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A documentary movie by Jean-François Brient about the totalitarian mercantile system where we are living. It's a radical critic about the liberal democracy where we all lost our liberty and autonomy.
This movie do not have commercial purpose and is totally free to reproduce, copy and diffuse by all necessary means.

More information on delaservitudemoderne.org

"Modern servitude is voluntary, endorsed by those slaves who crawl on the surface of the Earth. They buy the merchandises that enslave them every day more. Slaves run after alienating jobs that are gently given to them if they prove to be tamed enough. They choose the masters they will obey. For this absurd tragedy to happen, it has been necessary to dispossess slaves from the awareness of their own exploitation and their alienation. Here is the bizarre modernity of our time. Contrary to slaves from antiquity, servants from the Middle Ages or the working-class from the first industrial revolutions, today we are contemplating people that are totally enslaved. The difference is that they are unaware of their enslavement and those who are aware, choose to ignore it. They ignore rebellion which should be the only genuine reaction of the exploited ones. Slaves accept without question the pitiful life that was planned for them. Renouncing and resignation are the sources of their misfortune."
On modern Servitude, Chapter 1

12 Likes

  • Tulisio Timbiquí 3 months ago
    The film presents a very simplistic view of western society - slaves without the possibility of anyone being a free thinker by the mere fact that one must shop for food and clothing - and proposes no solutions, does not even suggest a possible route to change. It states hard truths about the system but presents destruction as the only way out, it even gloryfies wanton destruction in the last scenes. And then what? what happens on the day after destruction?
  • Ted Bolha 3 months ago
    Read endgame by Derrick Jensen: a true free thinker. Must we shop for food and clothing? is this what the native americans did for their food and clothing? The possible route to change is to destroy civilization and let humans live in traditional human lifestyles aka Tribes. Destruction is going to happen no matter what at this point, the first step to lessening the chaos is to accept that Civilization is unsustainable and is causing ongoing destruction now.
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  • Feizal Mansoor 3 months ago
    I agree with much of what the previous poster says except that the solution suggested seems to be the last sequence which promotes a violent response to violence; any eye for an eye. Such a response is futile for the simple reason that the PTB have more and bigger guns not to speak of non-lethal weapons.
    To destroy power one does not have to destroy the social fabric and to do so would be to look up to the sky and spit on one's face. NO! NO! NO! Violence is not an answer even because of what it does to the perpetrator as well as the victim. The haunted look of any professional soldier is enough evidence of this.
    It is also completely erroneous to say that we live in a world of insufficiency, the very fact that from time immemorial we, as a species, have been doing more and more with less and less belies Malthus and Ehrlich, they are voices of the Power Elite.
    In fact what is required is a sustainable economy underlying the industrial one, where we exchange goods and services equitably by using open systems, non-monopoly patents and time-energy accounting. Such a knowledge based economy would have the same knock-on effect as the circulation of money in an economy. In time we can expect that our sustainable economy would become so much more efficient than the industrial one that the iniquities of the latter will seem nothing more than pinpricks.
    We must use technology to provide the most goods and services to the greater numbers for the least possible expenditure of energy physical or fuel.
  • Ted Bolha 3 months ago
    Read Endgame by Derrick Jensen. Violence isn't always the answer, but there is still a need for violence in life.

    Also, Don't you see that we no longer have faith in technology? You seem to conflate humans with it so much that you cannot see us without it. We no longer want "jobs" we no longer want to pay for food, we want true 100% freedom... and the only way to get that is to bring it all down.
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  • Clayne 3 months ago
    Love does not imply pacifism.

    Those in power use violence as a tactic because it works, and to give them the advantage of owning violence as a monopoly is far too dangerous.

    Pacifistic nonviolence will never bring down civilization, and for those who believe it's worth it to wait, I bet every species that is now extinct because of this civilization, or on the brink of extinction, or any being on this earth whose home or self is being manipulated and destroyed, or every facet of the landscape who has been inorganically altered to a mockery of their previous self, would strongly disagree. The time to end this was before it began, but I'll settle with NOW.
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  • Feizal Mansoor 2 months ago
    You forget Gandhi and Mandela. One brought down an Empire and the other minority rule. Change is the only constant in the universe: "When nations grow old, the arts grow cold and commerce settles on every tree."
    The future you envisage is bleak indeed. I would rather see a technological future where everyone who wants its advantages can have them and those who do not can find havens for their views. Whether we like it or not we are technological tribes. Our average standard of living depends on it.
    I suggest that the problem lies in the institution of fractional reserve bank and the artificial market of credit. You do not have to build the same road twice.
    It is the nature of power to arrogate more to itself but it is the nature of the individual to resist.
    The thing about violence is what it does to the perpetrator as well as the victim. In the sense that one can only sin against oneself, this is the larger crime. In my country we are just coming out of a bloody civil war, twenty years long. One of the simplest cultures celebrates death when its essence was once ahimsa or hurtlessness. Which is why even though I am as angry as you and when someone hits me I usually hit back I urge you to consider also that PTB (power that be) have much bigger and better weapons than the resisters can ever muster, without the shedding of innocent blood. And one thing we must never let them have is the high moral ground.
    Rather I suggest that we become more efficient than them. The one thing PTB cannot tax is what is in the public domain, what is free. So it is too our advantage in our local communities to provide as much as we can for free.
    We do this through open systems, non-monopoly patents, and time-energy accounting of the goods and services our communities produce. We create networks of networks of interacting communities based on common wealth.
    While man may not live by bread alone, no man is an island. As a species we stand on a mountain of achievement that is a common heritage more tangible than any corporate goodwill could ever be. When wealth is measured in what is owed it is foolish to use someone's yardstick.
    The integrity of our communities is its common consensus, its backbone its infrastructure. And we build it by trust. By consenting to obey the two laws, contract and tort, by allowing the free circulation of knowledge, by only recognising royalty patents and letting the market set the price, and by valuing our goods and services by the inverse of their energy cost as measured by the amount of time and energy it cost to make them.
    Buckminster Fuller's point was that when man wanted to go to the moon, he sat down and made a list of things he would have to do and ticked them off one by one. At the moment we face an ecological disaster and an imminent ice age our technological focus should be on how we as a species is going to survive it not on blowing each other up.
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  • Feizal Mansoor 2 months ago
    I have neglected to thank the film maker for a great film. Very effective, you elucidate your perspective clearly.
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  • Calvin Miner 2 days ago
    Excellent film, great editing, use of quotes, use of footage, and so on.
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