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A review by ben_sch
Modern Slavery: A Global Perspective by Siddharth Kara
Thoughts while reading this:
The world is much scarier than I thought it was. More scary than the "slavery existing" part. There is a section in the book where mafia backed juju priests conduct magic rituals to strip away girls identities and will before they go work in debt bonded prostitution. I didn't realize that deep emotional / spiritual work can be used to harm others in such a way.
That, plus the author's meeting with the juju priests has me questioning morality --- it seems like spiritual access is a morally neutral thing, and that just meditating or whatever won't necessarily make you a good person. That has me far more confused, and suspicious, about how moral and religious precepts are constructed. Are they just as bogus [intellectual fronts for psychological aggression/power] as other ideologies?
About 3/4's of the way through book, in one of the more mild seeming sections, made brain came to a hard stop of some kind I haven't understood fully. One of the major reasons slavery exists is the global inequality, yet with huge numbers of poor people and the cheapness of travel, this means it's super easy. I came away from this section feeling like making "Do no harm" pledges are utterly pointless, because there is always people suffering somewhere down the line, and living totally off the land as a hermit is only possible because of modern technology and governments doing the innovation and protection work for you.
The world is much scarier than I thought it was. More scary than the "slavery existing" part. There is a section in the book where mafia backed juju priests conduct magic rituals to strip away girls identities and will before they go work in debt bonded prostitution. I didn't realize that deep emotional / spiritual work can be used to harm others in such a way.
That, plus the author's meeting with the juju priests has me questioning morality --- it seems like spiritual access is a morally neutral thing, and that just meditating or whatever won't necessarily make you a good person. That has me far more confused, and suspicious, about how moral and religious precepts are constructed. Are they just as bogus [intellectual fronts for psychological aggression/power] as other ideologies?
About 3/4's of the way through book, in one of the more mild seeming sections, made brain came to a hard stop of some kind I haven't understood fully. One of the major reasons slavery exists is the global inequality, yet with huge numbers of poor people and the cheapness of travel, this means it's super easy. I came away from this section feeling like making "Do no harm" pledges are utterly pointless, because there is always people suffering somewhere down the line, and living totally off the land as a hermit is only possible because of modern technology and governments doing the innovation and protection work for you.