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JimJohn
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28 Jan 2023, 10:32 am

I don’t mean this to be offensive but this is how I think slavery arose. I have systemic thinking so please bear with me. I am not trying to make light of atrocities. It is just interesting to me to think about how things develop. They obviously could develop in other ways depending on imagination and the politics involved. I have just picked a benign way because I am a contrarian. Here it is:

Let’s say there is no running water and a man has a well. His neighbor doesn’t have a well so he lets his neighbor use it so he doesn’t die of thirst. He becomes friends with his neighbor and asks his neighbor over for dinner because his neighbor is hungry. The neighbor brings their family over for dinner because they are also hungry. They don’t bath because they don’t have a well or a bar of soap. All of them in a room together smell through no fault of their own so you feed them in a separate hut.

They decide to help you out because of your generosity. Money doesn’t exist in the modern sense so you have no way to pay them and they owe you anyway. You become to rely on them. You rely on them so much that you ask them not to leave. They say ok we have a deal. You let them build a new hut close to yours and form a perimeter for mutual benefit.

When the younger family members back out on the deal later you feel it is unfair. To settle the dispute you both go to the tribal leaders who decide along side you that it is unfair. The tribal leaders say they must not leave. As time goes on the tribal leaders get tired of settling similar disputes. For the sake of simplicity they classify people into groups with different rights and enforce it with violence because that is how they roll.

5,000 years follow, villages turn into cities. Money is invented along with other types of servitude. Some worse than others. Sick people commit atrocities. Non-sick people commit atrocities because life is hard and people can be cruel. All a few steps removed from carnivores forming groups to kill and eat.

I guess an alternate view could be that organized people caught people and kept them in prisons and gave them work assignments. It could be true. Personally, that seems hard to pull off. Most things have an organic beginning.

I guess if the Aztecs could line up 90,000 people to rip their still beating hearts out in a day anything is possible. Perhaps it was never organic and requires an advanced civilization to pull off.

Maybe the Egyptians did it to build the pyramids because they had a patriarchal Pharoah and that was the beginning. I kind of doubt the Egyptians had prisons to house the workers though. I have read that sometimes they killed the people that built tombs. I wonder if that was a prime assignment that people wanted because of indoctrination.



funeralxempire
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28 Jan 2023, 10:53 am

Odds are slavery existed long before civilizations resembled what you're describing.

Slavery is documented among peoples who aren't permanently settled.

Slavery, as practiced by hunter-gatherer peoples tends to be primarily about turning war captives into members of your own society. In the Eastern Woodlands region of North America there was a tendency to either forcibly adopt or kill war captives, depending on needs.

You're also assuming ancient peoples had the same understandings of hygiene as our society, which doesn't seem very likely.

It's also worth noting that slavery isn't the same within all societies. There's a tendency to describe indentured servitude in other societies as slavery, yet we tend to respect that distinction when it comes to western societies.

Aztec slavery often involved people who sold themselves into slavery. Aztec slaves could own property, including slaves of their own. Clearly this is at odds with slavery as practiced by many other societies, but my entire point is that slavery isn't the same thing across all societies.

Also, Egypt's pyramids weren't constructed by slave labour. That's a trope from old Hollywood movies.

Anyways, back on to topic, in a less wealthy, less stratified society the boundary between a free person and a slave might be trivial, but as a society becomes more stratified more differences would begin to appear. Wealth disparities make it possible for some to end up in debt to others, which would create the 'opportunity' to end up bound in service to another.

Out of curiosity, have you read about the institution of slavery within various societies, or did you just start daydreaming of a potential explanation?


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JimJohn
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28 Jan 2023, 12:12 pm

funeralxempire wrote:
Odds are slavery existed long before civilizations resembled what you're describing.

Slavery is documented among peoples who aren't permanently settled.

Slavery, as practiced by hunter-gatherer peoples tends to be primarily about turning war captives into members of your own society. In the Eastern Woodlands region of North America there was a tendency to either forcibly adopt or kill war captives, depending on needs.

