Modern-day slavery is not enforced with whips or chains. Rather it is much more efficient and easy to enslave a man when the enforcer of this slavery lives within his own mind.
Each and every one of us is a prisoner to something. Whether or not we realize it, we are enslaved. We are beholden to false notions of who we are, societal pressures to conform, and the fear of stepping out of bounds to embody who we really are. Every time you wish to dance but remain on the sidelines, every time you wish to express love but fear coming off as “too needy,” every day you show up to a job you dislike for the fear of being without it; you are beholden to the taskmaster who lives within your own mind.
We are all quite familiar with our taskmaster, whether we recognize it or not. Though rather than think of him or her as our taskmaster, we probably think of him/her as our protector. Though our safety and our entrapment are built of the same stones. The castle walls get taller, and our space in which to be free grows smaller. In the act of protecting ourselves from the outside world, we imprison ourselves in a small world and inhibit our ability to be free.
We have come to an odd conclusion as a civilization—that the only path to safety is by ever-increasing control. We control our environments, we control ourselves, and we control populations through systems of governance, law, and manipulation. We do this because we believe this is the only path to safety, and freedom is a worthy sacrifice upon that altar. I'm not here to tell you that this story isn't true. Perhaps control is the truest path to safety, but then we must examine this safety closely. What, precisely, is the safety that we seek? What are we protecting? Is it worth what we're giving up?
Life, Nature, and the Universe do not operate on the value of safety that we modern humans consider so important. It seems that the only constant in Nature is change. All things are in a continuous process of transformation. From this perspective, nothing in creation is safe. All things are destined to end. Everyone dies eventually. There are countless tiny deaths in the course of life as one thing changes and transforms into another. The caterpillar as caterpillar dies before being reborn as the butterfly. Far from being tragic, it is actually through death that life is continually renewed.
The very elements of our body were forged in the hearts of countless stars. You and I would not exist if not for the deaths of those stars scattering these important elements across the Cosmo, before coalescing into new stars, new planets, and eventually the Earth. This planet was once dominated by dinosaurs. Paleontologists tell us that the age of the dinosaurs ended when a massive comet collided with the Earth, making space for a new era in which mammals were able to thrive. If the Earth had been safe from the impacts of the Cosmos, none of us would have been born. Any good gardener knows the value of good soil. Compost heaps are common in order to create nutritious soil for thriving plants. It's a strange process to see the brightly colored watermelon rinds, onion ends, and handfuls of tan straw decompose and become the dark, rich soil that eventually nourishes new life. It is the transformation inherent in the death of these plants that becomes the nutriment of the renewed life that grows from it. Life depends on transformation. Life becomes stagnant when it stays the same.
So what is it we're serving when we seek safety above all else? Perhaps this is the natural result of a mythology that imagines humanity as the pinnacle of creation rather than a temporary form of an ever-evolving Cosmos. We deny the transformation that is the necessary result of an intimate, unmediated relationship with the wider world. We build our houses, we pursue heroic medicine, and we defend our opinions and worldviews at all costs. Meanwhile, the Earth suffers, species go extinct, and our hearts suffer in isolation—afraid of becoming the object of scrutiny or judgment from the cult of safety of our culture.
It was about 100 years ago that Sigmund Freud outlined a vision of humanity and became the forefather of modern psychology. His thesis was that the human psyche was made up of three basic parts: the id, the ego, and the superego. The id, he theorized, is the home of all our instinctual and primal impulses. It contained irrational urges, sexual desire, and the impulses of aggression. Essentially, it was identical to the nature of an animal that is wholly responsive to instinct. Opposed to that was the superego, which is the psychic storehouse of culture. The superego recognized the dictates of culture, conventionality, and social norms. The superego's job then was to keep the instinctual id in check. The ego, then, stood between the id and the superego and mediated the relationship between the two.
Essential to Freud's view was a startlingly negative view of the id. He supposed that the contents of the id were primarily aggressive, sexual, and violent. Famously, Freud theorized the “Oedipal Complex”, which stated that all young boys desire to murder their father and marry their mother. It's no wonder, with this view of the instinctual self that Freud thought the superego so absolutely important. Without it, he seemed to think we would all become completely selfish, sexually deviant murderers in order to achieve our own aims. We've inherited that legacy of thought. A quick google search of Freud's theories will have you greeted with familiar imagery of a tiny devil and angel on a person's shoulders. The angel, of course, is the superego. The id, then, is the devil.
What a villainizing view of ourselves: that our instincts are dangerous and negative and that we can only live rightly if our instincts are controlled by culture.
I'm here to tell you there is another way. Our innate impulses may indeed include sexuality, aggression, and violence. Though there is much more to it than that. From what place other than instinct could arise music, art, poetry, compassion, connection, and love? I was given a flower by a two-year-old child once. Surely it was not cultural morals that inspired this young act of generosity, but that generosity lived within the heart of this tiny being. It may indeed be true that our instincts run counter to our cultural obsession with safety—that the inner enforcer of the superego may indeed not want you to dance—but I ask again, what is it that serves? I offer that the kind of safety it engenders is the kind of safety where one never has to change. The reason that dancing may feel so threatening to us is not that it is immoral, disgusting, or harmful; but because it is dangerous in the best kind of way.
When one finds the courage to defy the warnings of the inner taskmaster and step out onto the dance floor, one surrenders oneself to the same natural forces that turn stars into planets and watermelon rinds into soil. One offers oneself to the mystery of transformation.
The Taskmaster! Yes.
It seems to me the Taskmaster can disguise himself pretty well in a number of different alluring shapes, it can be a subtle enticement, tricky, sticky. But it's clear enough when the walls suddenly block the sunlight from coming into the soul.
I especially feel stirred at the closing lines. It's not "When one finds the courage to defy the warnings of the inner taskmaster, everything will work out just fine." It's turning from watermelon into soil, and then into god knows what. It's scary in ways that speak to me now.