The Slave Morality Trap
Power & the Sophistication of Self-Preservation
The paradox of the human condition is that it requires emotional nutrition to feed the soul, yet at the same time, we must be realists about how to survive in the physical world. The nature of the human condition seeks security in reconciling and satisfying the needs and objectives required to survive and thrive. Our human condition is based on our biology and experiences: birth, learning and reasoning, joy, pain and suffering, work, morality, conflict and spirituality which underpins our need for security. We seek security from shelter and sustenance, comfort, social status, sexual needs, relationships, wealth, power and influence. All of this is driven by the innate human ability: the Sophistication of Self-preservation (SSP) — the pursuit of security through applied intelligence, which leads to the human objective of achieving wealth security.
We can see technological progress, therefore, as essential to satisfying the human condition, so how we apply our intelligence to those value-creating tasks and how and what we put innovation to becomes critical to our survival and essential for us thriving in the physical world. We are motivated to develop technology to serve our interests, so more technological advancement and complex technology tools serve that purpose. They serve our wealth security and influence our economic system, driving our comfort and affluence. So, profit motivates us, not ‘morality’! This is central to the functionality of the human condition and the natural state of our existence.
Capitalism, therefore, is the sophistication of self-preservation that brings meaning and identity to our lives, so we make our world not in the image of God but in the human condition.
The raison d’être for applied intelligence (ai) is that it provides a disciplined framework for learning and applying complexes of empirical facts through a process of logic. Technological advancement is an extension of the human condition, the purposeful mind, and applying intelligence strategically and tactically aided by technology eases our burdens, shortens the means and prioritizes the ends by lifting those burdens of our interactions with our natural environment to fulfill our needs in the most efficient and effective time possible.
“Technology, as we have seen, promises to bring the forces of nature and culture under control, to liberate us from misery and toil, and to enrich our lives.” — Albert Borgmann.
Religion, however, has risen as an inhibitor to intelligence, a force of distraction away from the realities of life; religion has been used widely for thousands of years for the indoctrination of the masses by the elite as a method of control and hoarding of wealth and opportunity.
So, religion-based morality is a trap, cleverly being used to keep people obedient while the elite don’t abide by the same morality standards they set. In the sense of Christian values, morality is a constructive illusion conveniently used on the willfully ignorant by the elite to further their economic objectives and limit yours.
De Rerum Natura, Latin for On the Nature of Things, is a first-century BC poem (rediscovered in 1417) by the Roman poet and philosopher Titus Lucretius Carus, who explored Epicurean physics through poetic language and metaphors. Lucretius believed that the nature of the universe is made up of ‘atoms and void,’ and the perception of time based on the movements of human purpose and deeds. Lucretius’s work explored the principles of the nature of the mind and soul with explanations of sensation and thought, which are core to the human condition. Lucretius concludes that there is no divine intervention or deities, just atoms and void in space and time, and it is left for you to fill the void with your intellect and actions. In other words, what we do makes our world, not any celestial beings — ideas of heaven and immortality.
Being intelligent means asking more questions than there are answers to. Reality doesn’t budge, our evolving perceptions of it do. Facts can be statements about phenomena but reality exists independent of our beliefs, just conceptualized to help us understand the universe.
When it comes to People of African descent, the Black mindset must evolve from the mental shackles of its traumatic pasts and where Christianity has been manipulative to the Black psyche. Successfully keeping it emotionally trapped, confused, and uncertain in believing in cursory constructed white-supremacy narratives based on historical hierarchical Christianity-based false constructs of reality.
The intelligent and observable mind must recognize new environments, understand how to manage its superpower: the SSP and develop core growth strategies with evolutionary relevance. The romanticization of past suffering must stop. The SSP controls and regulates emotions and focuses our intelligence on satisfying the human condition, applying our intelligence effectively keeps our minds from falling for constructed distractions like DEI. Which promotes paternalistic dependency, creating the fallacy that the ‘morality’ of others will somehow help us achieve our wealth security. It is counterintuitive and counterproductive to believe that those who have achieved some of the core needs and attributes of the human condition will share their wealth, power, and privilege with you, Ill-gotten or not, they will somehow find it in their hearts to do so. Such thinking is severely harmful to Black progress; it is dependency and goes against our natural grain. Nobody is coming to save you. It is up to you to help yourself. Otherwise, you put yourself at a competitive mental disadvantage, mistakenly emboldening a dependency culture that is externally looking works against you.
