As with the social changes that were necessary to end the African slave trade, a transformation of modern capitalism requires that we step outside of ourselves and examine our own roles within the system objectively.
John Newton (1725-1807) is best known for penning the hymn
"Amazing Grace" in the later years of his life as a minister in the Church of England. In 1788 he published a pamphlet entitled "
Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade", in which he spoke out strongly against what he called "a disgraceful branch of commerce." But for much of his life Newton worked on slave ships, including four years as captain of his own vessel taking stolen African men and women to the American colonies.
Newton's transition from slaver to minister and activist was inspired by one particular event. On a return journey to Liverpool in 1748, a great storm had threatened to sink his ship, and the fear he was forced to face affected him profoundly, changing his views about the people who were imprisoned beneath his feet. He referred to this event as his "
great deliverance," and afterwards gave up the slave trade to campaign against it from his new position in the church.
What had happened to Newton to cause such a change? Did he suddenly develop a new sense of empathy with others, or was it always there, suppressed by the social norms of the time - the collective stories that were told to justify the enslavement of a different race?
We live our lives through stories that reinforce certain values and beliefs. What's true or false, acceptable or not, are constructs that are held aloft like a scaffold in the collective psyche. But when a critical mass of individuals lets go of these stories, a tipping point is reached, and the scaffold collapses. So it was when the slave trade was abolished.
A cascade of individuals like Newton let go of the story that slavery was acceptable, and change rapidly accelerated. As the historian
Adam Hochschild has written, "If you had proposed, in the London of early 1787, to change all of this, nine out of ten people would have laughed you off as a crackpot. Yet by 1807 the British Parliament had banned the slave trade."
Comment: Although this was symbolic for the Palestinians, it will do little to slow down or stop Israel's wall building efforts for "defensive purposes".