What is a slave and what is a prisoner? (rough notes)

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What is a slave and what is a prisoner? (rough notes)

I was born into slavery. And fought my way up to prisoner!

The slave obeys. The slave subjugates his will to that of an other or others. The slave is never under duress -- that is the prisoner. The prisoner makes no pretension of submission. From the outside the two may be indistinguishable -- but they are totally different -- opposites. The slave is a slave in mind, the prisoner is always really free.

There is no shame in being a prisoner. Anyone can be overpowered, outwitted, outnumbered.

These are absolute considerations: one-thousand years is not a mitigation: she is biding her time, in stealth... waiting to make a break for it. No outward symbol can ever demonstrate slavery because slavery is not an incongruity of will and situatedness(?). Shackles, bars, whips and chains... these are the common condition of slave and prisoner.

Motive: The slave seeks to preserve his life, the prisoner seeks to preserve her will.

Will is not a component, sub-machine, of life; it is not. Will preceeds life, and life depends on will. We will ourselves to die and we will our life. If you die in your dream, you die -- this folk wisdom has no experiential proof, yet it creeps in by necessary logic. The last free act of a prisoner might be to will the eradication of her life. The slave never does this, he is a slave to life. No one can have everything she wants all the time -- if ever.

A prisoner's will is obstructed, but it is not subjected. (This is a fault that society values life, and not liberty; but a society must -- and an individual must never -- or he becomes a slave.)

The radical freedom of God's will is identical to his animals. No animal has a life; no imaginary cares; if an animal can perceive her escape -- born free -- she takes it!

born in pain born stubborn? that line comes out of a sepultura song. old sepultura rules, and i agree somewhat

Lots of pronoun switching. Not sure if this is intended to also note the difference between slave and prisoner, but is confusing.

i was also confused, then again i get confused easily

I thought the pronoun switching made it much easier to read. The prisoner was female throughout and the slave was male.

A slave is bound for his labor. A prisoner is just bound or caged.

In some prison systems, prisoners are compelled to work for sub standard wages. So a prisoner is both a prisoner and a slave in that case.

ruveyn

Isn't that how most for-profit prisons work?

I was not certain if it was used as a tool to simply differentiate between prisoner and slave, or if the gender assignments had further implied meaning. But I can often get thrown off by female pronouns in general, as male pronouns can imply anyone but female ones do not. Perhaps I just read too much into it.

A slave is owned. There's no real possibility of the ending of servitude. That is the one thing that differentiates one from a prisoner.

Under Hebrew law, a slave was to go forth free in the seventh year, unless he, the slave, chose to remain bound for life.

ruveyn

Yeah in reality slave and prisoner share many more things than you give credit. Not really mutually exclusive.

Besides not all prisoners, and indeed prisons are the same. It depends how much control they can have over them. In modern prison is common for the gang mentality to kick in, and it becomes difficult to control the criminality and violence. However you have to consider the reason why they are in there in the first place.

Am I the only one who did not think this was literally about prisons and indentured slaves? I think there are more possible implications within, rather than just tricky pronouns. I read it in more abstract terms...more of a statement of the state of mind of any member of a given society, all being either prisoners or slaves. Kind of a poetic feel to it in a way, but maybe it is just me.

I look forward to the OP giving further explaination.

I agreed with everything right up until this nonsense. I have died(mostly from falling and drowning) many times in dreams. By virtue of my post here, the nonsense of dying dreams is laid bare.

And what about people who are prisoned for life?

Sounds like unrealistic sexual love out of a european low budget movie.

"Slave" and "prisoner" are words. They are used in many ways. Humans have this habit of inventing words and then wrangling endlessly about their definitions. There are all sorts of people held captive in all sorts of ways for all sorts of reasons. To choose one word or another to describe their situation is often an oversimplification of a circumstance. No doubt there are parameters to limit how widely the words can be used but, in general, a great deal of the personal definition of each state is a matter of personal viewpoint.