Masters and servants

Liberty, like all human conditions, is reflected in the interpersonal relationship.  A society consisting of free people is filled with individual relationships that reflect this freedom.  Openness, brotherhood, compassion, and respect act as the framework for every social interaction.

If a society lacks such characteristics in its relationships, then it will unquestionably lack freedom at a social level as well.

It is a sad reality, then, that the vast majority of societies on this Earth and the vast majority of individual interactions are not marked by freedom.  Rather, they are marked by a need for domination and control.  This is the tragic dyad of the master-servant relationship.

The master-servant relationship is the default form of interaction for most people on the planet today.  In dealing with others, a person acts either as a master or as a servant, as dominator or dominated, as ruler or ruled.  The husband oversees his wife; the employer commands the employed; the bully abuses those lacking in confidence.  In each situation, a person falls into this default pattern where they act as the oppressing master or as the groveling servant.

At a global level, this relationship unquestionably dominates as well.  The billions of poor people who live on this planet — oppressed, dark-skinned, condemned to poverty — must suffer the indignities of helplessness and war.  Meanwhile, their masters — the global rich, the powerful, the light-skinned, the colonizers — spend their days and nights enjoying themselves and their privileges.  The globalization of poverty means that the rich American no longer has to worry about the slaves who toil for her benefit, because there is a rare chance she will ever encounter them.  The child labor in China, the call-center in India, the serfdom in central America (and central California) can be summarily dismissed and ignored.

The ugliness of history is easily explained through the lens of the master-servant relationship.  Every war that has been ever fought, all the blood that has been shed over territory or for an idea or for some religion has been based on one side’s need to feel superior — to be the master and to have a servant.  Thus, the German people went on a rampage and occupied Europe in the 1940s because they believed they were genetically superior to their neighbors on the continent.  The state of Israel kills and oppresses the Palestinian people because it believes that its claims to the land are superior to the claims of the people who currently live there.  America has invaded Iraq because it believes (among other things) that it can impart its superior values to a misguided and backwards society while also showing the world that it remains master of the planet.  One nation insists that it is superior, and to prove this it must treat another nation like a diseased dog, beating it up and torturing it so that others will see who is master over whom.

If a person understands the nature of the master-servant relationship, she will understand everything from international politics to her own personal relationships.  All human interaction is colored by this relationship; we are all born into it, and we are all silently trapped by it.  Instead of seeking mutual understanding, people seek only to solidify their own perspectives, to be proven “right” — this will make them a master.  My politician is better than your politician, my god is better than your god, my religion more correct than your religion, my ideas and beliefs better than your ideas and beliefs.  There is only victim and aggressor, saint and sinner, angel and devil, a crude and never-ending battle for individual supremacy where we can all feel smug about being so much better than everybody else.

The tragic effect of the master-servant relationship is to deprive the world of freedom.  Those who must serve are in an obvious condition of slavery; but the chain that attaches to the slave also connects to the throat of her oppressor.  Here is a truth that most would ignore:  whatever the supposed benefits of being a master, it is a state that is also deeply servile and oppressive to the human spirit.   A master becomes dependent on his servant, but also becomes enslaved to the fear that one day he may no longer be a master.

If a person wants her liberty, then she must learn to reject the master-servant relationship and repudiate this division of the world into the superior and the inferior.  This is an difficult thing to do.  All people are trained to think in terms of master and servant; they have come to automatically behave in ways which reinforce its existence.  We see a tank, or a gun, or someone with money and wealth and privilege, and we immediately think that they are better than us or more superior.  Or, by contrast, we see dark-skin, or poverty, or manual labor, or a different belief system, and we see things that are worse than scum.

Why do the police officer, the politician, the rich man think they are better than others? Because they are told so?  No! Because they see how others treat them, how people rush to lick their boots and kneel before them and pledge allegiance in some revolting display of fealty that any defender of liberty would instinctively abhor.

The master remains master because the servant is eager to perform her servitude.

A free individual is neither master nor servant. She obeys no one but herself, and follows no laws but those of her own making.  She bows to no police force or military. She forces no one to do anything, but she is not forced to do anything either.  No one can do anything to her without her consent.  Such a person cannot be controlled by any government.  She is more powerful than any government.

Such freedom cannot be bestowed or granted by anyone else.  A person who has been a slave all her life knows nothing but the habits of slavery; having never fought for her liberty herself, she cannot understand what it means to be free.  If she is liberated by another, she will come to serve her liberator.

Freedom must be won, piece by piece and inch by inch.  It is not a boon given by the gods; it is a treasure that is only reached through individual struggle, torn from the mouth of the angry lion and defended against at every moment, for in this world of hate, anger and sorrow a relapse into the habit of servitude is painfully easy.

A person who wants her liberty must insist on her dignity, on her equality, on her right to happiness.  She must not cower before the manifestations of the tyrant that materialize in her fellow man; she must stand her ground and meet the force of oppression with the force of freedom.  She must understand that there will be no one who will come and rescue her or remove the shackles from her feet — and that those who claim to do so are charlatans who pose as liberators but are just another set of oppressors.

She must learn to free herself.

Once a servant is enlightened on the meanness of her condition and the extent of her slavery, it becomes her decision to accept or to reject it, to attain her freedom or remain a servant.  There are many who would prefer the safety of their servitude over the chaos and unknowingness of liberty; let them choose their servility.  For there are also those who, upon seeing their chains, will allow their shackles to fall and enter the undiscovered country of chaotic liberation.

Anyone who says that freedom is easy has not truly endeavored to obtain it.  To be a free man or woman on this Earth is the most difficult thing a person can do.  But there is no other condition as infinitely rewarding or as profound in its majesty.  Freedom can yet be brought to humanity, but it will have to be won person by person, individual struggle by individual struggle, through the rejection of both servility and superiority in favor of the humbling equality of individual dignity and respect for all.  This is the true price of liberty: the end of masters and servants.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 23rd, 2006 at 11:41 am and is filed under Alternative Living, Featured Post, Freedom and Democracy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.