Freedom

I'm not proud but I'm not going to hide it either. I'm like everyone else: I live in a culture that relies on slavery. I try to minimize my contribution to it. I see publicizing the situation as helping change it. Each time you bought a cell phone, laptop, or electric vehicle, you bought goods almost certainly produced using slavery, possibly without realizing it. I'd like to help change our culture to end such practices. If you haven't listened to my podcast episode with Siddharth Kara or read his book Cobalt Red, I can't recommend them enough. If you find anything I write here offensive, read Cobalt Red before judging. If you find I wrote something wrong in this post, let me know. Here are…

The more history and anthropology I learn, the more I learn the alternative to continuing our cultural path is not the Stone Age or a Mad Max apocalypse. For a good 250,000 years of human existence, our ancestors enjoyed more freedom and equality than we do. That's why indigenous cultures still exist. When they look at ours, they see our airplanes and medicine but also our lack of freedom and equality compared to theirs and don't want to give it up. My upcoming book describes why we've convinced ourselves that their cultures are disasters---briefly, it helps us rationalize and justify what our culture does to them, including taking their land, enslaving them, genocide, and so on. You might ask: if people prefer their culture, why…

Keep in mind that nine million people have died per year from breathing polluted air since 2015, a number it took the Atlantic Slave Trade centuries to reach, and we can expect it to increase dramatically. Keep in mind the United States has regions called Cancer Alley and Sacrifice Zones. There are big differences between enslaving someone and polluting their air, but what of the underlying systems, which are more abstract concepts? I ask as an open-ended question. I can think of some differences, but what do you think: What's wrong with a system of slavery that isn't also wrong with a system of polluting? One difference: any single act of enslaving someone violates their rights, freedom, and dignity. On the other hand, how much…

Earlier this year I posted The Ruling Race: Quotes on those who improve their lives on the suffering of others, corrupting them, with quotes from podcast guest James Oakes’s book The Ruling Race, which describes the demographics, beliefs, and views of slaveholders in the U.S. south. They are no more or less human than you. That book reveals how being on the dominant side of a dominance hierarchy corrupts one’s values. Today I'm posting quotes from another book on how Southern slaveholders thought of their culture. It's fascinating to see how people rationalize and justify what we consider horrible and evil, but they considered good, right, and normal. Not so fast, actually. You can see how they considered what they did wrong and knew others…

I've been learning more about colonialism lately, as regular readers could probably tell from my recently reading Heart of Darkness, King Leopold's Ghost, and Cobalt Red, among others. I used to think colonialism was something from the past, that we outgrew. Do you consider imposing on other people's life, liberty, and property wrong? Do you find past colonialist behavior wrong and believe colonialism is mostly in the past? Do you consider yourself not a colonialist? If so, do you buy fossil fuels extracted not from your own property? Do you buy products built with minerals not from your own property? So far you may say, "sure, but there's a division of labor. I contribute my part to global trade, others contribute theirs, I get things…

I hadn't thought about it in a while, but I haven't received an electric bill since July, when I posted My last electric bill? after my first bill after closing my account. Partly I'd expect not received one because that's what happens when you close your account. Partly it didn't feel real to close it. I know I had disconnected the circuit so I hadn't drawn power in over a year, but who doesn't have an account with the electric company?? Me, it seems. I had forgotten when that last bill was. Is it coincidence that it was July 6, three months ago to the day? Last year the summer was hardest since I didn't know how to keep food fresh in the heat and…