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Once in a while, as regular readers know, Dr. Boli picks out a word that he thinks has lost all meaning and prohibits it. His prohibition means nothing to the world at large; it is merely a declaration that he will not take you seriously if you use the word in a reasoned argument.

Today’s verbum prohibitum is “indigenous”—specifically when it is followed by “peoples.” Dr. Boli has nothing against the word when it is used by botanists or zoologists, who may talk about the indigenous flora of New Caledonia or the indigenous reptiles of the Galapagos Islands to their hearts’ content with his entire approval. But “Indigenous peoples” is out.

Why does Dr. Boli make that sweeping prohibition? For the usual reason: that the word has become meaningless; and insofar as it has any meaning, it is wrong.

First of all, there are no peoples who are indigenous. The best guess of paleontology is that the human species developed in eastern Africa. Every human who is not currently in eastern Africa is descended from people who came from somewhere else. Every human who is currently in eastern Africa is almost certainly descended from people who went somewhere else, and then came back and kicked the older population out.

What, then, do people mean when they say “Indigenous peoples”? It’s a surprisingly slippery term. “Indigenous peoples,” says the Wikipedia article on “Indigenous peoples,” “are non-dominant people groups descended from the original inhabitants of their territories, especially territories that have been colonized.” We have already remarked on the difficulty with calling any inhabitants “original.” As for the other qualification, it adds another layer of absurdity: if your ancestors had dwelt on the site of the Garden of Eden since the time of Adam and Eve, you still could not be “indigenous” if you were “dominant.”

Indeed, the Wikipedia article admits the problem in the second sentence. “The term lacks a precise authoritative definition,” it says. But then it adds, “although in the 21st century designations of Indigenous peoples have focused on self-identification, cultural difference from other groups in a state, a special relationship with their traditional territory, and an experience of subjugation and discrimination under a dominant cultural model.”

There’s a lot to peel apart in that attempt at a definition.

The first qualification is “self-identification.” That means that if you call yourself “Indigenous,” the rest of us are obliged to take your word for it. We shall doubtless run into some difficulties with native-born Yinzers who insist on being called Indigenous inhabitants of Pittsburgh, but what can we do? They certainly are culturally different from other groups in the state of Pennsylvania. Furthermore, it is only quite recently that the Yinzer dialect has been embraced rather than deprecated and shunned by every Pittsburgher who gained a smidgen of education, so there’s your experience of subjugation and discrimination. As for a special relationship with their traditional territory, just try to take away a Yinzer’s black-and-gold anything and see where it gets you.

In current popular thought, however, there is a specific meaning for “Indigenous peoples” that the Wikipedia definition hints at but does not dare to say out loud. What we mean by “Indigenous peoples” (usually with a capital I) is “noble savages.” You can read about the Noble Savage at Wikipedia, where you will find that “One question that emerges is whether an admiration of ‘the Other’ as noble undermines or reproduces the dominant hierarchy,” so perhaps you might skip that article after all, because it doesn’t look as though you’ll get anywhere. Noble savages are good and wise with a deep natural wisdom, and we could all learn a lot from them, as long as we don’t actually have to be them. When we see “Indigenous wisdom” held up as a thing to admire, that is what is meant. The praise of “Indigenous wisdom” is merely the myth of the noble savage under a pseudonym.

Let us look, for example, at “The Wisdom of Indigenous Cultures” at EARTHDAY.ORG. It begins: “Of the more than 4,000 religions worldwide, several hundred are considered Indigenous religions, associated with distinct cultural beliefs and traditions.”

Right away we know we are in the realm of romantic fantasy, and specifically Western European romantic fantasy. If you try to pick apart that statement, you cannot find any meaning in it.

Let us take the example of Pittsburgh again. The Jehovah’s Witnesses were founded in Pittsburgh, and Pastor Russell, the Laodicean Messenger, lies buried here near a scale model of the Great Pyramid, which he believed was a complete prophecy in stone of the shape of human history. There are still Jehovah’s Witnesses in Pittsburgh, where the movement was born; they are therefore indigenous to Pittsburgh in the only sense of that term that has any definite meaning. Furthermore, they have distinct cultural beliefs and traditions: ask any former Witness who has left the movement and as a result has not been allowed to see her family for years.

But are Jehovah’s Witnesses among the faiths “considered Indigenous religions”?

