2.5. The evolution of methods of persuading servants to execute orders

2. The references to slavery evolution from antiquity to the present 

 

2.5. The evolution of methods of persuading servants to execute orders

This entry continues the precedent one

Pentru varianta in limba romana clic aici

Whether classical or modern, painted in the false free trading relationship exchange the slavery consists in persuading "others" to execute orders by negatively influencing their living environment. These orders are meant to extend the beneficiaries' freedoms, but in the same time they restrict those of the order takers. That is why, as we know, people have a certain opposition power towards the orders coming from the others. Between the two sides there is an unconscious negotiation of imposing and accepting these orders. The negative influence of the close environment of these people implies such a restriction of their freedom that choosing the way of executing orders is, or appears to be, an increasing of personal freedoms rather than their refusal. On the contrary, the refusal to accept their executions leads to a restriction of some rights. The refusal to execute the orders could bring reprisals such as beating or death in the classical era or exile in the feudal one. The industrial and digital era has developed a very complex system of persuading subjects to execute orders by the deception of enhancing the personal freedoms in exchange for that. I will further analyze each of these methods of slavery.

2. 5. 1. The persuasion methods for obedience in the classical and feudal era

In the first slavery stage, which is the classical slavery, this belief was made exclusively through the threat of death or beating. But the consequences of this first slavery stage in the slave's mind are the ideological fatalism, the suicide, and the tendency to revolt, as pointed in detail here   . The explanation for this is the classical slavery inflexibility. The classic master did not have enough psychological knowledge to differentiate people. The theory of the four temperaments (choleric, blood, phlegmatic, melancholic), besides being rudimentary, was known only to a scientific elite. All the slaves were treated the same, without taking into account the psychical particularities of each. The classic master main interest was to have a minimum number of slaves for a maximum number of jobs, made for as short a time as possible, and at a longer pace. Their rest period had to be as small as possible. In return for maximum profit, the classic master could strengthen these pressures. This is still practiced today, of course, but the new masters have learned when to stop and anticipate the possible negative reactions of the subject. In the classical slavery there were no such instruments of measurement and control as those of today.

Of course, under these conditions, sooner or later the slaves’ mental balance would eventually break. Even one particular individual can go through periods of emotional fragility and refuse to do things that used to do before, at one time. This kind of slave responded with the tendencies to escape, to revolt or to commit suicide. The slave used to commit suicide when slavery life was perceived as a much greater penalty than the death itself. The suicide was for that person a release from this state of slavery. That is why so many have used this way of escaping from the slavery chains in the past, and still use it today, even when the slavery has radically changed. However, all these three slavery major socio-cultural consequences are counterproductive to the particular community / state economy, or the world wide economy. The suicides have not been a benefit to the system in the past and still are not even today, when overcrowding is an increasingly visible problem.

The slaves’ riots and suicides were main issue that led to the shattering of the Roman Empire and the ancient Greek cities that practiced classical slavery. In the Roman period, the catacomb Christians wanted to be killed rather than accepting the gross slavery. This was a kind of passive suicide of the stubbornness not to give up the faith. They have given much trouble to the time seniors, who eventually had to change the strategy. The armed force with its brutal threats, through which those civilizations were created, became incapable to counteract these attitudes. So things had to change in terms of the masters' way of seeing the slave. The evolution of civilization from antiquity to today is not a way of humanity to moral perfection, as some ideologues have said. It is simply a continuous optimization of the balance between servant suicide committing or riots (which eventually ends with their death too) and the maximum profitability that can be extracted from their predisposition to obey orders.

This was the perfect and necessary time for the church to appear. It was adopted in the state as a special auxiliary tool to persuade the servants to execute orders, besides the usual classical threats and repressions. The Christianity was that ideological pillar that made the "earthly" slavery to be humble accepted in exchange for posthumous happiness. The threat and repression force has not disappeared. But from then until now it has progressively stepped backwards, making room for religious way of conviction. The Christianity and every modern Western religions have given the servants the specific promise that once there will come a heaven after the earthly obedience life. The belief in heaven was the belief that, at some point, after such suffering, the servant would finally be able to live normally. The classic slave was given the right to be considered a person and to be taken accountable in history and in the universe. Jesus said that "the last shall be first ". Such an affirmation was no longer to be proved. It was the condition of mental survival. It was the salvation of those who ruined their mental state in a life full of frustrations and threats. In order to continue, the slave's psychic needed this fantasy to escape and isolate itself out of this social damnation.

Here is how, by creating the reality of this fantasy of survival, the church has facilitated a different exchange of information with the slaves than that of the threats used by the army. The Christianity had the power to slow down these slave reactions that were unconceivable by the military system. Unlike the army, which did not recognize the value of the slave's life, the Christian doctrine claimed the inestimable human life in general. But like a real gesture of modern PR, such an idea has been very well used for the contrary purpose in the post-Constantinian state. It has sustained a twice terrifying threat to the suicide committing, namely divine punishment. The institutional Christianity clearly says that the suicide committing is an eternal sin and that the person who kills oneself will end up in the fires of "hell". Here, beyond the death penalty (that the classical slave was threatened for refusing to execute orders), the church introduced ideological torture as an extra pressure. This is the turning point in the history of humanity in which psychical manipulation took the place of physical torture. The effectiveness of this measure is immense. Even today, in the big daily depressions ocean, many suicidal people do not kill themselves precisely because they are afraid of an eternal damnation in the bottom of hell. And when the church reached a maximum power in the Middle Ages, the torture was even put into practice against the criminals and dissidents, as Michel Foucault described in his memorable book “Discipline and Punish".

