4 ms·

Providing facts should never require justification. Everybody is free to have their own opinion, everybody is not free to have their own facts. Regardless of t

Providing facts should never require justification. Everybody is free to have their own opinion, everybody is not free to have their own facts. Regardless of the above, I'll indulge you because this is a topic I find particularly interesting - and there is also a moral. It seems many people in society are starting to view things as caricaturizations of reality. There are the good guys, and there are the bad guys. And the person I was responding to, I suspect, likely viewed the transatlantic slave trade through this lens based on his apparently significant offense as somebody daring to use the word 'just' in reference to a time frame of slavery. I think this is surprisingly dangerous. The reason for this is that in reality things are not caricaturizations, but changes that might not seem so severe to many. For instance back on the slave trade I hope you'll indulge a few more of those condemnable facts. In the entire transatlantic slave trade about 12.5 million slaves were bought from Africa, with 10.7 million surviving the voyage. Of the 10.7 million 388,000, or about 3.6% [1], ended up in what would be the United States. Many people in the US seem to think that slavery ended, more or less, after the Civil War. That's obviously quite a poorly informed view, but it's built upon this caricaturization of slavery. In reality today there are more slaves than ever before in history with an estimated 45.8 million people enslaved worldwide [2]. That includes an estimated 57,700 slaves even within the United States. Rather than judge people and events, I try to understand them - try to put myself in their shoes and see how things played out. And in this case, it's not hard to see. Slavery was likely a story of apathy and cognitive dissonance. In the US about 1.4% of free Americans owned slaves, about 8% of families. [4]. Obviously more owned slaves in states where slavery was legal, but I'm considering the entire population as slavery was a rich man's game - and getting involved in the business was little more than a carriage ride away. Similar to today how California's ratio of entrepreneurs cannot be considered in isolation as the lucrative opportunities there draw in people from across the entire country. And those that did choose to own slaves likely convinced themselves it was morally fine since they were buying people who were already enslaved. In Africa at the time slaves were even subject to things including human sacrifice. [5] Just in West Africa there were events including the regular sacrifice of hundreds of slaves and on rare occasion even thousands at once. The cognitive dissonance there is not really hard to see. And this behavior of cognitive dissonance and apathy continues to this day. Do you really care about slavery? I imagine we'd all like to think so, but reality paints a less favorable picture. What if the president started implicitly condoning slavery for his own benefit? You might think you'd care, but that has already happened very recently. Malaysia is one of the worst places for modern slavery. You can see from the aforementioned link [2] that about 0.4% of their population is a slave. That's one out of every 250 people for 129k slaves in a country of 30million people. In 2015 Obama chose to remove Malaysia from a list of the worst human traffickers. He did this just so he could squeeze them into a trade agreement he wanted to pass (the TPP). This was the same year that more than numerous mass graves and trafficking camps were discovered in Malaysia. [3] A few media outlets ran the story, but for the most part people showed they couldn't really care less. And so it almost certainly was during slavery as well. What if I told you a list of companies or products that are still generated using slavery? Like chocolate? West Africa supplies about 69% of the world's cocoa. [6]. And unsurprisingly, slavery and even child slavery, is involved in its production. Companies funding the practice include Mars, Nestle, Hershey, and others. Will you now stop buying their products? Probably not. Think about that for a minute. A sweet treat is more important to you ("you" in this case is rhetorical, as even if you in particular would/will give up the companies - few would) than taking a stand against not only slavery, but child slavery. Slavery is incredibly offensive until it provides something we want, or when doing something about it might cause you some inconvenience. It's quite phenomenal isn't it? This disconnect between what we think we think, and what we actually seem willing to do based on that? The point of this all is that I think if people were more aware of reality, and understood that the line between good and evil is far closer than any of us would like to admit, that we'd be much more inclined to concern ourselves with actual events and happenings - instead of taking faux offense at somebody using the word 'just' in a way you find offensive. [1] - http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/how-many-slaves-landed-in-the-us/ http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cro... [2] - https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/findings/ https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/findings/ [3] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/25/malaysia-migrant-mass-graves-police-reveal-139-sites-some-with-multiple-corpses https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/25/malaysia-migra... [4] - http://www.civil-war.net/pages/1860_census.html http://www.civil-war.net/pages/1860_census.html [5] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice#West_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice#West_Africa [6] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labor_in_cocoa_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labor_in_cocoa_productio...