Any religion began somewhere; if anyone still practices it in that place it is indigenous to that place. But that is not what is meant by “Indigenous religions.” Usually what is meant is “the religions of noble savages.”

We assign a romantic vision of goodness and wisdom to these noble savages, untainted by the things we recognize as worst in our own civilization. That seems very complimentary, so many people who belong to groups we would call “Indigenous” are happy to embrace it.

But many others are not happy at all, because they have realized that, in shrouding them in our romantic haze, we take away their right to be seen as people, as distinct human beings, with good and evil qualities so thoroughly twined together that the tangle can never be sorted out. We speak of their “wisdom” in just the same way we talk about how clever our dogs or horses are, and our patronizing kindness is the same. We despise someone who abuses “Indigenous peoples” the way we despise someone who beats his dog.

Then what should we do? The only way to bring “Indigenous peoples” back to a full measure of humanity in our own imaginations is to recognize that they are just as bad as we are. They are not worse, but they are not better. They are not a distinct variety of human—Homo sapiens indigenus—with a special gift of wisdom. Some individuals are good, some bad, some indifferent, most just scraping by like the rest of humanity.

Perhaps it is paradoxical, but we shall always see “Indigenous peoples” as less than human until we recognize that they have the same capacity for evil and the same fatal and stupid pigheadedness that we have. Then we shall at last see their individual virtues and their delightful peculiarities, and even their wisdom.

The first step along that path to full recognition is to give up the word “Indigenous,” which has picked up such a load of connotations and associations that it is broken. It no longer conveys any real meaning, and therefore, through the mighty power of arrogance, Dr. Boli prohibits it.

In reply to an advertisement from the Dairisophical Foundation that ran yesterday, KevinT asks,

Why does everything these days need to be a “journey”? Although, I suppose that a cheese wheel smooths the personal journey toward full spiritual potential.

Dr. Boli will not presume to answer on behalf of his advertisers. He can only offer his own opinion: everything is a “journey” because, if you actually reached the spiritual destination on offer, you would find it was not all it was cracked up to be.

What is “slop” in modern American slang? AI can tell you.

Γνῶθι σεαυτόν, as the graffiti said on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. This is, as the young people say, very meta.

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The screenshot extract from Google results is quoted for the purpose of mockery, which is one of the purposes that qualify as “fair use” in American legal theory.

Dear Dr. Boli: What is the difference between religion and superstition? —Sincerely, Just Sitting Here in Peter’s Chair Wondering.

Dear Sir or Madam: The distinction between religion and superstition is the distinction between the grammatical first and second persons. Religion is what I believe about the supernatural. Superstition is what you believe about the supernatural.

Dear Dr. Boli: Why do laws exist? —Sincerely, Samantha in Mr. McRoberts’ Fifth-Period Civics Class, and if you could get me an answer before the bell rings that would really help.

Dear Miss: You will hear two completely incompatible theories about why laws exist. The idealists will say that laws exist to protect the poor and humble from the depredations of the powerful. The cynics will say that laws exist to maintain the ascendancy of the powerful over the poor and humble.

However, the real answer is much more pragmatic. Laws exist to give legislators something to do, thus keeping them off the streets. If you have ever met an average state legislator, you know that this is a necessary and laudable goal.

More than once Dr. Boli has pointed out that agreements to which we did not agree have made slaves of us. No normal person (to give one obvious example) would agree that the details of her sexual activity could be sold to any third party who hands over a few pennies; yet, if you have ever accepted a ride in a friend’s car, you may have legally made just that “agreement,” depending on who made the car. You didn’t know? Well, neither did your friend, because that clause was buried among thousands of words that she never read. But there was also a clause making it your friend’s responsibility to inform her passengers that all the terms and conditions applied to them as well, so it’s not the car’s fault that you didn’t know, is it?

Now, obviously, if you have lost control of the most intimate and closely guarded aspects of your life to a corporation, you are the slave of that corporation. And here is where you might expect Dr. Boli to wax eloquent, or at least sarcastic, on the evil intentions of big corporations. But that is not going to happen. It is certainly true that some corporations have evil intentions. Corporations are people, too (says the Supreme Court); and some people are good and some less resistant to temptation. But terms and conditions are not imposed on us primarily because corporations are evil. They are imposed because corporations are afraid.

What are they afraid of? Aside from big hairy spiders, of course?

Their fears are very reasonable. They worry constantly that they will be held liable for millions of dollars in damages because of some ordinary and necessary aspect of their business.

