They knew it morally wrong and always have.
by Salty_Strain3313
They knew it morally wrong and always have.
by Salty_Strain3313
32 Comments
Op not knowing Greeks enslaving other Greeks because fuck em and not racism.
Humans can be foul gits without being morally wonk about it.
I am not defending slavery obviously, but even today there are people in the west (where slavery is only legalised through the prison system in some countries) who wouldn’t blink twice to make others unfree and do cheap labor for them. (said prison system)
In my view, slavery persists to this day. Namely wage slavery.
So, how do people in the contemporary world view it?
I think you see a lot of the same rationalizations. “This is natural, this is good for them, their lives are getting better as we exploit them.”
You fell asleep during the lecture on ethnocentrism, didn’t you, OP?
The Humble mass use of Serfs in Europe. “Oh, but serfdom was different because on paper they had more rights in some areas.” It was slavery with a different coat of paint, but you couldn’t liberate serfs.
There are also many accounts of genuinely *good people* from the time, even by today’s standards. Abolitionists and philanthropist that were calling out terrible people amongst their peers
There are like 50 million slaves exist in modern times.
It is more than the fucking Transatlantic slabe trade btw.
Which Christians were practicing widespread slavery?
I mean unless you meant serfdom or the transatlantic in which case of course, but Christians did that to Christians all the time. in that case Half the time they were converting the slaves.
Christians enslaved other Christians all the damn time. What are you on OP?
>relgion
There are accounts of Muslims enslaving other Muslims too
Enslaving subhumans wouldn’t be morally wrong in their worldview though
Harm reduction being the main value above all is a modern liberal thing that wasn’t in all societies
Even Romans, who engaged widely in slavery, would deem American style slavery as barbaric.
“Erm, they couldn’t have known slavery was bad” as if abusing another human being ever wasn’t? We’re social creatures, of course we see that as fucked up. We just find all sorts of ways to convince ourselves it’s not as fucked up as we think.
They had all manner of *excuses* why it was normal and not that bad. The same way we do with all sorts of other shit; just like gun control in the USA or climate change around the world. “Yeah, it sucks, but it’s a normal part of life here and there’s nothing we can do”. In their heart of hearts, they know it’s wrong, but they excuse it to themselves because no one’s pressuring them.
I mean, this is a bit backwards.
At the beginning of the slave trade, the slave selling ports where in Muslim held areas of a North Africa. Slaves were brought north to these ports across gruelling conditions.
However, Muslims couldn’t sell *Muslim slaves* to Christians and Christians were obligated to treat Christian slavesas though they were generally humans. This was far from being treated “well” and would be considered murderously inhumane by any standard of the last two centuries, but it was better than they were allowed to treat non-christian slaves.
However, Christianity also *proselytized* to enslaved peoples, which created a problem for slave owners. Their very expensive living machines were now required to he treated as though they needed to do things like eat, sleep, and release themselves. So they needed a reason *why* African and non-europreans were inferior enough to treat like dirt but also allow them to be converted to Christianity.
The solution, was skin color based racism.
Both a Muslims and Christians did enslave members of their own religion from basically late antiquity through the early part of the trans Atlantic slave trade.
Also, slavery has always been unbelievably horrible. Lots of idiots point to Greek and Roman slave systems and act like it can be fine. They point to gladiators, tutors and certain kinds of brothel slaves and say it was just another class. This is basically BS.
There were a small number of high prestige professions or cases where a person could only have a role if they were technically a slave. These have been used to stand in for “typical” slavery on antiquity, which they are not even close to representative of. If you were enslaved as a result of being captured after battle you were often worked to death over a period of weeks or months. Most did not last years and years. Treatment was incredibly cruel and they were used to do jobs that *Laws prevented Citizens who were convicted of murder* from being forced to perform. Roman isn’t known for going easy on criminals so you can imagine how crappy mine slaves were treated.
Are we pretending that christians and muslims didn’t put their fellow brothers in religion through systems of dominations all the time now ?
It’s important to study the history of dehumanizing people.
First, you make them out to be lesser, then you justify the enslavement though that.
There are so many different forms of slavery throughout history. Some of them are just truly awful with no justification whatsoever, others are more nuanced. When your only options are murder everyone or enslavement, some people would willingly choose the latter. Not every slave was worked to the bone in fields/mines/etc, sometimes slaves could be well educated and even more well regarded and better treated than many illiterate free peoples. Not everyone was just straight up immoral or evil, they had less options to work with.
Lol both Muslims and Christians did have slaves of the same religion. Just completely ahistorical.
The Greeks felt bad about enslaving other Greeks sometimes, just not enough to stop.
Human sacrifice is a travesty and those cultures need to be extinguished for supporting it.
Forcing slaves to fight to the death in the arena is actually totally different and aura building because they might become a famous gladiator.
“relgion”
No one said that the people of the past thought slavery was moral. They most certainly thought it was immoral, but morality back then was a luxury as they still needed the labour, so they made the brutal but logical decision to deem it appropriate only if they enslave their enemies or the other. Lest they become enslaved themselves by people who didn’t choose to be “moral” and get to have an advantage for it.
So could an enslaved person just change their religion and automatically be freed?
Speaking in the sense of American chattel slavery, you aren’t entirely correct. Many saw it as wrong, however a few prominent moral justifications emerged, such as phrenology and the idea that it was the duty of white Christians to “civilize” non-whites by forcing them into slavery then converting them to their religion. So Christians definitely enslaved other Christians when it comes to American slavery, as many slaves had converted to Christianity and were recognized as such by their enslavers.
I have a U.S History class in college (last week of last semester before 4 year school) and my professor talked about how in the Early Republic and early Ante-Bellum years slave masters were fully aware of how fucked their system was (but not fucked enough to free them). However, by 1860 many slave masters collectively brainwashed themselves into thinking slavery was a positive good and/or salvation for the slaves. Like Jeff Davis who was a “good” slave master (of course good here is highly comparative to other masters and while not good, there were godly amounts of worse options) and thought of slavery as divine prophecy and good for the black people. Also they brainwashed themselves so hard that many masters were shocked and appalled that their spaces ran away when they entered Northern territory.
Post-Darwinism Slavery for sure, but the Romans had a very unique system that was honestly the best of a bad situation, especially if you lost everything. Ancient slavery didn’t fuck over their merchandise for anything as dumb as race, it was the British that mostly started the whole race-justifications though the Ottomans did the same thing in terms of religion.
Christians enslaved other Christians, as did the Muslims with other Muslims and Jews with other Jews. Most, if not all races have enslaved their own race.
It’s good to hate slavery, but just adding in one lie to it makes your argument worthless and invalid.
This is probably the wrong group to be posting idiocy like this in. Plenty of cultures have enslaved their own people. Maybe from different sects or tribes, but still their own people. Same race, same culture, same religion.
[Shota Rustaveli](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shota_Rustaveli), a major Georgian poet of the late 12th and the early 13th centuries, condemned slavery in [his poem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Knight_in_the_Panther%27s_Skin)
Enslaving someone who is an equal to you was considered wrong for a long time. Especially chattel slavery.
Now who is your *equal*, is a definition that’s expanded over time.
OP’s post is complete ass
“it’s impossible people had different beliefs because… It’s impossible okay!”
in two hundred years if we’re still alive we’ll look at the current meat industry as barbaric yet it’s an accepted practice
not a vegan btw i eat steaks