[Mrs. Don-o]

"...what you have described here is most emphatically not subservience, enforced by physical or mental threats......yes, we owe those who have mentored and guided us our allegiance and loyalties..."

This makes me think that we've been arguing about different things without making the necessary distinctions.

I have been regarding "subservience" and "humility" in this discussion, anyhow, in a filial sense. Which is to say, a way that is conformed to reality. "Humility" in this context is practically a synonym for "realism." We did not make ourselves, we are contingent beings and therefore indebted beings, we live "referred lives", which is to say, lives that refer, inescapably, to others; and we are born into a society and a world we did not make.

We are not born "free". We are born into a predicament.

Your kids will say, as you yourself said, or at least thought, as a kid: "Why do I have to live in this world I did not make?" "What do you expect *me* to do?" That's the predicament.

[Tax-chick]

We are not born "free". We are born into a predicament.

I agree with that. However, I also think that the most common experience of human beings over time is "subservience, enforced by physical or mental threats." To conclude from this that humans are "born free" in any sense is far from obvious.