The church was established in the post-Constantine state as a mediation institution. There was an unwritten pact between masters and slaves. The slaves have asked, "We will serve you, but we no longer want to be thrown away into nothingness, but treated as your equals." The masters replied: "Serve us and we will recognize your human value!" We observe here that ambivalence specific to the slave's Compulsion to Repeat towards its status, which I have detailed here . On the one hand, the post-Constantine servant wants to free oneself completely from slavery through the new faith, but proclaims as well remaining in it, on the other hand.

This ambivalence to classical slavery can be seen from the Jesus’s lectures. On the one hand, Jesus denied it deeply by the famous statement that "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." So the rich man with his power to order the servants, whether a classical master or a fake free exchange relationship master, seemed to Jesus as an unforgivable sinner. But, at the same time, Jesus himself facilitated the slave mentality with the resignation towards this situation and its acceptance as intangible; "Give the Caesar what is Caesar's, and God's, that of God,", he once said.

Exactly this last side was speculated by late state organizers to preserve their power over the servants. The critical side was tolerated for the moment. After all, it has faded out over the centuries as a result of the clerical empowering, which reached the same position as those who have established or profited from the classical slavery. Subsequently, the Protestantism will reject this position and return to the old Greek-Roman theory that God loves the rich and fortunate.

The classical slavery was only sporadically practiced in Europe after Constantine’s revolution. The main servants were the paying tributes "free peasants". The special orders execution was paid by the new lord, apparently as a free trade. Most of the medieval servants could always leave the feudal property if wanted to. Of course, this "freedom" was not exactly the slavery eradication, but a change of it. As we have seen in the linked above entry, the slavery has continued until today, in a modified shape. The slaves were released, according to the catacombs Christian’s ideals, but the ghost of slavery followed them further on: the land they scattered became the lord’s propriety. He claimed for himself the right to master huge portions of land. Those who lived on it had to pay for their "toleration" on his property.

This was and still is an abuse. Such a gigantic property can only be sustained by a slavish mentality. As I pointed in the series of articles started here   , the profiteers personal liberties extending that leads to the order taker restricting freedoms is the principle of the classical slavery modified continuing further on. The master’s propriety’s extending over the medieval "free peasant" was an abuse quite similar to the threat to the life or body integrity practiced on the classical slave. Excluding an individual from the right to practice agriculture and, in other words, to live, is the distinctive sign of the human life undervaluation, treating the person as a substitutable object, which is specific slavery attitude.

But the difference between the tributes feudalism system and the classical slavery one is nevertheless minor, dependent on the lack of fertile land or overcrowding. That's why the tributes feudalism could not be established in areas where the lord could not control the entire fertile lands. That's what happened in the Americas. The space there was not quite populated so that it was not controlled and monitored by a lord. The "free peasants" could have gone on lands that did not belong to anyone and the paying tributes feudalism could not possibly work. That's why the classical slavery was used in the Americas until the Civil War marked the northern industrial mentality expansion in the south.

By strengthening the church, the post-Constantine state basically spread the Christian message of Caesar's "ceding of goods" in the exchange for eternal happiness. Subsequently, the papacy made huge business on the sins forgiving basis (indulgence), effectively selling the "holiness" on which it had ruled the monopoly. The money or property tax policy has replaced the old practices of threatening and putting it into practice to make the classical slave be more productive. The classic master wanted a smaller number of servants and put as much pressure as possible on their shoulders for maximum profit. The middle age lord, on the contrary, wanted a greater number of peasants on its land, so to collect a percentage of goods they produced as taxes. If the peasants were numerous, then the goods collected as taxes were also more, without additional pressure. Unlike the Greek-Roman master, the feudal lord learned the art of governing the owned lands. The careful monitoring of production led to the flexibility of determining the tributes amount, depending on seasonal productivity. The classical slaves were rarely used in the middle age state, and when it happened they were used more as domestic servants. That's why the middle age revolts were far less meaningless than ancient ones. Here is how such an experience has been noticed since those times and perfected further on to this day.

The tax principle promoted by the post-Constantine era gave the servant the right to a certain property on the land of the lord, with a certain more liberties. The servant gained the liberty to work in its own rhythm, without the direct and violent pressures specific to the classical slavery. The senior used the motivation for the order taker to serve instead of the classical slavery threats. I didn’t matter much how big would have been the tax paid for the lord, because there would eventually remain something to the "free peasant" after the collection. The motivation to be productive came precisely from its inner belief sustained by the experience that overproduction will eventually turn into a more comfortable life and a richer diet in the near future.

The post-Constantine state has thus learned to make a selection of slaves, unlike the Greek-Roman state. The most productive ones have become the wealthiest, having the potential to accumulate some fortune. The least profitable were left "in the Lord's mercy" to produce as much as possible, rather than not produce at all, by being killed. The very depressed ones were allowed to recapture in prayer, rather than killed by the lord, which means wasting its own fortune. The church was that piece by which the depressed ones not only that were not wasted in rebellion massacring or suicide but were even used to convince others to execute orders. This principle is the key to understanding the evolution of slavery from antiquity to the present. The ideological ornament of this new persuasion strategy was the morality itself, as I will show in the next article .

Gabriel Baldovin