BuyerBeware
Phoenix
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Age: 35
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 Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2012 12:47 am Post subject: Thoughts on Slavery |
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http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2012/03/world/mauritania.slaverys.last.stronghold/
I'm looking for all and any thoughts on the article, not just on the subject of slavery itself.
My first thoughts-- and the reason I linked it here-- were actually about the extent to which I've been encouraged to have the "slave mentality"-- the attitude that I am organically and inherently a lesser person and that it is therefore only right and natural that I should be treated as such-- in my own life.
I wonder-- Why??? Why would anyone want to do that to another human being??? Are they not capable of seeing how easily the shoe could be on the other foot??? Or is it BECAUSE they can readily see how easily the shoe could be on the other foot???
Anyway. I'm soliciting thoughts. On people-- human nature I guess-- as much as or more than race, Mauritania, Africa, autism, the Colonial slave trade, all that stuff.
Thoughts. Any thoughts.
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nirrti_rachelle
Go Tigers!
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| Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2012 1:10 am Post subject: |
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Well, the thing is, people who enslave others don't see them as being other human beings like them. To a slave holder, their slave might as well be a mule or a cow. Most people don't bother to put themselves in the other "shoes" of non-humans.
I think this is also the root of cruelty toward those with disabilities, different races, and religions. People think of them as the "other" and can't possibly empathize with them. After all, in their minds, if they could at all, that would mean that they were just like them. And no one wants to see themselves as being in any way like the disenfranchised group.
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Declension
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Joined: Jan 21, 2012
Posts: 1653
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| Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2012 1:15 am Post subject: |
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| Slavery is a good issue to troll libertarians with. Libertarians claim that you own your own body, and therefore that you should be allowed to sell yourself into bondage. |
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cyberscan
Naughty Autie
Joined: Apr 17, 2008
Posts: 1357
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| Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2012 2:09 am Post subject: |
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One thing that people need to be aware of is that slavery is not just in Africa or the Middle East. It is also right here in the United States of America. Human trafficking is almost as big as trafficking in drugs. Most of the people enslaved here in the United States are forced to work as prostitutes, domestic servants, field hands, and other jobs where they can be hidden from the public. Slavery exists right under our noses, and most people are completely unaware.
Many of these people are kept in slavery because they don't know our language, because they are told they will be jailed for life, and because of threats against their families in their native countries.
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Ellendra
Snowy Owl
Joined: Dec 22, 2011
Posts: 127
Location: Wi, USA
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| Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2012 12:33 pm Post subject: |
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| cyberscan wrote: | One thing that people need to be aware of is that slavery is not just in Africa or the Middle East. It is also right here in the United States of America. Human trafficking is almost as big as trafficking in drugs. Most of the people enslaved here in the United States are forced to work as prostitutes, domestic servants, field hands, and other jobs where they can be hidden from the public. Slavery exists right under our noses, and most people are completely unaware.
Many of these people are kept in slavery because they don't know our language, because they are told they will be jailed for life, and because of threats against their families in their native countries. |
The idea that slavery is bad is also a relatively recent developement in human history. For thousands of years, owning a slave was as acceptable as owning a computer. In some cultures it was even viewed as an honorable alternative to poverty, sometimes people would voluntarily offer themselves as slaves rather than starve. I have often wondered if, 200 years from now, we will be judged harshly for the way we treat our computers as slaves?
(I should probably add, the above is in NO WAY to be taken as support for slavery. It is an evil practice and should be abolished.) |
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JeremyNJ1984
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Age: 29
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| Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2012 3:06 pm Post subject: |
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| Ellendra wrote: | | cyberscan wrote: | One thing that people need to be aware of is that slavery is not just in Africa or the Middle East. It is also right here in the United States of America. Human trafficking is almost as big as trafficking in drugs. Most of the people enslaved here in the United States are forced to work as prostitutes, domestic servants, field hands, and other jobs where they can be hidden from the public. Slavery exists right under our noses, and most people are completely unaware.
