the sports spokeswoman said
explaining the refusal
of certain American sportsmen
to continue to perform to order
whilst their country rioted.
Rioters are definitely not robots,
but protesters against what they see
as unfairness beyond irony
in 'the land of the free'.
But the freedom of speech and action
that their country promised
was never to their ancestors,
who were indebted former slaves
who could never earn their freedom
from their former slave-masters
who if they understood the word 'robot'*
would have applied it to those they kept as debt-slaves.
*Robot is drawn from an old Church Slavonic word, robota, for “servitude”, “forced labour” or “drudgery.”. The word was a product of the central European system of serfdom by which a tenant's rent was paid for in forced labor or service. The word was applied to artificial/non-human automata in 1920, by Czech writer Karel Capek in his play R.U.R. where 'soul-less' robots rise up against their human owners, echoing the historic rebellions against slavery by slaves in America where their white owners 'had souls', but for being slaves, the labour those with souls believed they owned did not have souls. One of the conditions for having a soul was disbelieving that the people they buy/own/haggle with other (male, white) souls over can have souls in themselves. Go figure.....
explaining the refusal
of certain American sportsmen
to continue to perform to order
whilst their country rioted.
Rioters are definitely not robots,
but protesters against what they see
as unfairness beyond irony
in 'the land of the free'.
But the freedom of speech and action
that their country promised
was never to their ancestors,
who were indebted former slaves
who could never earn their freedom
from their former slave-masters
who if they understood the word 'robot'*
would have applied it to those they kept as debt-slaves.
*Robot is drawn from an old Church Slavonic word, robota, for “servitude”, “forced labour” or “drudgery.”. The word was a product of the central European system of serfdom by which a tenant's rent was paid for in forced labor or service. The word was applied to artificial/non-human automata in 1920, by Czech writer Karel Capek in his play R.U.R. where 'soul-less' robots rise up against their human owners, echoing the historic rebellions against slavery by slaves in America where their white owners 'had souls', but for being slaves, the labour those with souls believed they owned did not have souls. One of the conditions for having a soul was disbelieving that the people they buy/own/haggle with other (male, white) souls over can have souls in themselves. Go figure.....
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