Free Range Slavery

For most of human history, slavery has been central to all economies. Ownership of human livestock has always been the single most profitable endeavour of all, as it allows the owners to claim the productivity of the slaves. Countless wars have been fought both to capture slaves and to free them. But a number of misconceptions have arisen about the practice of slavery, both in the past and in the present.

The story we are given is that slavery has existed forever, and continued up until the British Empire banned the trade in 1807. From there it was gradually banned throughout the rest of the world. Except for one particularly violent disagreement in America in the 1860s, the world was happy to get rid of slavery, and in doing so we all moved forwards into a more equitable and respectful future. Today we are all equals, born with the same opportunities.

In reality, slavery continued, it just switched from the plantation slavery model to the free range slavery model.

In the old days, slaves were usually bound to a particular plot of land. This was because the demand for their labour initially came from landowners, who wanted someone to work their farms without payment. The origin of this practice can be seen in the behaviour of the alphas of chimpanzee troops, who control access to food and sexual resources. In the same way subordinate chimpanzees must obey the alpha or face physical violence, the slaves must obey their masters.

The landowners in such cases were often plantation owners. This is the model of slavery most common to the New World, a.k.a. the hacienda model. In the antebellum American South, slaves would often spend their entire lives on the same plantation. The problem with this model is that the slaves are obviously slaves. Therefore, they are liable to rebel.

Free range slavery is the solution to the problem of rebellion. Permit the slaves some freedom of movement, and the freedom to choose the plantation upon which they will labour, and they won’t get discontented enough to rebel. This is doubly true if you also have a gigantic propaganda apparatus brainwashing everyone into thinking they’re as free as they could ever wish to be. It’s triply true if you also have a security apparatus devoted to destroying anyone who realises any of the above.

The new ruling class of the Industrial Age were factory owners, not plantation owners. This ruling class had the insight that enclosing the commons, making it impossible for many to sustain themselves, would create a large number of desperate people willing to work for very little. Free range slavery began with the enclosure of the commons in acts such as the Highland Clearances. The people so cleared had to move to the cities and take work in factories, where they were regularly put to work for 70-80 hours per week.

In spirit, free range slavery is enslavement on the class level, something made more possible by modern technology. This technology allows for an unprecedented level of co-operation among the slave-owning classes. These ruling classes co-operate closely through two-way technology such as the telephone, while the middle and working classes are divided and conquered through one-way technology such as the television.

In the free range slavery model, each slave is free to choose the plantation on which they work. But the system is rigged so that, no matter which plantation they choose, they can never overcome slave status. No matter how high their wage, they have to pay so much in taxes, rents and other expenses that they are just as incapable of improving their position as the plantation slave.

A man who works 60 hour weeks, 250 hours/month, making $10/hour, will make about $2000/month after tax. Average rent for a one bedroom apartment is $1000/month in many American states. His bills for groceries, healthcare, electricity and other utilities will come to at least $500/month. This will leave him at most $6,000/year to put towards a house – and the average American house price is now above $370,000, so it will take him at least 60 years to get there. In practice, he will never get there, because working 60 hour weeks for 60 years is not realistic. But he will probably put in a lot of effort before he realises this.

Those who already own all the land are laughing all the way to the bank at this arrangement.

There are several advantages to the free range slavery model, which essentially maximises horizontal freedom at the same time as minimising vertical freedom.

The first, and most obvious, is that the slave owners no longer have to bother with the feeding, shelter and upkeep of the slaves. Those things are now the slaves’ problems. This is much more efficient for the slave owners, who now only have to manage the slaves during working hours. Outside of working hours, the free range slave manages itself.

A second advantage is that the free range slave can be manipulated into believing that his difficulties are his own fault. This makes him much less likely to blame the slave owners and landlords. If a free range slave can’t afford housing, he can simply be told that he isn’t working hard enough. Likewise if he can’t afford decent food. If he gets killed by rent, he can be blamed for choosing to live in a high cost-of-living area. Can’t or won’t relocate? Then he doesn’t really want freedom enough.

The main advantage to the model is that the slaves never figure out that they are slaves. If they were forced to wear shackles, or if they were whipped by overseers, they would figure it out in short order. But because they are free range slaves, any of them who complains about their conditions is met with “You can always get another job somewhere else.” Because they’re always scrambling to find or to keep employment, they never figure out that they are structurally enslaved in a way that individual action cannot overcome.

