How Slavery Began



A long time ago humans lived in small groups that ranged in size from dozens of people up to about 150.  They survived by hunting, fishing, trapping, and by foraging for wild food like nuts, berries, and wild honey.

They lived in a world of such absolute and overflowing abundance that to us it would be unimaginable.  A world whose rivers teamed with fish and whose land contained an abundance of animals of every kind.  A world with clean air, endless forests, and rivers of crystal clear water.

There was no 40 hour work week in those days, no rent, no mortgages, no multinational corporations, so people only worked as much as they needed to in order to support themselves and their family or their tribe.

Of course there were greedy and ambitious people back then, just like there are today, but their negative impact on others was minimal.  This was because few ways existed for them to exercise that greed.

If a greedy person was a man then he could try to become the ruler of one of these small groups.  As chief of the tribe he would have gotten to wear fancier clothes, had first choice when it came to food, and been able to drink more wine than the others if he so desired, he could have slept in the best part of the cave or in the largest tent.  He would have enjoyed the admiration and respect of others (or at the very least be envied by them).  And he could probably have gotten away with having two wives if he wanted to.  However all of this would have been in exchange for his service to the group and his wealth would still have been very limited.

If a ruler would have started to get greedy and tried to take more from the people than they thought he deserved, then things would go bad for him pretty quickly.  For example, if he wanted to have three wives instead of two then instead of just one man in the group not being able to have a mate there would be two men who could not have a mate.  Since back then most men knew how to fight and had the same type of weapons as the ruler, an imbalance like this could be easily corrected.

Some of these tribes were matriarchal in the sense that it was often an older woman that made most of the day to day decisions for the tribe such as who would do what chores and how to distribute the food.  This was partly because the men were often on hunting trips or off warring with other tribes.   And so sometimes you had a war chief who also headed up the hunting party as well as a matriarch who ran the camp, each with their respective spheres of authority.

If the matriarch focused too much on acquiring fancy clothing and flaunted her wealth it would be disrespectful to the others.  And back then having wealth meant flaunting it because there was no way to hide it from others.  Sure the matriarch could have a secret stash of honey that she could eat in her tent where nobody could see or wear fancy jewelry only while inside but that was about it.  In the days before rich people had their own private gated communities to live in, the flaunting of one's wealth was not exactly a good idea unless you were protected by a castle and some nights.

And so what you had back then was kind of like a company with 150 employees and a very strong union that capped the CEO's pay to a maximum of about twice that of the lowest paid worker.

Imagine back then if the matriarch were to walk up to another woman in the tribe, perhaps as that woman was arriving back to camp after gathering fruits and berries with some of her children.  If the matriarch told her that she wanted her to sew together a bunch of animal hides so that the matriarch could have a second set of clothes.  Then she might respond by saying something like "hey a set of clothes does sound like a good idea, I've always wanted clothes, maybe I'll make some clothes for myself instead, or maybe make them for one of my 9 children.  And so the matriarch would buzz off. She would realize that if she wanted a 2nd set of clothes she'd either have to try to make them herself, offer something of value in exchange, or find a way to increase the wealth of the entire tribe.

Or imagine if it was you living back then, in that pristine natural paradise, and then one day the chief of your tribe slithers over to you and he starts telling you that he'd like to take your daughter or your sister for his 3rd wife.  I mean you'd probably start reaching for the nearest lethal object before he could even finish talking!  And so there were natural checks and balances that kept things from getting too far out of balance.

Eventually however some people started to figure out how to remove those natural checks and balances.  They figured out how to put systems into place that forced people to work more than they needed to so that rulers could enjoy the excess.

I'm sure you can understand the temptation for slavery that there would have been back then.  Back when there were so few comforts and plenty of manual labor.   Imagine how tempting it would have been for a greedy chief to think that there might somehow be a way to get full time laborers dedicated to his service.  To have someone to carry around his tent, for him to be able to be carried about from place to place; to be able to be carried to the river to bathe or to have the river carried to him, to never have to hunt for or gather his food, and to have someone to fan his face in the summer heat or maintain a fire during those cold winter nights, to have others to make and mend his clothes, to always have someone to cook and prepare his food, to have someone to stand guard over him and protect him while he slept.

But there was a problem.  How could one man subdue many?  Subduing the masses by force alone would have been a non-starter.  Even if the leader was so fierce a warrior that he could take on his entire tribe at once, he still had to sleep sometime.

The problem of how to subdue the masses was no easy problem to solve back then.  It wasn't like today where most people are nothing more than obedient pets of the ruling class; blindly following the mandates of idiots in power.

Back then people were strong, independent, human!  Life was a full contact sport.  And the purpose of life was to spend time with friends and family, to enjoy raising one's children, to rest and to play, to fight and to fuck, and to enjoy one's work.  The kind of people who lived back then would have never agreed to slaving away, barely surviving, while an elite criminal class flew over them in private jets.

