The continuation of the slavery debate
Nov. 26th, 2005 08:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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trikotomy (not the same person as the original commenter - or at least, not the same username.) Additional comments welcome, and I've invited trikotomy to continue the debate in my journal if so desired.
Wait... isn't a failure to properly acknowledge human value the very definition of dehumanization, regardless of whether it was done consciously?
"NONE OF THEM DID"
No, most of them didn't, as far as we know. I assure you that in almost no point in the history of a culture has there ever been a complete and total consensus on anything, even if the dissent has not been successfully vocalized and charitably recorded, and the failure of people to bring "serious" efforts to fore is both an arbitrary distinction and insufficient to establish otherwise. I find it highly unlikely that it would never occur to anyone that slavery was humiliating for the slaves unless they were told so. Furthermore, how would such a consensus be relevant? Modern slavers and their supporters must surely have a consensus amongst themselves that what they're doing is fine, or else they wouldn't do it. Why should I despise them while respecting the slavers of the past? If it's because old slavers "couldn't" know any better, then I pity their poor and/or lazy critical thinking skills at best, and if it's because most people now disagree with modern slavers, this sounds like an ad populum fallacy.
"Even the Bible [...] never said slavery was wrong"
Well, there was certainly an understanding that it was wrong when it happened to the Hebrews, if not other people (a double standard the Bible is notorious for which I will not dwell on here). Moses didn't rally for the fair treatment of his people, but for their unconditional freedom. It seems reasonable that slaves typically do not endorse their slavery, and it is convenient that they are left absent from popular accounts on the morality of it.
Now, I'll grant you that the condition of being a slave-owner didn't necessarily make one a seething mass of pure, liquid evil, and that many may have been otherwise decent people who may have had valid ideas, but this fact does not obligate me to appreciate "different lifestyles and viewpoints" in relation to slavery. I shed no tears for stereotypical depictions of evil slave-owners... there are other subjects far more worthy of my sympathy.
"Wait... isn't a failure to properly acknowledge human value the very definition of dehumanization, regardless of whether it was done consciously?"
No, it's not. Acknowledgement of human dignity by a large segment of the population is a prerequisite for taking away that human dignity. Someone has to have something before they can be deprived of it.
Keep in mind that this was not a matter of slaves vs. free, the vast majority of the time. An ancient Athenian landowner who owned forty slaves was a well-respected citizen, while his heiress daughter might as well have been a slave herself for all the good she got out of her freedom. She was not more respected than her slaves; if anything, her life was MORE circumscribed than theirs. Similarly, in many cultures, a slave woman was seen as a legitimate source of free sons by her male owner, but a free woman who let herself be impregnated by a slave lost practically all value to her family and society.
The ancient Hebrews did, in fact, make slaves of each other. They were generally not slaves for life, though, and there were very, very specific rules about their treatment. Read Leviticus and Deuteronomy for more on that.
I'm not talking about a consensus of opinion here. There was no consensus leading up to the Civil War in America. There was, however, an understanding of rights that was beginning to develop into a modern understanding of human rights, and which was debated vociferously throughout the country. Many nations had already abolished slavery - Upper Canada did it in 1809, and the rest of the Canadian colonies did it in 1834, along with Great Britain. This had never happened before. There was no movement anywhere in history to treat people in a way we would describe as "fair", that is, everyone has certain inalienable rights that they are born with. The concept did not exist before the eighteenth century, and its application to all levels of society has only recently become the norm in the West. Unfair treatment - that is, treatment based on societal status, gender, and wealth - was not framed in any thought as being fair or unfair. It was just the way it was, and if individuals railed against it (which they did, certainly, you're right there) they didn't rail against the system so much as against their place in it. If they managed to escape that place, they took their place in the system at a different level of it and made lives for themselves there. Even the concept of changing society through concerted action was a modern idea. Little people had no power to change their government or the way things were done. Only men in the highest social classes had that power in most societies.
The reason I believe this to be an important point to make for a student of history is this. If you claim that all slavery and all slave-owners were by definition evil, what you've done is set up an "us" and "them" situation where "those evil people" did something WE would never do. You've divorced yourself from their moral failings and you've failed to recognize that all humans have the capacity both for great good and for great evil, regardless of the social conditions in which they live. You've set yourself on a moral pedestal, and that's a dangerous place to be. The basic value of modern citizenship is that everyone has a role to play in running our society and in making needed social changes. Recognizing one's own potential involvement in social injustice is a huge part of that. Are we likely to recognize our involvement in the modern elements of economic slavery that go on around us, if we've so completely divorced ourselves from the morality of the past? I don't think we are.
