Yeah, though I do my best to buck their shackles. I think it's one of those "be enslaved or enslave others" dichotomies, which suck.

no.
but sometimes it is safer to live in chains than to live free.

(That was from franz Kafka btw. not me. but I've found it to be true. very much so.)

Now, if you direct that question at Hobbes, he will tell you "No. society doesn't exist to enslave people. People give up their rights (or nature, I don't remember his verbage) in order to gain the ablity to not be killed/maimed/damaged by the other members of that grouping of humans." See his babbles about social contract theory for justification of the statement.

The survival of the fittest camp gets some say so as well, but theirs is a "yes. society, run by the best of the group, enslaves those of lower ranking." But that is a pure jusification of stratified society, not really society as a whole. (I've not done enough reading to expound further in that direction.

Really, it's do you want to be enslaved, and how are you going to go about creating that reality?

sometimes a question is just a question.

( I just finished a political philisophy class so I'm full of hobbes and locke, and aristotle and kant and a few other dead guys' words in my head. sharing them just made space for new stuff.)

As far as kafka, someone near me was reading him and I asked what he was reading so he started reading aloud. That's all I got from it, for i've never picked up his work myself.

All is good.