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Rescued

Let’s imagine a wealthy and powerful person rescued a group of young adults from a life of slavery in a brothel. Let’s imagined this person brings these poor unfortunates to this person’s great estate. On the estate are all that this group of former slaves needs for life. They just need to settle in, grow some food, build a life. What would you imagine would happen to this group of young people?

It would be entirely believable that very quickly this new community would decay into a cruel anarchy. We’d love to imagine that the experience of slavery and deprivation would make the formerly enslaved sex workers noble and high-minded, but unfortunately experience with human beings leads us to imagine that it would not be unlikely for some of the more powerful former slaves would quickly figure out how to advantage themselves at the expense of others.

Rules for Living One the Estate

Let’s imagine the wise liberator understood this about the former slaves and so decided to give them some rules for living on the estate. We would imagine this liberator is entirely within her rights to lay down such rules, given that this is her estate. He would likely select rules that are not too strange to the culture of the former slaves and not too strange to the neighbors of the estate with which the new inhabitants must now get along. The liberator wishes for the conduct of the estate’s new inhabitants to reflect the character of the liberator, to enhance her reputation and to be a positive influence in the community of his neighbors.

If the new inhabitants of the estate were to violate the rules set down by the liberator what would the liberator be entitled to do in response?

We would probably imagine a wise liberator would in subtle and gentle ways encourage following the rules and discourage breaking them. She would probably wish for this new community to set up structures by which they would police themselves, embracing the order freely out of gratitude to the liberator and for their mutual well-being and peace.

The Presence of the Liberator Continue reading →