It's interesting that a lot of people equate the modern world to slavery, but this is the first article I have come across which partially agrees with that assessment and still challenges it. I think it is correct in assessing that slavery is not quite right (we have moved on) and yet there is still more work to be done for freedom.
I like the concept behind the article, that modern first-world society can be a very subtle but powerful trap. But that is not slavery. Slavery still exists today. There are more slaves today then ever. This type of article, and the thinking behind it is helpful; it could help free your time and money up to help people who cannot help themselves.
One organization working to educate people about modern slavery and fighting to stop it is the Not For Sale Campaign (http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/)
Thanks KE! This was my initial reaction as well. Sometimes it's nice to apply abstraction in order to grease the wheels of reason, but abstraction has a nasty double edge. ("Owner cared for well-being") does not equal ("Only individual cares for well-being"). Not even a little bit.
The more we buy into consumerism as a lifestyle, the less we are able to see clearly and become independent, as our social stature begins to depend on our consumerist successes.
The slavemasters here are ourselves, or more accurately our subconscious desires (to be popular, sexy and powerful) as interpreted and channeled by the market.
On this subject, I would strongly recommend Adam Curtis' BBC documentary series 'The Century of the Self' which documents the rise of consumerism and the psychoanalytical theories underpinning it. It really opened my eyes to the many parts of our culture that I'd considered eternal that are in fact entirely C20th creations.
I don't think it's actually available legally, but your favourite torrent site can certainly find it. 'The Power of Nightmares' is another of his masterworks. There's a complete Curtis archive torrent out there, which is probably among the most informative single downloads in existence.
Those both sound very interesting. I'll see if there are any BBC archives available, but you're probably right that they no longer exist legally except at absurd price points.
There is a lot of literature around how consumerism and debt driven lifestyles detract from our ability to live life in a more meaningful way, but I find solutions lacking. It is my goal to eventually discover better ways of structuring our lives and perhaps society to improve the quality of life in the modern world, without eliminating the positive aspects of a competitive culture and technological progress.
1. The author's points about self regulation are at the heart of Foucault's Discipline and Punish and in particular it's extension into Feminist philosophy - i.e. the ways in which subjugation to power manifests itself as a person's self-control. [http://www.iep.utm.edu/foucfem/]
2. The idea of wage slavery is hardly novel, though quite revolutionary - see Marx.
3. One of the things which modern US society has lost is casual and seasonal labor as we have moved from an agrarian population toward an urban one. One needs only to hang around the drinking hole with Iowa farmers in January to see how much a clock driven lifestyle affects our outlook [however you might be better served to look in Phoenix for Iowa farmers come January].
While people are starving, terrorized, enslaved and such, and that's really bad, that doesn't necessarily mean there's no point in asking whether you're any happier than you'd be as a subsistence farmer.^
If anything, a proper analysis of what really makes us happy could encourage us to use some of our material wealth helping those who are truly oppressed.
I understood GP's point as being about the use of the word slavery (to describe something that is not as bad as the real cases of modern slavery) rather than about the whole article being pointless.
That's sensical-- I guess my response would be that if we can conceptualize different severities of murder, rape, theft et al., we're probably intelligent enough to perceive appropriate gradations to the statement "If you stop working you will die."
Thanks for posting. Something about this rubs me the wrong way, so I read it a couple times to help me formulate my feedback.
I think the problem I have with this is that I can't create the same level of abstraction on the 'modern system' and 'slavery' that the author does. I'm not offended by the use of slavery as a point of comparison, but I don't think that it's really compared to the 'modern system' in a useful way. They are so many leagues apart, which can't be shown through the logical comparisons present in the article.
Also, the examples of entanglement aren't really inescapable evils that the argument requires (I'm looking at you car and iphone). I have no doubt those evils are out there.