You're also assuming ancient peoples had the same understandings of hygiene as our society, which doesn't seem very likely.

It's also worth noting that slavery isn't the same within all societies. There's a tendency to describe indentured servitude in other societies as slavery, yet we tend to respect that distinction when it comes to western societies.

Aztec slavery often involved people who sold themselves into slavery. Aztec slaves could own property, including slaves of their own. Clearly this is at odds with slavery as practiced by many other societies, but my entire point is that slavery isn't the same thing across all societies.

Also, Egypt's pyramids weren't constructed by slave labour. That's a trope from old Hollywood movies.

Anyways, back on to topic, in a less wealthy, less stratified society the boundary between a free person and a slave might be trivial, but as a society becomes more stratified more differences would begin to appear. Wealth disparities make it possible for some to end up in debt to others, which would create the 'opportunity' to end up bound in service to another.

Out of curiosity, have you read about the institution of slavery within various societies, or did you just start daydreaming of a potential explanation?


I haven’t researched it. I am glad that you have and replied.

In my country which is U.S.A. some people think that we invented it and I don’t believe that. Obviously, anytime someone promotes one thing or another it takes on a political natiure.

My recent ancestors that had some slaves are long forgotten many times over but I like to think about them. You can’t even find their graves. There were much fewer people back then and most people didn’t even have slaves. I think someone would be hard pressed to find someone whose recent ancestors had slaves and the ones that did were not necessarily evil or cruel. It is just one of those things that is interesting. I have a thing where I like to see large number of people being wrong. History is interesting.

I realize I could be wrong hence the question. I don’t mind being wrong.



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28 Jan 2023, 1:15 pm

I think slavery began when human society first became able to create surplus value. Until then, it was impossible to exploit anybody because no individual could produce more than enough for their own survival. So slavery would have begun with the neolithic revolution.

It happened because it became possible. It's human nature to avoid unnecessary work, so if you can get something or somebody else to do it for you, that's what you're likely to do if you have any sense. These days we're taught that slavery is wrong, but back in ancient times it was seen as perfectly natural, just like the inequality of women, children, foreigners and animals was normal. Plato knew about equality and felt it was a great thing, but he never considered extending it to the slave class. I suppose the human race's original sense that slavery was normal was why the ancient religions got away with their emphasis on absolute subjugation to a supreme being. Religion reflects and reinforces the cultural norms of the society that hosts it.

Even as late as the feudal system it's said that most serfs saw it as strange to question the inequality of it all or to attempt to rise above their station in life. Even in the here and now with our "wage-slavery" system, socialism is at best a controversial ideology, and universal suffrage has failed to render society economically equal, strange though it seems from an egalitarian perspective. Exploitation only comes seriously unstuck when it gets so severe that it directly threatens the very survival of the underclass. In that scenario the slaves' survival instinct drives them to rebellion. Rebellion is very dangerous for them but they have nothing to lose that they weren't going to lose anyway. So the wise slave owner throws his slaves the occasional bone and doesn't get too greedy. As long as he doesn't go too far, everything remains stable and the overall economy thrives.



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28 Jan 2023, 1:27 pm

Back in the Seventies anthropologist Margaret Mead would say that "the average suburban American has 80 to a 100 'energy slaves' in their home". That is...the average middle class american - with our electrical appliances, and modern conveniences, has the equivalent of 80 human slaves working for them 24/7.

Pretty much answers the question right there.

In pre Thomas Edison times...men used muscle to farm, and fight, and women used muscle to beat clothing against the rocks in the stream to do laundry.

What ToughDiamond said...with invention of plow agriculture you had the rise of unequal classes in society.

Even in places were there was little outright slavery there were social structures only marginally better...like serfdom, or the Caste System.



MuddRM
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28 Jan 2023, 2:03 pm

Slavery has existed from the time man existed on earth (whether you believe man descended from apes or the creation story in Genesis). It will continue to exist until humanity is wiped off the face of this earth. There is not a damn thing that can be done to eradicate slavery.



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28 Jan 2023, 2:19 pm

JimJohn wrote:
I haven’t researched it. I am glad that you have and replied.


