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A Database of Fugitive Slave Ads Reveals Thousands of Untold Stories (2018)
- codeulike 7y agoA newspaper ad about a missing human-as-possesion is such a weird mix of mundane and terrifying
- praptak 7y agoMakes one reflect on how much do we take for granted when it comes to ethics. I remember a (googleable) exchange of letters between the former owner and an ex-slave. The former was genuinely hurt by slave's betrayal and urged them to go back. There were people for whom owning other people was so normalized that they were actually angry at their former slaves. I wonder if any of our current practices will be viewed as barbaric. Or maybe we'll go back and the future generations will laugh at our idealistic concept of "human rights", while sipping drinks served by their slaves.
- rolltiide 7y ago> I wonder if any of our current practices will be viewed as barbaric. Of course, but if you say which ones they are they'll be censored on all the consensus based websites like this one, since people won't agree.
- lopmotr 7y agoI wouldn't say censorship, but yes, the Overton window is powerful. Currently, it heavily favors individual liberty at the expense of survival of the society or quality of life for future people.
- Ma8ee 7y agoI think the way we treat animals today will be viewed as very barbaric within a generation or two. We are everyday learning more about how much intelligence and consciousness something like cows posses.
- markdown 7y agoHave you lived on a farm? Cows are the dumbest creatures, and they taste wonderful.
- keyP 7y agoAccording to the paper cited in this article, they may not be as dumb as you think https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/animal-emotions/201711/cows-science-shows-theyre-bright-and-emotional-individuals https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/animal-emotions/2017...
- kingkawn 7y agoWe see what we are in the world around us
- reportgunner 7y ago> We are everyday learning more about how much intelligence and consciousness something like cows posses How can I join this learning ?
- moccachino 7y agoRegarding crows, here is a start: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21769575 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21769575
- Guillaume86 7y agoCows <> Crows
- MrGLaDOS 7y agoTry this (and other) book(s) by primatologist Frans de Waal: https://books.google.it/books?id=vhmZCgAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y https://books.google.it/books?id=vhmZCgAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y "A passionate and convincing case for the sophistication of nonhuman minds." —Alison Gopnik, The Atlantic
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- lopmotr 7y agoWe treat children like that. Largely for the economic value they can provide by making them spend most of their awake life at school. If school wasn't needed, it would look barbaric.
- HSO 7y agoOne of the biggest lies I never believed is that school is for education. It is for many things but education (not indoctrination or brainwashing) is not one if them. Thankfully I realized this very early.
- lern_too_spel 7y agoIs there a conspiracy of the local school board?
- Consultant32452 7y agoYes, of course. It's visible in many subtle ways. One example is uniforms. Another is how "social studies" now stands where "history" once stood. Nearly 20% of high school graduates are illiterate. A highs school diploma signals something, but it's not being educated. Some amount of education does occur, but it's incidental to social indoctrination, keeping parents' wages high by forcing kids out of the job market, etc.
- pjc50 7y ago> Nearly 20% of high school graduates are illiterate That's America's choice to have a failing system, not a universal property of schooling.
- Consultant32452 7y agoA universal property of state run schooling is that schools are literal prisons for children and for many people is the only place they'll experience violence first hand. The finer details will vary by location.
- HSO 7y ago„Wage slavery“ and „factory farming“ (aka as concentration camps for other sentient beings) will be viewed unkindly by future generations. Actually, some if us already view it as barbaric but it will need more of us to finally do away with them.
- larnmar 7y agoIf your conclusion is “well obviously, the people of the future will share my ethics” then you’re missing the point of the exercise. The point of the exercise is humility — to think about how people in the future might think your ethics are wrong and evil — not arrogance.
- kmm 7y agoThe acceptance of slavery was not universal. Back then there were already people, abolitionists, striving to end slavery. So looking at what small but vocal groups protest now can give a hint at what future people could find wrong or evil. It's not at all arrogant to think future people will share my ethics, just like abolitionists were not arrogant to hope for a world without slavery. Arrogance would be believing they'd share all of your ethics, and just as well I'm sure most abolitionists were still very racist, sexist, homophobic, ...
- TeMPOraL 7y agoEthic shifts don't come out of the blue; they start as a growing sentiment within a population, which at some point (whether through growth or things being shaken up by e.g. war) reaches critical mass.
- FeepingCreature 7y agoSure but that's no reason to expect yourself in specific to be on the right side of the shift.
- Xelbair 7y agoNor the opposite is true. Both, or i should say all options, are probable, but not sure.
