The bright side of slavery

that's what i thought, but i wanted to be sure. fair enough, i may get back to you on that, or maybe someone else will. it's an extremely worthwhile topic. but in the meantime, i have to get back to work. later.

Yeah i better get back to class im on a bathroom break lol

fair enough.

If you personally were a slave do you think you would then think slavery is fine?

I mean, really try to think about it for 2 minutes. Focus on the daily life and reality of being a slave.

Live that life in your mind for 10 years or so.

Can you honestly say that if you were a slave, you would think slavery is fine?

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You post some very interesting and thought provoking topics, I grant you that. But here is a pattern I see emerging--
Somehow, it seems very self-centered--you seem to think everyone that doesn't experience your life-world exactly is wrong. I don't know if you have the capacity to empathize with the life of others. Or even accept others different from yourself.

You are not homosexual, so you think homosexuality is wrong.

You have not been a slave, so you think slavery is fine.

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I submit, for example, that if you were a homosexual slave, you might feel differently about the above.

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That makes me think: hey, if you are a slave-owner, and you forced your slaves to be homosexuals, would that be okay in your mind?

I guess it would be okay to have the slaves as long as there was no homosexuality involved? Just trying to figure all this out....

I could just see it now: "Hey dude, will you stop making your slaves be homosexuals? Yes, its fine to buy & sell them, rip their families apart, treat them like possessions, torture them if they don't work and all that other stuff, but really: making them do the homo thing is just going to far. Keep the sex with them hetero, okay? Then its all good."

adam, i have heard you say some stupid things before, but this by far trumps all of them. i'm not even going to tell you why because it is important that you figure this one out yourself.

- max
;-)

Couple of things:



This is probably the most common fallacy about the Civil War, the most widely held by those who learned about the slavery question in grade school and have never read anything further on the matter. Most of the Northern white men who died in the war were in no way interested in ending slavery. That is not what the war was about. The end of slavery came as a result of enactment of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, a couple of years after the war. The war was about maintaining the Union (from the North's federal point of view) or about the right of states to decide for themselves whether they wanted to continue as part of that Union (the Southern states' rights point of view). Slavery was only incidental to all this. In the begining, it wasn't even an issue on the table.

You will see from the foregoing that it wasn't the Southern soldier's main interest to preserve slavery, either. Most Southerners didn't own slaves. Some were even anti-slavery themselves. Robert E. Lee, the great leader of the Confederate armed forces had manumitted all of his slaves as soon as the estate he inherited (where Arlington National Cemetery now stands) was out of probate and he could legally do so. He had no love of the institution of slavery. As far as Lee was concerned, he was a Virginian fighting an invading Northern army.

The fact is, the concensus had pretty well swung to the point of most reasonable men admitting that slavery in mid-19th century was no longer a viable system. What the Southerners didn't like was a government in Washington telling them what they could or could not do. And so they tied to secede.

My other point: what you say about slavery as a moral issue being a cultural value has some merit, Discreet. It is still practiced in many other parts of the world, particulalrly in East Africa. But that is the culture of the slave owner you are talking about. As has already been suggested, put yourself into the shoes of the slave (if, indeed, he/she has any shoes) and see if you think that the question doesn't have a universal moral dimension. I believe it does.

Yeah but in the case you say i don't understand because i havn't been in their shoes i don't think thats a good way to justify things. Take the sex offender issue thats going on right now. Some sex offenders will rape a child and only get a couple years in prison or some circumstances somehow get off with paroll. How woould you feel to be the vitim of these parents. People can still say what is right or wrong based on their own beliefs. I think slavery did more bad then it did good. But your statement talking about my common grade school fallacy about the war is pretty lame i think... YEs its a common misconception taht all northerners sympathized with slaves and treated them fairly, this i agree is not true, but some did. And political leaders sought to free slaves and i do believe that is a factor in the civil war

I have been reading through this thread and find it very interesting. You can say what you want about Discreet, but he seems like a deep thinker.

The question "If the South had won the Civil War, would we still have slaves?" is worth debating IMO. If that had happened, when would slavery have stopped? Surely it would have by now (I hope).

Another thing: Merry Andrew, I have heard before what you said in your last post.



Several months ago, I was discussing that very subject with a friend of mine who lives in the South. I asked him if it were true, and his reply was "Absolutely not. It was about slavery." This man is very intelligent and has read probably most everything that has been written about the Civil War. He is born and raised a Southerner and is proud of it. Even so, he is not one bit proud that the South fought to keep slavery legal.

I would like to know where you got your information on the above quote. I am not trying to argue, but am sincerely interested.