I just wanted to know the angle you were approaching it from, not to be negative if you were just speculating without any research. It's a good question that's worth discussion.

JimJohn wrote:
In my country which is U.S.A. some people think that we invented it and I don’t believe that. Obviously, anytime someone promotes one thing or another it takes on a political natiure.


I've talked to a lot of people from the US on this topic and I don't think anyone has ever tried to claim slavery was invented in the US.

Keep in mind, people encounter references to it in the bible or in history class because of how widespread it was in the Classical world.

There's a tendency to downplay it's importance to the early British North American/American economy as well as the extreme brutality that was typical of that specific form of slavery, so that has lead to people wanting to focus more on just how bad slavery as practiced in those regions was. It's treated as original sin, not because it was invented there, but because it essential for that entity to exist.

In Canada there's a tendency to forget that a lot of important people out east made their fortunes in the slave trade even if they never had slaves in territory that is now Canada.

Broadly, there's a tendency to focus on slavery in the US South because of the Civil War, while ignoring it's history further north, as well as that involvement in the slave trade is broader than just simply owning them to perform work. The human traffickers involved are just as guilty.

JimJohn wrote:
I think someone would be hard pressed to find someone whose recent ancestors had slaves and the ones that did were not necessarily evil or cruel.


Whether or not they're evil, I kinda had a whole thread dealing with that discussion recently. Not specific to that context, but more broadly about how people who are mostly decent and view themselves as good get involved in objectively evil acts.

As for cruelty, I'd argue that slavery is inherently dehumanizing and routinely enforced with brutality and emotional manipulation. Further, in the Americas it was consistently practiced along a racial caste system (part of the reason we differentiate between indentured servitude and chattel slavery) that further contributed to the dehumanizing element.

It was excused quite literally on the basis of claiming the people subjected to it deserved it for being lesser humans, and if they refused to accept this brutalizing them was encouraged. If that's not cruel I don't know what is.

One needs to be careful when thinking about history, to not only sympathize with the people who look like or are mostly closely related to one's self. Every single person who ever lived was just as deserving of empathy and dignity as you and I; if your historic loved ones were involved with denying that to people they might have otherwise been decent, but they're still the bad guy. We can't be too fragile to flinch from accepting that; if German kids can learn about what their greatgranddads did, we can absorb what our ancestors did too.


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JimJohn
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28 Jan 2023, 3:51 pm

funeralxempire wrote:
JimJohn wrote:
I haven’t researched it. I am glad that you have and replied.


I just wanted to know the angle you were approaching it from, not to be negative if you were just speculating without any research. It's a good question that's worth discussion.

JimJohn wrote:
In my country which is U.S.A. some people think that we invented it and I don’t believe that. Obviously, anytime someone promotes one thing or another it takes on a political natiure.


I've talked to a lot of people from the US on this topic and I don't think anyone has ever tried to claim slavery was invented in the US.

Keep in mind, people encounter references to it in the bible or in history class because of how widespread it was in the Classical world.

There's a tendency to downplay it's importance to the early British North American/American economy as well as the extreme brutality that was typical of that specific form of slavery, so that has lead to people wanting to focus more on just how bad slavery as practiced in those regions was. It's treated as original sin, not because it was invented there, but because it essential for that entity to exist.

In Canada there's a tendency to forget that a lot of important people out east made their fortunes in the slave trade even if they never had slaves in territory that is now Canada.

Broadly, there's a tendency to focus on slavery in the US South because of the Civil War, while ignoring it's history further north, as well as that involvement in the slave trade is broader than just simply owning them to perform work. The human traffickers involved are just as guilty.

JimJohn wrote:
I think someone would be hard pressed to find someone whose recent ancestors had slaves and the ones that did were not necessarily evil or cruel.


Whether or not they're evil, I kinda had a whole thread dealing with that discussion recently. Not specific to that context, but more broadly about how people who are mostly decent and view themselves as good get involved in objectively evil acts.

