Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Was slavery always wrong?

#21
C C Offline
(Oct 29, 2018 04:28 PM)Syne Wrote:
(Oct 22, 2018 03:07 AM)Secular Sanity Wrote: It's wrong now and it was wrong then.

(Oct 29, 2018 01:30 PM)Leigha Wrote: It's not that people of different time periods didn't know better, they did know better, and either didn't care, or were too afraid to change laws.

Good. It sounds like there's at least a few here who believe in a universal morality that transcends culture or time.

Not surprising that online pockets of people with an anti-metaphysical or scientism bent (via whatever lingering past or persisting -isms) may often be reluctant to explore or clarify what they mean by advocating spreading the net of an _X_ over all eras of time and place on Earth.

Given the ubiquitous nature of slavery throughout human history (even in the isolated New World[*]), potential attempts to ground modern antipathy toward it in genetics (so as to make it globally repugnant) would seem to be a fail. That leaves the kind of situation Winston was in as a captive of O'Brien (addressing a different species of bondage and its overthrow):

“Do you believe in God, Winston?”

“No.”

“Then what is it, this principle that will defeat us [the Party]?”

“I don’t know. The spirit of Man.”
--1984


IOW, if Winston or someone in his particular pickle aren't alternatively falling back on an outright appeal to common folk traditions of the occult -- then at least apparently making a hand waving appeal at some idealized, Platonic level of potent principles which have significance to the human societal domain; or Kant's transcendental version of the mind, with its set of thought-forms, faculties, and moral standard distributed universally to rational agents (as if a Windows OS).

- - -

[*] Slavery of children in Latin America continues; and of course today's political pop-market orientation infectiously attributes the original source of that solely to Spanish colonialism. But slavery also already existed in pre-Columbian populations, including parents voluntarily selling children to priests for the most powerful human sacrifices of innocence (captive of war-like raids certainly weren't the only source).

~
Reply
#22
Leigha Offline
I think we complicate these conversations. It comes down to, ''would I wish to have harm inflicted on me and be property of another?'' If the answer is no, then people should by and large, consider slavery to be an indelible stain in history, and always morally reprehensible. The definitions of slavery can vary, if we look at modern day ''sweat shops'' that provide the US market, much of its clothing, for example. Do we boycott those companies or do we justify it in a way that allows us to feel good that we keep Walmart going, since after all, it provides jobs in the US? All about the lens with which you use to look at the topic.
Reply
#23
C C Offline
(Oct 29, 2018 06:40 PM)Leigha Wrote: I think we complicate these conversations. It comes down to, ''would I wish to have harm inflicted on me and be property of another?'' If the answer is no, then people should by and large, consider slavery to be an indelible stain in history, and always morally reprehensible. The definitions of slavery can vary, if we look at modern day ''sweat shops'' that provide the US market, much of its clothing, for example. Do we boycott those companies or do we justify it in a way that allows us to feel good that we keep Walmart going, since after all, it provides jobs in the US? All about the lens with which you use to look at the topic.


Yes, that's the everyday, practical orientation that overlooks inconsistencies or loose ends in our beliefs for the sake of "just getting on with things". But the original post apparently set-up a dichotomy of contingent versus universal in the thread (i.e., a topic not satisfied with unresolved ambiguity).

Slavery being only retrospectively wrong for the past (requiring these future social contracts applied to the past) still makes the judgment of "wrong" contingent rather than part of a non-invented standard that's literally independent of location and date. Plus, even the consensus of today probably isn't 100%; just that most governments and institutions formally give lip-service to slavery being a violation of human rights or whichever abstract bone is served up. ("Rights" also another construct rather than literally prior in rank to working out these human agreements of an era, though did have incrementally developed precursors in various historic occasions.)

~
Reply
#24
Leigha Offline
I wish this forum had a (like) ''reaction'' emoji for posts like that CC. Smile
Reply
#25
Syne Offline
Since economic prosperity is often correlated with greater protections for freedom, economic opportunities that are initially exploitative can lead to freedom where nothing else would. Sweatshops, being voluntary, are likely among the better opportunities in such areas. And places with actual slavery are rarely stable enough to invest in.
Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Treating rapists as ordinary criminals to stop them + What slavery looks like today C C 0 410 Apr 4, 2017 03:11 AM
Last Post: C C



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)