To Discreet: Keep that thinkin' cap on! Whether or not I agree with you, I admire you for hanging in there, writing down your thoughts, and continuing to debate this subject.

Viva la revolucion! lol

merry andrew, i hope you realize that i'm well aware of the common fallacy about the civil war you elucidate. in several earlier posts, i stated that the civil war was fought over the expansion of slavery into new territories, not abolition where it was already in effect. in the post you quoted, i was merely demonstrating that the assertion of a debt owed by freed slaves to the society that allowed them to be enslaved in the first place is logically indefensible, even if the war had been fought over the slavery issue.

Discreet, i'll need a little more time for research before i attempt to address your claim that
what you're advocating is often labelled moral relativism. the reponse to this depends on one's religious beliefs or lack of them. so i will only respond from an agnostic viewpoint, since i'm agnostic. the religious response would be morality is based on God's commandments. many atheists probably agree that morality is relative: Bertrand Russell is an example of a famous atheist philosopher who maintained this; but if any atheists want to argue on behalf of an absolute standard of morality, i welcome your assistance. lastly, i'm going to change your statement a little bit. instead of society, i will substitute culture; the reason being, there are pluralistic societies like the US where several cultures coexist and have different values, so in that case the society is not determining morality, but culture can still do so.

YEah thanx ill be interested in what you find! But hey even if your agnostic don't you see how religious values affect the common society. Most of the laws in the bible for example are common things that people view as "wrong" Whether they are religious or not. Proving that society is biased towards what they are taught. In the old days people were very religious and i think their views determine most of our values today. Tell me what you think

Don't even get me started on using the Bible to back up your actions.

The Bible says among other things, that it is okay to have slaves, to sleep with your family members, to rip out your eye if it offends you,
and thats just the G rated stuff.

One of my personal favorites is that Lot slept in the cave, after his wife was turned into a pillar of salt (that god feller, i'll tell ya, Mr. Personality), his two daughters screwed him, and he (allegedly) didn't wake up--preserving his paternal innocense, of course.

Oh yeah, tell me another one. Got any bridges in New York i can buy?

Setanta,

Yes that is a funny scene.

Hey I always wanted to ask you, is that dog in your avatar actually your dog?

Does s/he look so happy & hyped because s/he is tripping on a caffeine high from that coke beside her? That pict is pretty hilarious. Looks like the dog just finished off the coke and now is sayin: "You want a piece of me? Come on, I'm hyped and ready for anything tough guy!"

That dog is pretty attractive(bringing up the point how one is accepted for being attracted to other men but not accpeted for liking animals.)

The dog you see is Miss Cleo(patra). Miss Cleo is a rescue dog, who is one of the companions of my sweetiepie. We were visiting the still functional locks of the Rideau Canal system in Ontario when that picture was taken. Built in the early 19th century, over the dead bodies of a lot of Irish Catholics (the laborers), it was about the only way to transport goods from Lake Ontario to the St. Laurent River.

Now, of course, they have the St. Lawrence Seaway (the name of the river is St. Laurent, but you can't tell that to English-speaking Canajuns, they get their backs up--but the French were there first, so i accede to their names for things). The little dog there had herself a swim after that--she's been in not only the Rideau, but also Lake Ontario on occassions too numerous to count, in Lake Erie, Lake Huron, Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Green Bay and the Wisconsin River. She likes bodies of water, thinks they're a wonderful idea.

Wow. That dog might know more than most of us here.

What more do you need than a nice body of water, really?

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But I do note you avoided the question: Did she chug the coke???

I gotta go to a movie now, but I'll look forward to seeing your answer later.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Media is your master and you are its slave EM

Hey, nice one D! (and it fits into the Slavery Thread too...you are good!)

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As for me being a slave to media, I think you may have a point there.

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But, btw, how do I know you are real?

You might just be another master, some computer program over there on the internet, programmed to spout random replies to me, to keep me enslaved here and typing away.

I must break free of this able2know master of slavery so I can go serve my other master: media.

Then I'll go serve my other master: wine.

Then its on to my other master: sleep.

Then my next master: morning sunrise & jogging.

And all those masters of the weekend.

Is there no escape from the masters of this existence?

Perhaps the slave breaks free when s/he realizes the master & the slave are really the same.

The servant becomes the master.

I will master the media!

The coke was mine . . . (insert eye-rolling emoticon of your choice in this space) . . .

My own favorite example of Bible morality is when the mob tries to storm Lot's house, and he tells it he'll give them his two virgin daughters to do with whatever they want, if only they leave himself and his house alone. And the LORD thinks this such a stellar example of doing the right thing that he saves Lot, but not the rest of his city, from annihilation.

Impressive morality indeed.