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| Am I not a man emblem used during the campaign to abolish slavery. The image is from a book from 1788, so there can be no effective copyright. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Go back 200 years in time. Imagine yourself the proud owner of a big plantation in the Southern side of the recently incorporated United States of America.
You live like a king, you open the windows on your property and there it is, Your Empire, you can proudly say to Your Children 'my dear, all this will be yours one day'.
Out in the garden you see your Slaves, you own them, and that is Great.
They are like the genies in the movies we made since Slavery was no longer allowed, the little creatures that can turn every wish of ours into their orders and reason to live and make them come true.
Life is easy with slaves, they do all the dirty work for you and you provide food and accommodation, plus they are just like livestock, you can loan them to friends for some time and still own them, so they are actually handier than livestock, because the fruit of their labour, either under your careful supervision and masterly management or under the one of your friends, still gives You benefits, you build up credits for their work wherever they work, whenever they work, because You Own Them.
When you own slaves your life is consequence free, you can have big homes -they'll clean them-, give big parties -they'll arrange them from procuring everything required, to cooking, to arranging flowers, seats -you are just the Master of the Game and move your pawns around as you see best to make it all happen, your Life is suddenly longer because you never have to waste time in menial tasks, you have slaves for those, you get to live a full life of leisure only, they get to live a full life of slavery at your service only, it works for you and mind you, you are a good Master, you don't beat them, you house them and feed them good, not like some of your friends that keep them sleeping on floors and are stingy when it comes to providing for them, sometimes you even allow them to eat what You eat, because you are generous and you want them to be happy slaves.
When a thought comes to your mind about what kind of lives is the one they live, you come up with reasons to justify why things are the way they are, oh, hear this one, they are BLACK, yes, this one will work, you can argue that it was God's idea to make them different for different purposes and since you are the Master by Trade they are left with the Slave jobs, but after all, wouldn't they be worse off if they didn't have a Master at all? They are like animals, they need a Shepard, they wouldn't know what to do with themselves with the education they don't have -what do you mean because we didn't provide it, we don't provide it because they are animals, simple as that-, look at what they do when they drink -what do you mean we provide the drinks on their free day? We do it for a spot of entertainment, it's them getting shit faced drunk, which proves they are just animals, innit?-, they have families but not like our families, their children are dirt poor and dirty and..animals, what could animals breed if not more animals? They were born to be my slaves, they are just lucky I own them and I am not some sick bastard that Really mistreats them, I let them go to Their Church on Sunday, no they can't come to Our Church, they have their Own God, the Black God ...they don't? Well if they pray to the White God they are just proving my point, they are Godless people, we gave them everything, even our God, they'll be able to hear first hand from Him why they were created, to serve and cherish us, the Whites, the Superior race, the Chosen Ones.
I will never let my slaves go, they'll have to kill me before I do, I own them, it's not like I am abusing them or anything, I provide everything they need to live, they are like family to me, my children -albeit retards- people who oppose slavery are just not in touch with reality and the point that some are just more worthy than others, the Whites, that's why they are Blacks, so we know who are the ones supposes to serve and cater for us, God marked them all right, it's not you can't see the difference, r you color blind?
If God wanted us all Equal, we would be all white, get that in that little head of yours.
Fast forward two centuries.
You are a Rich property owner anywhere in the world. You look out of your property window.
You live like a King. Out in the garden you see your Maids, it's great to have Maids, they do everything for you, they are lucky nowadays that they are no longer Slaves, because Slavery was Wrong, we had to abolish it, it was against Human Rights and a Crime against Humanity
Now my Maids are free, I don't own them, they can come and go as they please. Sure if they have to go somewhere they must ask my permission, just for respect you know, what if I have other plans, my plans come first because I pay them to work for me.
How much do I pay them? The minimum wage, look I am well within the Law, I give them the whole lot that has been established to be the 'right pay' for the unskilled, uneducated job they do for me and my family.
No one wants to screw with the Law, I give them an accommodation and food, I even let them eat what we eat -sometimes- and for the rest they have an average 14 hours a day job, after dinner and cleaning up they are free to do whatever they want, in their room, we gave them their own TV you know. No, no air con, who do you think I am, King Midas? Anyway summer lasts only a few months and most of the day they spend it in aircon rooms, ours, the night is short, we bought them fans, they can't complain, you know the joke 'if there is air con in the maid room, you know the boss is screwing her ?', they have a way above average life with us, some people make them sleep on floors, some people beat them. Please don't come up with the story of their families back at home, without me they wouldn't be able to even feed their families, what would be the point of spending time with them if you can't feed them plus with the money they make here they feed 10 people where they come from.
You know how much money that is? They earn more than a doctor in their country. Yes, they live here though, so what? You are looking at this all wrong, we provide for them, food and accommodation fit for a.. well, fit for a maid of a certain experience, yes they have 1 day off a week but they wouldn't know where to go anyway if they had more, ask them, don't trust me, they will tell you, they love to work anytime, they just think about workingworkingworking, they have nothing else in their little heads.
