5 ms·

> It's not just about the deaths, but also about the suffering and degradation spanning generations, for the sole purpose of making "superior people" more money

> It's not just about the deaths, but also about the suffering and degradation spanning generations, for the sole purpose of making "superior people" more money. Absolutely, I don't see anybody making the claim that slavery is wonderful, and devoid of suffering and degradation for generations to come. Maybe the folks walking around with tiki torches, but, let's be real. You and I, and most of Hacker News interlocutors are not spending much time around that crowd day-in and day-out, so we can all safely assume nobody is advocating for that here. The fact however is that slavery has been with us, as a species, for the entirety of our recorded history, and is still alive and well as of today, in one form or another. As horrible as the Atlantic slave trade has been for centuries, we can learn more history, transcend a US-centric, exceptionalist world view, and realize that what we're talking about was not an isolated, special and rare phenomenon, never seen before, or that never happened again since.

pvg 8y ago
what we're talking about was not an isolated, special and rare phenomenon, never seen before, or that never happened again since. We pretty much are. And a lot of this weird ahistorical 'contrarian' message board stuff about slavery might not seem like marching with torches but it tends to originate from the same places - as a way to rationalize and recruit for the ideology of the marchers. It's a sell job, not some clear-eyed, unflinching take on history as the people who tend to repeat this stuff often appear to think.
- jlawson 8y ago
  Simply trying to tar a certain set of factual claims with a moralistic evil tribal association falls below the standard of good-faith discussion. It would be good if you made a factual argument to oppose a factual point. No sarcasm: I'd be happy to hear your data/reasoning behind the claim that slavery in America was somehow a one-off exceptional evil historical event, in the context where Native Americans, Egyptians, Chinese, Africans, Muslims, Romans, Akkadians, and nearly every other society who could also engaged in slavery to the tune of millions of victims. Notable is that in many cases they even performed in brutal human sacrifices (Incas) or castrated their slaves (Persians vs African slaves, or Romans). I don't think you'll argue that fact, though, since you're not arguing from facts but from morality. You seem to believe it's good to distort facts about history if those facts (in your opinion) support arguments of groups that are (in your opinion) immoral. It's a sort of reversal of priorities where the factual world is understood on the basis of pre-decided moral conclusions, instead of the moral landscape being understood on the basis of our best knowledge of the physical facts. I hate to go off topic but I find myself in opposition to your "moralism filters reality" stance. I think it's anti-intellectual, irresponsible, and dangerous, given that such moralistically-motivated suppressing of facts has caused such massive suffering before. The word "memory hole" comes to mind. And it's amazing you'll do it so casually and openly.
  - pvg 8y ago
    They aren't factual claims. I'm not expressing some controversial opinion, it's the consensus view. Whereas you've written me a giant wall of condescending, name-calling text. So I think we're good.
- BadassFractal 8y ago
  If it's ahistorical, you have the option to provide evidence to the contrary that disproves the facts stated above. Instead what I'm seeing is ad-hominem bigoteering that attempts to ascribe bad faith, nefarious motives to someone even bringing up historical facts that can be looked up by anybody with access to the web or a library.
  - pvg 8y ago
    No, I'm not ascribing bad faith, I don't know if you're a racist-apologist, or (as I tend to assume) just message-board-fashionably ignorant or something else. And you are right, access to the web or a library will show you that no serious historians of the African slave trade sit around comparing it to the Soviet Gulags or claim it does not stand out as a phenomenon against the many other examples of slavery throughout history. Nobody does that because it's obviously silly, even in the most punctiliously charitable interpretation.
  - hyumin 8y ago
    Thoroughly enjoying how this thread about female warriors in an ancient kingdom devolved into a historical revisionism thread about the european slave trade
- spangry 8y ago
  From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery : The history of slavery spans many cultures, nationalities, and religions from ancient times to the present day. However the social, economic, and legal positions of slaves were vastly different in different systems of slavery in different times and places. Slavery can be traced back to the earliest records, such as the Mesopotamian Code of Hammurabi (c. 1860 BC), which refers to it as an established institution, and it was common among ancient people... Although slavery is no longer legal anywhere in the world (with the exception of penal labour), human trafficking remains an international problem and an estimated 25-40 million people are enslaved today, the majority in Asia. Slavery is absolutely ubiquitous across both time and cultures.
  - pvg 8y ago
    And?

