“…they call this the "Ownership Society," but what it really means is that you're on your own. Out of work? Tough luck, you're on your own. No health care? The market will fix it. You're on your own. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, even if you don't have boots. You are on your own.
Sen. Barack Obama
Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speech, 2008 National Democratic Convention.
Who own us? Is a question tangled up with the idea of freedom. Yet, freedom is one of those concepts that we all think that we understand but in reality have no idea what it is or how to achieve it. If we consider that most of the human race been owned by some else at all times, one must wonder if we are any different than our forefathers in not been free.
Through the history of the human race there seems to be some kind of ownership. Someone always owns someone else. No one ever reads Proudhon, ownership is a crime. The Egyptians owned the Jews, the feudal lord owned peasant, god owns the religious and the lending companies own the students. The examples are interminable. But in the past that ownership allowed for the greatness of human kind. Without the slaves in Greece could the philosophers dwell in their idyllic ideas? Or could the roman emperors build an empire without owning slaves?
Now-a-days there is a whole system to keep you from achieving true freedom. Our parents tell us what to do, the church tells us what to believe, and the educational systems tell us what to learn. And there are no real alternatives. At least no practical and pragmatic ones, as graduate students we must summit, we must surrender our freedom to Feyerabend watchdogs of the profession. Maybe Dave Chappelle was right when he said, “I’m the first freeman in my family, I didn’t went to college”. Sadly we are not Thoreau or Birce…
As the recipients of a great legacy of ownership we are perpetuating the system that has enslaved us. The profession needs slaves. We, as psychologist, are just one more of the many mechanisms used to perpetuate the ownership. With a DSM in one hand and theories on the other we would tag and limit the capacity of people. We are going to do unto others as it was done unto us. Besides, the resentment that we feel toward the free, when we had to relinquish our freedom, is too much to bear. We are a new form of Kapos, the slaves that help enslave the rest…