For example, when I ring the intercom at midnight for my cup of tea, they are glad I did, it's one of those little habits of ours, no, you are just assuming they may be in bed sleeping, they wait for my call, if I shouldn't call them for my cup of tea they would worry, sometime I call even when I don't want my cup of tea, I don't want them to worry, I care about them and their feelings. What? You don't know what you are talking about, if I fired them they wouldn't know where to go, they would lose their right of abode which is dependent on ME or the right to anything else they enjoy because I am their Employer, I am the One that has all the Rights and they gain them through working for me, without me they would be lost, poor and with no future.
Having Maids is not like Slavery, it's just a job with free accommodation and benefits such as....well health care, for one, when they are sick I take them to the doctor and they are free to leave when they want AND return to their country, because if they should leave they have a little time to find another employer then they must leave, but I will make sure to write such a bad reference letter they will never find a job in the whole South East Asia. They can leave anytime to go back to their life of misery in their country, that's how free they are.
We did not abolish Slavery, we just created a world where Slavery has another name: Debt, Poverty, Famine, we created the perfect conditions to be able to enslave some to do what Slaves used to do - just about anything to stay Alive.
Having a full time maid is great, I know from experience, I had one, great help, I spent part of my life experiencing what it means to have a Life-Double and a Double Life,my Life double did all the chores and anything I did not want to do, I did all the fun stuff at night and in the weekends and had the cool job during the day. I experienced myself sometime like I was now a 48 hrs a day person, someone else was living the 24 hrs a day I didn't enjoy and I kept for myself the 24 hrs I did enjoy, I could, Money gave me that power. My maid ironed my ballerina's laces, because I like tidy things and she loved to please me, it was like to be married to a loving woman, it was GREAT.
I went back to taking care of myself and my home, not on principle to start with, just because my life changed and I could no longer support my previous lifestyle nor I had reasons to do so. I have time now, I still would love to have people keeping my home spotless clean and my clothes in good order and the fridge full., I would still love to be 'married' to a loving caring woman, who wouldn't? It was convenient and it worked just fine for me, incidentally it worked fine for my maid too, she was allowed to live out, we gave her a way above minimum wage salary and she had plenty of freedom to go out and work for others too, she never made as much money as when she worked for me and my ex husband. Still, if she was born in a system of support that gave her and her family enough to live from Birth to Death we would never have crossed paths, she would have stayed happily in the Philippines, because there would have been no reason for her to go anywhere else -just to 'make a living'.
Yet, there are situations that will have t change in this world despite our preferences for a life that works just for us to move to a Life that works for All, a World that works for All.
Keeping the world in such conditions of Poverty and Famine, Need and Debt it's an Act of Malevolence that cannot be justified by our preferences and desires to be served and revered.
I got to live the best of life and someone else the worse of it, it's just wrong, my life time and my leisure time doubled because someone else's halved, quartered in fact, and in some cases reduced to nothing, I got to live the good life and left my, self defined, unpleasant tasks of taking care of myself and my environment to someone else, I could do that because where I lived the Law -written by those with Money- said I could pay this person 1 twentieth of my then wage -that's how much less than me she was worth according to the social- that- became- legal system (we know we can't consider the Law our Moral Compass in any way whatsoever if the Judicial system has been set up, designed and written by those with Money to protect those that own the whole World Game), it was affordable, convenient and legal.
So was Slavery -and yet that did not make it right.
To change the world and make it work Equally for all, we will have to Change what we see as commodities we are entitled to, due to our Money Power, owning the lives of others in the palm of our hands IS NOT RIGHT, whatever excuses we come up with. The story I wrote above was actual real bits and pieces of conversations that I either had first hand or heard when I used to live in South East Asia, where the relationships between Employer and Maid is NO different than the relationship between Master and Slave, we just upgraded our vocabulary to make it politically correct - Not correct, it means twisted in such ways that we gave apparent rational life to arguments that were once only available and to Slave Owners, the substance has not changed, We have not changed.
The truth of the world we live is clear beyond any change of costumes, background or storytelling, if we believed Slavery to be wrong in any way, shape or form 200 years ago, we will have to face that Slavery is still wrong, changing its name is not enough, having people in this world who have No Choices but those we conveniently leave for them to live out is Slavery, we managed to make the chains no so obvious but we are still bound to the beliefs that Not All Lives have the Same Worth.
If you are born in a poor disadvantaged country, 'Money buys Freedom' not only Ours, the ones with Money, it buys the Freedom of others to, it buys out their entitlement to a Life of Dignity and Equal Choices for themselves and their children, it buys their right to a Life with No fear for the Future and how they are going to make it when their life is not guaranteed but bought, from those that have the Money to own others and their lives.