As for cruelty, I'd argue that slavery is inherently dehumanizing and routinely enforced with brutality and emotional manipulation. Further, in the Americas it was consistently practiced along a racial caste system (part of the reason we differentiate between indentured servitude and chattel slavery) that further contributed to the dehumanizing element.

It was excused quite literally on the basis of claiming the people subjected to it deserved it for being lesser humans, and if they refused to accept this brutalizing them was encouraged. If that's not cruel I don't know what is.

One needs to be careful when thinking about history, to not only sympathize with the people who look like or are mostly closely related to one's self. Every single person who ever lived was just as deserving of empathy and dignity as you and I; if your historic loved ones were involved with denying that to people they might have otherwise been decent, but they're still the bad guy. We can't be too fragile to flinch from accepting that; if German kids can learn about what their greatgranddads did, we can absorb what our ancestors did too.


I have heard some of that before. I have trouble grasping some of it.

For example, why did people outside of agriculture have slaves? I understand the Northeastern US has agriculture but they are not famous for slavery.

I don’t think they were locked up. I think that if they wanted to needed they had the opportunity to kill people while they sleeping but didn’t. I don’t think their living quarters were bad.

I thnk 1000 acres of farmland equaled about a half dozen slaves which meant the owners family were working right along side them in many cases.

Yeah, in some cases there may have been an overseer but you can get a feel for that by looking at the number of famous plantations. There aren’t that many of them. I have only heard of half a dozen of them in my entire state.

I am not sure where the experts get their facts. I have been wrong before but I haven’t been quite convinced to believe the jargon.

I don’t think you see rampant sexual relations between slave owners and slaves if you look at DNA analysis. Sure people come up mixed but that is not from the time period.

I know there was a religious revival at some point perhaps after the height of slavery. As much as people are religious in the Bible Belt I don’t see them mistreating people.

I am not necessarily arguing anything. It is just how I see it and would like to see if I am wrong. It is one thing to read things and another thing to have been there.



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28 Jan 2023, 4:10 pm

JimJohn wrote:
I have heard some of that before. I have trouble grasping some of it.

For example, why did people outside of agriculture have slaves? I understand the Northeastern US has agriculture but they are not famous for slavery.


There's people who kept domestic servants, but there's also people who were involved in transporting slaves who never had them work for them. Someone who owns a company, that owns ships and purchases slaves to sell them elsewhere doesn't necessarily have slaves in their home. They're still profiting from the slave trade though, that's literally their job.

JimJohn wrote:
I don’t think they were locked up. I think that if they wanted to needed they had the opportunity to kill people while they sleeping but didn’t. I don’t think their living quarters were bad.


You're familiar with the concept of a runaway slave, right? If they weren't locked up most of them would have freed themselves. I'm not sure what 'wanted to needed' means. As for the living quarters, how bad would they have to be before you would consider them bad? But also, that's not really a priority when discussing keeping humans as property. But you had decent living quarters would not be an excuse if I kept you as a slave.

JimJohn wrote:
I thnk 1000 acres of farmland equaled about a half dozen slaves which meant the owners family were working right along side them in many cases.

Yeah, in some cases there may have been an overseer but you can get a feel for that by looking at the number of famous plantations. There aren’t that many of them. I have only heard of half a dozen of them in my entire state.


Doesn't matter. That's not a defence of keeping people as livestock. The owners family had no right to those people or their labour in the first place. It doesn't matter if it's on a large scale or on a small scale, it's indefensible no matter what.

JimJohn wrote:
I don’t think you see rampant sexual relations between slave owners and slaves if you look at DNA analysis. Sure people come up mixed but that is not from the time period.


While sexual abuse of slaves is documented, a society that doesn't sexually exploit slaves still exploits them and deserves to be condemned for those actions.

JimJohn wrote:
I know there was a religious revival at some point perhaps after the height of slavery. As much as people are religious in the Bible Belt I don’t see them mistreating people.


Whether or not you see it, they did.

JimJohn wrote:
I am not necessarily arguing anything. It is just how I see and would like to see if I am wrong.