Free range slavery is, therefore, correctly understood as an ingenious system of mass enslavement with minimal resistance.

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What Orwell Meant By “War Is Peace” And Why It’s So Relevant

One often hears reference to the phrase “War is Peace” from George Orwell’s 1984. VJM Publishing mentions it all the time. In fact, we mention it so much, that I often cringe when making essay compilations, because it comes up so often. I say “surely this is a cliche now?” In truth, it’s not a cliche because 1984 is as relevant as The Iliad. Everyone knows the basics of it by now because they must.

In 1984, Big Brother has three mottos. The first of these is “War is Peace”. The application of these mottos is how order and control is maintained (this ordering and controlling is discussed at length in the book-within-a-book, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, which is in my opinion the most important 20 or so pages ever written in English).

It’s understood by most that this phrase refers to external war. If an authoritarian government provokes a state of war with a neighbour, the people’s anger will be deflected from their government to that neighbour. Thus authoritarian rulers start wars to deflect blame for how poorly run their countries are.

Many of us were taught about Saddam Hussein as a classic example of this phenomenon. Hussein, the television told us, attacked Kuwait to deflect the dissatisfaction of those he ruled over onto an external enemy. This is actually a pattern common to Middle Eastern rulers in recent times, and also in various other times and places throughout history.

But not enough people understand that this phrase also refers to internal war.

If the ruling class can set the masses against each other, they can secure their own position at the top of the pyramid. They do this, in practice, by fomenting discord along every existing social fracture line, and by creating new ones. The middle class is set against the working class by telling the former that the latter are lazy, and telling the latter that the former are greedy. Whites are set against browns in the same manner. Men are set against women by telling the latter that the former are trying to control them, and by telling the former that the latter are trying to vote away all their money.

In this manner, everyone is encouraged to have someone to hate who isn’t the ruling class. All discontent is directed horizontally at someone else on the same level. This leaves the ruling class safe and secure above it all.

Without this concept, the modern world can’t be explained.

It’s simply impossible to explain why Western ruling classes imported so many Muslims and Africans without reference to War is Peace. Everyone honest and intelligent knew that these Muslims and Africans would attack and harm the people in the neighbourhoods they were dumped in. But it must be understood this was precisely the point. The point was to subject working-class families to countless violent and sexual crimes. The point was to encourage those working-class people to hate the newcomers. In doing so, the working class would forget their grievances against the ruling class. And thus the position of the ruling class was secured.

It’s also impossible to explain the War on Drugs without such a reference. Why would the political establishment destroy so many of the finest minds of their younger generations by saddling them with criminal convictions, when all they wanted to do was explore consciousness and spirituality? War is Peace explains: the ruling class wanted the pro-drug and anti-drug segments of the population to be at each other’s throats. So it must either err on the side of excess restriction (War on Drugs), or err on the side of excess liberty (as with alcohol): it cannot take a reasonable middle ground. In either case, rationality must be eschewed, because that would lead to peace, which, viewed from the perspective of the ruling class, is war.

It’s also impossible to explain why the mainstream media pushes so much cortisol-raising fear porn unless this concept is understood. Why does the mainstream media constantly stir discord and misunderstanding? Why does it platform the worst examples of almost every demographic, and ignore the best? Because the owners of it want discord and misunderstanding. Not because it “drives clicks” – they don’t need money. They want control. They want to be the boot stamping on the face of the masses, forever. To achieve this, they need to foment war among those masses.

Everyone with any real chance of becoming part of the ruling class understands this principle, and habitually applies it by setting normal people against each other. Demonstrating an ability to do this is how people audition for a place in the ruling class.

Essentially, the logic behind “War is Peace” can be explained as: war for my enemies is peace for me. This is relevant because the Western ruling class is using this exact logic to destroy the Western middle and working classes. In most cases where there is clear evidence of social dysfunction or decay, the War is Peace principle is being applied somewhere.

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21st Century Signs Of A Slave Mindset

Many people believe that slavery ended in the 1860s in America, in the 1820s in the British Empire, and it hasn’t existed since then. In reality, slavery just changed forms. It became more subtle.

