The European transatlantic slave trade to the Americas lasted 300 years and the Arab slave trade in Africa lasted 1100 years but unlike the slave trade today, slavery of the past did not have willing slaves.
Throughout history no one grew up planning on being captured or kidnapped and thus enslaved. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was founded in the late 1800’s out of hate for the northern U.S. carpetbagger victors invading the southern U.S. states after the northern victory in the American Civil War of the 1860’s. Over time the KKK evolved into a racist group thus becoming enslaved by hate. Most people do not intend to use drugs like heroin, nicotine or caffeine and become enslaved by these drugs. No one born in North Korea in the past and today intends to grow up and be a slave to the North Korean dictator’s government. No one growing up in 20th Century China intended on becoming slave labor making fashionable sneakers for American sports shoe corporations.
The slavers, today, are arguably those credited with inventing computers and cell phones and, unlike the past, the slaves to these inventions today are willing participants and their addiction to these devices is better known as ‘chasing the dragon’, a phrase also referred to in the use of and addiction to heroin. If you are one of the addicted ones to these devices, like any ‘calling’, it chose you, you did not choose it and you are just living up to your own expectations.
Some people make the somewhat false claim that you are a product of your environment but some of the most productive, successful people in America come from the toughest, crime ridden, poverty stricken neighborhoods in America. Critics charge if you are honest with yourself, you are arguably not a product of your environment but more a product of your expectations.
Today, there is an unintended willingness to become enslaved and, to date, it is unexplained and unclear why people willingly go along with being enslaved by the ‘new techno-slavery’. Maybe slavery, like addiction, is built into the human psyche of certain individuals to be vulnerable and/or susceptible to the all consuming, seductive temptations, distractions and lures of unknowingly ‘chasing the dragon’ like that which is so tempting in the ‘new techno-slavery’.
Today, this outright willingness to be enslaved has not been deemed harmful….or harmless by society. It took decades to determine that tobacco use was harmful and that using a cellphone close to your body for hours a day every day was conceivably emitting enough radiation possibly contributing to some cases of cancer in some individuals. Like generations of the past that were the guinea pigs for the harmful effects of processed foods, today’s generations are the guinea pigs for the potential physical and psychological harmful effects of the new ‘techno-slavery’.
Only time will tell but do not hold your breath for any clear, quick resolutions of any potential effects because the profiteers always find ways to successfully lobby to keep the public in the dark and continue questioning the latest science on issues of potential harm to public health, especially those seductive activities that the public just loves.
Until more consensus of opinion rolls in as to what the facts may be about the effects of the new ‘techno-slavery’, if you find yourself enslaved to technology, in the meantime, simply consider it your calling…consider yourself one of the chosen ones to ‘chase the dragon’. We are who we are…and, philosophically, our destiny and our expectations choose us.
SUPPLEMENTAL SOURCES: ORIGINAL PEOPLE.ORG and UNNAMED AFRICAN AMERICAN, U.S. COMBAT VETERAN, CEO OF AN ANTI-POVERTY FINANCIAL SERVICES COMPANY 10/23/19 and AN UNBRIDLED, FREE-WILLED, INDEPENDENT THINKER 10/28/19