- netcan 7y agoWell... The more radical political philosophies (at any given time) make lots of equivalences (ethical and others) between slavery & other stuff. Wage labour today, and obviously older institutions like tenancy, serfdom, indentured labour, etc. Even many free thinking, but politically mainstream people (eg t cowen) make non-ethical comparisons between slavery and employment. It's easier to agree with if you widen your concept of slavery, beyond the specific institution of African slavery in the US... during the later years. That system was so brutal and unethical by slavery standards. So, it's hard to compare to. Before, during & after chattel slavery, the Americas had other systems of "slavery." Most were not that* brutal, but still slavery. Indentured service was huge, at a certain point. Share croppers. These people probably outnumbered free employees in many times and places. Serfs were not free to go. Monks were arguably enslaved by abbots. Artisans sometimes bought apprentices as children. In western Europe, the "tenant" concept that replaced serfdom was often similar to sharecropping.. arguably also a system of slavery. We know of ancient examples: Greek, Roman, Jewish, Persian, Babylonian... Ancient law codes (including the bible) dedicated a lot of ink to slavery laws. Slaver rights, slave rights, manumission, and such. A Greek slave could be wealthy, and that should help broaden the concept. Marxism sees slavery in class terms. Ie it's just a name to describe the lowest class, and wage labour is a descendant of slavery. There are even many modern-economy examples where employers have a say in an employee's marriage or reproductive choices. That arguably is slavery-like. Anyway... once you widen the concept of slavery with multiple examples that you easily accept as "obviously slavery*, drawing analogies to other institutions is easy. Indenture, for example, exists, today, in practice, widely... in many forms. Invariably, the "slavers" think it's ethically sound.
- humanrebar 7y ago> I wonder if any of our current practices will be viewed as barbaric. Contraceptive abortion, especially late term ones. Consider how unusual and horrifying the villain in Cell Block 99 is. Also consider the consider the cognitive dissonance between current abortion laws and the legal consequences for assault resulting in a failed pregnancy. EDIT: "Contraceptive" is probably more precise than "prophylactic"
- pjc50 7y agoThere is almost no "late term" "prophylactic" abortion anywhere. Late term abortion is usually driven by medical necessity. Denying this reality gets women killed by withholding medical treatment from them. It was the death of Savita Halappanavar as a result of this policy that ultimately triggered the liberalisation of abortion in Ireland.
- humanrebar 7y agoLet's not attack straw men. It's also barbaric to ban medically necessary procedures. Besides, frequency of an event isn't a defense against charges of barbarism. Lobotomies, the Tuskegee Experiment, and eugenic sterilization weren't all that common, but they were barbaric.
- youdontknowtho 7y agoIt's easy to make abortion seem barbaric in a HN comment thread. The lives of people are complicated and messy. Your opinion about how other people should conduct their personal lives shouldn't extend to family planning. Period. If we are being honest, open heart surgery is barbaric. They cut people open and then break all their ribs. It's not assault or murder, for a variety of reasons that I'm not going to go into. Further, experience tells me that granting good faith in these arguments is usually a bad idea. I oppose the right-wing on every issue. Abortion is particularly important in this context because it normalizes state based oppression against women.
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- thih9 7y ago> I remember a (googleable) exchange of letters between the former owner and an ex-slave. The former was genuinely hurt by slave's betrayal and urged them to go back. Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Anderson#Letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Anderson#Letter
- kaffeemitsahne 7y ago> I wonder if any of our current practices will be viewed as barbaric. Here we go again, everyone posts their pet not-actually-barbaric thing under the moral authority of people from the future.
- Pigo 7y agoBy so many metrics our lives are incredible compared to every other period of human history. Of course it's not perfect, there's always room to improve, but there's a stark contrast between how things actually are and how many perceive it to be. Very few problems are as unambiguous as slavery. A lot of our problems are much more nuanced.
- humanrebar 7y agoSlavery is unambiguous in retrospect. I find the mental gymnastics of the slaveholders to be fascinating and disturbing. The most barbaric things we do now are probably closely guarded by people as legitimate traditions or rights.
- workthrowaway 7y agowow, you've just opened a pandora box :) from the school system, to vegan diet, to parenting, to immigration...
- bryanrasmussen 7y agohttps://www.facinghistory.org/reconstruction-era/letter-jourdon-anderson-freedman-writes-former-master https://www.facinghistory.org/reconstruction-era/letter-jour... I don't know that the former master was genuinely hurt as much as he was trying to get some more free labor.
