slavery

[exploring]

Dear exploring, before I became a Christian, I was a slave to many things, I was fearful, shy, easily hurt, lacked confidence, was a nonentity, to give just an idea, what a little mouse I was. After my children had become adult, I seeked for more meaning in my life, and " Praise be to God," Jesus found me. He freed me from all sorts of fear, He taught me to love and care, He gave me His Joy and Peace, and now I feel, " With God on my side, who can be against me?" I became a soldier of Christ,( joined the Salvation Army) and feel wonderfully FREE and loved and protected. Life has not become without its sadness, or setbacks, but I thank the Lord to be allowed o live for Him, and be His devoted Slave. ( Follower) I say this humbly and lovingly, and send greetings, exploring. Emmy, sister in Christ.

Looks like we agree. When I say that christianity is slavery i don't mean that nothing else is! You seem to agree with me that being christian means being Jesus's slave. Slavery to a supreme being must be better than other slaveries.

 

[Mling]

I haven't read a lot of this thread, just the first page or so, so I appologize if I am repeating.

Being human means having slavish attributes. No body can truly "master" their own life. You can try, certainly. My grandfather went so far as to rename himself to help with the image that he had "pulled himself up by the bootstraps." But, ultimately, you can do all you can for your life, make as many decisions as you can and...a tornado hits your house, or you get mugged and find yourself paralyzed by fear. Ultimately, you can never go far enough. There are always decisions you are leaving to somebody else, and things you can't do for yourself.

So the question is, what kind of slave are you? Are you a slave who recognizes his strenghts and weaknesses, and learns to work with them, or are you a slave who has deluded himself into thinking he is in control.

As for "why believe in God?" slavery is much less frightening for a person who believes that there does exist one true master, and that master is on their side. Without that, there is no master, and the world is completely arbitrary. It is not a question of wanting to be a slave, it is recognizing one's slavery and making the most of it. The person who can recognize their one slavery is much closer to master-hood than somebody who cannot.

 

[exploring]

I haven't read a lot of this thread, just the first page or so, so I appologize if I am repeating.

Being human means having slavish attributes. No body can truly "master" their own life. You can try, certainly. My grandfather went so far as to rename himself to help with the image that he had "pulled himself up by the bootstraps." But, ultimately, you can do all you can for your life, make as many decisions as you can and...a tornado hits your house, or you get mugged and find yourself paralyzed by fear. Ultimately, you can never go far enough. There are always decisions you are leaving to somebody else, and things you can't do for yourself.

So the question is, what kind of slave are you? Are you a slave who recognizes his strenghts and weaknesses, and learns to work with them, or are you a slave who has deluded himself into thinking he is in control.

As for "why believe in God?" slavery is much less frightening for a person who believes that there does exist one true master, and that master is on their side. Without that, there is no master, and the world is completely arbitrary. It is not a question of wanting to be a slave, it is recognizing one's slavery and making the most of it. The person who can recognize their one slavery is much closer to master-hood than somebody who cannot.

Hello Mling.
I think all thoses ideas are commpletely valid and i would agree with them within the framework you explicitly put them in: slavery construed as the opposite of mastery. I accept that I have been quite unclear throughout this thread on what i mean by slavery, but i have now settled that it should not be thought of (in this case) as the opposite of mastery, but as the opposite of freedom of choice. Mastery implies, as you pointed out, some kind of omnipotent power to avoid tornadoes and such.

When we think of slavery in this way, it becomes clear that the randomness of the world, with its muggers and tornadoes, actually frees us from the oppression of outside principles: if our actions bear no relation to their consequences, then it is us who give our actions meaning, not the consequences. If things could be predicted, then we could be predicted.

Since noone claims to be able to predict the future, maybe you can see that in this sense, everyone is free, being free to choose their own actions (although not the consequences).

The only slavery is that which we subject ourselves to, which is where , for me, religion comes in. If someone thinks something like "I want to do that, but I won't because of my religion" then they are enslaving themself, because they are surrendering their freedom of choice to an outside force, refusing to make their own decision.