In Hong Kong there are over 300000 maids who do not benefit from the right to residenceship no matter how long they lived there, they have no access to free health care, they can't live by themselves and their free time can be managed by their Employers because the Law says 'their maids are their responsibility', they can be fed or not, they can be sexually abused or beaten for some time before they muster up the courage to go and report what they have gone through, many blame themselves and keep quiet in fear of losing their jobs/livelihood, their right to Life.
In a city of excess luxury they earn just less than 400 euro per month, when the government issued a levy on Filipino maids in 2002 -equivalent to 1/7 of their salary's worth at the time- to ease the problems of their Employers during 'recession times', people who had salaries anywhere from 10 times what their maids earned to 1000 times, welcomed the government move as sound.
When they get sick, they are for the most part sent home to die, here is an article on this topic
Help to the very end
Reyes, who started in 2007 the support group Buhay Ka for cancer
victims and survivors among the thousands of Filipino domestic helpers
in Hong Kong, said “more than 10 Filipino domestic helpers have come
home to die” from the former British colony in recent years.
“They’re lucky if their employer supports them—we’ve had cases of
Hong Kong employers helping until the very end—but others terminate
their domestic helpers even if it’s still Stage 1 or Stage 2 cancer,
which is still curable,” Reyes said.
Treatment is finished
Filipino domestic helpers in Hong Kong who are stricken with
cancer try to hold on to their jobs especially since the city has a
socialized health care system, and medical treatment, like chemotherapy,
is relatively cheaper there compared to that in Manila.
“Ampaguey fought so hard to stay in Hong Kong for her cancer
treatment but her employer terminated her. She is now very weak,” Reyes
said.
“She was able to stay longer in Hong Kong because our consulate
asked the authorities there to allow her to continue with her treatment.
But now that that’s finished, she’s coming home to an uncertain
future,” he said.
Why is this not Slavery or better than? Isn't this what was possible to do with slaves, strip them of all their rights or even better, don't give them any at all, have them tied to their Masters for their livelihood and their right to exist, and then, cherry on the cake, have them wash and iron our clothes for the Charity Ball, where we'll go and display How Good We Are to those that are as Good as We Are, Slave Owners not with a conscience but a pile of fucking good excuses about why we have the right to do what we do.
We'll never be able to have our cake and eat it too, time to wake up to this truth, if our cake is the only one available for all and we plan to not share it and leave only the crumbles for others to enjoy, which is what we are doing at the moment by taking the top layers of everything, the best lives, the best experiences, the best of everything for ourselves alone, without seeing that if we corrected all the layers of this cake to share, no one would have to endure shitty lives anymore, and yes that would mean to give up some unjust privileges, given to us just by the luck of where we were born, which is not in any way enough to define who we are, unless we accept to be defined by what we own and possess, ending up Possessed by our Possessions to the point of giving up Common Sense and what we know is right, because if it is not Right for All, not working for All, it's just Not Right.
We are the ones that will have to define who we are, Humanity or Abusers of Life and this was always The Only Choice we had to make, Life for All or Self Interest as Good Living for myself alone? Life for All or the delusion of Life just for Me?
We didn't do too well so far, we can see how many people are living dis-grace-full lives every day so we can have the life of our Dreams, what if we woke up and changed the course of this World to steer it back to Equality and a world that works for all, wouldn't that be the end of Damn-Nation, the place where we confine some into Dis-Grace and Con-Damn them to lives we would never want to live.
We are rewriting a system for Equality and Justice for All, this Planet is the Home of All of us, no one is more or less entitled to Life than another, nor to privileges that make the life of another a Living Hell.
Can you keep your Maid in a system of Equality? NO
Not even if they are happy with you? NO.
No, because they are 'happy' as the result of the limited abusive choices they have access to, you are just the lesser of the many Evils FOR NOW, but when the tables will turn and they'll have access to the choices and options You have access to, will they choose You or life with their Family?
Will they choose to get up from bed and make your cup of tea or iron your Charity Ball Clothes or to see their grandchildren grow up? Freaking tough choices as you can see, hard to imagine where the preferences of Free people would lean...
Life will exist for All only when we give it Equally to All as We Would like it, so we stop asking others to do things we wouldn't want to do ourselves, we drop all excuses as to why a worthless piece of paper entitles us to do so, instead we Stand, united as One, to create a world where the Life choices available to All are All Good; that will mean using technology and advancing inventions that we now don't care for because we have humans to do the lousy jobs, and it will mean each one will make themselves self responsible for their own living to allow the World to become a Self Responsible World, as the Image and Likeness of Who we Are, and this farce of Existence of Have and Have Nots will end, as All will Have. and in that giving Life to Each other as Creators of Life and not of Abuse, All will have Life -as Life, Equal and One.
Join us, the Change is Here, Be A Part of It.
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