Freedom ain't easy
Hi, my dear apathetic drones fiery fighters for freedom! Thursday was a big holiday in my country, especially in my town. It commemorated the only time we had the guts to do something that was right - totally on our own, against all odds, and in defiance of everybody else's interests. And then to stand by it and stake everything to defend it. "Unification brings strength" are the words hanging over the entrance of our Parliament to this very day. How very true... (Well, Friday is the birthday of our late dictator from the commie times, but that's quite another story; let's stick to the point).
This reminded me of another, much older story, which went quite the other way. Somewhere around 70 BC a large horde of freed slaves who had escaped from bondage in the Roman republic, managed to reach the foothills of the Alps. They were standing just one step away from their freedom. All they had to do was reach out and grab it.
Nothing stood in front of them, there was no obstacle to making that final step. The Roman legions were left far behind, scattered and defeated. And somewhere there, beyond the mountain, were the various lands of Spartacus' men and women - vast, free, and wild. Their barbaric homelands, the lands of their ancestors, full of memories from their childhood. Lands full of lush forests, dashing rivers, broad fields and endless steppes, without masters and slavers, without chains and cells, without fighting pits and lions, without service - a place where anyone lived as they pleased.
And that's why the slave army turned their backs to the mountains, and marched back on Rome, to ultimately meet their doom.
I'm sure there've been tons of reputed historians who've given all sorts of lame excuses reasonable explanations why the slaves had chosen to do that. But here's another, and IMO deeper, reason.
Okay, they'd cross the mountains and go back there, to re-join their barbaric relatives, to dwell in their damp wet huts in the forest, where their people slept in wooden shacks with hay roofs, hugging their cattle and pigs at night to warm themselves and waking to the strange sounds of the wilderness. They'd go back to their smoked yurts where the only thing they could do during the long dark nights was making more babies half of whom would not live to see their first birthday, or listening to horror tales told by the old grandmas, about grumpkins, werewolves and witches; and where smelly rugged men and women copulated on beds of goat furs under the gaze of bewildered barefoot kids and frowning relatives. They'd go back to a place where the humiliating service to the Roman masters would be substituted with ceaseless digging and shoving into the dirt for a few bulbs of onion and a bundle of barley; and running after cattle and sheep all day under the sticky rain, or chasing stubborn boars through dusty fields under the scorching sun, just to be able to live another day.
They might've been barbarians, but they weren't dumb. So they stood facing that mountain, they contemplated a little, they met at a council, and after tossing all options around, they lingered in the foothills for another month, then headed back south, to Rome. Where Crassus was awaiting them with the full force of his new legions.
Why did the slaves turn their back on the wilderness? It's not that they wanted to be slaves again, did they? Well, turns out they just didn't know what to do with their freedom any more. Somehow they wanted to be like the Romans: not free in the barbaric sense, but free in the urban, Roman sense; affluent, self-confident, washed and clean, knowledgeable, capable, deft, skilful in both architecture, urban development, technology and warfare; literate, interested in philosophy, arts and entertainment, and all in all, dynamic and alive. Ruling the world, the Roman way. That's what they wanted to be. Because they had seen what it's like.
Except, they didn't know how these things are really done. They had been part of this machine, but they had never had access to the intricacies of its way of operation. They had only seen the outside of this shiny facade, but they had no grasp of how it was built and maintained. And yet, they wanted to emulate it because it attracted them like the candlelight attracts the moth.
The slave mind has several peculiarities that are inherent to it. Its most insidious, most depressing and meanwhile least explored characteristic is its inability to make decisions. To act. To do things.
It's simple. The master takes the decisions. He acts. Or at least orders what should be done, when and how it should be done. Or forbids what shouldn't be done. And the slave follows the command, and rants under his nose. In time he even forgets what exactly he's ranting about. All he remembers now is that he's a slave, and this is not good. But when confronted with choices, he'd shrink and realize that not having to do them is not that bad either, after all.
Because it's too easy to keep one's mouth shut and do nothing of particular import, and have someone else make the decisions. Because every decision requires thinking, and carries responsibilities with it. And dangers - what if the decision turns out wrong and detrimental? And responsibility is bad too - you'd have no excuse if you fail, no scapegoat to wash your hands with if you do something stupid. So it's much easier not to try thinking too much, and you wouldn't have anything to worry about.
But this inevitably leads to degeneration. This way people sink into the sweet, muddy, warm and in many ways, cosy swamp of slavish existence. I'm not even calling it "life".
You'd say it's way more preferable to try making decisions, even if they're sometimes the wrong ones, than living a life with none. The latter being as if someone else is living your life. You'd argue that it's better to fail, try again, fall and try, and try again until you succeed, rather than do nothing and see your life going to waste. Others would argue that the masters are often so strong and they have such a firm control on the situation that nothing could be done even if the slaves wanted to.
Which brings us back to the holiday I talked about in the beginning. Seems like this is not exactly true, and the small ones are capable of achieving their goals, even against all odds and in defiance of the strong of the day - as long as they're persistent and resilient, and make their case convincingly enough. Or we might argue that this is too far back in the past, the times have changed and this is not possible to happen that way any more.
