Most of us are slaves. No matter how much we loathe that conclusion and reject it, it is true nevertheless.
If you want to know if you are a slave, consider these criteria.
Every day you go and do a job you don’t like. It gives you no creative thrill, and you derive no feeling of self-worth from it. You are under someone else’s control. Your employer decides how you spend your time, not you. Your employer demands obedience, application and proper conduct from you. If you don’t comply, you will be fired. You must behave in the way that the employer sees fit, not in the way that you deem fit. In other words, you have handed over your definition of "proper conduct" to another. You have sold your time and effort to your employer. Sure, you get a salary in return. You can pay the bills, buy nice things, support your nearest and dearest, go on holidays, go out for fine meals at the weekend. In short, you can live comfortably. It is on that basis – that your petty needs are satisfied – that you can justify the fact that you have given away your control over the most precious thing you have: your own life.
Your employer, on the other hand, is wealthy, loves what he does, gets immense status and prestige from it, is admired and envied. His lifestyle is breathtaking. He has three magnificent homes, a 300-ft yacht, a stable of Ferrari supercars. He stays in the best hotels, and everyone is eager to do his bidding and fulfil his every wish. They are permanently at his beck and call, falling over themselves to please him. He can come and go as he pleases. He will never be sitting in front of another person waiting to hear if he is about to lose his job. He is the one who decides who gets hired and who gets fired. He controls his life. He allocates his time as he sees fit. He behaves as he wishes to. He imposes his views on others. Others depend on him, but he does not depend on them.
So, then, which are you…master or slave?
Who are the masters? The Old World Order. Who are the slaves? The rest of us.
Who is guilty? We are. Why? Because we allow the masters to rule us. In exchange for a "comfortable" living, we sign away our own lives. All over the globe, for billions of us, the headstones of our graves will bear exactly the same inscription: "Here lies the body of a person who was an adequate employee. He did what he was told and paid his taxes. He made no impact on the world. Nothing more need be said." Are you happy for that to be your epitaph?
But on the marble headstones of the members of the Old World Order, overlooking vast, spectacular mausoleums, will be magnificent eulogies, great lists of achievements, the tales of the lives of people to whose tune so many danced.
Overwhelmingly, the masters are those born into privilege, those handed huge advantages from the outset. Their parents are wealthy. They live in the finest neighbourhoods. They go to the finest schools. They join Masonic societies with the other sons and daughters of privilege. They agree to carve up all of the best jobs amongst each other. They marry each other and breed new generations of masters. They don’t care about anyone else. Why should they? They have everything they want. On their side of the equation, there is no question to be answered.
The people who must answer the question are the slaves. The question could not be simpler. It is: Why do we let the masters get away with it? And the answer is a painful one. It's because we are lazy, apathetic, cowardly, satisfied with our trivial comforts. We’d rather accept the status quo than make any attempt to change things because then we’d need to leave our comfort zone, put in time and effort, and above all be brave and take bold risks. If we weren’t content with our enslavement, we’d be doing something about it. We’d be fighting back. But how many of us are doing anything at all? Don't ask others what you need to do. Use your initiative.
The answer to why we behave this way was provided by one of the greatest Illuminists of them all – Hegel. His dialectic of the master and slave is a famous and hugely influential contribution to philosophy. On its own, it would have elevated Hegel to the highest ranks of philosophers, yet it was just one small part of his dazzling thinking.
Only those slaves who understand Hegel’s remarkable dialectic will be able to change their status and become free men.
Ill will to Humanity
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"They" are no different from "Us". We are all One, we are all reflections of the same Being.
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