- MrGLaDOS 7y agoEthical philosopher Peter Singer presents and expands on the following argument in his book:[1] "First Premise: Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter and medical care are bad. Second Premise: If it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as important, it is wrong not to do so. Third Premise: By donating to aid agencies, you can prevent suffering and death from lack of food, shelter and medical care, without sacrificing anything nearly as important. Conclusion: Therefore, if you do not donate to aid agencies, you are doing something wrong." [1] https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/the-book/ https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/the-book/ They bought back the publishing rights, so it is freely downloadable.
- aphextim 7y ago>I wonder if any of our current practices will be viewed as barbaric. Circumcision aka male genital mutilation is the first thing that comes to mind.
- aphextim 7y agoMy reasoning stems from this person's presentation, which after he gave was let go from Harvard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCuy163srRc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCuy163srRc
- roberto 7y ago> I wonder if any of our current practices will be viewed as barbaric. I became vegan after asking myself that same question.
- ceautery 7y ago> I wonder if any of our current practices will be viewed as barbaric. The US jailed 70,000 migrant children this year. I doubt history will smile on that.
- jordanpg 7y agoThe fact that we put other humans in cages for any reason is probably unforgivable on a long enough timeline, especially for non-violent crimes.
- jtx22 7y agoProtecting the sovereignty of your country will be paramount in the future. Future generations will look back at this borderless craze.. as truly insane.
- danharaj 7y agoStrict immigration control is a relatively modern phenomenon, and you should reevaluate your viewpoint if you find it so easy to justify putting children in cages. Scratch that, justify other people putting children in cages. Most people who support these policies wouldn't have the stomach to do the dirty work themselves.
- deogeo 7y agoThe present state of migration is also a modern phenomenon - otherwise, countries wouldn't be trending from more towards less homogeneous, but would already be in a 'steady state'.
- zaccus 7y agoNot true. People have been migrating from place to place for all of recorded history. Cultural homogeneity is nothing more than a "good ole days" fallacy; it's never really been a thing anywhere, except in the most remote parts of the world.
- mlforlife123 7y agoTHIS is so important for society to see, read and learn from the past in order to grow in the future
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- SloopJon 7y agoAccording to freedomonthemove.org, there are 22,236 advertisements. If I search (registration required) for transcribed ads, I get 6,920 results. Transcriptions are not visible in the default view. Select the icon on the right to see images and transcriptions side by side.
- aazaa 7y agoThe article links to the original source: https://freedomonthemove.org https://freedomonthemove.org Scrolling down, one sees an ad from none other than Thomas Jefferson: > In Alberale, a Mulatto slave called Sandy, about 35 years of age, his stature is rather low, including to corpulence, and his complexion light; he is a shoemaker by trade, in which he uses his left hand principally, and is something of a horse jockey; ... Whoever conveys the said slave to me, in Albermarle, shall have 40 s. reward ... One of the histories of the US that I read mentioned the ridicule that the British heaped on the Americans for their hypocrisy, a copy of the Declaration of Independence in one hand and a whip in the other. It's striking to consider the self-delusion that must have been necessary for people at the time to believe in such wildly inconsistent notions as "inalienable rights" and slavery. On the other hand, culture is a powerful reality distortion field. Scratch just a little below the surface and you'll find the most bizarre creatures scuttling for cover.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoJefferson’s and Washington’s psychology was certainly very interesting as far as their attitudes towards freedom and slavery went. I wonder how they justified to themselves having slaves while talking about freedom and liberty. But we do the same today. A lot of us have pretty unsustainable lifestyles as far as the environment goes but we make ourselves feel good (or even superior to others) by adding a little bit of organic food and organic clothing. The hypocrisy gets even more exaggerated when stars promote climate change awareness while flying private jets all over the world and living in 20000 square foot houses. The interesting thing is that a lot of famous hypocrites still do good. Maybe not with their own lifestyle but by other people being motivated to do better
- gdhbcc 7y agoProbably in much the same way people today cry out about freedom of speech in china, while labeling restrictions on speech at home as acceptable (or not even restrictions at all!) At the end of the day all of these high minded ideals are just excuses to justify ones own actions and world views.
- fredophile 7y agoThere's a really good museum that includes info from this period in Montgomery, Alabama. I'd definitely recommend visiting if this is something you're interested in. I wouldn't bring small children since there is a tonne of text and some, entirely optional, graphic imagery. https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/ https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/