Well, why is it? Slavery is frowed upon, hated. Why? Why is it bad?
The question:
How are a slave owner and his progeny in a slave-owning society affected negatively by slavery? In what way are the cons of slavery worse than the pros?
Slavery to my mind is bad through a lack of consent, and a lack of acknowledgement of of humanity of the slave. If the slave is willing, or perhaps a prisoner of war, and the duration limited, and what you’d call ‘human rights’ respected, most of the problems with the sort of slavery abolished in America dissappear.
maybe because it really sucks to be one…
gemty
Um, because it is the most blatent disregard of a person’s free will, the slave can immediately understand and mourn that he/she is a slave. Subtle forms of slavery like the wage system and the economic entrapment of the poor pale in comparrison to throwing chains on somebody and ordering them around.
Slavery!?
You love slavery!
You bask in it!
You put your head on it’s chopping block.
If I came to a man and said:
“Let me remove your pain, for it is controlling you.”
He would certainly agree, and once the pain was gone, he would not want it back, thus he would be cured in one day.
If I came to a man and said:
“Let me remove your pleasuer, for you have become addicted, and it is controlling your thoughts of the day and your dreams of the night.”
This man would then try to kill me.
And if I took him away from his greatest pleasure, and if I made the pleasure stop, he would return to it – he would remember it forever, it would be the curse of his body. He would die for it.
Romantic love and passion – are the most cruel slavery I have ever seen.
The craving for them makes peace of mind for the single man or woman nearly impossible.
Then, the opressive and life-controlling forces of lust would cause someone to rip appart his own heart, the thing that he needs most in order to live, simply to pay his blood sacrifice up to the gods of intoxication, as his senses are dulled and his body is left vulnerable.
How easy it is to hurt a man, when he is craving love.
Remind yourself each day – that all pleasures are temporary, random and changing. Pleasure does not exist. Try to fight it, and it will fight back. It can be for you, but is often used against you. Was not lust the only “reason” why any greedy man took a life or a dollar?
I agree with uniccosor, if you unconsentually take possesion of someone or thier possesions this is always a bad thing for the person being taken control of.
whats mine is mine whats yours i want(but i have to buy whats yours from you, or trick you into giving it to me for free, like sex)
Slavery did produce good music, so it can’t be all bad.
Unfortunately you probably have to be black to make it work. White people are not fit for honest slavery - they have to be put in offices and made believe they’re actually voluntarily doing their work. You have to call them ‘sir’.
You can be really funny sometimes…
Slavery is a inefficient mode of production. The classic example of a slave driven economy is the Roman Empire, check out Edward Gibbon’s “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” Essentially the argument here is that slavery is inefficient because it is forced labor, it takes alot of effort to get a slave to work, and they will probably resist every second of it. Secondly, slaves are generally poorly treated and get health issues, and since its easier to just buy new slaves there is always a huge demand for slaves - but where are you going to get them? And last but not least, the number of slaves you need to keep a economy growing just keeps increasing and once again… where are you going to get them.
Also - think about having a society where the majority of people are slaves, if you dont have a perfect handle on them… the moment something goes wrong… youre going to have a big ole slave revolt. Think Sparticus.
The Roman Empire had to stretch its armies further and further out to find fresh unconquered lands where they could get slaves, and it was this overextension that opened up holes in their defenses for the barbarians to put pressure on Rome. There were a host of other factors in the fall of the Empire, but this was a big one.
Its been a while since Ive taken a US History course, but I do distinctly remember reading that a similar case happened in the South. Aside from the social strain, the slave economic model had plateaued in the South and this flowered into many different responses.
I believe that overtime, all these negatives… alot of which are outside of a individuals perspectives… from the social to the economic to the psychological became abbreviated by the collective social consciousness to simply “Slavery is bad.” Nowadays, thats all you need to know… we’ve condensed all of the history in a moral judgment, but its good that you asked so that we can crack that statement open again and see what it was composed of. Maybe a Historian or Sociologist will come along and do better job of explaining the history of slavery than I ;]
anvildoc wrote:
I’m not so sure, anvil, that anyone will explain it better than you have here. Splendidly done.
This is an almost perfect quote because it exactly gives the moral reasons that slavery is thought to be frowned on.
-“… a lack of consent…” As so many contemporaries of ours imagine that freedom exists and is desirable, this is a big point against slavery.
-“… a lack of acknowledgement of of humanity…” The same here, many people in a position to set moral agenda imagine that humanity has a special position in the cosmos, that part of what it means to be human is to be free, and therefore slavery is dehumanizing.
-“… America…” Americans have set much of the social-moral thinking of this age, and in light of their history in regards to this issue, slavery is considered very taboo.
The other standard component of the anti-slavery argument is not moral but economic,
Many of our contemporaries imagine that society has some goal, and therefore an efficiency is important for working towards that object.
