'Loose Talk'
By Benjamin Benedict

Conforming To Ourselves

Conforming To Conformity

Since the end of the First World War, the world has swung between left and right wing philosophies, until I suppose inevitably, the line between the two has blurred. This is perhaps hardest to accept in a country like the United States, which calls itself ‘free and democratic’ while running a two party system.

It is generally supposed that the Republicans are right wing and the Democrats are left wing, and seen in its best light the Republicans front the ‘laisez-fair’ approach, while the Democrats are more for social justice. Tellingly, they would not argue with the quality that I have attributed to their philosophy, but would say that they also encompass the quality I have attributed to the other party.

The fact of the matter is that we now have a situation where it makes no odds whether it is the Christian Democrats or the Social Democrats in Germany, New Labour or the Conservatives in the UK, the Republicans or Democrats in America, or any of the main political parties in the other Western, democratic countries. Their political philosophies are inextricably intermeshed and they have one common goal; to control us. It is for your own good, don’t you know.

Europe has been designated as one control centre, North America (Canada, The US and Mexico) as another. Whoever you vote for won’t stop it happening. You will be subject to the directives of countless committees of bureaucrats who will know what is best for you, without knowing you at all.

This goes way beyond politics. Even these articles are monitored, not by an editor, which a writer has to accept, but by a search engine’s ranking system. Anything considered ‘adult material’ would be likely to lose this site a point or two. ‘General audience material’ is what makes this particular world go round, and that means it is governed by something very similar to the classification system placed on movies, only in this case if you get an ‘adult’ rating, you just don’t show. And this rating system comes from a search engine thru which you can easily access not only written, but the most graphic ‘adult’ material legally available.

No, we are being boxed and packaged like never before. We are being subjected to double standards and double talk and are ultimately being led down the road to conformity; not conformity to any one particular standard, but to conform to conformity itself. Never have things seemed as Orwellian as they do today.

The question must be, are we here to do what we are told and take what we can get, or to live a free life, and accept the consequences? Our lives are on the line, and no matter which way we vote and who gets into power, they are not going to be free ones.

Boy, did we have it good some forty years back! Maybe this is the price that has to be paid for it, but I doubt that. We just overcooked things a little, but were on the right track.  We need to get back to the garden, as Joni said and learn how to play again. 

Slaves To Ourselves

I caught sight of a chimney sweep and took him for a slave. It was an easy mistake. His face was black and he looked distressed. I suddenly saw that he was as much a slave as the Africans before him. We have had many slaves since slavery was banned.

Slavery is older than prostitution, but few have made it a profession. Africans were enslaving Europeans long before Europeans were enslaving them. The Corsairs sailed from North African Ports and pillaged their way up the Atlantic Coast as far as Scandinavia. Their victims were corralled onto their ships and sailed back to the waiting African slave markets, from where (apart from the prettiest boys and girls, and the strongest young men) they were marched off to their fate, somewhere in the interior.

The British Navy finally blasted the Corsairs out of existence, but in the main, the North Africans were excused the slavery they had inflicted on others. They were just left slave less. For them, Central Africa, not Europe, had always been the major source of slaves, and under the new European regime, these slaves were simply diverted from their various North African destinations to the West Indies and America. In other words, the Europeans took over an existing operation, and enlarged it. I am afraid that there is no patent on man’s inhumanity to man. We are all capable of the most sickening sins against each other, no matter our colour or creed.

Slavery is as prevalent as it ever was; child workers in India, prostitutes from Eastern Europe, foreign domestics, children abused by those in authority, women used as chattel, the list is almost endless.

Slavery is deeply imbedded in our psyche. So much so, that we often equate it with love. It is an expression of power and control and has many hidden implications. It is hard to say where all this begins and ends. ‘Duty’ and ‘vocation’ are subtle forms of slavery, and the prospect of wealth can easily enslave. At the end of the day, we are slaves to ourselves. We are slaves to our ambitions.

But don’t try to smack me on the bum or strap a spiked collar around my neck. I don’t want to be your slave and have no intention of enslaving you. Slavery is like bird flu. It recognises no boundaries, is highly infectious, and can thrive under our very noses. The very birth of Democracy took place in a slave zone called Ancient Greece, and most if not all of the early civilizations were founded on bedrocks of slavery. You could say that civilization and slavery went hand in hand.

No animals that I know of have a similar arrangement, and yet we are the ones who are meant to be civilised. I can’t help feeling that an extraterrestrial would like animals a lot more than he, she or it would like us. In fact, it seems that slavery, wars, and the desecration of the planet have been our hallmark. As far as the earth is concerned, the sooner we either blow ourselves up, or bugger off into space, the better. Yes, we are slaves to ourselves and we are the pandemic.

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