Many of these people are kept in slavery because they don't know our language, because they are told they will be jailed for life, and because of threats against their families in their native countries. |
The idea that slavery is bad is also a relatively recent developement in human history. For thousands of years, owning a slave was as acceptable as owning a computer. In some cultures it was even viewed as an honorable alternative to poverty, sometimes people would voluntarily offer themselves as slaves rather than starve. I have often wondered if, 200 years from now, we will be judged harshly for the way we treat our computers as slaves?
(I should probably add, the above is in NO WAY to be taken as support for slavery. It is an evil practice and should be abolished.) |
Please tell me you did not just compare a human being to a computer when it comes to its " treatment" ? |
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Ellendra
Snowy Owl
Joined: Dec 22, 2011
Posts: 127
Location: Wi, USA
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| Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2012 12:17 pm Post subject: |
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| JeremyNJ1984 wrote: | | Ellendra wrote: | | cyberscan wrote: | One thing that people need to be aware of is that slavery is not just in Africa or the Middle East. It is also right here in the United States of America. Human trafficking is almost as big as trafficking in drugs. Most of the people enslaved here in the United States are forced to work as prostitutes, domestic servants, field hands, and other jobs where they can be hidden from the public. Slavery exists right under our noses, and most people are completely unaware.
Many of these people are kept in slavery because they don't know our language, because they are told they will be jailed for life, and because of threats against their families in their native countries. |
The idea that slavery is bad is also a relatively recent developement in human history. For thousands of years, owning a slave was as acceptable as owning a computer. In some cultures it was even viewed as an honorable alternative to poverty, sometimes people would voluntarily offer themselves as slaves rather than starve. I have often wondered if, 200 years from now, we will be judged harshly for the way we treat our computers as slaves?
(I should probably add, the above is in NO WAY to be taken as support for slavery. It is an evil practice and should be abolished.) |
Please tell me you did not just compare a human being to a computer when it comes to its " treatment" ? |
In 200 years, lets compare notes on that. |
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MrXxx
Moderator/Enigmatus Paradoxius
Joined: May 12, 2010
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| Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2012 12:23 pm Post subject: |
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| Declension wrote: | | Slavery is a good issue to troll libertarians with. Libertarians claim that you own your own body, and therefore that you should be allowed to sell yourself into bondage. |
Most of us already do that.
We just call it "employment."
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jojobean
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| Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2012 10:19 pm Post subject: |
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I agree there is alot of things that go on beneath the surface in our country like "human trafficing" weird way to say illegal slavery. This country was founded on slave labor by religious fanatics and crooks....not much has changed since.
In fact, ppl carry on about our mexican illegal immegration problem, but just until recently, the dept of immegration was inside the dept of agriculture. Strange arrangment, huh? Well the truth of the matter is the US has been bringing over undocumented mexicans to work in factory farms...these people are paid way below min. wage and doing jobs most of us would not be caught dead doing. They are exposed to harmful chemicals, bacteria and a host of other things. See after Lincoln freed the African American slaves...agriculture had to find a new crop of people to use to work the big farms. So later on the govt started importing mexicans and other latin americans who are not entitled to rights as citizens or even as migrants.
To add insult to injury, they begin this war on illegal immigration which alot of the ppl they bring over here are either sent back or jailed in ICE camps. I guess thats what thanks they get. One mexican man said they treat the cows better than they threat them...and they kill the cows.
Jojo
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ruveyn
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| Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 10:22 am Post subject: Re: Thoughts on Slavery |
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| BuyerBeware wrote: | http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2012/03/world/mauritania.slaverys.last.stronghold/
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I am not surprised. Africa is the bottom of the toilet bowl.
ruveyn |
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edgewaters
hibernating
Joined: Aug 17, 2006
Age: 40
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Location: Ontario
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| Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 2:14 pm Post subject: |
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| Ellendra wrote: | | cyberscan wrote: | One thing that people need to be aware of is that slavery is not just in Africa or the Middle East. It is also right here in the United States of America. Human trafficking is almost as big as trafficking in drugs. Most of the people enslaved here in the United States are forced to work as prostitutes, domestic servants, field hands, and other jobs where they can be hidden from the public. Slavery exists right under our noses, and most people are completely unaware.