But, you say, I'm missing the point. True enough, and I think there's a good point in this post that can be teased out through a little more revision. I think the payoff is at the end...the portion on disentangling. This is the hacker ethos, yes? Recognizing the artificial/restrictions and subverting it to make your life better. The best part of the article was where the author linked to his/her startup; it really shows where the logic is taking us. I guess I'd prefer it if this were more explicit in the conclusion (and probably more appealing to the people in this venue, although the many supportive comments indicate that many make this logical connection automatically). Again: Thanks.
"Recognizing the artificial/restrictions and subverting it to make your life better" - I think we all strive to do that. Like you, I have some reserves will the article, but it definitely rings a bell.
Yet how exactly is creating a company any better? If you keep servicing other people interest, it could be called an illusion of freedom. You will compromise yourself at a time or another.
If you hire people to really get your freedom, it's subjugating others, and it may not be any better if you consider other persons besides yourself also matter.
"Yet how exactly is creating a company any better? If you keep servicing other people interest, it could be called an illusion of freedom"
If you sell a product or service, you get to choose what goes into that product or service. Look at apple: If they listened to the general public, the Ipad would have never been released.
" You will compromise yourself at a time or another."
You don't ever need to. Plenty of companies release what they want and it just so happens to coincide with what other people want.
Thanks for the feedback - you make some good points.
I started from the point of slavery mostly in response to other authors who describe the modern system of employee/employer as slavery, which I think is the wrong word, but it seems I didn't do quite a good enough job of making that clear.
It isn't that consumerism & 50 hour work weeks are inescapable, only that they are difficult to escape and remain in mainstream society at the same time. Looking at people who have chosen alternate lifestyles (Like ERE or being a bum as someone else pointed out) are often marginalized ans ostracized - the system does not seem to like that they challenge the basic assumptions of what is good about our society.
I personally have been trying to bootstrap a startup as a way to escape some of the control a 9-5 brings with it, but I don't see entrepreneurship as a catch-all solution. As another article I am working on will point out, Startups are better off in some areas but are also often forced to trade off in others. Depending on the structure, leading a startup may often be worse from a lifestyle design perspective than working for a corporation.
I don't have a general purpose "solution" to the problem of dis-satisfaction in modern society, but I do know that what we have going for us is sub-optimal, and I would like to find alternate ways of living and structuring society to address some of the issues I tried to bring to light.
Thanks for the feedback - I think perhaps I will expand on the areas you mention in the future to help make it more clear. I would appreciate your input :)
Poor impulse control with respect to buying gadgets, thinking you have to keep up with the neighbours, assuming that you can be part of society without having to pull your weight, calling employers 'owners', ignoring social security (which is quite effective in many countries), these are all choices and the writer of the article seems to miss the point that these are choices.
Modern society works because we want it to work, we choose representatives which enact the laws which in turn create incentives to participate in society. For the most part, we govern ourselves through our ability to vote. Slaves could not vote.
Sure it isn't all roses, there are plenty of areas where there is waste and there is lots of unfairness.
The deck can feel stacked against you, that's a fact. But that does not mean that this equates to slavery, even in a modern sense. That does a great disservice to those that actually are in slavery today and whose plight makes the one of someone that has a hard time to refuse buying the next generation iGadget look like exactly what it is: A luxury problem.
There are factors at work to improve the situation (not always equally effective): technological progress means more pay for far less work, unions that give people that work collective power, and that have in some cases toppled governments (see Poland, ca. 1986) and so on.
Slavery is a serious issue, not living above your means and matching your expenses to your income so you don't run into debt is a bookkeeping problem and a psychological one.
The option to 'self employ' instead of being a part of the system is a false dichotomy, the third (unlisted) alternative is to be a bum.
And there is absolutely nothing wrong with choosing to be a bum.
Care should be taken to distinguish between societies that have a proper social security system in place and those that don't. For those countries that do not the number of choices people have may be seriously reduced and typically those countries have a larger percentage of their population below the poverty line or in the homeless category, and definitely not by choice.
Even in those situations you'd be hard pressed to call them slaves.
