I'd Rather Go Blind Boy

One sentence delivered in Douglass' "American Slavery, American Religion, and the Free Church of Scotland" address reminded me particularly of Plato's "Allegory of the Cave". After discussing the tactics used by slave owners to diminish a slave's spirit through constant abuse so that he forever accepts his condition, Douglass says,  "If a slave has a bad master his ambition is to get a better; when he gets a better, he aspires to have the best; and when he gets the best, he aspires to be his own master." In the Allegory of the Cave, men who during their entire lives saw only the shadows of objects and then get the opportunity to see the actual object, never want to go back to the unclear shadows.

 Neither the slaves who haven't grasped a sense of liberty, or the men who have not witnessed three-dimensionality miss any of the latter. Equally, if one only experiences excess of what has been denied, the alternative then does not seem as tempting. 

This was one of the tactics used by slave owners to discourage any longing for freedom. On holidays, slaves were forced to succumb to excessive intoxicating activities, thinking they were enjoying a touch of freedom, when in fact this was just another savvy tactic from their owners. At the end of each holidays, all slaves would be so sick and miserable that they longed no more for freedom. It is as if the men in the cave only saw humanity's most lascivious acts when shown the outer world, like if they were taken to a Southern cotton plantation while any of the masters was committing a brutality such as the many described by Douglass. 

Douglass never succumbed to those excesses, he was well aware of the mischief behind them. Whatever glimpses of freedom he did experience served only to enlarge his appetite for it. He knew what freedom meant, and would not be fooled by anyone in his attempt to achieve it.