Anyone with half the ability to deconstruct themselves out of the mass thinking can see,
i) that slavery is little worse than ever so many of the social situations, and human-animal relations that are far worse than most historical or contemporary slaves endure. In terms of degrees of hypocrisy it would would make far more moral sence to be a slave-owning, vegetarian pacifist; but due to “slave-hysteria” no such persons would ever be considered anything but demons.
ii) Nihilists and amoralists can not possibly have any objection to slavery; excepting absurd whims. The idea of freedom being extant or desirable can be deconstructed, likewise, medieval notions of humanism can also be seen as unfounded constructs.
iii) Economic arguments against slavery are largely dubious conjecture, detailed evaluations of supposed inefficency are seriously lacking, but as is the case in a science worshiping age, numbers and statistics and loosly logical arguments will be constructed to support the thesis. By contrast, if slavery were popular, Aesop, Henry the Black, Scipio Africanus, Zheng He individually and organizations such as the Janissaries would be mentioned. The glory of Rome and Greek slavery would be extoled and explanations such as inflation, failure to develop a cavalry arm, the division of the Curch and the rise of Islam might be emphasised in explaining the downfall of Rome. Other arguments might remind one of the origin of the term slavery in “Slav,” and consider the modern slave trade in the Sudan and in Mauritania in relation to what Aristotle said. Kooks could take solace in Biblical and Koranic justifications of slavery.
Gorgias, not to nitpick, but anvildoc’s treatment was of morality. You took that quote out of its context.
Do you mean to suggest that there is some connection between your three bullet points and anvil’s exegesis? I see none, but may have mistaken your intent. One thing is clear, that one does not have to see society as having a transcendant goal to understand the economics of slavery (although there is no one general case). Or that morality does not exist in a vacuum.
Society has goals, of course, but A Goal is nonsensical.
I just mean to say that if you walk around on the streets, of Western cities, asking people why slavery is bad, you’ll get pretty much those four constructions: freedom, humanism, American history and economic factors.
Oh. Thanks for the clarification. It was an interesting post, and I am glad I understand it better.
Well, anvildoc got the point. What I meant was, assuming that moral notions don’t come out of thin air, why is slavery frowned upon?
In a slave owning society, there is a constant enemy presence everywhere. Within every home of every city there are a few enemy soldiers. Even in times of relative peace you can’t let your guard down, you have to be prepared for these soldiers to attack, for the slaves to revolt.
In times of war, the enemy is already inside the gates. He has a force inside your city about two times as large as the citizenry of the city. Thus, from a military perspective, slavery is not a good idea.
So we have military, economic, and moral reasons. Let’s excavate further these moral reasons. One of the most prolific moral justifications/condemnations of actions is “Do unto others as you would have done unto you” or something like that (I cannot remember it completely). This is the golden rule. Why? Why would you hesitate to put someone in a position you yourself would not like to be placed in. Perhaps, when you do this action, in somehow increases the chance that it will be done unto you in the future. How? Let’s think. When a person decides to use a slave, how does it increase the chance of himself or his progeny becoming slaves? (work on the assumption that it does)
Most certainly it does. This is mostly just from the Wikipedia article “slavery,” but it might be interesting to highlight a few points.
The Europeans, who co-opted in enslaving tens of millions of Africans, found themselves on the recieving end back in the fourteen and fifteen-hundreds when as many as one-and-a-half million Europeans found themselves transported to the Barbary Coast (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya). In a further twist of irony, centuries later, some American crews also found themselves sold in the Maghreb.
The Italians themselves were being captured by Arab raiders just a few centuries after the fall of the Western Empire; and the Northern Barbarians and Russians who were the victims of Mediterranean slave trade for a millenium became the slavers themselves once they rose to Imperial power.
A very relavant quote to the discusion at hand comes from Seneca,
Receeding further into history, obviously at outset the Ancient Greeks could never know if a military campaign would result in their or their adversaries enslavement. A Greek citizen could hardly have known whether he would be free, dead or a slave the very next season. Even Heracles was enslaved at one point.
Living in a slave owning society, or world, obviously radically increases the chances that you yourself will be enslaved. As it seems that historically most slaves were POWs, slaves of debt and/or of birth, as opposed to being the victims of slave raids, the possibility that one might, through no fault of ones own, become a slave while dutifully participating in a slave owning society seem, if not high, at least unsettlingly possible.
Real slaves are hardly if at all out of sight. Perhaps 27 million persons today live in a condition of slavery or one very analogous to it. Interestingly, temple slaves still exist in the World Cup team hosting nations of Togo and Ghana; 50,000 plus may live as slaves in Brazil; the chocolate industry has a very bad reputation for slave cocoa workers; as well as Mauritania and the Sudan, slaves are considered to be being sold into Libya, and many other M.E. countries for various purposes; and unfortunate North Korean convicts are transfered to “gulags” in the Russian Far East to work off foreign debt. Even the province I live in saw a large human trafficing scandal just last year, one financially supported and tacitly allowed by your friends and mine, the US army 
Other related topics that come to mind are the third world textile factory workers, tax in general, the relation of a state or Queen to her subjects, prison systems, national military service, and relative value of currency.