For example, you set up a photo-sharing site where people can upload pictures and share them with their friends. How delightful! Now someone is suing you for copyright infringement because you have his copyrighted pictures stored on your server—even though he uploaded them to your server himself. “Did you have written permission to store those copyrighted pictures?” attorney for the plaintiff asks in court. Well, no, not really.

You should have had some terms and conditions. And you should have had them written by a lawyer, who would have the expertise to think of all the unlikely but possible ways other lawyers might try to exploit the courts against you.

So the other companies in your business, having watched your downfall with alarm, do just that. And so do you, if you have the good luck to emerge from bankruptcy and try again. And the more your lawyers think—or, in other words, the better they are at their job—the more the terms and conditions pile up into tens of thousands of words. Now, a site like yours needs at least thousands if not millions of users in order to make a profit; you simply cannot negotiate an agreement with each one of them individually. And you quickly discover that most prospective users will just go somewhere else if you make them e-sign a bunch of documents before they can interact with your site. So you make the terms and conditions apply to everyone who uses the site, just by using the site—and the courts, realizing that modern business would be impossible without these “agreements,” go along with it.

Make a few assumptions, draw the obvious conclusions, and modern slavery is the inevitable result. It is quite impossible for you to know the terms of all the “agreements” you have accepted, but it is just as impossible for businesses to offer you their services without those terms and conditions.

Are we trapped, then? No! Dr. Boli has a pair of sharp shears (labeled for metaphorical use only) that will cut through this Gordian knot. The lawyers won’t like it, because it will eliminate nine parts in ten of their work, but if the consumers will get behind it, the corporations will have to deal with it.

The proposal begins with an observation: every business in each category has the same legal problems to face. Your business may have a few unique aspects, but the great majority of your legal fears are the same as the legal fears of all the other players in your field.

Why, then, should you not all use the same terms and conditions?

Right now, if you run a photo-sharing site, you have your own set of terms and conditions, and your own privacy policy, and so on. The competition has a different set of terms and conditions, but they address the same problems. That is, at the very least, inefficient; and from the point of view of the user, it is impossible. No one can read a separate set of legal conditions for every site on the Web.

Open-source software programmers have dealt with this problem in a very reasonable way. Instead of making a new set of terms and conditions for every bit of software they release, they pick one of a handful of well-known licenses. If you install software licensed under the MIT license, you can say, “Oh, I’ve seen this a dozen times before,” and you know what you’re getting into.

What we need is a similar way to consolidate everyone’s terms and conditions. It is impossible to read separate terms and conditions for every car you ride in, every app you download, every Web site you visit, every appliance you buy, every wi-fi hotspot you connect to. But it would be reasonable to read a short document called “Universal Wi-Fi Hotspot Terms” once, and then know that, whenever you saw the UWFHT logo, you could confidently agree to the terms you had already read and understood.

It is the multiplication of separate agreements that enslaves us, not the idea of agreements. Make the agreements few and easy to understand, and balance will be restored to the relationship between businesses and customers. Customers would be well-informed enough to point out the conditions they didn’t like. Corporations would have an incentive to adjust their terms and conditions so that consumers had a good impression of them. The “agreements” would become agreements, without ironical quotation marks.

How would we accomplish that? Govern­ment regulation might work. Better would be a network of trade associations pooling their resources to come up with the most equitable terms and conditions to apply in each industry. Then, of course, businesses that adopted these new universal agreements would have a strong advertising advantage. Buy from the business you trust—the one that’s up front with you—the one whose terms you know in advance—and not from that shady charlatan who hides who knows what wicked chicanery in his nonstandard terms and conditions!

The hardest part of the endeavor would be to get the lawyers on our side, because we seem to be taking food out of their mouths. But when the mob of attorneys with pitchforks shows up at our door, perhaps we can persuade them that there is a pile of money to be made in suing the corporations that persist in holding customers to nonstandard terms and conditions. As the standard agreements become more usual and expected and are adjusted with experience, they will become more immune to legal assault—but the one-off nonstandard agreements will begin to show their tattered edges and moth holes. Lawyers who can take advantage of those weaknesses will be doing the world a favor, and they may get rich in the bargain.

You are a slave. You might as well get used to the idea. The sooner you recognize that you are owned, the sooner you can begin to make conscious adaptations to that condition.

