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Seventh Blade's blog
Is Slavery Unjust?
Today in Debate, we were having mock debates to prepare for an upcoming tournament. In one of my rebuttal's, my value had been justice and I countered an opponent's argument by saying by his logic, slavery was justified. Afterwords, the captain said it was great that I brought it back to slavery, that's pretty much a trump card if I'm arguing why something is unjust.
That got me thinking: why is slavery unjust? Does it not strike anyone as odd that slavery just suddenly became unjust? Prior to the mid-18th century, for the most part, slavery was accepted. Few found it unjust. Take African slavery for example. Before the movement against it started, most people didn't care to respect any rights of these people. But once the movement started, many joined along, and as time went on it just became taught that slavery was evil.
I have two problems with that. One, slavery was abolished because of a movement. The rise of Hitler to power and the "horrible" things that happened under his reign were also because of a movement. So in one case a movement is good, in the other a movement is bad. That's how most people would respond if I compared the two cases. But why? They were both movements for change, many were involved in order to gain power/fortune in each, both had many members that felt what they were doing was justified. But it is because a majority of the people disagree with one movement that it is condemned.
Two, hypocrisy just rings out from it. Oh, of course, everyone will agree that slavery is wrong and those slaves deserved rights. But they're all fine with millions of animals being murdered each year for consumption.
Thus, the only reason slavery is seen as unjust now is because we are fed that it is wrong, and most people don't even think about why. They just feel it is wrong. However, back in ye good old days, most people didn't feel it was wrong. So whose right? Neither, of course. So it is neither unjust or just.
By the way, I probably have a severe flaw in my logic that I overlooked. If anyone catches, please do share.
That got me thinking: why is slavery unjust? Does it not strike anyone as odd that slavery just suddenly became unjust? Prior to the mid-18th century, for the most part, slavery was accepted. Few found it unjust. Take African slavery for example. Before the movement against it started, most people didn't care to respect any rights of these people. But once the movement started, many joined along, and as time went on it just became taught that slavery was evil.
I have two problems with that. One, slavery was abolished because of a movement. The rise of Hitler to power and the "horrible" things that happened under his reign were also because of a movement. So in one case a movement is good, in the other a movement is bad. That's how most people would respond if I compared the two cases. But why? They were both movements for change, many were involved in order to gain power/fortune in each, both had many members that felt what they were doing was justified. But it is because a majority of the people disagree with one movement that it is condemned.
Two, hypocrisy just rings out from it. Oh, of course, everyone will agree that slavery is wrong and those slaves deserved rights. But they're all fine with millions of animals being murdered each year for consumption.
Thus, the only reason slavery is seen as unjust now is because we are fed that it is wrong, and most people don't even think about why. They just feel it is wrong. However, back in ye good old days, most people didn't feel it was wrong. So whose right? Neither, of course. So it is neither unjust or just.
By the way, I probably have a severe flaw in my logic that I overlooked. If anyone catches, please do share.
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I don't agree that that we only believe slavery is bad because we're told it is. Science today has improved and so has social and psychological understanding, so I think we genuinely do have more compassion and reason these days. It would be interesting to see something like this though; I mean most Westerners are capable of justifying and supporting genocide through ignorance, so I'm sure we could do something similar with slavery if we really wanted.
Are any of these actual genuine thoughts? It seems half "because I had to", half "for the sake of argument".
Back then slaves were often (but not always) treated well, and provided for. Slaves could win freedom , or be granted freedom, by their owner's will. There was even many occasions in history when famous politicians and intellectuals fell in love with their slaves, and married them.
I'm sure you could find many political scientists, economists, historians and sociologists that would argue that ancient world slaves had a higher standard of living than many 'free' people in today's world, working for extremely low wages, only to survive.
Re superfastOz0-> Ya, you are right. Unfortunately back then -- and just as much as now a days -- money has the power to corrupt science for commercial purposes. In other words, money trumps science, and science can be used to support pretty much and position, if enough funds are available.