Slavery

The ambience of a dungeon is somewhat lacking without the stench of communal excrement and the occasional wail of despair. One must turn a blind eye to the fundamentals of human decency in order to operate a dungeon efficiently. The administrators of this particular venue had no such moral barrier between them and their profits. For the guests of the dank cells, the good news was that their average stay would be a short one; the bad news was that the only exit was aboard a ship to the New World. The coastal slave forts of West Africa brought wealth and misery in equal measure.

Slavery, as the saying goes, gets shit done. One look at the world’s largest economy demonstrates the benefits of free labour. Consider that most of the authors of the American Constitution owned their own slaves; men celebrated as some of the most progressive in history. Consider that when Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1861, that almost one in five Americans were owned by someone else. Consider that the slave trade was officially banned over thirty years earlier. Letting go of slaves is tough.

To be fair, we cannot hold the USA responsible for slavery; it worked equally well for the Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Chinese, Romans and Arabs. Without slavery, we may not have had the Pyramids, the Parthenon or the Coliseum. In fact, most civilisations the world over had slaves, including native American and African cultures. Slaves were a sign of wealth and luxury, often prisoners or spoils of war. Feudal peasants were not entirely slaves, freedom of movement and employment were extremely limited, especially for the serfs in Russia. It was not until after Portuguese landed in West Africa in the 1460s did the slave trade really take off.

Europeans didn’t just show up in Africa and take over, trading slaves was common amongst existing empires through the Sahara to North Africa along with gold and ivory. In their efforts to outdo their Muslim rivals, the Portuguese sailed to modern day Ghana to tap into the wealth of the gold trade. As time passed, they saw the profits to be made in trading human cargo, especially to their freshly decimated and labour-lacking colonies in the Americas. Before long, the English, French, Swedes and Danes were in on the act, dotting the sub-Saharan coast with fortresses. While slavery was an African tradition, it took Europeans to make it a global business.

The heartless profiteering of the slave traders is hard to ignore, however it takes two to tango. The slave trade saw the rise of the Ashanti Empire, a warlike people who conquered neighbouring tribes to seize captives and sell them to the slave traders for horses and guns – which in turn were used to make more wars of human plunder. The prime of West African men were polished with oil and sold in American slave yards, older men had their heads shaved to appear younger, while pregnant women and the sick were disposed of overboard during the journey. From the Bahamas to Brazil, slaves were traded for sugar, tobacco and cotton as their owners returned to Europe to reap the rewards.

Britain tabled the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833. The European powers saw the error of their ways and instead decided to divide the African continent up between them in a wave of colonial fervour. A few nations still see the benefits of slavery. Mauritania’s slaves were only officially freed in the mid-80s, newly made citizens still struggle to make the change from slave to employee. Only the sex industry continues a regular trade in slaves worldwide, making effective use of the illiterate and disadvantaged. The shrewd US, on the other hand, still makes the most of slave labour, with over 2.5 million people incarcerated who are put to work across a variety of industries.

Khufu was a powerful Egyptian Pharaoh of the Old Kingdom. In the ancient world’s greatest cock-measuring contest, he ordered the construction of the largest slave-built structure ever known.* Today, most people don’t know the name of the man buried in the Great Pyramid of Giza any more than they know the names of the slaves that built it. Owning a fellow human being is mankind’s ultimate power and most despicable weakness. The status quo, greed and the Bible propped up slavery over the centuries, however it is a weight rightfully shrugged from the shoulders of our collective conscience.

* A useless one nonetheless as his grave was robbed.

Evangelists

A collective sway consumes the room with the ebb and flow of a sea vessel. The dull, continuous hum of the waiting crowd resembles an old refrigerator waiting to reveal its inner brightness. A creaky organ gradually warms up in the corner as divine feedback whines over the PA system. The last few plastic chairs slide across the wooden floor as the final stragglers take their places. The moment swiftly approaches, the hour is nigh.The flood lights illuminate the stage, the Holy Spirit is unleashed with a roar and the man of the moment appears on stage. Welcome to the realm of the evangelist.

Combining the authority of a priest and the illusory personal touch of the motivational speaker, evangelists are not just good shepherds, they’re exceptional ones. Unlike most shepherds, the garden variety preacher attracts his sheep with billboards and catchy slogans. He poaches the flocks of other shepherds and offers unique insights into being a happy lamb. A symbolic relationship exists between the charlatan and the sheep. The suspension of disbelief is aided by placing the word ‘Pastor’ in front of the name of any theatrical individual wearing a silver suit that the average sheep could never afford.

The sordid co-existence of repressed urges and bouts of public ecstasy forms the keystone of evangelical architecture. Originating in US, these weekly emotional orgies are now multinational organisations, welcoming sinner after sinner to instant chequebook gratification. Transforming the dreary traditions of puritan Protestantism into musical and rhetorical masturbation, evangelical services never fail to result in a predictable therapeutic climax. Repent. Absolve. Repeat. By reducing the content of the holy book to choice one-liners, difficult moral and textual questions are avoided. Evangelism is to theology what the Abdoer-Twist is to regular exercise; reducing a complicated and difficult book into bite-size sugary chunks to ease digestion.

 "Your wallet is getting sleepy..."

