# Quote — Derrick Jensen, The Culture of Make Believe

> In order for a slave--or, for that matter, a slaveholder--to become free, a series of successive perceptions must be realized. First, the person must perceive that the owners (and slaves) are merely human, that is, putting all rhetoric aside, that there exists a dichotomy of privilege and exploitation, and that the privilege is a result of exploitation. … The second realization is, once again, that the owners and slaves are merely human, meaning this time that the exploitation and consequent privilege are not inevitable, but the result of social arrangements and force (as well as a huge dollop of bad luck on the part of those enslaved). … The third realization is yet again that the owners are merely human, by which I now mean they are vulnerable. Wealth does not protect them.

- Author: [Derrick Jensen](https://www.leafyquotes.com/derrick-jensen.md)
- Book: [The Culture of Make Believe](https://www.leafyquotes.com/derrick-jensen/the-culture-of-make-believe.md)
- Page: 63
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Derrick_Jensen#The_Culture_of_Make_Believe_(2003)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/derrick-jensen/the-culture-of-make-believe/in-order-for

## More from this book

> To believe Christianity stands in opposition to slavery is at best to think anachronistically and at worst to not understand Christianity.

p. 57 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/derrick-jensen/the-culture-of-make-believe/to-believe-christianity.md)

> Slavery was a central concern of governance form the time of the first nation-state. The Code of Hammurabi, the earliest known set of laws for governing an empire, prescribed death for anyone who harbored a fugitive or otherwise helped a slave to escape. The relationship between the law and bondage goes back even farther: Indeed, the oldest extant legal documents don't concern the sale of land, houses, or even animals, but slaves.

p. 60 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/derrick-jensen/the-culture-of-make-believe/slavery-was-a-central.md)

> Several times I have commented that hatred felt long and deeply enough no longer feels like hatred, but more like tradition, economics, religion, what have you. It is when those traditions are challenged, when the entitlement is threatened, when the masks of religion, economics, and so on are pulled away that hate transforms from its more seemingly sophisticated, "normal," chronic state--where those exploited are looked down upon, or despised--to a more acute and obvious manifestation. Hate becomes more perceptible when it is no longer normalized. Another way to say all of this is that if the rhetoric of superiority works to maintain the entitlement, hatred and direct physical force remain underground. But when that rhetoric begins to fail, force and hatred waits in the wings, ready to explode.

p. 106 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/derrick-jensen/the-culture-of-make-believe/several-times-i-have.md)