Slave Morality
Therefore, if we look at the Black Activist Culture (BAC) or Woke if you like; it has badly misinformed Black populations about how the real world works and what is honestly required to advance in it, BAC has been reacting to highly charged emotional events and pursuing activist actions in the same emotional ways. The George Floyd event, for example, created a quick abstract response without intellectual rigour for thoughtful and practical application in solving the enduring problem for Black populations: lack of power! Without power, wealth-security, and equity you effectively have nothing to compete and win, in the universe. That’s the long and short — reality!
The BAC has gotten it backwards, pursuing expedient political policies without the backing of power. So these pursuits essentially become detached from reality. But it has created an industry with not-so-thoughtful leaders, who have effectively found a way to create nice salaries for themselves. No economic value or measurable equity has been created, just dependency on government grants and the rise of the phenomena of Black non-profit organizations; declaring themselves the de facto leaders of “Black Entrepreneurship.” A ludicrous alternative reality that doesn’t exist. Nonprofit leading in a for-profit world? Doesn’t make logical sense. Completely backwards and ridiculous! Nevertheless, this phenomenon has manifested into a victimhood culture, one of complaining and begging, a total misunderstanding of how power flows and how the world works; that your strong economics leads to political influence and power, not the other way around.
In virtually all of human history, there has never been an identified period or place where societies were not separated or defined by income and/or social status, so it is hard to argue against Lucretius’s poem On the Nature of Things. Consider the meaning of life, if you must, it’s more about what we make out of life and how well we master the atoms and void during our time on Earth. Aristotle believed that happiness is something we create from within, based on our actions. Happiness, therefore, is not a human right, and like everything else in life, happiness must be earned by fulfilling one’s potential and actualizing virtue. Inequality is part of the natural friction of atoms in the void looking for connections to make formations; the concept and practical application of morality are elusive.
Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche believed that strength and weakness are present in every human being, but weakness and avoidance of reality pose a greater risk to ourselves. Not only does it prevent one from achieving their goals, but it eats away from within, degrades one’s capacity to think critically and sucks out your vital spiritual energy, and religion contributes to that.
Christianity more or less began in the 1st century CE in Rome with the institutionalization of the Roman Catholic Church, which was built on the racial supremacy view of only One God, a Christian one of course, and the hoarding of wealth and privilege by elites in the church and those connected to it and funded it: the aristocracy. Connection to the church held the path to economic opportunity through socioeconomic hierocracy structures, which led to political power and influence. From day one, ‘the church’ has been one of the most self-serving, hypocritical, and corrupt institutions ever created. Further, conversion to Christianity was not voluntary or inspired. In the 4th century CE, for example, conversion came through extreme violence and pillaging, taking over Pagan temples and Jewish synagogues and turning them into Christian churches. Violence against women, too, was part of what contributed to the growth and domination of the Christian church in Rome and throughout the Roman Empire. The church was the first abuser and subjugator of women; and let us not forget sexual deviance and pedophilia, all of which existed and were part of the Roman Catholic Church from day one.
Christianity, therefore, was a religion forced upon people through violence and military might, cohesion and thievery in the CE, from the beginning of the Crusades to the Inquisitions and Pogroms in Europe, Imperialism, Slavery and Colonialism, the Holocaust, the Rwanda genocide and more. Christianity was central to all of it and has been an underlying source of conflict and evil throughout the ages.
Therefore, Christianity-based morality is highly convenient, built on a big lie and in favour of the wealth and privilege of the few. However, still today, many Black people have not been able to escape the mental slavery of Christianity to find the liberating power of their natural spirituality and individuality, their self-sufficiency and their SSP superpower.
The Gospel of Matthew says, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth,” this has to be one of the most deceptive and manipulative words in the Bible. The phrase “will inherit” comes from the Greek word kleronomeo, which means to receive an inheritance or to possess. In biblical times, inheritance was a significant concept, often associated with the passing down of land, wealth and blessings from one generation to the next. But the elite possessed all the wealth, privilege, and inheritance — there was nothing left for anyone else so nothing to be passed down. Hence, nice bible stories were invented to pacify the masses, promising a fantasy of a rich inheritance in the afterlife, heaven in exchange for obedience. The Bible became the authority of doctrines on how ordinary people should live their lives, a source utilized to temper down the masses — the poor and afflicted acquiesced to this amazing book of stories that served the interests of the powerful. The classic do as I say, not as I do. This system remains in place to this day and won’t change because it’s the nature of the human beast.