In truth, our rulers don’t need to put chains on our bodies, because they already have chains on our minds. In the 21st Century, people are made into slaves not through beatings but through relentless, all-pervasive media propaganda, psychological brutalisation in schools, unforgiving work schedules and an irrational, capricious government. This mental beatdown creates slave mentality, of which various signs are evident.

The first and most obvious sign that a person is spiritually a slave is being against freedom. If they don’t understand what motivated the American Revolutionaries, they are very likely to possess powerful slave sentiments. Note that this doesn’t mean free people necessarily support degeneracy: the degenerate is as much a slave to their biological impulses as anyone is a slave to anything.

Freedom as a philosophical concept is rejected by all spiritual slaves. They simply don’t understand the pleasure that comes from exercising free will. Ever the yin element, they prefer to be directed.

A slave mentality is often present in cases where a person doesn’t understand the important freedom issues of the day. Those who vote against cannabis freedom in the various referendums want the government to tell them what they’re allowed or not allowed to do, which is pure slave mentality. Someone without a slave mindset will naturally try to maximise their agency. Thus they support freedom as a general principle.

A second sign of a slave mindset is a tendency to lick upwards and kick downwards. The tendency to fawn towards one’s social superiors and abuse one’s social inferiors is extreme in many Third World cultures, and Western travellers immediately notice.

The tendency exists in Western countries too (but to a lesser extent) as it reflects an aspect of human nature: when enough fear is put into a person they become vicious. This viciousness is the reason for the abuse of the weak. In contrast to the truly belligerent, however, those with slave mindset do not challenge the strong.

A third sign is respecting violence more than intelligence. In a normal, healthy society, people think further than their immediate environment. Those who are the best at that naturally gain esteem and rise in the social hierarchy, where they are given power to make some decisions on behalf of the collective. This is natural because the survival of the tribe is best served by giving the most power to those who have the deepest understanding of reality.

In slave morality, normal morality is inverted. Long-term thinkers are resented, and short-term, impulsive thinkers are prized. Anyone who thinks long-term is assumed to be weak, nerdish, sickly of mind. Thoughtfulness is hesitance is weakness. Being “tough” is more important than being wise or intelligent. Thus, the most thuggish and aggressive are at the top. The slave doesn’t see such people as thuggish, of course, but rather cool, fun, spontaneous, powerful etc.

A fourth sign is perhaps the most subtle, but also the most characteristic: resentment. As Nietzsche understood, slaves feel immense resentment at the strength and beauty of free people. A person deep into a slave mindset will feel resentful at life itself. If a person resents the role that Fate seems to have placed them in, and makes life harder for others thereby, they are a certainty to possess a slave mindset.

A perpetual bad mood is a clear sign that a person knows they’re a slave and can’t get over it. If a person is constantly surly, disagreeable, sullen – chances are very high you’re dealing with a slave mindset.

A fifth, and probably the most telling sign, is that a person has given up. There is a great word in Swedish called ‘uppgivenhet’, which means ‘resignation’ in English, but which literally means ‘given-upness’. A person’s level of slave mentality correlates highly with their level of uppgivenhet.

Much like the dog that has been shocked so many times that it lacks the will to take an obvious escape offered to it, a person who has given up will do nothing to better their situation even when presented with opportunity. Those who, when given freedom, spend it watching television, mindlessly scrolling, gossiping or boozing are slaves by any other name.

It’s best to avoid people who demonstrate these five signs of a slave mindset. They won’t lead you into physical bondage but even worse: psychological enslavement.

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Thoughts On Suicide From Someone Who Hasn’t Done It Yet

I have endured a lot of suicidal ideation in my life. As I have written and spoken about at length previously, I have a traumatic stress disorder that has damaged my nervous system. This has led to constant hyperarousal of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, which is deeply unpleasant to experience. Symptoms of this include nausea, insomnia, anxiety and depression. This has involved a lot of vomiting, a lot of migraines, and a lot of deep breathing until the pain has passed. Although I strive always to say Yes to life, and although I have never made a suicide attempt, I am very tired and will be relieved when this life is over.

