House servant or field hand?
There's a lot to recommend being a house servant.
Privilege, prestige, power (to the limited degree the owners will let you feast off their crumbs)
Sure beats laboring in the hot, hot sun, don't it?
Don't work up a sweat, callouses, resentment
Cut yourself some slack
Enjoy the good things in life
(And if they're not really good things, then at least better things than those poor bastards out in the fields get)
Doesn't take much
Easy living
Soft work
All it costs is your self-respect
And you know it
And it eats at you
And you either fester in self-loathing (if you still have a soul)
Or hate and contempt for your cousins in the field
Greater hate and contempt than even the owners have for them
Because without you, the system can't work the way they want
Without you, there is no system
So every time you smile and suck up their abuse
Every time you shuck and jive so the system can flourish
It's as if you're wielding the whip yourself
It would be better, in fact, if you actually were whipping them
At least that's honest oppression
No hypocrisy involved
So you have to hate
You have to close off your heart
You have to say that you are worthy and they are not
That the system isn't rigged
That the system is just
The system is correct
The system is moral
The system is righteous
Only then can you sleep at night
That's what it takes for you to close your eyes
Otherwise your eyes will stay open wide
Darting anxiously in the dark
Constantly fleeing the question you never want to face:
"My God, what have I done?"
yeah, i'm trying to be circumspect here...