Change yourself out of love. How we are deceived: slavery and modern man Man is a slave to his own

A slave who is satisfied with his position is doubly a slave, because not only his body is in slavery, but also his soul. (E. Burke)

Man is a slave because freedom is difficult and slavery is easy. (N. Berdyaev)

Slavery can degrade people to the point of loving it. (L. Vauvenargues)

Slaves always manage to have their own slave. (Ethel Lilian Voynich)

He who fears others is a slave, although he does not notice it. (Antisthenes)

Slaves and tyrants fear each other. (E. Beauchaine)

The only way to make a people virtuous is to give them freedom; slavery gives rise to all vices, true freedom purifies the soul. (P. Buast)

Only the slave restores the fallen crown. (D. Gibran)

Voluntary slaves produce more tyrants than tyrants produce slaves. (O. Mirabeau)

Violence created the first slaves, cowardice perpetuated them. (J.J. Rousseau)

There is no slavery more shameful than voluntary slavery. (Seneca)

And as long as people feel like they are only a part, not noticing the whole, they will give themselves into complete slavery.

Anyone who is not afraid to look death in the face cannot be a slave. He who is afraid cannot be a warrior. (Olga Brileva)

The slave owner is himself a slave, worse than the helots! (Ivan Efremov)

Is this really our miserable destiny: To be slaves to our lustful bodies? After all, not a single one living in the world has yet. He was unable to quench his desires. (Omar Khayyam)

The government spits on us, don’t talk about politics and religion - all this is enemy propaganda! Wars, disasters, murders - all this horror! The media puts on a sad face, characterizing this as a great human tragedy, but we know that the media does not pursue the goal of destroying the evil of the world - no! Her task is to convince us to accept this evil, to adapt to living in it! The authorities want us to be passive observers! They left us no chance, except for a rare, absolutely symbolic general vote - choose the doll on the left or the doll on the right! (Author unknown)

Anyone who can be made a slave is not worth freedom. (Maria Semyonova)

Slavery is the greatest of all misfortunes. (Marcus Tullius Cicero)

It is disgusting to be under the yoke - even in the name of freedom. (Karl Marx)

A people who enslaves another people forges their own chains. (Karl Marx)

...There is nothing more terrible, more humiliating, than to be the slave of a slave. (Karl Marx)

Animals have that noble peculiarity that a lion never, out of cowardice, becomes the slave of another lion, and a horse never becomes the slave of another horse. (Michel de Montaigne)

In truth, prostitution is another form of slavery. Based on unhappiness, need, addiction to alcohol or drugs. A woman's dependence on a man. (Janusz Leon Wisniewski, Małgorzata Domagalik)

There is no slavery more hopeless than the slavery of those slaves who consider themselves free from shackles. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

Almost all people are slaves, and this is explained by the same reason that the Spartans explained the humiliation of the Persians: they are unable to pronounce the word “no”... (Nicholas Chamfort)

The slave dreams not of freedom, but of his own slaves. (Boris Krutier)

In a totalitarian state, an all-powerful cohort of political bosses and an army of administrators subordinate to them will rule over a population consisting of slaves who do not need to be forced, because they love their slavery. (Aldous Huxley)

So, comrades, how does our life work? Let's face it. Poverty, overwork, untimely death - this is our lot. We are born, we receive just enough food so as not to die of hunger, and the draft animals are also exhausted with work until all the juices are squeezed out of them, and when we are no longer good for anything, we are killed with monstrous cruelty. There is no animal in England that would not say goodbye to leisure and joy of life as soon as it turns one year old. There is no animal in England that has not been enslaved. (George Orwell.)