This essay has been inspired by the passing of Shane Christie, former Tasman Makos captain, who was well-known in Nelson. I now know a handful of people who have died by suicide, and many others who have made a genuine attempt to die. Many VJMP readers will know at least one suicide victim. The New Zealand nation suffers some 600 suicides every year. Despite our familiarity with the subject, it’s not well understood.

The first thing that people ought to know about suicide is that it’s done because people want the suffering to end.

I was about 13 the first time I felt true suicidal ideation. I had been having a bad time as a result of my mother getting institutionalised for an acute psychotic episode (again). This was the first time it occurred to me that death would solve my problems (I did not believe in reincarnation at this time). I was walking through town, and I realised that I could permanently liberate myself from physical suffering by throwing myself under a truck.

Since then, I have always suffered suicidal ideation to some degree or other, although much less in recent years. It was worst at particular times. 2003, when I realised the West was committing suicide; 2006, when my marriage fell apart; 2013/14, when my grandparents were dying. At these times, the thought of anything in the future evoked the deepest dread. The future itself seemed to be an infinitude of misery, inescapable, an ocean in which I had already drowned and sunk to the bottom. Often I would walk across a bridge and wonder if it could really be so painful to dive head-first onto the road below.

These are typical thoughts for a person tempted by suicide.

I have kept going for mostly two reasons – one, I received unconditional love from my grandparents, which created a large part of me, deep inside, that thought the world was maybe a sort of okay place, despite the bountiful misery elsewhere; two, I was lucky enough to be born really smart and I wanted to see where this could lead. It seemed like an egregious waste to throw that away. In recent years there has been a third reason: the Elementalist imperative to live in a manner that entertains the gods, which involves overcoming suicidal ideation.

People who have more-or-less decent lives usually don’t appreciate how unwelcoming life is for those at the bottom of society. If you were abused as a child, you learn that the world would be better off without your presence. If you were abandoned by one or both parents (and over 20% of New Zealand children grow up without a father in the home), you learn as a child that the world doesn’t want you. Add on top of this the confusion that comes from sexual abuse (this didn’t happen to me, but it happens to many), and it’s understandable why so many make the decision to exit.

I actually hope to die by suicide, which might sound strange. But this is only because I would like to go out on my own terms, mentally prepared. The way Hunter S Thompson did it – just as the decline into old age began – strikes me as ideal (this is still at least 25 years away). Dying in such a manner would not necessarily be a tragedy.

In my religion, Elementalism, there are tragic and understandable suicides. An understandable suicide is when there was, rationally considered, no quality of life remaining. A typical example is an elderly person with terminal cancer. Only sadists would demand that such a person carry on when they don’t want to.

A tragic suicide is when there was significant quality of life remaining. Many tragic suicides are when people surrendered to a bout of depression. These are cases when a person might have gone on to live a decent life, but succumbed in the moment to what should have been a temporary impulse. These cases are truly tragic because of all the lost opportunity they represent.

It’s important to me to reduce the amount of tragic suicides. I support this in my personal life by keeping a friendly ear open for depressed friends and family. I support this in my civic life by advocating for investment in mental health care, particularly for treating depression. Many people don’t realise that a large proportion of suicides are effectively depression deaths. It’s also not well known that depression is usually treatable to a major extent.

The biggest problem with depression is that, when you have it, you don’t think rationally. You become deluded. It’s entirely possible, when depressed, to think that everyone hates you and wants the worst for you. In reality, even if you have a lot of enemies, you don’t have that many. But when depressed, you can feel hate oozing out of every face you see. It’s easy to convince yourself that you’re not wanted on Earth.

Another big problem with depression is that if you ask your doctor about it they will throw you on antidepressants and tell you to get back to work. These antidepressants probably won’t be very effective and will probably come with awful side effects. The doctor won’t do the most helpful thing, which is explain to you what depression is and why you have it. So you will have to learn about it from somewhere else.

What I plan to do is to keep informing people about the reality of depression in particular and of mental illness in general. I feel like my own life has been saved thanks to being able to access useful and accurate information about the condition. I feel great joy at the thought I could save another life by popularising such information.

For more of VJM’s ideas, see his work on other platforms!
For even more of VJM’s ideas, buy one of his books!

If you enjoyed reading this piece, buy a compilation of our best pieces from previous years!

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