pvg 8y ago

what we're talking about was not an isolated, special and rare phenomenon, never seen before, or that never happened again since. We pretty much are. And a lot of this weird ahistorical 'contrarian' message board stuff about slavery might not seem like marching with torches but it tends to originate from the same places - as a way to rationalize and recruit for the ideology of the marchers. It's a sell job, not some clear-eyed, unflinching take on history as the people who tend to repeat this stuff often appear to think.

jlawson 8y ago
Simply trying to tar a certain set of factual claims with a moralistic evil tribal association falls below the standard of good-faith discussion. It would be good if you made a factual argument to oppose a factual point. No sarcasm: I'd be happy to hear your data/reasoning behind the claim that slavery in America was somehow a one-off exceptional evil historical event, in the context where Native Americans, Egyptians, Chinese, Africans, Muslims, Romans, Akkadians, and nearly every other society who could also engaged in slavery to the tune of millions of victims. Notable is that in many cases they even performed in brutal human sacrifices (Incas) or castrated their slaves (Persians vs African slaves, or Romans). I don't think you'll argue that fact, though, since you're not arguing from facts but from morality. You seem to believe it's good to distort facts about history if those facts (in your opinion) support arguments of groups that are (in your opinion) immoral. It's a sort of reversal of priorities where the factual world is understood on the basis of pre-decided moral conclusions, instead of the moral landscape being understood on the basis of our best knowledge of the physical facts. I hate to go off topic but I find myself in opposition to your "moralism filters reality" stance. I think it's anti-intellectual, irresponsible, and dangerous, given that such moralistically-motivated suppressing of facts has caused such massive suffering before. The word "memory hole" comes to mind. And it's amazing you'll do it so casually and openly.
- pvg 8y ago
  They aren't factual claims. I'm not expressing some controversial opinion, it's the consensus view. Whereas you've written me a giant wall of condescending, name-calling text. So I think we're good.
BadassFractal 8y ago
If it's ahistorical, you have the option to provide evidence to the contrary that disproves the facts stated above. Instead what I'm seeing is ad-hominem bigoteering that attempts to ascribe bad faith, nefarious motives to someone even bringing up historical facts that can be looked up by anybody with access to the web or a library.
- pvg 8y ago
  No, I'm not ascribing bad faith, I don't know if you're a racist-apologist, or (as I tend to assume) just message-board-fashionably ignorant or something else. And you are right, access to the web or a library will show you that no serious historians of the African slave trade sit around comparing it to the Soviet Gulags or claim it does not stand out as a phenomenon against the many other examples of slavery throughout history. Nobody does that because it's obviously silly, even in the most punctiliously charitable interpretation.
- hyumin 8y ago
  Thoroughly enjoying how this thread about female warriors in an ancient kingdom devolved into a historical revisionism thread about the european slave trade
spangry 8y ago
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery : The history of slavery spans many cultures, nationalities, and religions from ancient times to the present day. However the social, economic, and legal positions of slaves were vastly different in different systems of slavery in different times and places. Slavery can be traced back to the earliest records, such as the Mesopotamian Code of Hammurabi (c. 1860 BC), which refers to it as an established institution, and it was common among ancient people... Although slavery is no longer legal anywhere in the world (with the exception of penal labour), human trafficking remains an international problem and an estimated 25-40 million people are enslaved today, the majority in Asia. Slavery is absolutely ubiquitous across both time and cultures.
- pvg 8y ago
  And?