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< | Slave Mentality: Where Choice is Key, but Choices can Shackle | >
> | Slave Mentality: Where Choice is Key, but Choices are Shackles | | | -- By TomaLivshiz - 03 May 2012 | | | Last year, I spent Passover visiting a friend in Israel who lived in an urban commune. Most of the Jewish world celebrates Passover by reciting the narrative of the exodus of the Jewish people from bondage in Egypt, but the group with whom I was sharing the holiday took a different angle. At their seder, this commune read a portion of a famous Midrash (a rabbinic commentary on the text of the Torah) which focused on the untold story of Passover: the story of how most of the Hebrew nation—eighty percent—decided to stay in Egypt as slaves. The seder organizers wanted us to consider what seems like a confounding question: why would so many people choose to stay in slavery? | |
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< | At first, the idea seems preposterous—is there anything worse than slavery? But I found at least one explanation to be distressingly familiar. From the perspectives of the Hebrew slaves, stability and predictability in their lives in bondage was preferable to the risks and unforeseeable challenges of total freedom. One defining characteristic of slavery is the lack of autonomy. It is unsurprising, then, that people who have been in bondage their whole lives might be terrified at the prospect of boundless choice. People might prefer to be unhappy, to suffer, to allow themselves to be denigrated when the other option is carving a new path, through incremental steps and deliberate decision-making. Trailblazing may not seem like a choice at all. What if the new path leads somewhere worse than Egypt? | >
> | At first, the idea seems preposterous—is there anything worse than slavery? But I found at least one explanation to be distressingly familiar. From the perspectives of the Hebrew slaves, the stability and predictability of bondage was preferable to the risks and unforeseeable challenges of total freedom. One defining characteristic of slavery is the lack of autonomy. It is unsurprising, then, that people who have been in bondage their whole lives might be terrified at the prospect of boundless choice. People might prefer to be unhappy, to suffer, or to allow themselves to be denigrated when the other option is carving a new path, through incremental steps and deliberate decision-making. Trailblazing may not seem like a choice at all. What if the new path leads somewhere worse than Egypt? | | | If You Were Shown the Path out of Slavery, Would You Take it?
Over the last twelve months, the original question—why do people choose to stay in slavery—has fermented in my mind and, in relation to the trajectory we began in August, has become truly pungent. I do not mean to say that I, or we, are slaves to the school, the system, or the firms; that would be too dramatic. What I mean to say is that I too am paralyzed by the thought that “I have no real choice” when in reality, it may be the inundation of choice that frightens me. My guess is that many of us feel bound to the well-worn path of the canning factory out of fear that leaping out of the assembly line might leave us worse off than we will be on the inside of a can. | |
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< | Speaking for myself, I admit that I am overwhelmed by the prospect of stepping off the pre-drawn path. Were I to do so, instead of making the singular resolution to stay on the conveyor belt, I would have a whole lifetime of decisions, and worse still, a lifetime of mistakes. Thoughts of being an entrepreneur, finding other ways of covering my nut, finding clients, are inspiring in the classroom, but quickly seem audacious and quixotic once I step out. And while a fate like that of the narrator in Bartleby--splitting our souls until we descend into insanity--is far from appealing, like the narrator I feel the urge to grasp at a semblance of safety rather than crafting my own route out of debt and into the future. | >
> | Speaking for myself, I admit that I am overwhelmed by the prospect of stepping off the pre-drawn path. Were I to do so, instead of making the singular resolution to stay on the conveyor belt, I would have a whole lifetime of decisions, and worse still, a lifetime of mistakes. Thoughts of being an entrepreneur, finding other ways of covering my nut, finding clients, are inspiring in the classroom, but quickly seem audacious and quixotic once I step out. And while a fate like that of the narrator in Bartleby--splitting my soul until I descend into insanity--is far from appealing, like the narrator I feel the urge to grasp at a semblance of safety rather than crafting my own route out of debt and into the future. | | | Being Your Own Deliverer |
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