There's a strong appearance that you're trying to defend and white-wash slavery simply by constantly repeating talking points used by those who seek to defend and white-wash it. It doesn't mean that's your motive, but it does mean people might be prone to assuming it. Not too many other people throw those talking points around.

Basically, you can remove one or two really horrific aspects of slavery without it making a lick of a difference because the inherent act of reducing other humans to chattel property makes one a monster. Anything on top of that merely compounds it.


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Silence23
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28 Jan 2023, 5:04 pm

Just neurotypicals doing neurotypical things.

E.g. claiming the body of another person as their property. As work force, as soldier (conscription), as someone who needs to take your superduper mRNA technology so your pharma stock values rise, etc. All by bullying people or threatening them with violence if they don't comply.

Once the state psychologically terrorized me by threatening me for several months, then hunted me down, kidnapped me and locked me away. All because I didn't agree to join their military organization. They caused severe trauma by doing that. And they think they did they right thing.

They did not accept when I told them to just leave me alone. Instead they pretended it was my own fault, and that this is just how things are and need to be.

This, and threatening people with violence so they pay taxes without them having signed a contract with the state, is basically the neurotypical mentality which was behind slavery. People who involuntarily pay taxes are work slaves of the state. Except that the state brainwashes them to believe they're free.


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28 Jan 2023, 6:35 pm

Silence23 wrote:
Just neurotypicals doing neurotypical things.

E.g. claiming the body of another person as their property. As work force, as soldier (conscription), as someone who needs to take your superduper mRNA technology so your pharma stock values rise, etc. All by bullying people or threatening them with violence if they don't comply.

Once the state psychologically terrorized me by threatening me for several months, then hunted me down, kidnapped me and locked me away. All because I didn't agree to join their military organization. They caused severe trauma by doing that. And they think they did they right thing.

They did not accept when I told them to just leave me alone. Instead they pretended it was my own fault, and that this is just how things are and need to be.

This, and threatening people with violence so they pay taxes without them having signed a contract with the state, is basically the neurotypical mentality which was behind slavery. People who involuntarily pay taxes are work slaves of the state. Except that the state brainwashes them to believe they're free.


Beautifully said.



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28 Jan 2023, 7:22 pm

I remember visiting a museum with an old doll. The old doll was a racist caricature. If I were the superstitious type, I would've considered it cursed. I was hit with a feeling similar to nausea; I felt disturbed and disgusted. Then angry with humanity.

Whilst I'd seen pictures like the doll before, seeing it in person felt different. Real. It was jarring how the doll was still in good condition. Still sitting there. The idea that this had been a child's plaything, how the parents had probably bought it for the child as if it were nothing.

Before I thought about it, I said "I hate this. Evil." to no one in particular. The thought had been on my mind and it just came out.

That doll left a lasting impression. How its features had been made to look absurd. Less than human. That's what it comes down to. How people used to think.

I remember coming across a document when researching my family tree. An ancestor of mine signed a document in favour of the abolishment of slavery. I have to wonder if he always held that position, or if he was once in favour of slavery but changed his mind. It is a shame that the dead cannot talk.


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28 Jan 2023, 7:52 pm

I personally feel slavery is the bastard child of imperialism



JimJohn
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28 Jan 2023, 8:00 pm

funeralxempire wrote:
JimJohn wrote:
I have heard some of that before. I have trouble grasping some of it.

For example, why did people outside of agriculture have slaves? I understand the Northeastern US has agriculture but they are not famous for slavery.


There's people who kept domestic servants, but there's also people who were involved in transporting slaves who never had them work for them. Someone who owns a company, that owns ships and purchases slaves to sell them elsewhere doesn't necessarily have slaves in their home. They're still profiting from the slave trade though, that's literally their job.

JimJohn wrote:
I don’t think they were locked up. I think that if they wanted to needed they had the opportunity to kill people while they sleeping but didn’t. I don’t think their living quarters were bad.


You're familiar with the concept of a runaway slave, right? If they weren't locked up most of them would have freed themselves. I'm not sure what 'wanted to needed' means. As for the living quarters, how bad would they have to be before you would consider them bad? But also, that's not really a priority when discussing keeping humans as property. But you had decent living quarters would not be an excuse if I kept you as a slave.

