Returning to Bondage

"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependency back again into bondage." --Sir Alex Fraser Tyler (1742-1813) Scottish jurist and historian

This quote impacted me greatly. I wanted to share it with you because there was some truth in it for me. Is history always repeating? If so, where are we in this progression?

So if we take this as a possibly accurate representation, it seems we've moved past bondage and spiritual faith as concepts that define us. Our culture has it's believers, most certainly, but as a whole, we're not a society based on faith any longer. There are also those (politicians) who believe that, or at least suggest, that we're in the midst of liberty and courage (despite a very strong movement on behalf of some to take away our liberties).

Clearly, we were once an abundant nation and if the recent reports on our country's obesity epidemic are an indication, we are at the very least physically quite abundant still.

I would suggest that we've even moved into the selfish and complacent stage with our eyes on apathetic. There's evidence of this everywhere. . . our bridges collapsing, civil liberties eroding, and New Orleans virtually abandoned.

We are already dependent. We outsource all of our jobs to India and China so that we can have cheap foreign labor. We build cars in Mexico for the same reason. Our trucking industry appears to be heading over to Mexican companies.

There's a lot of talk about illegal immigrants nowadays. It seems all of the jobs that used to be good, middle/working class careers which used to provide for a family a living wage, health insurance, the ability to buy a house and two cars, put your kids through college, and have a pension for retirement. . . the powers that be are outsourcing these jobs to be performed somewhere else for a fraction of the price and with no safety or environmental restrictions.

If this all weren't enough to prove dependence, what about that foreign oil? On road trips with my children, I often hear, 'Are we there yet?' We're there. We're on borrowed time. And I fear there's an imminent return to bondage. We've gone over this 200 year cycle by 31 years.

Phew! Boy. . . take a deep breath. Who out there is raging mad with what I've just written? How can you reframe it to tell me where I'm wrong? And who out there agrees and thinks I haven't taken it far enough? I'm trying to poke at you all here. Poke me back.

About the Author

Kenrick Cleveland teaches strategies to earn the business of affluent prospects using persuasion. He runs public and private seminars and offers home study courses and coaching programs in persuasion strategies. Click here for other unique 'persuasion' articles.

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