More Obligations, Responsibilities and Limits...

Sometimes I can get going on an almost obsessive internal stream of consciousness, and can't quite let it go until I unravel all the tangled up thinking and follow all the trails to their ends. That seems to be where I am with the bits and pieces of ideas that I laid out in this Last Rambling Post. I'm just not done with it all yet. There is this sense that I haven't gotten it clear in my own mind, and surely haven't expressed it for myself clearly yet. The words are in there -- wrestling around with one another. I have this feeling that I have the idea, but when I look at it straight on, it vaporizes and goes, "POOF!" into thin air so that I cannot get a clear sense of what it is I'm trying to say exactly. That just makes me crazy. That is the sort of thing that is going to cause me to keep talking to myself about it until it sorts out into something halfway coherent. So, if you don't want to tune into this convoluted internal chatter... change the channel now.

So... I have argued, often in my "Devil's Advocate/Gadfly" persona, that Masters (or Owners) do not have any defacto obligations to their slaves arising from the simple condition of ownership. I have often been bemused, over the years by the notion that the fact of Ownership somehow implies a set of obligations to treat the property in a particular fashion. When I first came to this, it was common to read submissives/slaves who wrote about being "cherished and treasured and valued" above all else in their Master's or Dominant's life. Those kinds of sentiments are romanticized ideals that, if they get repeated often enough, can set up a sort of expectational norm that simply does not logically follow from the premise of a Power relational dynamic.

If I find someone who simply cannot be shaken from their insistence on the cherished/treasured property model, I am sometimes inclined to launch into my "table" parable which goes like this:

A very wealthy and powerful man lives in a fine and elegant mansion filled with the most beautiful objects and furnishings, every piece chosen by hand to satisfy his every whim and desire. The table that graces his dining room is an heirloom of the most pristine quality and finest woods. It is a rare and priceless piece that glows with beauty, polished with purest oils by dedicated servants, but he finds no joy in its presence and one day he asks his staff to have it moved to the barn at the back of his estate. There the lovely table is relegated to a dark corner. Over time, dust comes to gather on its surface, and boxes of household items are stacked on top of it. The denizens of the barn; the small spiders and crawling creatures, climb around and over its elegant legs and turned feet. The glowing wood loses the deep sheen that brought such joy to so many during the time it served in the great and elegant dinng hall. Silent, dull, dusty, unremembered -- the now humble and barely serviceable table remains, as it always was, property.

It is that little story that I keep in my mind to remind myself that I am property. Perhaps I am not a "table or a bath towel," as magdala and I once discussed at length, but I do try to remain mindful that "in absolute terms, if one enters into a dynamic wherein the definition of the status is 'property,' then there is a realistic potential that an owner really does not have any greater level of obligation than to any other owned object."

Now, lest there be any misapprehension of the truth of my life, I am never, ever left to feel like a table. There are power dynamic relationships where such objectification is the intent and the goal, but that doesn't happen around here, either intentionally or otherwise. I AM loved, cherished, and cared for, and for that I am deeply and humbly grateful. However, I know and understand that I am given that love and care -- I am not owed it because I am owned.

There ARE times when I cannot be the center of attention, nor should I be. He has many demands on His attention and His energy. I need to self-direct, self-monitor, self-soothe, self-maintain. I've also learned (especially through the difficulties of this last year) that I need to be careful not to withhold from Him the opportunity to hold the reins. The delicate balance of our inward/outward lives is demanding to maintain, but it must be maintained -- and maintained with grace, honor, dignity, and integrity.

As to the (in my mind) different issue of "responsibility, as I think about this further, I think there are really two different parts to this for me: the "Top" side (Masters), and the "bottom" (slaves). I need to separate the two if I'm going to talk about them clearly.

So, when I contemplate the notion of "responsibility" in relationship to Masters, I think I'm really in mind of the view of "moral responsibility" that is drawn out at length here. A slave is not, in fact a table. A slave is, in fact, a human with the ethical capacity to make morally responsible choices. If one understands or acknowledges a slave in that context (at least prior to entering into the power exchange relationship), then in my view a Master does take on a level of moral responsibility to compensate for whatever diminishment of choice comes as a result of the dynamic. It is this "compensation" that ups the ante in terms of the responsibilities for one who takes on the mantle of Ownership with human property. The Owner of human property is, from a social, ethical perspective, morally responsible to use that property "well;" creating, improving, developing, perfecting... The Owner assumes the responsibility, from an ethical perspective, to use that resource in ways that serve His pleasure, certainly, but it seems to me that there is the concommittant responsibility to answer the question of how the resource is to be used in service to the larger world.

If the Master does that, and does that well, the slave becomes (in every sense) entirely free to fulfill all the responsibilities of BEING for the Master. And, when that happens, the synergy makes the result into something more than there was before the power exchange existed -- the manifestation of Master and slave standing and acting as One in the and (ideally) for the world.

So, I do protect and care for His property. I care for His clothing, for His home, for His knives, for His toys (most of the time -- really), for His medications, and for His slave... Unless He tells me otherwise, I'm going to continue to do that. I watch my diet, I take my medications, I see the doctors He tells me to see -- on the schedule that I need to.

I work hard at presenting myself in public in ways that bring Him honor and pleasure and make Him proud. So it was that last Wednesday evening I made the "Clark Kent in the phone booth" transformation from chalk dust besmirched school teacher to (hopefully) elegantly dressed dinner-party presentable board member for the annual dinner for Master's agency. Even though He must act as if we barely know each other at such events, His look as I walked into the place made it clear that I'd done exactly as I should have.

Sometimes, protecting and caring for His property means saying, "no." A couple of years ago, when Master's evening indulgence in the "Irish" was not confined to Irish tea (as it is these days), there was a night when, quite late, He eyed me blurrily, and declared -- "Alright, the six of you have been cruising for a spanking for weeks, and now you are going to get it. So just line up!" The "six of us" calculated quickly, evaluated the safety factor, talked quietly among ourselves, and decided to go hide in a dark corner in another room... The "Irishman" fell sound asleep, and the six of us, slept curled up, shivering in a corner in the dark -- but we were safe. Perhaps there are those who might have made a different choice that night. Perhaps, on another night, I'd have made another choice (there were many times when He and I played when He was not entirely sober and I never thought a thing about it). I know I've never regretted making that call that night. I did what I believed was the best thing for Him and for us. I served Him in the best way I knew how under those circumstances. It was my judgement, in that moment, that He would not knowingly have me injured, and that He would have advised me to take those "other five girls" and go hide from the Irishman that night.

Perhaps, as kaya comments, this is all "a different perspective than what (I) have given in the past." She may be right. I'm not sure that it is entirely different because I believe that most of those parts and pieces are things that I've had kicking around for a long while. It does feel to me as if I am understanding it at a different level. Or from a different point of view. Maybe that makes sense -- I don't suppose that all of the angst and struggle from the last year could have been expected to have passed by without having left its mark on my thinking. I do think that I've changed and evolved from where I was when I came to this new and starry eyed over seven years ago. I know I'm much different than I was two years ago. I don't know that change is "good" or "bad" -- it is, I imagine, simply the condition of being alive. I'm not trying to convince anyone else -- just wandering the trails in my mind. Chasing the wispy bits that are teasing me from the shadows...

swan