Only a person who has overcome the slave within himself will know freedom. (Henry Miller)

This means that all the knowledge that scientists with respectable diplomas and impressive titles gave him, like priceless treasures, was just a prison. He humbly thanked him every time they extended his leash a little, which remained a leash. We can live without a leash. (Bernard Werber)

Power over oneself is the most supreme authority, enslavement to one’s passions is the most terrible slavery. (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)

- This is how freedom dies - to thunderous applause... (Padmé Amidala, Star Wars)

Anyone who can be happy alone is a real person. If your happiness depends on others, then you are a slave, you are not free, you are in bondage. (Chandra Mohan Rajneesh)

You see, as soon as slavery is legalized somewhere, the lower rungs of the social ladder become terribly slippery... It's worth starting to measure human life money, and it turns out that this price is capable of decreasing penny by penny until there is nothing left at all. (Robin Hobb)

Better freedom in hell than slavery in heaven. (Anatole France)

People are rushing about, trying not to be late for work, many are chattering on their mobile phones as they go, gradually drawing their sleep-deprived brains into the morning bustle of the city. ( Cell phones Currently, in addition to everything else, they also serve as an additional alarm clock. If the first one wakes you up for work, then the second one tells you that it has already begun.) Sometimes my imagination completes the slightly hunched figures with bales on their backs, turning them into serf slaves, daily paying their masters taxes in the form of their own health, feelings and emotions. The stupidest and most terrible thing about this is that they do all this of their own free will, in the absence of any enslaving serfdom. (Sergey Minaev)

Slavery is a prison of the soul. (Publius)

Habit also reconciles with slavery. (Pythagoras of Samos)

People themselves hold on to their slave share. (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)

It is wonderful to die - it is shameful to be a slave. (Publius Sirus)

Emancipation from slavery is a law of nations. (Justinian I)

God did not create slavery, but gave man freedom. (John Chrysostom)

Slavery degrades a person to the point that he begins to love his chains. (Luc de Clapier de Vauvenargues)

The greatest slavery is to consider yourself free without having freedom. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

There is nothing more slavish than luxury and bliss, and nothing more royal than labor. (Alexander the Great)

Woe to the people if slavery could not humiliate them; such a people were created to be slaves. (Peter Yakovlevich Chaadaev)

Power over oneself is the highest power; Enslavement to one's passions is the most terrible slavery. (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)

You serve me slavishly, and then complain that I am not interested in you: who would be interested in a slave? (George Bernard Shaw)

Every man born into slavery is born into slavery; nothing could be truer than this. In chains, slaves lose everything, even the desire to be freed from them. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)

Debt is the beginning of slavery, even worse than slavery, because the creditor is more inexorable than the slave owner: he owns not only your body, but also your dignity and can, on occasion, inflict grave insults on him. (Victor Marie Hugo)

Since people began to live together, freedom disappeared and slavery arose, for every law, limiting and narrowing the rights of one in favor of all, thereby encroaches on the freedom of an individual. (Raffaello Giovagnoli)

Servants who do not have a master do not become free people because of this - lackeyness is in their soul. (Heine Heinrich)

To become a free man,... You need to squeeze the slave out of yourself drop by drop. (Chekhov Anton Pavlovich)

He who by nature belongs not to himself, but to another, and at the same time is still a man, is a slave. (Aristotle)

The dream of slaves: a market where you can buy yourself a master. (Stanislav Jerzy Lec)

6. Man’s slavery to himself and the seduction of individualism

The last truth about the slavery of man is that man is a slave to himself. He falls into slavery to the object world, but this is slavery to his own exteriorizations. Man is enslaved to various kinds of idols, but these are idols created by him. A person is always a slave to what is, as it were, outside him, what is alienated from him, but the source of slavery is internal. The struggle between freedom and slavery plays out in the external, objectified, exteriorized world. But from an existential point of view, this is an internal spiritual struggle. This follows from the fact that man is a microcosm. In the universal, contained in the individual, there is a struggle between freedom and slavery, and this struggle is projected in the objective world. Man’s slavery lies not only in the fact that an external force enslaves him, but even deeper, in the fact that he agrees to be a slave, that he slavishly accepts the action of the force that enslaves him. Slavery is characterized as social status people in the objective world. So, for example, in a totalitarian state all people are slaves. But this is not the final truth of the phenomenology of slavery. It has already been said that slavery is, first of all, a structure of consciousness and a certain kind of objective structure of consciousness. “Consciousness” determines “being,” and only in a secondary process does “consciousness” fall into slavery to “being.” Slave society is a product of human internal slavery. A person lives in the grip of an illusion that is so strong that it appears to be normal consciousness. This illusion is expressed in the ordinary consciousness that man is in slavery to external force, while he is in slavery to himself. The illusion of consciousness is different from the one exposed by Marx and Freud. A person slavishly determines his attitude towards the “not-I”, first of all, because he slavishly determines his attitude towards the “I”. This does not at all entail that slave social philosophy, according to which a person must endure external social slavery and only free himself internally. This is a completely false understanding of the relationship between “internal” and “external”. Internal liberation certainly requires external liberation, the destruction of slavish dependence on social tyranny. A free person cannot tolerate social slavery, but he remains free in spirit even if he is unable to defeat external, social slavery. This is a struggle that can be very difficult and lengthy. Freedom presupposes overcoming resistance.

