Slavery: Thoughts

Slavery still exists.

That's the buzz phrase now, something I've been told time and time again by people who should know that I know.

But its true too. Slavery is around, and humans belong to other humans. They're being kept on the edge of a primitive existence doling out prostituted sex and exploited manual labour.

The key to slavery across the scope of history is the same: the free will of one person is subdued through force by another human. Someone no longer can choose for themselves, while the one who chooses wields a whip or chains or access to food or family or sleep.

An estimated 27 million slaves are scattered across the globe today, hidden in the shadows of even the most modern and advanced countries. They're trapped and hopeless.

I personally think its abysmal that the human race could come so far only to have such a grandiose sin uneradicated in its lap. But the worlds like that. Look under its carpet today and you'll find the land in the shadows.

As M ranted in  Skyfall:

Well, I suppose I see a different world than you do, and the truth is that what I see frightens me. I'm frightened because our enemies are no longer known to us. They do not exist on a map. They're not nations, they're individuals. And look around you. Who do you fear? Can you see a face, a uniform, a flag? No! Our world is not more transparent now, it's more opaque! It's in the shadows. That's where we must do battle. 

We always ban things. No drugs. No abortions. No alcohol. No slavery. Its like walking into church and seeing all the smiling faces and feeling miserable but smiling yourself. The world thinks its better on its bantering chin, but truly its more broken than ever, creating so many noises and lights and sounds that block out the cries of people hidden in the brothels and fields and factories.

And when we look at who the enemy is, all we have done is force him to go underground. Once we knew the slaveowner. Now, the slaveowner could be any of us. We cover up our sins, our faults, our slaveowners. How, instead, do you change the hearts of a nation so that they understand the darkness in the chains they've attached to their slaves? Because law does nothing. Law is only a bandage, while the true wound festers mightily under a red, white, and blue flag?

We have more slaves in the world today than at any other time in history. How do we engage the shadows?