I don't know. If everyone had thought that way, then we'd probably still be living in the times of Spartacus, under the boot (the royal "we"). The thing is, we seem to have progressed a wee bit since then.
...Or have we?
This reminded me of another, much older story, which went quite the other way. Somewhere around 70 BC a large horde of freed slaves who had escaped from bondage in the Roman republic, managed to reach the foothills of the Alps. They were standing just one step away from their freedom. All they had to do was reach out and grab it.
Nothing stood in front of them, there was no obstacle to making that final step. The Roman legions were left far behind, scattered and defeated. And somewhere there, beyond the mountain, were the various lands of Spartacus' men and women - vast, free, and wild. Their barbaric homelands, the lands of their ancestors, full of memories from their childhood. Lands full of lush forests, dashing rivers, broad fields and endless steppes, without masters and slavers, without chains and cells, without fighting pits and lions, without service - a place where anyone lived as they pleased.
And that's why the slave army turned their backs to the mountains, and marched back on Rome, to ultimately meet their doom.
I'm sure there've been tons of reputed historians who've given all sorts of lame excuses reasonable explanations why the slaves had chosen to do that. But here's another, and IMO deeper, reason.
Okay, they'd cross the mountains and go back there, to re-join their barbaric relatives, to dwell in their damp wet huts in the forest, where their people slept in wooden shacks with hay roofs, hugging their cattle and pigs at night to warm themselves and waking to the strange sounds of the wilderness. They'd go back to their smoked yurts where the only thing they could do during the long dark nights was making more babies half of whom would not live to see their first birthday, or listening to horror tales told by the old grandmas, about grumpkins, werewolves and witches; and where smelly rugged men and women copulated on beds of goat furs under the gaze of bewildered barefoot kids and frowning relatives. They'd go back to a place where the humiliating service to the Roman masters would be substituted with ceaseless digging and shoving into the dirt for a few bulbs of onion and a bundle of barley; and running after cattle and sheep all day under the sticky rain, or chasing stubborn boars through dusty fields under the scorching sun, just to be able to live another day.
They might've been barbarians, but they weren't dumb. So they stood facing that mountain, they contemplated a little, they met at a council, and after tossing all options around, they lingered in the foothills for another month, then headed back south, to Rome. Where Crassus was awaiting them with the full force of his new legions.
Why did the slaves turn their back on the wilderness? It's not that they wanted to be slaves again, did they? Well, turns out they just didn't know what to do with their freedom any more. Somehow they wanted to be like the Romans: not free in the barbaric sense, but free in the urban, Roman sense; affluent, self-confident, washed and clean, knowledgeable, capable, deft, skilful in both architecture, urban development, technology and warfare; literate, interested in philosophy, arts and entertainment, and all in all, dynamic and alive. Ruling the world, the Roman way. That's what they wanted to be. Because they had seen what it's like.
Except, they didn't know how these things are really done. They had been part of this machine, but they had never had access to the intricacies of its way of operation. They had only seen the outside of this shiny facade, but they had no grasp of how it was built and maintained. And yet, they wanted to emulate it because it attracted them like the candlelight attracts the moth.
The slave mind has several peculiarities that are inherent to it. Its most insidious, most depressing and meanwhile least explored characteristic is its inability to make decisions. To act. To do things.
It's simple. The master takes the decisions. He acts. Or at least orders what should be done, when and how it should be done. Or forbids what shouldn't be done. And the slave follows the command, and rants under his nose. In time he even forgets what exactly he's ranting about. All he remembers now is that he's a slave, and this is not good. But when confronted with choices, he'd shrink and realize that not having to do them is not that bad either, after all.
Because it's too easy to keep one's mouth shut and do nothing of particular import, and have someone else make the decisions. Because every decision requires thinking, and carries responsibilities with it. And dangers - what if the decision turns out wrong and detrimental? And responsibility is bad too - you'd have no excuse if you fail, no scapegoat to wash your hands with if you do something stupid. So it's much easier not to try thinking too much, and you wouldn't have anything to worry about.
But this inevitably leads to degeneration. This way people sink into the sweet, muddy, warm and in many ways, cosy swamp of slavish existence. I'm not even calling it "life".
You'd say it's way more preferable to try making decisions, even if they're sometimes the wrong ones, than living a life with none. The latter being as if someone else is living your life. You'd argue that it's better to fail, try again, fall and try, and try again until you succeed, rather than do nothing and see your life going to waste. Others would argue that the masters are often so strong and they have such a firm control on the situation that nothing could be done even if the slaves wanted to.
Which brings us back to the holiday I talked about in the beginning. Seems like this is not exactly true, and the small ones are capable of achieving their goals, even against all odds and in defiance of the strong of the day - as long as they're persistent and resilient, and make their case convincingly enough. Or we might argue that this is too far back in the past, the times have changed and this is not possible to happen that way any more.
I don't know. If everyone had thought that way, then we'd probably still be living in the times of Spartacus, under the boot (the royal "we"). The thing is, we seem to have progressed a wee bit since then.
...Or have we?