There is a strong political movement in America, where we do not have what the civilized world would think of as a proper social security system, that believes that bums deserve to die.
Did you read the article? To me, the first half of the article basically said, "the term slavery is not applicable". And then the second half introduced the term entanglement instead.
One of the most tiring responses to a comment is 'did you read the article'. Yes, of course I read the article.
I thought of doing a 'point by point' because that seems to be the only way to respond a pile of nonsense like this without getting that particular response.
I choose not to because that would be overlong and it would not add anything.
The only thing this article shows is that if you use your creativity that you can stretch any term to mean anything. The only other party that I'm aware of that plays word and mindgames like this with its audience is scientology.
If you don't want to be a part of society you're free to opt-out, or to organize politically in order to effect change that makes society into what you want it to be.
No slave ever had that option, and no modern day slave has that option.
The author makes it seem as though we are all part of some gigantic mechanism that enslaves us all, and that we collectively would be better off by following his 4 step plan to 'independence', but he fails to notice that his 4 step plan simply leads to a much higher level of dependency but on different entities (aka customers).
Society is built on those dependencies, we enter into them voluntarily and there is absolutely nothing wrong with them.
Bad choices lead to feeling bad, so think before you commit to something, including starting a business.
Fast forward 4 years and we'll be seeing blog posts about 'how I'm going to free myself from being a slave of my customers'.
Slavery has absolutely nothing to do with it, not even in spirit or peripherally. Entanglement is a meaningless term, we already have a word that fits perfectly well: citizenship, which happens to have the opposite meaning of being a slave.
What is one supposed to escape to? The world is a bit crowded to support very many hunter-gatherers. I heartily agree with minimizing debt so as not to "become the lender's slave", but as many have pointed out, that is hardly true slavery.
Our house is paid off, and so are our cars, though they are about 10 to 20 years old. In truth, we probably need to shed a few possessions, so it's good to have a reminder, but the melodrama needs to be toned down a bit on this article, so as to better expose the nugget of truth within.
Why do people have this mindset? You aren't forced to work for anyone.
If you feel that being an employee is slavery, start your own company. At least for now, you still have the freedom to do this in the US.
Freedom means you have to take responsibility for your own life. If you rack of $10K in debt and can't pay it back, you will be a slave to it.
I learned my lesson with debt years ago and haven't kept a balance on my credit card since. It takes discipline to not live beyond your means and most people just don't have this discipline and it gets them into trouble.
This is also why so few people are actually successful at business. They won't stick it out when times get tough and give up when they aren't making a profit right now.
I believe that the more common term for disentanglement is 'liberation', and the freedom from entanglement is more commonly referred to as 'liberty'. I'm not sure why the author used such roundabout language to make the observation that both debt and employment restrict one's liberty, albeit voluntarily (unlike the very different case of slavery, which is by definition not voluntary).
It's interesting, I recently realized that the word "work" in Russian is just a derivative from "slave". Also interestingly enough, the word "slave" in english has its roots from "slavs" - people who populated the area of contemporary European Russia and were often enslaved.
27 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 77.4 ms ] threadOne organization working to educate people about modern slavery and fighting to stop it is the Not For Sale Campaign (http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/)
The more we buy into consumerism as a lifestyle, the less we are able to see clearly and become independent, as our social stature begins to depend on our consumerist successes.
The slavemasters here are ourselves, or more accurately our subconscious desires (to be popular, sexy and powerful) as interpreted and channeled by the market.
On this subject, I would strongly recommend Adam Curtis' BBC documentary series 'The Century of the Self' which documents the rise of consumerism and the psychoanalytical theories underpinning it. It really opened my eyes to the many parts of our culture that I'd considered eternal that are in fact entirely C20th creations.
I don't think it's actually available legally, but your favourite torrent site can certainly find it. 'The Power of Nightmares' is another of his masterworks. There's a complete Curtis archive torrent out there, which is probably among the most informative single downloads in existence.
