Colonization of time

[Monte Davis]

>> Are we now the slaves?  Is that the point?... where there's Commerce,
there's slavery.

I think you're right that chronometry in M&D is as rich and strong a
metaphor as those of surveying and astronomy. But as for the above-- uhh,
no, I don't think so.

I read something recently (prompted by the Mexican deaf-and-some-mutes in
NYC) about the metaphorical cheapening of the word "slavery." They were
most cruelly exploited, yes -- and because of their disability, minimal
education, and foreignness, limited in their ability to rebel, or even make
others aware of their situation. But it seems to me that the publicity that
story got -- and the speed with which their situation changed when they
*did* make the authorities aware -- is a good indication of how shocked we
are by anything even approaching slavery. Wouldn't the 18th-century slaves
of M&D have considered the Mexicans' crowded living quarters and paltry
earnings -- but no whippings or death -- a pretty good deal?

That real slavery -- the whip-and-gallows kind -- has been pushed back to
isolated cultures (and the labor camps of totalitarian states) seems to me
one of the unambiguous Good Things of the modern world. No doubt in getting
and spending, we lay waste our powers, but a wage slave is NOT a slave.

Commerce is indeed a powerful system, but a voluntary one. To forget that
is to trivialize not only the plight of real slaves, past and present, but
our own ability -- however rarely exercised -- to choose how far to buy
into it.

-Monte