Egocentrism is the original sin of man, a violation of the true relationship between “I” and his other, God, the world with people, between the individual and the universe. Egocentrism is an illusory, perverted universalism. It gives a false perspective on the world and on every reality in the world, there is a loss of the ability to truly perceive realities. The egocentric is in the power of objectification, which he wants to turn into an instrument of self-affirmation, and this is the most dependent creature, in eternal slavery. The greatest secret is hidden here human existence. Man is a slave of the external world around him, because he is a slave of himself, of his egocentrism. A person slavishly submits to external slavery emanating from an object, precisely because he egocentrically asserts himself. Egocentric people are usually conformists. He who is a slave to himself loses himself. Slavery is the opposite of personality, but egocentrism is the disintegration of personality. Man's slavery to himself is not only slavery to his lower, animal nature. This is a gross form of egocentrism. A person can also be a slave to his sublime nature, and this is much more important and troubling. A person is a slave to his refined “I”, which is very far removed from the “I” of the animal, he is a slave to his higher ideas, higher feelings, your talents. A person may not notice at all, may not be aware that he is turning the highest values ​​into an instrument of egocentric self-affirmation. Fanaticism is precisely this kind of egocentric self-affirmation. Books on the spiritual life tell us that humility can turn into the greatest pride. There is nothing more hopeless than the pride of the humble. The type of Pharisee is a type of person whose devotion to the law of goodness and purity, to a sublime idea has turned into egocentric self-affirmation and complacency. Even holiness can turn into a form of egocentrism and self-assertion and become false holiness. Exalted ideal egocentrism is always idolatry and a false attitude towards ideas, replacing the attitude towards the living God. All forms of egocentrism, from the lowest to the most sublime, always mean slavery of man, slavery of man to himself, and through this slavery of the surrounding world. The egocentric is a being enslaved and enslaving. There is an enslaving dialectic of ideas in human existence; this is an existential dialectic, not a logical one. There is nothing scarier than a man, obsessed with false ideas and self-affirming on the basis of these ideas, is a tyrant of himself and other people. This tyranny of ideas can become the basis of state and social order. Religious, national, social ideas can play such a role as enslavers, equally reactionary and revolutionary ideas. In a strange way, ideas come to the service of egocentric instincts, and egocentric instincts are given to the service of ideas that trample a person. And slavery, internal and external, always triumphs. The egocentric always falls into the power of objectification. An egocentric person who views the world as his means is always thrown into the outside world and depends on it. But most often, man’s slavery to himself takes the form of the seduction of individualism.

