Hayabusa Rider
Admin Emeritus & Elite Member
- Jan 26, 2000
- 50,879
- 4,265
- 126
No it doesn't change whether it is moral or not. In fact you don't address that issue. You beg the question.It doesn't change whether I'm more Moral about the subject now one bit. It is clearly more moral to not condone Slavery. Sorry.
You make this claim with frightening certainty of that which you cannot know. Since history demonstrates that major civilizations used slavery and that we know what was done in most cases your statement of "fact" hinges on your saying it is true. Begging the question. In a debate is it the responsibility of those at odds with demonstrated facts to convince others that are indeed correct. You fail to do so.Yes, Rome would be different without Slavery, but it did not need to have Slavery, no Civilization did.
Actually I am doing none of the above. I am examining the facts as they are, not as I'd like them to be. That's inspection, a statement of what was, not what I would like it to have been. That the facts do not support your contention is not my fault.You're having to defend, deflect, and make bad excuses for something that shouldn't need it.
Perhaps, but you act as if they should have all your "wisdom" on the issue. If I asked you to foresee a definitive outcome of a quantum event, what would that require on your part? Being God of course, because you cannot possibly know. Now I can chide you for not having done so after the experiment since I can see the results. Why am I so much smarter than you? After all, I have the right to judge since your foresight was so bad.The reason is that it was the invention of people of an age that couldn't foresee the possibilities.
They were clearly less moral than you because you know what they could not, did not have the luxury of building a civilization without machines. That's hubris. That they are "clearly less Moral" is entirely dependent on your personal judgement which you can only confirm by begging the question which you constantly do. You assign an absolute to morality that is applicable across the ages which is based on some unknowable to all but modern culture. On what is that absolutist argument made? That you say it is. Again that's, well everyone knows what that is by now. You go even further by claiming that the ancient world is inferior by far in knowledge/morals. They had a cruel existence and certainly people then who had to deal with not being at the top level knew it. They also created the fundamental basis for all you know, the way that we view the universe, they had art and literature, they developed the concepts of mathematics and science. They had something you seeming do not understand, which is wisdom, in spite of the mean conditions in which many lived. Your "house" is built on Greek academicians who in turn constructed a foundation based on the economic system of slavery which you decry as being completely superfluous based on your supposition of non-events.I don't think they were Evil people, but they were clearly less Moral than us and it's quite vile that many of us continue to look upon them for guidance when we far surpass their knowledge/morals in every conceivable way.
Does that mean that I endorse slavery? No, and I believe that it should not exist. I also wish that the world and the people it contains had been different to allow what we benefit from to have been produced in other ways. I do not however presume to dare and make definitive claims based on nothing other than my fantasies. I will not be so intellectually lazy as to state that my sense of right and wrong apply equally to all people in all times in all situations. That's the job of a deity, not you or I, and since you deny the possibility of there being one there is no other judge than ourselves, set up as demigods and pronouncing that all past and future generations are subject to the standards we hold today. We are not Gods, not even close.
A point being missed is that ALL of morality is axiomatic. We say slavery is wrong. The difference is that I realize that I do so because I can afford to. That I was raised in a culture that no one else has had before. That my parents, my friends, my education, my "world" influenced me to form my contextual perception. I CHOOSE to make slavery immoral, because "I" want it to be. I do not try to weave it into the fabric of reality, nor do I hold the past responsible for its situation unless I do so by the standards of ITS day. Yes I have preferences, I have wishes, but I do not live a magical world where I define reality based on my beliefs. That is the job of theologians and of folks who think as you do. You and the religious have much in common. Inerrant in judgement, defining beliefs as reality.
You see things haven't changed much at all in many ways.
Perhaps I'm being harsh, but if one cannot put some emotional distance between a thing and one's reason then the end result must be ignorance based on illusion. People need to learn this.
A more interesting question to me is that of the trade off between where we are and the means by we got here. In short, was it worth it? Easy question that's not easily answer based on the absence of "what might have been".