In other words, by claiming all slave-owners were by definition evil, you divorce yourself from the possibility that you could have done the same things in a similar situation, and that you still do, and that there's progress to be made here. Humanity is not perfect. We can't afford to rest on our laurels from a comfortable moral superiority and say that we're better than them. It's hypocritical - at least, it is if you buy cheap costume jewellry made by child labour, or if you don't ensure that your fresh produce is grown on a farm where workers are paid a living wage, or if you shop at Walmart on a regular basis.
I'm a history teacher, an author, and an active citizen in my community. These are important things for me to think about in those contexts. I seek to get inside the collective psyches of the civilizations I study, to know where we've come from, to check direction on where we're going, and to write about all of that in my books. If you wish to look less critically at both modern and ancient values, that is, of course, your choice.
trikotomy (not the same person as the original commenter - or at least, not the same username.) Additional comments welcome, and I've invited trikotomy to continue the debate in my journal if so desired.Wait... isn't a failure to properly acknowledge human value the very definition of dehumanization, regardless of whether it was done consciously?
"NONE OF THEM DID"
No, most of them didn't, as far as we know. I assure you that in almost no point in the history of a culture has there ever been a complete and total consensus on anything, even if the dissent has not been successfully vocalized and charitably recorded, and the failure of people to bring "serious" efforts to fore is both an arbitrary distinction and insufficient to establish otherwise. I find it highly unlikely that it would never occur to anyone that slavery was humiliating for the slaves unless they were told so. Furthermore, how would such a consensus be relevant? Modern slavers and their supporters must surely have a consensus amongst themselves that what they're doing is fine, or else they wouldn't do it. Why should I despise them while respecting the slavers of the past? If it's because old slavers "couldn't" know any better, then I pity their poor and/or lazy critical thinking skills at best, and if it's because most people now disagree with modern slavers, this sounds like an ad populum fallacy.
"Even the Bible [...] never said slavery was wrong"
Well, there was certainly an understanding that it was wrong when it happened to the Hebrews, if not other people (a double standard the Bible is notorious for which I will not dwell on here). Moses didn't rally for the fair treatment of his people, but for their unconditional freedom. It seems reasonable that slaves typically do not endorse their slavery, and it is convenient that they are left absent from popular accounts on the morality of it.
Now, I'll grant you that the condition of being a slave-owner didn't necessarily make one a seething mass of pure, liquid evil, and that many may have been otherwise decent people who may have had valid ideas, but this fact does not obligate me to appreciate "different lifestyles and viewpoints" in relation to slavery. I shed no tears for stereotypical depictions of evil slave-owners... there are other subjects far more worthy of my sympathy.
"Wait... isn't a failure to properly acknowledge human value the very definition of dehumanization, regardless of whether it was done consciously?"
No, it's not. Acknowledgement of human dignity by a large segment of the population is a prerequisite for taking away that human dignity. Someone has to have something before they can be deprived of it.
Keep in mind that this was not a matter of slaves vs. free, the vast majority of the time. An ancient Athenian landowner who owned forty slaves was a well-respected citizen, while his heiress daughter might as well have been a slave herself for all the good she got out of her freedom. She was not more respected than her slaves; if anything, her life was MORE circumscribed than theirs. Similarly, in many cultures, a slave woman was seen as a legitimate source of free sons by her male owner, but a free woman who let herself be impregnated by a slave lost practically all value to her family and society.
The ancient Hebrews did, in fact, make slaves of each other. They were generally not slaves for life, though, and there were very, very specific rules about their treatment. Read Leviticus and Deuteronomy for more on that.
I'm not talking about a consensus of opinion here. There was no consensus leading up to the Civil War in America. There was, however, an understanding of rights that was beginning to develop into a modern understanding of human rights, and which was debated vociferously throughout the country. Many nations had already abolished slavery - Upper Canada did it in 1809, and the rest of the Canadian colonies did it in 1834, along with Great Britain. This had never happened before. There was no movement anywhere in history to treat people in a way we would describe as "fair", that is, everyone has certain inalienable rights that they are born with. The concept did not exist before the eighteenth century, and its application to all levels of society has only recently become the norm in the West. Unfair treatment - that is, treatment based on societal status, gender, and wealth - was not framed in any thought as being fair or unfair. It was just the way it was, and if individuals railed against it (which they did, certainly, you're right there) they didn't rail against the system so much as against their place in it. If they managed to escape that place, they took their place in the system at a different level of it and made lives for themselves there. Even the concept of changing society through concerted action was a modern idea. Little people had no power to change their government or the way things were done. Only men in the highest social classes had that power in most societies.
The reason I believe this to be an important point to make for a student of history is this. If you claim that all slavery and all slave-owners were by definition evil, what you've done is set up an "us" and "them" situation where "those evil people" did something WE would never do. You've divorced yourself from their moral failings and you've failed to recognize that all humans have the capacity both for great good and for great evil, regardless of the social conditions in which they live. You've set yourself on a moral pedestal, and that's a dangerous place to be. The basic value of modern citizenship is that everyone has a role to play in running our society and in making needed social changes. Recognizing one's own potential involvement in social injustice is a huge part of that. Are we likely to recognize our involvement in the modern elements of economic slavery that go on around us, if we've so completely divorced ourselves from the morality of the past? I don't think we are.