Individualism is a complex phenomenon that cannot be simply assessed. Individualism can have both positive and negative meaning. Individualism is often called personalism due to terminological inaccuracy. A person is called an individualist by character or because he is independent, original, free in his judgments, does not mix with environment and rises above it, or because he is isolated in himself, incapable of communication, despises people, self-centered. But in the strict sense of the word, individualism comes from the word “individual”, not “person”. Affirmation of the supreme value of the individual, protection of his freedom and right to realize life's opportunities, his desire for completeness is not individualism. Enough has been said about the difference between the individual and the personality. Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt” reveals the brilliant existential dialectic of individualism. Ibsen poses the problem of what does it mean to be oneself, to be true to oneself? Peer Gynt wanted to be himself, to be an original individual, and he completely lost and ruined his personality. He was precisely a slave to himself. The aestheticizing individualism of the cultural elite, which is revealed in the modern novel, is the disintegration of personality, the disintegration of the integral personality into broken states and the slavery of man to these broken states. Personality is internal integrity and unity, mastery of oneself, victory over slavery. The disintegration of personality is a disintegration into separate self-affirming intellectual, emotional, sensual elements. The human heart center is decomposing. Only the spiritual principle maintains the unity of mental life and creates personality. A person falls into the most diverse forms of slavery, when he can oppose the enslaving force only torn elements, and not to a whole personality. The internal source of human slavery is associated with the autonomy of the torn parts of a person, with the loss of the internal center. A person torn into pieces easily succumbs to the affect of fear, and fear is what most of all keeps a person in slavery. Fear is overcome by a holistic, centralized personality, an intense experience of the dignity of the individual; it cannot be overcome by the intellectual, emotional, sensual elements of a person. Personality is a whole, but the objectified world opposing it is partial. But only an integral personality, an image of a higher being, can recognize oneself as a whole, opposing the objectified world on all sides. Man’s slavery to himself, which makes him a slave to the “not-I,” always means tornness and fragmentation. Any obsession, whether with a low passion or a high idea, means the loss of a person’s spiritual center. The old atomistic theory of mental life, which derives the unity of the mental process from a special kind of mental chemistry, is false. The unity of the mental process is relative and easily overturned. The active spiritual principle synthesizes and leads to unity of the soul process. This is the development of personality. Of central importance is not the idea of ​​the soul, but the idea of ​​a whole person, embracing the spiritual, mental and physical principles. A tense vital process can destroy the personality. The will to power is dangerous not only for those at whom it is directed, but also for the subject of this will itself; it acts destructively and enslaves the person who has allowed himself to be possessed by the will to power. For Nietzsche, truth is created by a vital process, the will to power. But this is the most anti-personalistic point of view. The will to power makes it impossible to know the truth. Truth does not provide any services to those striving for power, that is, for enslavement. In the will to power, centrifugal forces act in man, and the inability to control oneself and resist the power of the objective world is revealed. Slavery to oneself and slavery to the objective world are one and the same slavery. The desire for dominance, for power, for success, for glory, for the enjoyment of life is always slavery, a slave attitude towards oneself and a slave attitude towards the world, which has become an object of desire and lust. The lust for power is a slave instinct.

