RE: If you're pro-life, how far do you take that?
August 8, 2018 at 9:59 am
(This post was last modified: August 8, 2018 at 10:15 am by The Grand Nudger.)
(August 8, 2018 at 9:14 am)vulcanlogician Wrote:Rome was a civilization. To wit, a society, culture, and way of life. Society is the aggregate of individuals..a component of civilization. It's possible for a civilization to prosper even as the aggregate of it's individuals suffer. For example, when wealth or power are calcified at the top 1% - society is suffering....but the civilization may be doing great. I say this with one great big caveat which I'll get to in just a moment.(August 8, 2018 at 8:45 am)Khemikal Wrote: I think you're mixing up civilization and society. Society is the aggregate of individuals, and harming one of them does harm the aggregate, even if it doesn't harm the aggregate equally. Some civilizations thrive and prosper in spite of institutions which harm their society, sure. IDK if slavery is the best example, since we understand that slavery has an immense cost to society and civilization.
Well, by definition then, Rome was an aggregate of individuals, and therefore a society. We can look at this aggregate on a social level... examining their particular hierarchies... and see slavery as a social phenomenon.
Quote:But you raise a new and interesting question there, one that's worth exploring. Let's take morality out of it. Abstractly, can harm to an individual actually benefit his encompassing society? I'm thinking in terms of a tribe tracking a wooly mammoth. The tribe has been without food for days, and the mammoth is about to escape, perhaps for good. One daring hunter leaps onto the beast, clutching its fur and stabbing it with his blade. In the process he is trampled to death, but due to his efforts, the mammoth is greatly weakened and collapses not far from where the hunter leapt onto him.I think that you're moving away from the sort of harm I thought we were discussing. The enforcement of a slave apparatus and a courageous person doing something to the benefit of his peers are so disparate that I don't think any comment on one could address the other adequately.
No one can argue that an individual wasn't harmed in this scenario. But because of his sacrifice, the rest of the tribe was saved from starvation. Does this example demonstrate that harm to an individual can benefit his encompassing society? Or is there more to it than that?
In any case, about removing the moral angle. I can do that with the example of society, civilization, and slavery. While I think there are moral reasons for a civilization not to engage in slavery..ultimately, I can simply refer to it's effects.
Enslaved people have a historical tendency to get pretty live. Now, I don't want to ignore the docility of some...but one slave revolt or civil war can eradicate any short term benefit to unskilled labor that civilization that harming their society in that way might incur. Even in the interim of docility the culture and way of life is negatively affected (deeply negatively affected)..those other components of civilization.
Regardless of whether or not there is some harm that can be done to society to the benefit of civilization, this particular harm done to society also harms the civilization...inherently so. The lure, the benefit..is labor, plain and sweet. The risk is the maintenance of the slave apparatus, unrepresentative contribution (to markets, to innovation) by the disenfranchised, a cultural rift driving society into -at least- two camps, and the dissolution and reestablishment of governing authorities.
The understanding of how people react to their enslavement, all on it's own, provides a practical reason not to engage in it. History is littered with conflict over the subject..and on a personal note...it's is the thing that despots and slaveholders have nightmares about. Constantly fretting about the rabble and how to keep them under thumb. Even -that- labor..intellectual and bureaucratic...would be better spent elsewhere.
(August 8, 2018 at 9:17 am)pocaracas Wrote: I think, in that example, the long term societal wellbeing comes out impaired by the lack of an able bodied individual, even though, in the short term, society does benefit with the food bonanza.
You get food for the short term.
But one less hunter for when that food runs out.
I mean..if you're the smartest Ogg in the cave..you might wanna let a dumb young buck do the wetwork...but other than that...meh.
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