Christianity is part of the white supremacy system that sold poverty and weakness as a virtue, it prompted darkness and fear as a method of control and conformity, eroding the confidence necessary for ordinary people to assert their individuality and build their wealth security. It pushes limitations and paternalism, not ambition, masks the truth about our human nature and corrupts our thinking about the need to satisfy our human condition. This is the dishonesty in Christianity! A fake morality construct that promotes weakness, rejecting individuality, and avoidance of asking questions and seeking knowledge. Christianity disconnects you from reality in giving up your free mind to adhere to an exclusionary system of rules and doctrines which are opposite to the nature of the human condition.
It can be characterized as one of the greatest mechanisms of manipulation ever created — encourages people to blame others for their dissatisfactions. Nietzsche identified this as the Slave Morality complexity, an inversion of values that exalt suffering through disingenuous bible stories constructed to uplift and elevate people to illusion-based mental satisfaction and comfort, a substitute for their socioeconomic disadvantages and soothing life’s dissatisfaction.
Worshipping the idea of “God” for salvation kept the masses in order, giving nobility/aristocracy the legitimacy to control the factors of production: dominate all the wealth and privilege. Effectively using people’s human condition against them: exalting humility and submission while demonizing ambition, strength, power, and autonomy.
We still see this today with the new Big Tech Aristocracy (BTA). A world where massive cash and power allow billionaires to exert their wealth and influence over people and politics through brute force and arrogantly believing that they are the arbiters of our lives and only they know what’s best for society. Maximizing their wealth and power in the tech aristocracy network as a divine right to rule over others.
Slave morality discourages the assertion of self in the natural pursuit of wealth-security. This is what Nietzsche calls the inversion of values, which promotes weakness as an ideal. Evasion of responsibility and rationalization becomes a defence mechanism that protects the fragile ego but stifles its potential. And religiously based belief systems make it easy to keep people in this harmful comfort of constructive delusion. Such distortions of reality fuel the slave morality complex, where one becomes blind to their subjugation, only seeing the boundaries and not the possibilities, leaving them dependent and embracing the same slave morality system that dominates them.
The denial of reality has profound consequences. It impedes seeking knowledge for personal growth and wealth security, making it difficult to overcome challenges. It erodes trust and self-belief, dampens confidence, and wrongly leads one to believe others will rescue them. Finally, it lessens a community’s potential because of the lack of entrepreneurship leadership and wealth creation for intergenerational opportunities.
The slave morality mindset creates a victimhood mindset; an evolving culture in many Black communities, always someone else’s fault for the group’s dissatisfactions. Expecting government, institutions and organizations to do for them what they must do for themselves and the community. Wealth-security is not a morality play it’s a power play. No one is coming to save you; you must create willpower from within, then express it externally with the SSP and participate in filling your void. This is the Nature of Things, and critical to individual growth and authentic spirituality–your superpower!
The applied intelligence Process
The applied intelligence process is an unwavering commitment to self-knowledge and critical thinking, the conscious avoidance of nice stories and self-deception — rejection of justifying one’s limitations or adherence to constructed illusions. Pursuing wealth security by applying intelligence strategically to those value-creating tasks is the underpinning of the applied intelligence approach. Recognizing that power comes from confidence and confidence from action. But it’s not enough to recognize reality, you must take action to make things happen. Applying your intelligence effectively to the right value-adding tasks, aligned with vision and ambition, facing difficult environments and seeing the opportunities in the challenges, is a true form of courage.
Real power can’t be given it must be earned with ongoing acts of willpower and courage, constantly reinventing oneself and never settling and giving in to the inertia. We must remain cautious but optimistic and not fall into the trap of the slave morality mindset. Having self-confidence, agency, independence, resilience, and entrepreneurship, all of which is part of and essential to satisfying the human condition.
Particularly for people of African descent, establish bonds of solidarity based on reality and not fiction, encourage self-affirmation and self-determination by fostering resilience and not waiting for outside help, and organize resources and intellect strategically, to serve your economic and intergenerational opportunities to achieve power. Empowering one another by investing in each other’s entrepreneurship and writing our own stories. The pursuit of individuality strengthens the whole! Therefore, asserting your human condition to the fullest puts the community in closer proximity to the realization of sustainable prosperity and power.
Perseverance, growth and innovation are self-affirming, so embrace life’s complexities and contradictions. Don’t take refuge in illusion, take on the challenges and obstacles in your way. Don’t be distracted by trivialities or superfluous things, embrace life in its entirety because you are a part of, and do exist in nature. Seek to be all-powerful! It’s in your nature to be.