JimJohn wrote:
I thnk 1000 acres of farmland equaled about a half dozen slaves which meant the owners family were working right along side them in many cases.

Yeah, in some cases there may have been an overseer but you can get a feel for that by looking at the number of famous plantations. There aren’t that many of them. I have only heard of half a dozen of them in my entire state.


Doesn't matter. That's not a defence of keeping people as livestock. The owners family had no right to those people or their labour in the first place. It doesn't matter if it's on a large scale or on a small scale, it's indefensible no matter what.

JimJohn wrote:
I don’t think you see rampant sexual relations between slave owners and slaves if you look at DNA analysis. Sure people come up mixed but that is not from the time period.


While sexual abuse of slaves is documented, a society that doesn't sexually exploit slaves still exploits them and deserves to be condemned for those actions.

JimJohn wrote:
I know there was a religious revival at some point perhaps after the height of slavery. As much as people are religious in the Bible Belt I don’t see them mistreating people.


Whether or not you see it, they did.

JimJohn wrote:
I am not necessarily arguing anything. It is just how I see and would like to see if I am wrong.


There's a strong appearance that you're trying to defend and white-wash slavery simply by constantly repeating talking points used by those who seek to defend and white-wash it. It doesn't mean that's your motive, but it does mean people might be prone to assuming it. Not too many other people throw those talking points around.

Basically, you can remove one or two really horrific aspects of slavery without it making a lick of a difference because the inherent act of reducing other humans to chattel property makes one a monster. Anything on top of that merely compounds it.


You are right there is probably a strong appearance of me doing that but it doesn’t matter. I’ve already been canceled. It is a one time deal. I think in reality I just have an interest in it. I see some obvious errors with the way people describe it. It is too bad I can’t freely discuss it.

My “wanted to needed” phrase was a typo. I meant “wanted or needed”. I do think they were free to kill someone if provoked as much as you or I do with a kitchen knife.

As far as locked up, they were not locked in buildings where they lived. How else would they go outside to use the toilet? I doubt they rung a bell.

One thing about them being property. If someone had slaves, they obviously did not kill them when they got old or could not work. There were also children that must have needed to be watched over to a certain degree to get them to adulthood. There was probably not much second hand market for a slave that could not work. The separation of families is obviously sad but not all facets are interesting to be. I’m not fully indoctrinated.

I think someone would have had to have a big ongoing pursuit to commit to owning slaves for their entire lives. The people that owned slaves solely for housework must have been incredibly wealthy to take on another person for a humans lifetime.

This is probably going to sound like white washing for sure but why would someone harm property that they needed to get work out of for the next fifty years?

One of my points was that not many people can identify a distant relative that had slaves. I got one relative out of let’s say fifteen great great great great great grandpas that no one thought we were related to and had forgot. He was French and I don’t have any French ancestry so maybe even I don’t have any relatives that owned slaves.

If that is a talking point of apologists it is a good one. I came across the point organically. I certainly did not read it anywhere. My thoughts are original to me.



Last edited by JimJohn on 28 Jan 2023, 8:28 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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28 Jan 2023, 8:24 pm

Lost_dragon wrote:
I remember visiting a museum with an old doll. The old doll was a racist caricature. If I were the superstitious type, I would've considered it cursed. I was hit with a feeling similar to nausea; I felt disturbed and disgusted. Then angry with humanity.

Whilst I'd seen pictures like the doll before, seeing it in person felt different. Real. It was jarring how the doll was still in good condition. Still sitting there. The idea that this had been a child's plaything, how the parents had probably bought it for the child as if it were nothing.

Before I thought about it, I said "I hate this. Evil." to no one in particular. The thought had been on my mind and it just came out.

That doll left a lasting impression. How its features had been made to look absurd. Less than human. That's what it comes down to. How people used to think.

I remember coming across a document when researching my family tree. An ancestor of mine signed a document in favour of the abolishment of slavery. I have to wonder if he always held that position, or if he was once in favour of slavery but changed his mind. It is a shame that the dead cannot talk.


