because of hyper inflation. When the survival energy kicked in, people did things they normally wouldn't do just to survive. When this happened on the scale of the whole country, the whole country just degraded and destroyed itself.
If the economy collapses here, and the way things are going it's going to be sooner rather than later, most people are going to get hit hard because they are not expecting it. During tough economic times, most people hate their government. That's starting to become more and more obvious here, just ask around.
LeCutter, I agree that you don't need money to rove and scan, but it helps. Personally, I like the idea of a barter economy. That would show you what's essential for survival. Food would hold high liquidation whereas material things like furniture would hold a low liquidation because furniture is not essential for survival. And inflation wouldn't exist. But I'm not suggesting starting a commune or joining one. I don't need something so radical. Placing more political power in the hands of average citizens would change things drastically, probably for the better if we put that power in the hands of honest and caring people, instead of in the hands of the elite few who seem to run things at the moment. "As long as old F(_)cks with personal agendas get to vote, the younger generation is screwed" as Doug Stanhope would say. | |
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| Five Criteria of an Enslaved People
Posted: 10/25/2009 11:50:31 AM | Abby, I think I saw two cows for sale on craigslist, you want me to send you the ad? You gotta place to put them girl? I'm still trying to secure my 40 acres and a mule.
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| Five Criteria of an Enslaved People
Posted: 10/25/2009 7:00:50 PM | Nothinglefttoburn
During the economic collapse most professions suffered. People changed jobs. The government stopped serving their people, concentrating on their own needs instead. Infrastructures started to deteriorate, partially because of hyper inflation. When the survival energy kicked in, people did things they normally wouldn't do just to survive. When this happened on the scale of the whole country, the whole country just degraded and destroyed itself.
What your father described to you was the aftermath of a system which subjected ordinary decent russians to an obnoxious totalitarian regime in behalf of a few fat corrupt appartchiks who had chaffeur driven Zils and holidayed on the Black Sea drinking champagne.
It was a system dreamed up by dirty filthy communists so that dirty filthy communists could be more equal than the people.
I am confident that the vast majority of Russians are decent people who had a gun to their heads or a gun to their sons heads which shows just how filthy the communists were.
Ronald Reagan called it an Evil Empire and that is good enough for me. | |
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| Five Criteria of an Enslaved People
Posted: 10/26/2009 2:24:41 PM | Hey Mr. Willow
I am glad to see that you are one of the "plantation owners". So I am certain that means that your "slaves" are paid in a sufficiently adequate manner so that they may live a comfortable life style. Your empathy for the "young workers", (funny how that phrase was used so often in the writings of all of the "great" socialist writers), in giving them a good wage must have lines of people wanting to work for you.
If not........... why not?
Paul K | |
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| Five Criteria of an Enslaved People
Posted: 11/13/2009 1:04:07 AM |
Marxism enslaved everyone it touched.
“The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave, his fetters fall. Freedom and slavery are mental states.” - Gandhi
(Quoted by a free Marxist) | |
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