There is a lot of literature around how consumerism and debt driven lifestyles detract from our ability to live life in a more meaningful way, but I find solutions lacking. It is my goal to eventually discover better ways of structuring our lives and perhaps society to improve the quality of life in the modern world, without eliminating the positive aspects of a competitive culture and technological progress.
Kudos to the beeb and archive.org for making it available!
1. The author's points about self regulation are at the heart of Foucault's Discipline and Punish and in particular it's extension into Feminist philosophy - i.e. the ways in which subjugation to power manifests itself as a person's self-control. [http://www.iep.utm.edu/foucfem/]
2. The idea of wage slavery is hardly novel, though quite revolutionary - see Marx.
3. One of the things which modern US society has lost is casual and seasonal labor as we have moved from an agrarian population toward an urban one. One needs only to hang around the drinking hole with Iowa farmers in January to see how much a clock driven lifestyle affects our outlook [however you might be better served to look in Phoenix for Iowa farmers come January].
It's child trafficking, illegal immigration to another country (and then the company (or the pimp) holds your passport), and things of that nature.
Reminds me of http://www.theonion.com/articles/i-am-so-starving-vs-i-am-so...
If anything, a proper analysis of what really makes us happy could encourage us to use some of our material wealth helping those who are truly oppressed.
^Spoiler alert: Probably not.
I think the problem I have with this is that I can't create the same level of abstraction on the 'modern system' and 'slavery' that the author does. I'm not offended by the use of slavery as a point of comparison, but I don't think that it's really compared to the 'modern system' in a useful way. They are so many leagues apart, which can't be shown through the logical comparisons present in the article.
Also, the examples of entanglement aren't really inescapable evils that the argument requires (I'm looking at you car and iphone). I have no doubt those evils are out there.
But, you say, I'm missing the point. True enough, and I think there's a good point in this post that can be teased out through a little more revision. I think the payoff is at the end...the portion on disentangling. This is the hacker ethos, yes? Recognizing the artificial/restrictions and subverting it to make your life better. The best part of the article was where the author linked to his/her startup; it really shows where the logic is taking us. I guess I'd prefer it if this were more explicit in the conclusion (and probably more appealing to the people in this venue, although the many supportive comments indicate that many make this logical connection automatically). Again: Thanks.
Yet how exactly is creating a company any better? If you keep servicing other people interest, it could be called an illusion of freedom. You will compromise yourself at a time or another.
If you hire people to really get your freedom, it's subjugating others, and it may not be any better if you consider other persons besides yourself also matter.
There's another great article on HN at the moment - passion and professionalism (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6523/the_designers_not...), that explores this on a one-person basis.
Passion is great but it can become a self-imposed slavery too.
If you sell a product or service, you get to choose what goes into that product or service. Look at apple: If they listened to the general public, the Ipad would have never been released.
" You will compromise yourself at a time or another."
You don't ever need to. Plenty of companies release what they want and it just so happens to coincide with what other people want.
I started from the point of slavery mostly in response to other authors who describe the modern system of employee/employer as slavery, which I think is the wrong word, but it seems I didn't do quite a good enough job of making that clear.
It isn't that consumerism & 50 hour work weeks are inescapable, only that they are difficult to escape and remain in mainstream society at the same time. Looking at people who have chosen alternate lifestyles (Like ERE or being a bum as someone else pointed out) are often marginalized ans ostracized - the system does not seem to like that they challenge the basic assumptions of what is good about our society.
I personally have been trying to bootstrap a startup as a way to escape some of the control a 9-5 brings with it, but I don't see entrepreneurship as a catch-all solution. As another article I am working on will point out, Startups are better off in some areas but are also often forced to trade off in others. Depending on the structure, leading a startup may often be worse from a lifestyle design perspective than working for a corporation.
I don't have a general purpose "solution" to the problem of dis-satisfaction in modern society, but I do know that what we have going for us is sub-optimal, and I would like to find alternate ways of living and structuring society to address some of the issues I tried to bring to light.