ergothus 9y ago
> Providing facts should never require justification Facts don't require justification. Which and where and when one chooses to provide them might well require justification. Just as you are questioning the above poster's selection of facts to present, I often question when someone chooses to say "but what about X" whenever an issue is brought up, as if X changes the issue actually under discussion. > Regardless of the above, I'll indulge you Quite generous of you. Without sarcasm, I will truly try to understand you, though I do not agree that we cannot/should judge events, because our actions are all we can control, and without judging their quality how can we evaluate future ones? > many people in society are starting to view things as caricaturizations of reality You believe this is a new and/or increasing trend? I won't deny over-simplistic viewpoints and even that there are areas that are having more of an issue with this than in recent history, but I'm not willing to declare this to be out of historical norms. For all that, say, US politics is more bitter than in recent decades, we can't ignore politicians committing violence upon each other (including in the US) or even such dramatic incidents such as the Great Defenestration, all of which I assume involved a great amount of hero/villain perspectives. Per my previous concern these examples do not make such over-simplifications suddenly complex, but it does stand to show this is not new. > [ a great deal of material supporting the concept that modern slavery exists and that psychic/statistical numbing and compassion fatigue exist] > The point of this all is that I think if people were more aware of reality, and understood that the line between good and evil is far closer than any of us would like to admit, that we'd be much more inclined to concern ourselves with actual events and happenings - instead of taking faux offense at somebody using the word 'just' in a way you find offensive. So your point was solely to argue that we should think that 5 years of slavery is NOT a big deal? Your rationale appears to be in your previous post: > These individuals were doomed to enslavement for their entire life, one way or the other I understood the article's use of "just" to be a relative term, but I also understand that 5 years of slavery is a big deal, EVEN IF they would have been slaves anyway. Because while I do indeed practice a great deal of selfishness, doing so does not mean I should deny charity to anyone. A wrong does not justify a wrong, and a wrong certainly does not justify that we stop trying for right at all. The facts you have chosen to present seem cherry-picked to distract from the actual point of the discussion. You've expended a great deal of effort to only say that the phrase "just 5 years" is apt. If we acknowledge that good/evil (however we define it) is a spectrum and not a fine line as you claim is your desire and that 5 years as a slave is unarguably better than a lifetime as a slave, you've not addressed either the (presumed) actual reason behind the above poster's reaction (that being that a slave for 5 years should not be minimized), nor have you addressed my points about how the timing and choice of facts you present serve to convey the message that US slavery was fine. Take, for example, how you carefully select statistics to argue that relatively few US citizens owned slaves. But you don't address the large population of citizens that supported it, that elected politicians that made it a large national division from literally the founding of the country through the civil war and it's aftermath, then through Jim Crow, redlining, all the way to All Lives Matter. If slavery was merely a rich man's issue, why did non-slave owning people accept it on it's face as opposed to requiring the distance and plausible deniability we (mostly) do today? Was it Lee that captured and conscripted free black people, or was it his non-rich troops? (Plenty of problems in the North - I'm not trying to deny that, I'm addressing your choice of facts) Absolutely it is inaccurate to think in black or white, and it's wrong to feel we are morally superior and/or without error. It is likewise wrong to use our own flaws as an excuse to have more flaws, and it is wrong to ignore the results of our actions. In this case, I'm seeing your actions as downplaying and distracting from the problems of slavery, the historical brutality of these particular incidence, and as placing a reaction to a potential downplay as more important than other aspects of the issue, all under a guise of warning of the perils of over-simplifying. That's my impression, with no opinion on whether you are doing so intentionally or innocently. I can be mistaken - it would be ironic of me to over-simplify either your intentions or the effects of your choices. If I am mistaken, please grant me a little more indulgence and explain how. At the moment, regardless of the accuracy of my conclusions, I am not getting the message you say you are trying to send, for I fully acknowledge our many moral failings and the messy complicated details of human interactions, particularly when it comes to those who are being victimized by multiple nations, and yet agreeing that life is not as simple as good or evil has not modified my opinion of the above poster's reaction to "just 5 years" as reasonable, if likely not reflecting the intention of the author. Considering 5 years of slavery to still be bad is not "faux offense", that is attempting to acknowledge a fact.