In other words, by claiming all slave-owners were by definition evil, you divorce yourself from the possibility that you could have done the same things in a similar situation, and that you still do, and that there's progress to be made here. Humanity is not perfect. We can't afford to rest on our laurels from a comfortable moral superiority and say that we're better than them. It's hypocritical - at least, it is if you buy cheap costume jewellry made by child labour, or if you don't ensure that your fresh produce is grown on a farm where workers are paid a living wage, or if you shop at Walmart on a regular basis.
I'm a history teacher, an author, and an active citizen in my community. These are important things for me to think about in those contexts. I seek to get inside the collective psyches of the civilizations I study, to know where we've come from, to check direction on where we're going, and to write about all of that in my books. If you wish to look less critically at both modern and ancient values, that is, of course, your choice.
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Re: Part 1
Date: 2005-11-29 05:21 pm (UTC)As for deducing things, that isn't as easy as it sounds. People aren't as observant as you might think. And to realize that there's something wrong, a person has to see it.
Yes, they could have seen what was going on. But why would they have looked? They were fine.
And this has wandered away from
But evil? Not necessarily. Assuming that a slaveowner is automatically evil paints a rather poor picture of some of the people that signed the American Declaration of Independence. They were good people, for their time. For our time, they would be considered evil. But they were wrong to hold slaves, in both times.
And the difference between evil and wrong is the difference between deliberate wrong, and unthinking wrong.
Re: Part 1
Date: 2005-11-30 03:43 am (UTC)I presume you refer to a cultural development, as whether in a suit or a loincloth (to quote Jhonen Vasquez), man is the same animal as he was a few thousand years ago. I cannot say how successfully lessons of time really translate into future generations, so I likewise cannot speculate as to the progress of some overarching development of the species. We may yet be on the path to destruction, for all we know. In any case, the possibility that future humans may be overall be better or past ones worse does not alter my view of the individual's capacity for reason, and the responsibility born of that.
As for deducing things, that isn't as easy as it sounds.
Easy and right are rarely related. I am aware (heh) of people's lack of awareness, and perhaps the problem is one of effort. People who are not interest in seeing will not see. The attitude of "I feel fine. Why worry about others?" is one I comprehend but do not think any better of. In fact, those in a position of contentment ought to be the most morally responsible, as they have less of their personal welfare to attend to. We must remember that, in talking about slavery, we are not talking about a single wrong that is absently committed and forgotten, but an ongoing process which, for slave-owners, sits under their very noses and confronts them daily with its ramifications. If it is so deeply wrong as we accept it to be, someone should have noticed. Perhaps many of them didn't want to.
being a slaveowner doesn't make that person evil
I accept, and have previously accepted, that it does not by necessity make them inherently evil, or overall evil, or even significantly evil. I do think, though, that it at least makes them partially evil, as everyone is. Coming back to another earlier point, I do not feel bothered when I find stories depicting an evil slaver owner as 1) they are the least of the victims of the situation, 2) they (or their representatives) are not present to be offended, and 3) a parable is more successful in demonstrating slavery as cruel if the perpetrator is cruel, heavy-handed though it may be. I likewise do not find offense with depictions of villainous thieves or killers, despite that it is a cliché that is not always valid. (Though I will admit that both of these topics have a broader and more daring array of depictions while slavery, for its controversy, does not. If someone wishes to write a story about a non-evil slave owner, I will not defy them.) My time and resources are finite and I have priorities, and defending the good name of slave owners is not amongst them.
Incidentally, "willful dehumanization" would imply an intentional harm, would it not?
...a rather poor picture of some of the people that signed the American Declaration of Independence.
I do not, as some do, view the founding fathers as paragons of virtue who were above reproach. They were people, composed of good and evil as other people are, and though they had good ideas, they were not saints. Even the brilliant Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. cheated on his wife, or so I've heard. (I think
But anyhow. I believe that possessing a mindset which causes one to repeat acts of harm represents evil, even without the amplification of a specific desire to produce harm, though it's possible for that evil to be insignificant. (Conversely, I believe I can apply a similar standard to good, which is likewise enhanced by but not expressly limited to deliberate intent. Random acts of senseless kindness, and all that rubbish.) As for whether people as a whole are evil vs. wrong, I have known a few people I consider to be evil out of being monstrously, incomprehensibly inconsiderate, but for average situations your distinction seems to be a reasonable one and I can think of no fault with it, although we might be splitting hairs at this point.
Re: Part 1
Date: 2005-11-30 03:44 am (UTC)