The beauty of being a Pentecostal pastor is that anybody who can project their voice loud enough can do it. The task is made all the easier by a willing and enthusiastic audience who take peer pressure to a whole new level. Amongst a crowd of hyped-up worshippers, one can sense the impending repentance, the upwelling of tears and the loosening of various tongues. Right-minded people of gentle disposition become unrecognisable when miracles are approaching. An environment of infinite welcome radiates from the bleating flock. The lonely, the uncertain and the forgotten are thrust gently onto the stage by the tearful converted to be born again. There is nowhere else such a superficial display of human self-reflection and the abandonment of individuality.

Is there naught to be gained from such a display? Indeed, there is a multitude. Traditional churches can only gawp in envy at the dollars earned by the vanguard of Pentecostal Evangelists and Televangelists, driving heads and wallets into a frenzy with as much as 95 billion tax-free dollars raised each year in the US alone.* How about the suits? The stadiums? The private jets? According to purveyor of god’s word and global businessman, Benny Hinn, "God will begin to prosper you, for money always follows righteousness." Why do people listen then? The search for meaning in life is a difficult quest to be certain, and being told the answer is much easier than asking the question. All you need to do to make money is to dispense the answers at the pace of a Bold and the Beautiful plotline and the sheep will tune in every week.

In the meantime, the churches grow richer and the business model is catching on. Congregations in traditional churches are losing crowds to the glitz and glamour of evangelical churches and the US, as always, leads the way. Shameless miracle workers and prophets are popping up worldwide from Asia to Africa – with no shortage of silk suits and fine shoes. While witnessing a crowd speaking in tongues might make you question the power of the human mind, a packed stadium of forty year-old women crying to emotional rock ballads should remain Bon Jovi’s territory.

* A 2005 estimate based on GDP - churches need not declare financial statements.

Ireland

Before bursting the widget on this edition of DDW’s Complete Generalisations About Other Cultures, it must be noted that there is genuinely a Leprechaun Museum in Ireland. Being funny is serious business in the home of St. Patrick and taking the piss is the finest remedy against poor weather, potato famines or a thousand years of English bullying. After a few afternoon litres of Guiness, one can navigate the fine line between singy, jolly drunk and shouty, stabby drunk on the streets of Dublin – often before 6pm.

Calling pubs the centre of Irish culture would be an exaggeration; they are also places of learning, music halls, counselling centres and insane asylums. The local watering hole is the most effective method to escape the occasional sunny day. Irish pubs produce an elite class of barmaid, one who can reject the advances even the most committed middle-aged man and still leave him with a smile on his face. Dispensers of holy libations and warming stews, pubs are the next best thing to do in Ireland besides church.

Ireland is a nation on the move…out. The warm climate and sunny beaches – of Bondi – has made Ireland the only nation in the last two hundred years to decrease in population. This is odd considering the time taken to occupy Ireland by its neighbours throughout history. Vikings used the jolly green isle as a holiday resort to escape the Scandiwegian winters while later Norman conquerors sought to keep Irish lords weak and divided. Not until Henry VIII invaded in the late fifteenth century had a foreign power succeeded in taking complete control of Ireland, bringing his new divorce-friendly religion with him.

 

It sure is.

 

Unfortunately, for Henry, the Irish were quite fond of their own Gaelic-Catholic Church, introduced by St. Patrick long before in 383AD. After the puritanical Oliver Cromwell beheaded the Catholic English King Charles I, he retook Ireland for Britain in 1649 – needing only to kill a third of all Irishmen to do so. Thankfully, Ireland was no stranger to population decimation and there were plenty of Protestant English and Scottish settlers to take up the vacancies in the landed aristocracy. Combined with the selling of dissenting Irish into slavery in the Americas and famine-inducing tax laws, Ireland became the happiest province in the British Empire.

Irish independence saw no light until the twentieth century, culminating in the 1916 Easter Rising. While the bloody guerrilla war that followed resulted in a treaty with the British, the Irish Free State was such a long time coming, that the northern half of the country preferred remain a part of the United Kingdom. A cultural divide became a religious war in all but name, resulting in decades of bad blood and vengeance. Catholic vs. Protestant. Euros vs. Pounds. Kilometres vs. Miles. Guiness vs. Guiness.

The Irish may not have all of Ireland, but they have conquered the world. Irish generals fought for Napoleon and fought each other in the American Civil War. The lobstered skin of Irish can be seen from the Caribbean to the beaches of Sydney. Closer to home however, a bad climate creates warm hearts and friendly faces – with endless conversation and hospitable folk. Local legend and tall stories cover landmarks and museums, taking rightful precedence over dull historical fact. The narrow, meandering roads are wonderfully kept, striking the perfect balance between quality workmanship and blind-corner terror.

One cannot help feel suspicious at the mystical, postcard-like nature of Ireland and even your humble author had reservations when standing before a perfect rainbow over a lush green valley with stone walls and cottages dotting the landscape. Conversely, the ancestral hum you feel after purchasing the handmade coat-of-arms of your Irish family name from a quaint shop in a country town loses its lustre when the very same souvenirs can be found in the fridge-magnet section of any petrol station. Perhaps they put something in the Guiness, perhaps they are all actually lovely. Either way, the Irish have a skill at making the rest of the world weak at the knees and we fall for it every time.