We are forced to do many things in ordinary reality: we must
eat, drink, sleep, on penalty of death. Also, no matter what we do,
we shall eventually, within a fairly predictable time frame, die;
we cannot stay alive forever, or even for a couple of hundred
years. We can't travel back and forth in time; can't fly to other
planets by flapping our arms. The list could go on and on, and I
have simply offered limits we are subject to in virtue of the laws
of nature. In other words, compared with some easily imaginable
possibilities, we are severely constrained, in a type of bondage,
though ordinarily most of us don't think of it as such. Writers,
artists, philosophers, and theologians over the centuries have of
course been keenly aware of these limitations, examined many forms
of human bondage, and offered various types of suggestions as to
how to free ourselves. Human beings have longed to "break out" of
this reality, to transcend the imposed limitations on their
physical being. Moreover, we should be clear that these limitations
are imposed on us. We simply find ourselves in this condition, with
these rules: we all die within approximately 100 years. It has
nothing to do with our voluntary choice, our wishes, or our
judgements about what ought to be the case.
Who has done this to us? Answering this question is important to
some degree because we typically use the term "enslavement" to
refer to something done by one agent to some others. In the case of
the constraints I outlined above it may be harder, initially, to
find anyone on whom to pin the blame. But of course human beings
have offered answers to this question: one is God; another, the
laws of nature. Religious thinkers have struggled with questions
about why we should not be angry at God for constraining us in the
ways he does: why do people die, why can't we go back in time,
travel to other planets, etc.? Others conclude that God is not
constraining us, but simply the laws of nature. At least at first
this thought might be a bit more palatable insofar as we think of
the laws of nature as impersonal features of reality; no one made
them that way (if God did, then we get angry at him again). They do
not mean to constrain us and there is no mind or intelligent force
actively doing anything to us...