Many of these people are kept in slavery because they don't know our language, because they are told they will be jailed for life, and because of threats against their families in their native countries. |
The idea that slavery is bad is also a relatively recent developement in human history. For thousands of years, owning a slave was as acceptable as owning a computer. In some cultures it was even viewed as an honorable alternative to poverty, sometimes people would voluntarily offer themselves as slaves rather than starve. I have often wondered if, 200 years from now, we will be judged harshly for the way we treat our computers as slaves?
(I should probably add, the above is in NO WAY to be taken as support for slavery. It is an evil practice and should be abolished.) |
Historically incorrect. Slavery was never consistently or universally opposed in pre-modern times but it was opposed by some at almost every point in recorded history - and it was almost universally seen as unnatural. The Romans, for example, believed slavery violated natural law, but, that the laws of states took precedence and slavery was a necessary evil (quod ad ius naturale attinet, omnes homines aequales sunt, with regard to the natural law, all men are equal).
In medieval times, slavery largely disappeared in Western Europe; feudalism economically rendered it an obsolete institution. It still existed, but it took a limited form. Christians were banned under threat of excommunication from owning Christian slaves, and the practice of owning foreign slaves happened but only rarely because it, too, was frowned upon. Eventually there were moves in the late middle ages to abolish slavery completely; Poland, for instance, outlawed all slavery in the 15th century and the papal bull Sublimus Dei, in 1537, banned all slavery on threat of excommunication:
We define and declare by these Our letters, or by any translation thereof signed by any notary public and sealed with the seal of any ecclesiastical dignitary, to which the same credit shall be given as to the originals, that, notwithstanding whatever may have been or may be said to the contrary, the said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.
Nevertheless the Church itself continued to own slaves after passage of Sublimus Dei and just a few years later, annuled Sublimus. Less than a decade later, 1545, the same Pope affirms the right of people in the city of Rome to own slaves, and in 1547 sanctions the enslavement of King Henry VIII, and a year later, purchases some Muslim slaves. Basically it was regarded as wrong but they did it anyway, and as a consequence there was political support both for and against. Looking at something like Sublimus Dei you are looking at the Church navigating the politics of the situation - they publish Sublimus to appease a powerful movement against slavery (being led mainly by King Charles V and the bishop Bartolome de las Casas), but later switch tack according to political expedience.
Indeed, although slavery did exist for thousands of years, for tens of thousands before that, it was unknown. Hunter-gatherer societies never developed slavery; it seems to have been a novel institution, introduced at some point after more complex societies began to develop. |
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Feralucce
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MrXxx
Moderator/Enigmatus Paradoxius
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| Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 6:13 pm Post subject: |
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| Feralucce wrote: | | Declension wrote: | | Slavery is a good issue to troll libertarians with. Libertarians claim that you own your own body, and therefore that you should be allowed to sell yourself into bondage. |
Citation please?
With just a moment of web searching I find a lot of people saying that libertarians say this... but no libertarians ACTUALLY saying it. |
I believe Walter Block admits to being in the minority on this issue, but he is clearly in support of it, and is a professed libertarian.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/block/block134.html
http://www.walterblock.com/
This, by the way, only took five minutes to find. All one has to do is search the names in articles by people who say they're saying it. They don't all cite names of libertarians who have actually said it, but some of them do.
This is, apparently not a well supported view among libertarians in general, so I wouldn't call it a "plank in their platform."
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Feralucce
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| Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 9:48 pm Post subject: |
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I realize that the data can be found if you dig, but when proposing a statement like that, it customary for the person to back their words with facts and the best way to do that is with citation. It simply facilitates discussion.
In response to this, though, I would like to cite a mathematical concept. A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not a square. Some libertarians support the idea (and any job that has an internship is this very thing) but not all do. By eliminating the word Some from your statement, it can be taken (by all who read it) to mean that all Libertarians feel that way.
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slave
Always stuck between 13-38Hz and tired of it.
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| Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 10:53 pm Post subject: |
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I know that I am a slave. Are you?
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