One of human illusions there is confidence that individualism is the opposition of the individual person and his freedom to the surrounding world, which always seeks to rape him. In reality, individualism is objectification and is associated with the exteriorization of human existence. It is very hidden and not immediately visible. The individual is part of society, part of the race, part of the world. Individualism is the isolation of a part from the whole or the revolt of a part against the whole. But to be a part of any whole, even if it rebels against this whole, means to already be exteriorized. Only in the world of objectification, that is, in the world of alienation, impersonality and determinism, does that relationship of part and whole exist that is found in individualism. The individualist isolates himself and asserts himself in relation to the universe; he perceives the universe exclusively as violence against him. In a certain sense, individualism is the reverse side of collectivism. The refined individualism of modern times, which, however, became very old, individualism coming from Petrarch and the Renaissance, was an escape from the world and society to oneself, to one’s own soul, into lyrics, poetry, music. The mental life of a person was greatly enriched, but processes of personality dissociation were also being prepared. Personalism means something completely different. Personality includes the universe, but this inclusion of the universe occurs not in terms of objectivity, but in terms of subjectivity, i.e. existentiality. The personality recognizes itself as rooted in the kingdom of freedom, that is, in the kingdom of the spirit, and from there it draws its strength for struggle and activity. This is what it means to be an individual, to be free. The individualist, in essence, is rooted in the objectified world, social and natural, and with this rootedness he wants to isolate himself and oppose himself to the world to which he belongs. An individualist is, in essence, a socialized person, but he experiences this socialization as violence, suffers from it, isolates himself and powerlessly rebels. This is the paradox of individualism. For example, false individualism is found in a liberal social order. In this system, which was in fact a capitalist system, the individual was crushed by the play of economic forces and interests, he was crushed himself and crushed others. Personalism has a communitarian tendency and wants to establish fraternal relations between people. Individualism is in social life establishes wolf relations between people. It's great that the greats creative people in essence they have never been individualists. They were lonely and unrecognized, in acute conflict with the environment, with established collective opinions and judgments. But they were always aware of their calling to serve; they had a universal mission. There is nothing more false than the consciousness of one's gift, one's genius, as a privilege and as a justification for individualistic isolation. There are two different types loneliness - loneliness creative personality, experiencing the conflict of internal universalism with objectified universalism, and the loneliness of the individualist, who opposes this objectified universalism, to which he, in essence, belongs, with his emptiness and powerlessness. There is the loneliness of inner fullness and the loneliness of inner emptiness. There is the loneliness of heroism and the loneliness of defeat, loneliness as strength and loneliness as powerlessness. Loneliness, which finds only passive aesthetic consolation, usually belongs to the second type. Leo Tolstoy felt very lonely, lonely even among his followers, but he belonged to the first type. All prophetic loneliness belongs to the first type. It is striking that the loneliness and alienation characteristic of the individualist usually lead to submission to false communities. An individualist very easily becomes a conformist and submits to an alien world, to which he cannot oppose anything. Examples of this are given in revolutions and counter-revolutions, in totalitarian states. The individualist is a slave to himself, he is seduced by slavery to his own “I”, and therefore he cannot resist the slavery that comes from the “not-I”. Personality is liberation from both the slavery of the “I” and the slavery of the “not-I”. A person is always a slave of the “not-I” through the “I”, through the state in which the “I” is. The enslaving force of the object world can make a person a martyr, but cannot make him a conformist. Conformism, which is a form of slavery, always takes advantage of one or another temptations and instincts of a person, one or another enslavement to one’s own “I”.

Jung sets two psychological type– interverted, facing inwards, and exterverted, facing outwards. This distinction is relative and conditional, like all classifications. In fact, the same person can have both interverted and extroverted. But now I am interested in another question. To what extent can intervertedness mean egocentrism, and extrovertedness mean alienation and exteriorization? Perverted, i.e., having lost personality, intervertedness is egocentrism, and perverted extrovertedness is alienation and exteriorization. But interversion in itself can mean going deeper into oneself, into what is revealed in the depths spiritual world, how extroversion can mean creative activity aimed at the world and people. Extroversion can also mean throwing human existence outward and means objectification. This objectification is created by a certain orientation of the subject. It is remarkable that human slavery can equally be the result of the fact that a person is exclusively absorbed in his “I” and is focused on his states, not noticing the world and people, and the fact that a person is thrown exclusively outside, into the objectivity of the world and loses consciousness of his “I” . Both are the result of a gap between the subjective and the objective. The “objective” either completely absorbs and enslaves human subjectivity, or causes repulsion and disgust, isolating and enclosing human subjectivity. But such alienation, the exteriorization of the object in relation to the subject, is what I call objectification. Absorbed exclusively by its “I,” the subject is a slave, just as the slave is a subject thrown entirely into the object. In both cases, the personality is decomposing or has not yet been formed. In the primary stages of civilization, the ejection of the subject into the object predominates, in social group, on Wednesday, in the clan, at the heights of civilizations, the subject’s preoccupation with his “I” prevails. But at the heights of civilization there is also a return to the primitive horde. A free personality is a rare flower of world life. The vast majority of people do not consist of personalities; the personality of this majority is either still in potency or is already decaying. Individualism does not mean at all that the personality rises, or it means this only due to the imprecise use of words. Individualism is a naturalistic philosophy, while personalism is a philosophy of spirit. Liberation of a person from slavery to the world, from enslavement by external forces, is liberation from slavery to himself, to the enslaving forces of his “I”, i.e. from egocentrism. A person must at once be spiritually interverted, internalized and extroverted, reaching out to the world and people in creative activity.