Human civilization has a lingering problem. And the future success of our democratic experiment depends on solving it.

Man’s inhumanity to man has a long, inglorious history. We cannot change that past. But we can strive to understand how patterns in our own personal behavior, and our current social problems, were caused by that past. Because then we will be free to reverse the tides of history so that future civilizations can thrive without enslaving any more of our fellow humans.

The great and terrible irony is that this nearly continual pursuit of power over others will always remain just that: a pursuit. Because no mind ever attains real power over another mind. Other wills can certainly be bent to your desires by manipulating their emotions, by making them face harsh choices, or by scaring them half to death, but ultimately no one can ever force another mind to make any decision whatsoever. Two-year-olds demonstrate the power of No daily. And many of humanity’s historically favorite personalities are popular simply because they said No More to some form of institutionalized cruelty.

Part of this lingering problem is that we are not yet culturally adjusted to democracy. We have already left monarchy in the dust for a century, with only a few holdouts hanging on, but authoritarianism is still our default mode both personally and socially as we pursue our desires. It is simply easier to imagine that others are objects we can manipulate, rather than other minds with the same inherent power to make their own decisions as we ourselves experience.

And then there is the added complication of trying to make ourselves more important than others, to bolster our confidence, again both personally and socially through the groups we belong to. Being aware of these regressive factors helps. Being aware that we could even politically slip slide away back to dictatorships is a powerful motivator as well. But gradually becoming more effective in our pursuit of happiness by recognizing where our self-interest really lies in our dealings with each other should do the most to speed up the transition to truly democratic civic institutions.

Fortunately, we have reason to hope that the worst of it, when it comes to outright slavery, seems to be over, ever since its illegalization in the 19th Century. But there are so many forms of diluted slavery which still thrive in our cultures, including mass incarceration, governments devoted to total authoritarian control, home servant slavery and sexual slavery, that resisting a return to outright slavery needs to be continually reinforced.

It would also really help that resistance if we stopped overlooking the after-effects of slavery. Even common acts of casual callousness can stymie us in ways that last decades. How much more damage have we done by our most brutal attempts to break others’ wills?

But these personal and social habits do not leave us helpless, forced to repeat the worst of our history in cycles of foolish cruelty.

Actively eliminating, or at least thoroughly minimizing, the enduring and debilitating effects of slavery is the most effective way to undercut history’s lingering power, so that a stable democratic future for human civilization can be created.

To accomplish that, Amends Foundation adheres to the following principles:

1. That the spread of truly democratic attitudes requires accurate historical education about the cultural advantages and disadvantages of authoritarian civilizations, so that the critical advantages of more democratic cultures can be perceived clearly in spite of the obvious disadvantages that occur when political power is decentralized,
2. That slavery, from its most genteel, most polite forms to its most vicious, is an inherently cruel cultural institution,
3. That the attempt to determine which slaves were worse off ― sugar cane or cotton, field or house, tortured or sexually abused ― dissipates energy that should remain focused on the crucial institutional flaw: the failure to acknowledge that other individuals are independent beings,
4. That the punishment of perpetrators, and cultural bystanders, would only make them more miserable, and therefore more likely to be similarly cruel in the future,
5. That the inherent freedom to express oneself in life should be as politically protected as is practically possible,
6. That the infliction of powerlessness on others is even more culturally self-destructive than it is other-destructive, and
7. That no amount of money would ever be sufficient recompense for having crushed the slaves’ independent wills and wantonly destroyed their personal dignity.

That is why Amends Foundation, with its focus on the future, supports:

1. the teaching of complex and accurate history about human slavery, and
2. person-by-person encouragement of those who have been debilitated by it to recover their personal dignity.

In a nearly universal but ultimately useless attempt to prove one group is more important than another, almost unbelievable atrocities have occurred throughout human history, and on every part of the Earth. Amends Foundation’s focus is on America, with the hope that eventually doing “what we do, rather than what we say” will revitalize the spread elsewhere of human cultures based on the indestructible freedom of each individual mind.

Ending slavery in all its forms will ensure our democratic future. And it will give us an idea of what the end of authoritarianism in human life could look like. It is in our individual and our collective self-interest. And it is within our capacity as well. The path is clear. We only need to be persistent and patient enough to do it.

To that end, Amends Foundation dedicates its efforts to preventing billions of pain-filled prayers from remaining unanswered any longer.