Thanks for the feedback - I think perhaps I will expand on the areas you mention in the future to help make it more clear. I would appreciate your input :)
This is modern slavery:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_slavery
Poor impulse control with respect to buying gadgets, thinking you have to keep up with the neighbours, assuming that you can be part of society without having to pull your weight, calling employers 'owners', ignoring social security (which is quite effective in many countries), these are all choices and the writer of the article seems to miss the point that these are choices.
Modern society works because we want it to work, we choose representatives which enact the laws which in turn create incentives to participate in society. For the most part, we govern ourselves through our ability to vote. Slaves could not vote.
Sure it isn't all roses, there are plenty of areas where there is waste and there is lots of unfairness.
The deck can feel stacked against you, that's a fact. But that does not mean that this equates to slavery, even in a modern sense. That does a great disservice to those that actually are in slavery today and whose plight makes the one of someone that has a hard time to refuse buying the next generation iGadget look like exactly what it is: A luxury problem.
There are factors at work to improve the situation (not always equally effective): technological progress means more pay for far less work, unions that give people that work collective power, and that have in some cases toppled governments (see Poland, ca. 1986) and so on.
Slavery is a serious issue, not living above your means and matching your expenses to your income so you don't run into debt is a bookkeeping problem and a psychological one.
The option to 'self employ' instead of being a part of the system is a false dichotomy, the third (unlisted) alternative is to be a bum.
And there is absolutely nothing wrong with choosing to be a bum.
Care should be taken to distinguish between societies that have a proper social security system in place and those that don't. For those countries that do not the number of choices people have may be seriously reduced and typically those countries have a larger percentage of their population below the poverty line or in the homeless category, and definitely not by choice.
Even in those situations you'd be hard pressed to call them slaves.
Just sayin'.
In other words, the author agrees with you.
I thought of doing a 'point by point' because that seems to be the only way to respond a pile of nonsense like this without getting that particular response.
I choose not to because that would be overlong and it would not add anything.
The only thing this article shows is that if you use your creativity that you can stretch any term to mean anything. The only other party that I'm aware of that plays word and mindgames like this with its audience is scientology.
If you don't want to be a part of society you're free to opt-out, or to organize politically in order to effect change that makes society into what you want it to be.
No slave ever had that option, and no modern day slave has that option.
The author makes it seem as though we are all part of some gigantic mechanism that enslaves us all, and that we collectively would be better off by following his 4 step plan to 'independence', but he fails to notice that his 4 step plan simply leads to a much higher level of dependency but on different entities (aka customers).
Society is built on those dependencies, we enter into them voluntarily and there is absolutely nothing wrong with them.
Bad choices lead to feeling bad, so think before you commit to something, including starting a business.
Fast forward 4 years and we'll be seeing blog posts about 'how I'm going to free myself from being a slave of my customers'.
Slavery has absolutely nothing to do with it, not even in spirit or peripherally. Entanglement is a meaningless term, we already have a word that fits perfectly well: citizenship, which happens to have the opposite meaning of being a slave.
What is one supposed to escape to? The world is a bit crowded to support very many hunter-gatherers. I heartily agree with minimizing debt so as not to "become the lender's slave", but as many have pointed out, that is hardly true slavery.
Our house is paid off, and so are our cars, though they are about 10 to 20 years old. In truth, we probably need to shed a few possessions, so it's good to have a reminder, but the melodrama needs to be toned down a bit on this article, so as to better expose the nugget of truth within.
If you feel that being an employee is slavery, start your own company. At least for now, you still have the freedom to do this in the US.
Freedom means you have to take responsibility for your own life. If you rack of $10K in debt and can't pay it back, you will be a slave to it.
I learned my lesson with debt years ago and haven't kept a balance on my credit card since. It takes discipline to not live beyond your means and most people just don't have this discipline and it gets them into trouble.
This is also why so few people are actually successful at business. They won't stick it out when times get tough and give up when they aren't making a profit right now.