In the end the key to subduing the masses turned out to be tricking the masses into subduing themselves.  Although slavery developed independently in distinct places of the world, all forms of slavery that were ultimately successful shared the same common characteristics.  They all had the carrot and the stick.  The carrot was a reward for compliance, and the stick a punishment for non-compliance.

For some people the carrot came in the form of a share of the loot, for example a slave master would give more food and better housing to a slave driver than he would to just an average everyday slave.  For the masses of people however no physical earthly reward was possible so the carrot had to be something much more ethereal.  The carrot was different things at different times and in different places.  For Indians the carrot was called Nirvana, for Germans it was called Valhalla.

Nirvana was a state of bliss one could achieve by surrendering all concerns about physical things like one's possessions.  In a state of Nirvana people were equally blissful whether they enjoyed the fruits of their labor or whether the fruits of their labor were stolen from them.   If a person attained Nirvana in this life then it was said that when they died they would reach an even higher state of Nirvana known as Parinirvana.

For the Vikings, Valhalla was a place that soldiers went to when they died in battle for their king.  Upon the death of the body the warrior's essence was carried up to Valhalla by winged virgins.  Awaiting them in the abundant afterlife were the warriors of the past who also died in battle in service to their king.  Valhalla was a land of plenty where soldiers spent most of their time resting and drinking wine poured out by the virgins.  They also spent time sharing war stories with their fellow soldiers, and basking in honor and glory.

Whether the carrot was Valhalla or Nirvana, the end result was the same; people willingly gave away that which was rightfully theirs in this life, their time, energy, and their wealth in hope of some amorphous, hard to define, and possibly imaginary future benefit.

There was of course also the stick, the punishment for non-compliance.  Although kings had torture chambers to deal with rogue individuals, there was no way to prevent large groups of people from doing whatever they wanted.  So in order to dissuade the masses from overthrowing the king they had to be convinced that a higher power than the king would punish them, if they revolted.

If a Viking warrior did not die in service to his king, in battle, but instead died due to sickness or old age then that warrior went to a place called Helheim.  Helheim was an inescapable subterranean abode of darkness and horror.  There was however one distant future hope for the souls trapped in Helheim according to Norse mythology.  The brave warriors of Valhalla were said to be resting up for some future final battle that would take place between Valhalla and Helheim.  And so some people believed that after eons of suffering, those in Helheim might finally get another chance to die in battle and thus end once and for all their suffering.

In India if a person was unable to attain Nirvana in this life, unable to release their possessions to the king without resentment, unable to enjoy spending their life making people who were already rich even richer, if they were unable to find joy in their slavery for any reason, then that person would have no choice but to be reborn into this earth after they died and suffer yet again.

There was no limit to how many times one might have to be reborn, no limit to how many lives they might have to live, no limit to how many kings they might have to bow down to or how many corporations they might have to serve.  You could even end up reincarnating as a worm, doomed to spend your next life crawling around in the dirt.

Whether the stick was the Helheim of the Vikings or the Helheim of having to be reborn on this planet again and again in ever worsening circumstances, the end result was same; people became passive and compliant.  They allowed the established order to continue in order to avoid suffering after this life.

Needless to say once the minds of the masses had been subdued their bodies could be used for whatever purpose the ruling class desired.

Although we have been taught to think of things like these as "belief systems", what they are in reality are control systems.  Someone might ask you for example "what is your parents' belief system?"  No no no, the question should be what is your parents' control system?, what control system are they under?, by what means were they subdued?  How were your parents domesticated?

Now you might be saying, especially if you are younger, you might be saying "well Michael I'm not religious".  Well you sure were religious when it came to wearing a mask, weren't you?  Don't tell me you're not religious if you just spent the last two years in a cool aid cult!  Your belief system might not have a name, or its name might not be known to you, but it's still a very effective control system.

In the early days of slavery many different control systems were tried.  Over time a set of "best practices" was developed.  It was found that with the right belief system installed in the mind of the masses, that rulers could extract up to about 60 hours of labor per week from most people.

With the problem of how to control the masses solved, the largest remaining challenge for slavery was simply how to store the loot.  And thus came about the development of agriculture.  This happened long before the earth's population had grown to a point where the hunter-gatherer lifestyle would no longer be sustainable.  Agriculture not only produced easy to store grains that could last for years but it also offered a way to harness the power of animals to generate even more wealth for the elite.

And so that is the story of how slavery began.  The good news is this; that all we have to do to free our bodies is to free our minds.  "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

You see the problem is not that we are small in number, even if people like you and me are only 1 out of every 100 people, those who control the modern system of wage slavery are far fewer in number than we are.  We don't continue to lose because of our small numbers, we continue to lose because we are still in the matrix, we still accept enough of the control system that our minds do more to enslave us than to free us. Actually freedom is our natural state.  It's just that our mental computers are running junk code, mind viruses, code that was not written by us, code written by those members of the criminal class who lived before we were born.

Metaphorically speaking, if life were a game of chess, then you could say that in a way we were checkmated before we were even born.