Forced labor, or slavery, is unfortunately commonplace even in the 21st century. There are millions of workers worldwide that are employed under forced labor by organizations, some say by governments. But do we even want to be free? When a person is someone else's property, at least the landlord must take some care of them. It is similar to getting your car serviced on time so it does not break down. Am I not a slave to the government and the human society that I'm a part of? As a metaphor, we can relate to ourselves as modern slaves, but obviously it's a metaphor because at any given moment we can get up and do whatever we want with our lives. However, in practice nobody is free, meaning that everyone is willing to sell themselves for a certain price. Our internal calculator always works in one direction: enjoy life as much as possible, while paying as little as possible. For most people it amounts to performing the required tasks, and in return, society more or less takes care of our needs. In terms of our evolution, are we not supposed to free ourselves from slavery? In actual fact, it's not about that at all. In order to stop being a slave, something needs to change in the slave, rather than in the landlord. First, we have to want to come out of slavery, and then examine to what we are enslaved. Maybe we are not slaves to the landlord, but to our desire to receive pleasure? From the perspective of the wisdom of Kabbalah, a free person is one who is free from his ego, from the desire to receive pleasure from life even in the tiniest way, but not like a monk who doesn’t want to enjoy anything, who is not free because he forcefully keeps the restraint.. A kabbalist aspires to reach a state where a person wants to be free of the egoistic desire only in order to sustain its opposite form, the desire for bestowal and love toward others and through that to the Creator. How does this make a person free rather than enslaved to everyone? By nature, we are egoists who always seek benefit for our actions. A person who feels love toward others has freed himself from his ego, so he is no longer enslaved. His reward is that he's like the Creator and lives in a world that is utterly good.