Most people think of slavery as a thing of the past, but it is widespread today and has taken on a most insidious form: Financial enslavement. In fact, it is is such a norm now, that most people don't even realize that they are slaves.

When slavery is accomplished by stealth and not enforced by overt brutality, the slave retains a sense of freedom. There is no greater prison than the false belief that one is free. Furthermore, there is no more willing slave than one who falsely believes he is his own master.

This idea that you are a slave may seem outrageous on the surface, but let's examine the grounds for such a claim. The concrete evidence stands before you:

You probably have the debt of credit cards or a mortgage; or, you are otherwise saddled with the obligation of keeping a roof over your head and food in your mouth at a hefty price, all driven by mounting taxation. In order not to become homeless, you are obliged to work forty hours a week most of the fifty-two weeks of the year and many people work far more than that just to stay afloat.

If you are not swimming in personal debt, you are still a debtor to the financial system that has made every child born in the U.S. a debtor from the moment it draws its first breath. Whenever you work, you are strong-armed into paying taxes to support this debt. If you don't think this is true, just try not paying the taxes imposed upon you and see what happens!

This financial slavery is a form of involuntary servitude, it is such because the enslaved has no choice. He is born into a corrupt system. He cannot escape the circumstances of his birth; but, he can break free.

Freedom Road

The first step on the road to freedom is to recognize that you have been enslaved. If you are trading your time and labor for a paycheck, then you are a slave to a corrupt system at the expense of your health, your family and your creativity.

People cannot fully live, love and create beautiful things in their lives when they are enslaved by a corrupt institution from birth 'til death,

In this high tech age, how can it be that humans labor longer hours now than ever before in recorded history?

Thorold Rogers, Professor of Political Economy at Oxford University wrote, with regard to the Middle Ages that "a labourer could provide all the necessities for his family for a year, by working 14 weeks."

We now have a system in which people, when they can find work, are laboring for longer hours for less and less. In a highly civilized economy, driven by technology, people should not have to spend so much time just to provide food and shelter for themselves.

But, most modern westerners never question the status quo. Why would they?

Most of us grew up with parents who called us "lazy," even as we labored forty hours a week and attended school.

For those of us who grew up in the heartland, any work that didn't involve heavy labor, was not considered to be work, at all.

Our parents cannot be entirely blamed because they, too, were programmed by their parents and by the system that enslaved them.

You may not notice your own slavery until you consider all of the things you are not free to do. Most people are so conditioned to being tied to their jobs that they are grateful if they receive one or two weeks of vacation per year.

The only way that this will end entirely is if all slaves understand that they are enslaved and hold their masters responsible. It isn't impossible. It has happened before: The result was the American Revolution and the establishment of a constitutional republic.

Enslavement is a State of Mind

You must free your mind. You must recognize the full extent of this intergenerational chicanery. Your parents advised you wrongly because they didn't know. The popular culture has taught you to become a cog in the corporate machine. The schools and universities betrayed you - they sent you out into the world to be come a worker for wages. The entire system taught you to be a slave and even to love your servitude.

If you are sufficiently programmed, yourself, you probably feel very guilty if you think you're not working hard enough. Your programming may even cause you to feel a sense of anger or a twinge of guilt at this moment as you ponder the idea of not working hard. This is your slave programming talking - it's not you. The real you longs to be free.

Freeing yourself is not about hard work; it's about smart work. You have to put a system in place that pays you. As a larger percentage of your monthly income begins to come from work you have already done - not work you continue performing and re-performing - you begin to disentangle yourself from the slave matrix. Writers have always had a great opportunity to do this, but now the opportunities are more numerous and better than ever. With the internet, it is possible to put systems in place to earn money. Like anything, once you've done it, you know you can do it again and again.

Get on the Writer's Fast Track and speed your way to writing success!