ergothus 9y ago

> Providing facts should never require justification Facts don't require justification. Which and where and when one chooses to provide them might well require justification. Just as you are questioning the above poster's selection of facts to present, I often question when someone chooses to say "but what about X" whenever an issue is brought up, as if X changes the issue actually under discussion. > Regardless of the above, I'll indulge you Quite generous of you. Without sarcasm, I will truly try to understand you, though I do not agree that we cannot/should judge events, because our actions are all we can control, and without judging their quality how can we evaluate future ones? > many people in society are starting to view things as caricaturizations of reality You believe this is a new and/or increasing trend? I won't deny over-simplistic viewpoints and even that there are areas that are having more of an issue with this than in recent history, but I'm not willing to declare this to be out of historical norms. For all that, say, US politics is more bitter than in recent decades, we can't ignore politicians committing violence upon each other (including in the US) or even such dramatic incidents such as the Great Defenestration, all of which I assume involved a great amount of hero/villain perspectives. Per my previous concern these examples do not make such over-simplifications suddenly complex, but it does stand to show this is not new. > [ a great deal of material supporting the concept that modern slavery exists and that psychic/statistical numbing and compassion fatigue exist] > The point of this all is that I think if people were more aware of reality, and understood that the line between good and evil is far closer than any of us would like to admit, that we'd be much more inclined to concern ourselves with actual events and happenings - instead of taking faux offense at somebody using the word 'just' in a way you find offensive. So your point was solely to argue that we should think that 5 years of slavery is NOT a big deal? Your rationale appears to be in your previous post: > These individuals were doomed to enslavement for their entire life, one way or the other I understood the article's use of "just" to be a relative term, but I also understand that 5 years of slavery is a big deal, EVEN IF they would have been slaves anyway. Because while I do indeed practice a great deal of selfishness, doing so does not mean I should deny charity to anyone. A wrong does not justify a wrong, and a wrong certainly does not justify that we stop trying for right at all. The facts you have chosen to present seem cherry-picked to distract from the actual point of the discussion. You've expended a great deal of effort to only say that the phrase "just 5 years" is apt. If we acknowledge that good/evil (however we define it) is a spectrum and not a fine line as you claim is your desire and that 5 years as a slave is unarguably better than a lifetime as a slave, you've not addressed either the (presumed) actual reason behind the above poster's reaction (that being that a slave for 5 years should not be minimized), nor have you addressed my points about how the timing and choice of facts you present serve to convey the message that US slavery was fine. Take, for example, how you carefully select statistics to argue that relatively few US citizens owned slaves. But you don't address the large population of citizens that supported it, that elected politicians that made it a large national division from literally the founding of the country through the civil war and it's aftermath, then through Jim Crow, redlining, all the way to All Lives Matter. If slavery was merely a rich man's issue, why did non-slave owning people accept it on it's face as opposed to requiring the distance and plausible deniability we (mostly) do today? Was it Lee that captured and conscripted free black people, or was it his non-rich troops? (Plenty of problems in the North - I'm not trying to deny that, I'm addressing your choice of facts) Absolutely it is inaccurate to think in black or white, and it's wrong to feel we are morally superior and/or without error. It is likewise wrong to use our own flaws as an excuse to have more flaws, and it is wrong to ignore the results of our actions. In this case, I'm seeing your actions as downplaying and distracting from the problems of slavery, the historical brutality of these particular incidence, and as placing a reaction to a potential downplay as more important than other aspects of the issue, all under a guise of warning of the perils of over-simplifying. That's my impression, with no opinion on whether you are doing so intentionally or innocently. I can be mistaken - it would be ironic of me to over-simplify either your intentions or the effects of your choices. If I am mistaken, please grant me a little more indulgence and explain how. At the moment, regardless of the accuracy of my conclusions, I am not getting the message you say you are trying to send, for I fully acknowledge our many moral failings and the messy complicated details of human interactions, particularly when it comes to those who are being victimized by multiple nations, and yet agreeing that life is not as simple as good or evil has not modified my opinion of the above poster's reaction to "just 5 years" as reasonable, if likely not reflecting the intention of the author. Considering 5 years of slavery to still be bad is not "faux offense", that is attempting to acknowledge a fact.