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Humans have tried a number of strategies to modify our behavior. Two of the key ones have been religions and secular ethical codes that come with punishments built in. History shows that neither has much of a track record with modifying human behavior toward compassion, tolerance or just getting along: holy wars and secular wars; prisons and cults. And yet we (meaning human beings) don’t have as many public hangings as we used to. Slavery, while currently on the increase, has decreased significantly over the last 300 years. More women have some control over their bodies and can own property even if female “circumcision” is on the rise. Less children are sold into indentured servitude, even though child-slaves are still a hot property in a number of places in the world. The question is why? Why are there less public hangings? How did that happen and what does it mean?

Of course there is no guarantee that the situation won’t change and we won't go back to selling tickets to see someone swing. In fact it probably will ( as empires fall as often as they rise) unless we come up with some species recognition of what makes us behave as we do - followed by some willingness to limit our own personal power over others. I mean one thing that makes slavery possible is the ability and willingness to use superior power to force our will on another. You need both the ability and the willingness: the US had the ability to nuke 2 cities full of people, yet Hiroshima and Nagaski would not have had to be rebuilt if the US had not also the willingness. The same is also true of Saddam Hussein and his power to attempt genocide with respect to the Kurdish people. And of Andrew Jackson with regard to the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

With these 3 (and with the multitude of other current and historical examples) there were always really good reasons to do what was done. “It was war!” someone always says. Does that excuse what was done? Does it change the fact that at someone’s behest someone else died? Does it matter if it was a war fought in the name of some god or some philosophical ideal? It seems a touch hypocritical to kill in the name of peace and yet we use that same rationalization over and over – and we do it with a straight face. And of course there are the questions, Does it matter that the Kurdish died as a consequence of political policy; the Cherokee were walked to death; the Japanese cities fried? Does it matter if we extinguish our claim to the capacity for morality and rationality in the blood of others?

So what is it that compels us to ignore our back trail – our history – and blindly step all over the rights and lives of others while uttering our war cry “Freedom and liberty for all?” And at the same time as we are stumbling around through the nightmare of “foreign policy” (whether it be policy between nations or between persons), what has made the overall decline in slavery and indentured servitude possible?