As far as I can tell, most religions (apart from some funny ones that Charlie V told me about) seem to demand this surrender from their followers ("I am the way the truth, the light" etc). The believer who says that their religion in no way affects their choices is rare. So in the specific sense of actions rather than consequences, religion is an easily avoidable method of self-enslavement.

 

[Mling]

In America today, however, there is a "spiritual marketplace." That is, people are free to choose the religion which they agree with. I can say, for me, relgion does not constrain my decisions--it gives me a framework in which to explore and clarify my beliefs. In the few cases where I do not do what I would "like" because of my religious beliefs, those things that I would "like" to do, I also recognize as being bad for me (like trying drugs, for example). In truth, I want more to avoid them, but I am also curious in a temporary, immature sort of way. Having something more concrete to hang my beliefs on--a religious framework, makes it a bit easier to resist doing the things that I really don't want to do, but are tempted by anyway.

 

[exploring]

We are really cutting to the chase now: the question is "how do you know what it is that you want?"

I have taken the view that noone can objectively "know" what they want, so the only way that I can get whatever it is that i really want is to remove as many restrictions to my free, spontaneous decision-making faculty as possible, so that my unknown conscious mind, the real "me", is free to make its own decisions. So when you say that you suppress your momentary impulse for the sake of an idea of how you want to be, I understand it as rejecting the real, inner "you" in favour of an outer idea of a "persona" or "character".

On the other hand, you probably think that you do know what you want, so getting what you want is just a question of acting according to this essence, or character, which is the real "you". The anomalous voice telling you to act against this character is a temptation that can be explained in terms of biological factors, or the devil or something, anyway it is not what you really want. Is that accurate?

The question of whether we know what we want is difficult, perhaps impossible to answer definitively, so I cannot definitively tell you that you are wrong. All I can do is ask you to consider the other point of view as equally valid and see how from that point of view, religious constraint is slavery of the self.

 

[Mling]

For many, many people, religion can be slavery, though not to God. I would call it slavery to other humans. That's a separate issue though.

Moving right along...many people want contradictory things.
I am extremely curious. About everything. "How hot is that pan, really?" "I wonder if I could make a knife/suit of armor/drinking horn from scratch?" "What does this say in the original language? I think I need to learn Hebrew" "What will happen if I stick my finger in this?" "So what's this String Theory all about?"

I have a tendency to beome inert. I'll take a break and...it just keeps going. For days or weeks I'll do close to nothing. I hate it, but I don't know how to break out of it. This interferes with the first interest. I can't reallly explore what I'm interested in if I can't bring myself to take action.

I have specifc goals for my life, but I find myself worried that I won't be able to make myself do the things that are necessary to meet them.

In order to meet my goals, I should stay (*ahem* become) as healthy as possible, and avoid developing unecessary bad habits. So, continuing the example I used above, avoiding drugs would be a very good idea.

But if a stamp of LSD fell into my lap, that curiosity would kick in big time.

So, my point is, this isn't a matter of the "real me" vs. a persona. The real me is highly interested in all sorts of things, and would be very satisfied in learning and experiencing them. The real me is also somewhat lazy, and thus doesn't always experience the things she wants to, because it is easier not to bother.

Then there is the "meta-me:" the side of me that exists when I am thinking about myself, and which aspects of myself I like or dislike, and which traits I want to bring to the fore. The other two sides of myself cannot really exist at the same time, they flip back and forth. Either I am active or inert, learning or stagnating. Meta-me prefers the active, curious me, and wants to bring that to the fore.

If you limit yourself to "spontanius" decision-making, that is also a sort of slavery--to one part of your own mind. The subconscious, inner you does not exist whole and complete within you. You shape it and feed it via what you do and think and experience. You have a choice over who you are and who you become. Stripping yourself of the ability to make that choice is not mastery.