Off-topic, but inlight of the scale of injustice in the world, and the destitution of billions, it seems to me that slavery is demonized far out of proportion to the actual ill effects. The stigma of slavery which hangs on a certain population is quite exaggerated in light of the absence of any peoples who were never enslaved. Almost certainly we all have slave forebearers. I find Henry the Black to be a very amazing slave, and also Antonio Corea. It is no less grotesque to eat a piece of chocolate, wear a t-shirt “made in Cambodia”, or watch some of the World Cup matches than to say “why is slavery bad?” The Togo players demanded 120 American dollars to play in the World Cup! I make that before I eat lunch on Monday; I’m sure I’m not the only one. It’s too bad that only on an anonymous internet forum is it possible to have an open discussion about this subject.
one director of movies, He got any idea of a new one, usually He does it of Him, something He felt to inspire Him a lot, He wanted to give it more than He ever did a masterpiece of what He is used to create, for that He made it as to say Him, to give power of what he felt a big truth of what He is, Hw wrote the script first, putting down all the true forces given power to the feeling of being in real, these forces rely all on what He appears does saying of its depth of whys for the power to what it must give to justify the feeling He want to see real of Him, a geometric shape of the truth He would make, than come the best part that he was waiting for, characters that would play this particular shape, than again He wants it grand as He is saying Himself, so He must be inn one, well of course it is not really Him but one would play as He to make it real He would distinguish himself of all other beings in what the producer thinks He is, this character would be more real as they are all playing a movie, so all others will be slaves so He can give more impact of true being inn, it is not the only reason He would justify it in depth of the actor truth, even the one who would play His part would see himself as a slave and say it, but He will show how much He suffer off without leting that stop the show, actors are paid slaves, but this director would promise them to pay them later of what they dont know they dont have any choice to keep on faith of his kindness and values to stick to his words, so they are real slaves of a good master he says, He wanted to make it grandiose, giving more than He can to multiply the idea reality in whatever moves on the screen, for that the geometrical truth shape is in every figure so He cannot be lost, they will be than excellent actors, each one would read his part of his sense to be for, what they read are the details information of the script as One same source, some would be good slaves others bad because the idea is to say goodness He felt of being, as bad He saw when He stop being Himself, when He let Himself being any thing seeking for Him, the good creator is the best to be all the points giving power in prooving one goal to reach the only truth of being, the unbeing must be to make the truth of the being who is, it is a matter of prooving issue,
we are all slaves of God, black peole know it more by feelings of what they saw of our condition in real, therefore usually they are the best to react to the agressive power of hate, by dancing infront of the nature who kills, by never doubting its reality ruling their beings, by being the best for eyes contact to reduce the pain of another slave, telling him i know and it is ok we live, they are the best to never betrayed a friend and to give this value all of respect as to wish for the promise they got of heavan, they are of truth of love the most, white people they dont admit to be slaves, they live in illusions of being the devil who can kill God of what He allowed him to see God source of doing, white man like science and maths because he likes to persuade himself of being god who make, the feelings who make him say his part of the script is so empty and doll, one feeling i am strong i am clever i am god, and when he tried to accept God on his head he will keep on saying it of a far sense to feel what God is beyound in faking smiles to him, willing always to say o ya yop my God we could be so bodies the same, we are all same slaves of God movie, the only positive act we can make is on the script, it is in fact the feeling He thought being of Him, we would be still slaves acting a part but most valuable part of the play, the one who says i know my condition and i choose to play it as if it was real, my condition is to be hating this promise i cannot see as it is real, but i can see what is going on therefore i will give to myself the most of what i see need, i am hated and it feels so bad, i will not do that i will even do much good in leting this awareness only guide me to love myself in loving all others who feel reacting as me of our condition, so love is the answer to our truth, God said love and heavan, we know here now and we are so much asleep, take advantage of the few hours He let you wake up to smile to any tear, last i want to share my feelings of the fusion black and white for a new race to give the whole truth in being a man as the best script slave to act, white will give the power of knowledge source black the truth of being in what is, for now one is giving the information more without a soul, the other is feeling so down that he can barely speak
one is saying of the false feeling that he is the maker the other is in the truth of being abused
Wow, totally forgot about this post.
Yes! Introducing and using slavery increases the chance of yourself (or progeny) being a slave. But could this be true of other things? I put forward the idea that the “golden rule” is fact based.
wow not this is just a superficial approach to men slavery condition in Gods wills to beand your request seem to be an affirmation itself that you dont say, what do you want exactly say it or dont say any