We have mentioned before that nearly everything you do comes with terms and conditions attached—an “agreement” that you agreed to without reading it, because it may well have been twenty thousand words long. You may have made multiple such “agreements” just today. If you have been alive for the past ten years, it is almost inevitable that you have “agreed” to more than a thousand of these articles of enslavement, and that is a very low estimate. And you are bound by these agreements that are not agreements.

If Party A can impose conditions at will upon Party B, then Party B is the slave of Party A. We must call things by their names, and only then can we begin to understand them.

But perhaps it is not as bad as it seems to be. Perhaps there is a kind of safety built into the system: we accept the terms and conditions because there is an unspoken agreement that the terms and conditions will not be unreasonable. Or, even if they are indeed unreasonable as written, the most unreasonable provisions will never be enforced, because corporations know that people will not tolerate the enforcement of unreasonable conditions.

Perhaps not now. But the conditions have become much more unreasonable over just the past two or three decades, and we have tolerated it just fine. Did you agree to let your corporate masters monitor your sex life? If you drive or ride as a passenger in certain brands of automobile, yes, you did, just by getting in the car.

Once we have admitted the principle that we can have conditions imposed on us, we are owned. We have fallen into the abyss, and the fact that we are still falling and have not yet hit the bottom does not make it less of an abyss. The next time you are confronted with terms and conditions to agree to, read some of them. Not all of them, of course: that would be unreasonable. But read enough to get an impression of the general tenor of the document. You will probably find that the various provisions, as they pile up in heaps too high to wade through, are all reinforcements of the same overall principle: you owe us everything and we owe you nothing.

It will be better in the long run, then, if we just admit that we have been enslaved.

And then what?

Now, before the Internet explodes with outrage for the five hundredth time today, Dr. Boli will point out that our condition of slavery is not at all like African slavery of the days before the Civil War. We have it easy. We are the privileged household slaves, not the tortured, abused, and short-lived field slaves. We call our condition slavery not because we have bloody stripes on our backs, but because it is necessary to understand that we have been placed under a kind of control from which we have no legal escape. It is a kinder, gentler slavery, but it is slavery.

So, once we have made the observation that we are slaves, what can we do?

There are two possible ways of dealing with this kind of enslavement. One is to be rich. If you are rich enough to hire lawyers more devious than the enslaving corporations’ lawyers (who, after all, are likely to be copy-and-paste timeservers), then you can make it inconvenient enough for the enslavers to try to impose their most outrageous conditions that they ultimately will not hold you to them.

But if you are not rich and well-lawyered, then you must learn to think like a slave.

That does not mean what you probably think it does. It does not mean that you must resign yourself to your condition and become a humble and obedient automaton, serving the master’s every whim. That may be what you think a slave is like, but that is because you have not known many acknowledged slaves. Through most of human history, slavery has been part of the fallen and broken human condition. And for most of human history, the reaction of the slave to the condition of slavery has been deviousness.

To learn to think like a slave, you must study Roman comedy. Plautus and Terence will show you how it is done. The slave must be one step ahead of the master at all times, to the point of making the master wonder whether it is worth the trouble to own slaves in the first place.

Once you have mastered the Roman comedies, you are ready for the advanced class. Here you study the works of Frederick Douglass, and learn how a modern genius deals with being a slave, with the ultimate goal not only of profiting in the short term but also of gaining permanent freedom. If you have not given yourself the pleasure of reading Douglass himself, Dr. Boli would certainly recommend his autobiographies—especially the first one, written in the heat of the fight for abolition. Mr. Douglass writes with anger, as you might expect, but also with a scalpel-sharp sense of humor. Slavery is an absurd condition, and no one is more absurd than the slaveholder who thinks he has a right of property in his slaves.

So we learn from Pseudolus and Frederick Douglass. We treat our masters with contempt—but devious contempt. If nothing belongs to us by legal right, then we will make everything belong to us by cleverness. Mr. Douglass will even teach us the art of combining deviousness with dignity. We can make the slaveholders wonder why they seem to have everything according to the law and yet never actually get anything they want.

There may come a time when the people rise up against their masters and defeat them on the only ground that will make any difference—in court. There may come a time when lawyers prove to the satisfaction of the highest court in the land that so-called agreements that, because they are so long and come in such numbers, are literally impossible for consumers to read are no more valid than a supposed contract that required one of the parties to levitate or teleport. But, until that distant day, we can learn to think like slaves and, like old Pseudolus, make pretty good lives for ourselves.