Quot servi tot hostes.
(Sextus Pompeius Festus)

There are as many enemies as there are slaves.

(pron = kwoht SEHR-wee toht HOHS-tays)

Comment: When were the occassions that I used my power over another human being?
Slavery is legally long gone from most of our experiences, but the dynamics of
slavery are not.

It should be obvious that if I am a slave owner, however many slaves I own equal
the number of potential enemies I have. No human being responds well to being
owned or controlled or coerced or pressed by another into doing anything.

Slavery is gone, but coercion is not. In formula, coercion works like this. I
tell another in so many words: do X or I will hurt you. I will likely never say
the words "I will hurt you", but I will make it clear that there will be pain
and the other will not enjoy it. One of the most deceiving forms of this is
when the one offering the threat calls it a "consequence". This sounds very
autoritative, professional, and as if the one being threatned somehow deserves
it, is even responsible for the the pain! Educators use this language often, I
am sad to say.

If I am remotely capable of enforcing the pain that I have threatened, my
coercion will "work", that is, the person that I have so pressed with my threat
will do what I demand. The payoff will be, in the short-term, the action I
demanded, and long-term, a new enemy. Any act of coercion creates this huge
gorge of separation between the two human beings involved. The one now hates,
and the other now has cause, even if subtle, to fear. The one who hates has
been treated like a slave by the coercion of the other, who lives in fear now
because he/she has made a new enemy of the one coerced.

Slavery is gone as an institution, but as a way of relating between human
beings, it is as alive as the next time you hear one person coercing another
into action. Listen carefully. The one offering some form of "If you don't do
X, I will hurt you" has just added an enemy to his/her life.