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>Why should we care about some long-dead slaves' opinion about what is good or bad? Because they had a more direct experience of it than we can ever have. I t

>Why should we care about some long-dead slaves' opinion about what is good or bad? Because they had a more direct experience of it than we can ever have. I think the (even if implicit) claim that it is better to physically harm, rape, and kill slaves than to be nice to them is highly questionable. Yes, both are bad situations, but adding additional physical violence doesn't make things better, only worse. Edit: I guess I should also add that we can never truly know what someone else's experience was. It is especially difficult to know if all you have left after hundreds of years is some text.

Retra 11y ago
I guess my own position is tainted by the belief that slavery is fundamentally wrong as a restriction of freedom, not as a matter of being beaten. So if I were a slave, though I would personally prefer not to be beaten, I would also prefer slavery be seen as a vile practice, and if I have to take a few beatings to make that be known, I would take them. The alternate of nobody being beaten, but still being slaves where everybody is waffling and unsure about whether slavery is bad because nobody is being beaten seems to me a bit like a losing proposition. It's the same reason we can't do effective political reform today: people will choose their own convenience when they're not facing a visible evil as a group. The last thing I would want is for people to think I got beaten because I'm a "naughty slave" or because my owner was a particularly bad guy. No, the reason I got beaten was because I couldn't choose my path. Because I was a slave, and slaves can't choose not to be beaten, even if they would prefer it. When a slave gets beaten, he or she is beaten by slavery as an institution, not by some violent individual. How much different would the world be if Hitler had announced from day 1 his play to conquer Europe and massacre millions of people? Heck, if we had ended slavery 100 years earlier, maybe we'd be 100 years closer to managing global warming. We don't have time for evils to fester in the margins pretending to be nice. I remember a couple years ago there was some politician saying we don't need minimum wage laws because companies already pay more than that, so the law is redundant. And in the name of "small government" declared that we should remove the law from the books. All because his favorite corporations are "nice slaveowners" who don't beat their slaves, he thinks that there's nothing wrong with destroying a very important institutional protection.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  Do you think you would be the same you if you had been born into slavery?
  - Retra 11y ago
    I don't think that's a useful hypothetical. If I were born into slavery, I would be a different person, and I can't tell you what that person would think.
    - maxerickson 11y ago
      Yes, that was my point. You had written as if that were not the case.
      - Retra 11y ago
        I was telling you what I actually do think, not what someone else might think. That is, knowing what I know now, I would say what I said. If you are asking me if I would agree with that while not knowing what I know now, then obviously I can't say, because I would know things that I don't currently know. Regardless, I can't make decisions using information I don't have, so the question is pointless.
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  I do not consciously support slavery. I just find some objection to the apparent false dichotomy that beating slaves is a sound path to their freedom. If (and it's a very big if), the only way to end slavery is to have slaves be beaten, then you might have a good point. However, I can think of no way to verify that, nor can I think of any evidence in support of that premise that can withstand even most most basic scrutiny. >How much different would the world be if Hitler had announced from day 1 his play to conquer Europe and massacre millions of people? How do you know he didn't?
  - AnimalMuppet 11y ago

Retra 11y ago

I guess my own position is tainted by the belief that slavery is fundamentally wrong as a restriction of freedom, not as a matter of being beaten. So if I were a slave, though I would personally prefer not to be beaten, I would also prefer slavery be seen as a vile practice, and if I have to take a few beatings to make that be known, I would take them. The alternate of nobody being beaten, but still being slaves where everybody is waffling and unsure about whether slavery is bad because nobody is being beaten seems to me a bit like a losing proposition. It's the same reason we can't do effective political reform today: people will choose their own convenience when they're not facing a visible evil as a group. The last thing I would want is for people to think I got beaten because I'm a "naughty slave" or because my owner was a particularly bad guy. No, the reason I got beaten was because I couldn't choose my path. Because I was a slave, and slaves can't choose not to be beaten, even if they would prefer it. When a slave gets beaten, he or she is beaten by slavery as an institution, not by some violent individual. How much different would the world be if Hitler had announced from day 1 his play to conquer Europe and massacre millions of people? Heck, if we had ended slavery 100 years earlier, maybe we'd be 100 years closer to managing global warming. We don't have time for evils to fester in the margins pretending to be nice. I remember a couple years ago there was some politician saying we don't need minimum wage laws because companies already pay more than that, so the law is redundant. And in the name of "small government" declared that we should remove the law from the books. All because his favorite corporations are "nice slaveowners" who don't beat their slaves, he thinks that there's nothing wrong with destroying a very important institutional protection.

maxerickson 11y ago
Do you think you would be the same you if you had been born into slavery?
- Retra 11y ago
  I don't think that's a useful hypothetical. If I were born into slavery, I would be a different person, and I can't tell you what that person would think.
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    Yes, that was my point. You had written as if that were not the case.
    - Retra 11y ago
      I was telling you what I actually do think, not what someone else might think. That is, knowing what I know now, I would say what I said. If you are asking me if I would agree with that while not knowing what I know now, then obviously I can't say, because I would know things that I don't currently know. Regardless, I can't make decisions using information I don't have, so the question is pointless.
jsprogrammer 11y ago
I do not consciously support slavery. I just find some objection to the apparent false dichotomy that beating slaves is a sound path to their freedom. If (and it's a very big if), the only way to end slavery is to have slaves be beaten, then you might have a good point. However, I can think of no way to verify that, nor can I think of any evidence in support of that premise that can withstand even most most basic scrutiny. >How much different would the world be if Hitler had announced from day 1 his play to conquer Europe and massacre millions of people? How do you know he didn't?
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago