Slave/Master Paradox

This from Robert Kagan, Introduction to Ancient Greek History:

I remember my old colleague who taught history of American slavery and so on, John Blassingame, said to me at one point, he said when the emancipation came, the slaves were freed and so were the masters...

He explains: as long as there were slaves in the antebellum South, there would also be riots and homicides, and no master could ever live entirely without fear of revolt. So owning slaves was like living in a tinder box. It was the sort of contingent life -- though you have something now, at any moment it could be taken away -- that characterizes slavery in the first place.

According to Kagan, this paradox helps us to understand the city-state of Sparta --that for Sparta, colonialism had the ironic effect of creating more fear, not less. As they conquered and enslaved the Mycenaeans to the West, they spread their military thin and at the same time multiplied their points of vulnerability. They internalized their enemy. So acute was their fear of Mycenaean revolt, Kagan says, that had to transform their society into a control apparatus, until it finally became the Rousseauian totalitariat we know Sparta as today. I'm sure there's a lot more here, but the point is this: their security apparatus, designed to enslave the Mycenaeans, was so total that they ended up enslaving themselves.

So the parable goes. I'll venture to say that I think something similar happens whenever we buy things or otherwise take control of material objects: a transaction of control happens, where we gain a lot of control, but forfeit some of it too. A petty example is my cellphone, which allows me to make calls when and where I want, but at the same time "tells me" when to charge it and "makes me" put in my pocket every morning and of course takes up a bit of space on my nightstand. This isn't existential stuff (it's the not Mycenaeans descending from the hills!), but it's a modern analogue. When we buy things, we're still in some way accepting the unfreedom of their proper stewardship. And these myriad forfeits of control, I think, ultimately speak to the persistent difficulties of life despite material abundance (speak to the fact that that perhaps it's not "despite" but "because of" abundance that some people drown).