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One can be addicted to many things besides drugs, alcohol, tobacco. One can be addicted to television, sugar, coffee, low self-esteem, sex, authority, shopping, a specific (or specific type of) relationship. One can be addicted to a lifestyle. A whole culture, as we shall see (or perhaps as we already do), can be addicted to civilization.

My compact Oxford English Dictionary defines the verb addict (in excruciatingly tiny print that seems to get tinier with each passing year) as “to bind, devote, or attach oneself as a servant, disciple, or adherent.” In Roman law, an addiction was “A formal giving over or delivery by sentence of court. Hence, A surrender, or dedication, of any one to a master.”157 It comes from the same root as diction: dicere, meaning to pronounce, as in a judge pronouncing a sentence upon someone. To be addicted is to be a slave. To be a slave is to be addicted. The heroin ceases to serve the addict, and the addict begins to serve the heroin. We can say the same for civilization: it does not serve us, but rather we serve it.

There’s something desperately wrong with that.

This might be a good time to remind readers of the necessary relationship between civilization and slavery, that in fact civilization originated in slavery, is based on slavery, requires slavery, would collapse without slavery. You needn’t take my word for this, nor the word of anarchists, Luddites, or indigenous peoples. Nor do you merely need to take the word of pro-slavery philosophers or pro-technology CEOs. Nor do you merely need to take the word of Aristotle—propagandist extraordinaire—who wrote extensively in support of slavery and its necessity, indeed, its naturalness. Nor mainstream historians who recognize that, as Friedrich Engels (admittedly not a mainstream—i.e., pro-capitalist, procivilization—historian) wrote, “Without slavery, no Greek state, no Greek art and science; without slavery, no Roman Empire. But without Hellenism and the Roman Empire as the base, also no modern Europe. We should never forget that our whole economic, political and intellectual development has as its presupposition a state of things in which slavery was as necessary as it is universally recognized.”158 You don’t even have to take the word of modern anti-slavery activists who point out that there are more slaves in the world today than came across on the Middle Passage. Just look around. Consider the immiseration inherent in the items surrounding you. Look for the slavery, both human and nonhuman, that went into their making. Just because you don’t see the chains doesn’t mean you don’t benefit from their slavery, and from their deaths. How many salmon died to provide you electricity? How many rivers and mountains were enslaved to make this aluminum can? How many trees died to make this book? Further, how many people do you know who hate their jobs? On the other hand, how many people do you know who love their lives, and who live at least remotely integrated into the larger community that is their landbase?

ABUSE

We are going to fight them and impose our will on them and we will capture or . . . kill them until we have imposed law and order on this country. We dominate the scene and we will continue to impose our will on this country.

Paul Bremer, U.S. Administrator of occupied Iraq 159

Something very unpleasant is being let loose in Iraq. Just this week, a company commander in the U.S. 1st Infantry Division in the north of the country admitted that, in order to elicit information about the guerrillas who are killing American troops, it was necessary to “instill fear” in the local villagers. An Iraqi interpreter working for the Americans had just taken an old lady from her home to frighten her daughters and grand- daughters into believing that she was being arrested.

A battalion commander in the same area put the point even more baldly. “With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we