You should watch “Scrub me Mama with a Boogie Beat” on YouTube. It is a banned cartoon from something like the 40’s. I’d be interested if people find that offensive or disturbed by it. I like old cartoons. It is so far fetched that I don’t think anyone would take it seriously.



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28 Jan 2023, 9:14 pm

JimJohn wrote:
You are right there is probably a strong appearance of me doing that but it doesn’t matter. I’ve already been canceled. It is a one time deal. I think in reality I just have an interest in it. I see some obvious errors with the way people describe it. It is too bad I can’t freely discuss it.


Cancelled, like, people got tired of you peddling these sorts of talking points and decided to associate with other people instead?

From what I've seen, most so-called cancel culture is just as*holes being unhappy that other people realized they're as*holes.

JimJohn wrote:
My “wanted to needed” phrase was a typo. I meant “wanted or needed”. I do think they were free to kill someone if provoked as much as you or I do with a kitchen knife.


If they killed the people holding them as slaves they'd be killed. Society didn't take kindly to slaves attempting to subvert the 'way things were'.

JimJohn wrote:
As far as locked up, they were not locked in buildings where they lived. How else would they go outside to use the toilet? I doubt they rung a bell.


You don't need to be locked inside a building in order to have no chance of leaving the property you're held at, and if you fled you would be pursued as a fugitive and tortured and/or killed for seeking to remove yourself from chattel slavery. People who helped you flee might also be punished.

JimJohn wrote:
One thing about them being property. If someone had slaves, they obviously did not kill them when they got old or could not work. There were also children that must have needed to be watched over to a certain degree to get them to adulthood. There was probably not much second hand market for a slave that could not work. The separation of families is obviously sad but not all facets are interesting to be. I’m not fully indoctrinated.


No, they often set them free once they couldn't work anymore, not to mention a lifetime of being abused tends to cause people to die young.

Clearly you've never actually read about the period and how mistreatment was the norm because it's an essential tool in maintaining slavery.

JimJohn wrote:
I think someone would have had to have a big ongoing pursuit to commit to owning slaves for their entire lives. The people that owned slaves solely for housework must have been incredibly wealthy to take on another person for a humans lifetime.


Domestic servants used to be more common, I think naturalplastic pointed that out earlier in the thread.

JimJohn wrote:
This is probably going to sound like white washing for sure but why would someone harm property that they needed to get work out of for the next fifty years?


Because abuse is how people maintain control over slaves. There were guides written in that era advising people how to properly abuse slaves to ensure they kept working. Corporal punishment is used to modify behaviour, in this case the behaviour is not allowing yourself to be exploited.

JimJohn wrote:
One of my points was that not many people can identify a distant relative that had slaves. I got one relative out of let’s say fifteen great great great great great grandpas that no one thought we were related to and had forgot. He was French and I don’t have any French ancestry so maybe even I don’t have any relatives that owned slaves.


And?
I'm not sure of the point you're seeking to make.

All and all, slavery as practiced within the US and other parts of the Americas was among the most brutal forms of slavery the world has ever witnessed, no defence of the institution exists and all the old Lost Cause attempts at white-washing it were debunked decades ago, so you might be better off spending a few minutes doing independent research before repeating anymore white supremacist talking points.

Seriously, before asking another question that wonders if slavery wasn't really as bad as people say spend an hour learning even the basic facts about what it was like for those being held in bondage.

Thomas Jefferson raped and impregnated a child he owned. Sally Hemings was 14 years old when that abuse began. You try to present it as though sexual abuse was uncommon meanwhile slaves couldn't refuse their masters advances and sexual abuse was widespread.

They were denied their basic humanity, their ownership over their own flesh and their ownership over their own lives. There is nothing that can be said in defence of such an institution or the people who engaged in it or otherwise profited from it.


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Watching liberals try to solve societal problems without a systemic critique/class consciousness is like watching someone in the dark try to flip on the light switch, but they keep turning on the garbage disposal instead.
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