RE: Does the positive side of tribalism/racism outshine the negative side?
August 13, 2020 at 2:28 pm
(This post was last modified: August 13, 2020 at 2:51 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
No, thank you. Conversation ftw.
We could use a different kind of slavery for an alternate comparison. Still chattel slavery, but chattel slavery aimed at non agricultural purposes. A caste of warrior slaves. These guys can get treated different to other slaves when they appear in a society. Societies can revere them, instead of reviling them. Sometimes, they live better than other free men, which is to say that theyre well incentivized (and, arguably, a wage earner by another name). If we compare an agricultural slave to a battlefield slave we might have a case that the one instrumental good is preferable to the other and that at least some of the moral issues are resolved. That you should be a warrior slave instead of a farm slave, if you could choose - but I don't know that the overall moral summary changes, in the end. More a comment on the priorities of a society and the desires of an individual.
Poor and free, or well kept and enslaved - these are choices, for sure - but the effects of slavery on more than just one slaves life must factor in. What may be to his personal benefit (which is granting alot in the context of slavery, a hell of alot) may not be a good thing to allow in a society. That's a pretty common state of affairs.
-also wanted to point out that this is a comparison between the instrumental bad of death, and the moral evil of slavery.
That's not weighing the good against the bad, it's weighing the bad against the worst. Exclusively sub-optimal, like I'm always yammering about. In a field with no good choices, we try to grasp for the least bad one. In a field full of instrumental goods, we grasp for the one with the least moral evil attached. Or, at least, that's what our functioning moral agency would do...allegedly. Since we're compromised, we can be swayed by things like convenience or fear or attachment or habit or predisposition. We can get it wrong, factually....and we can knowingly select the (self described) morally wrong option.
We could use a different kind of slavery for an alternate comparison. Still chattel slavery, but chattel slavery aimed at non agricultural purposes. A caste of warrior slaves. These guys can get treated different to other slaves when they appear in a society. Societies can revere them, instead of reviling them. Sometimes, they live better than other free men, which is to say that theyre well incentivized (and, arguably, a wage earner by another name). If we compare an agricultural slave to a battlefield slave we might have a case that the one instrumental good is preferable to the other and that at least some of the moral issues are resolved. That you should be a warrior slave instead of a farm slave, if you could choose - but I don't know that the overall moral summary changes, in the end. More a comment on the priorities of a society and the desires of an individual.
Poor and free, or well kept and enslaved - these are choices, for sure - but the effects of slavery on more than just one slaves life must factor in. What may be to his personal benefit (which is granting alot in the context of slavery, a hell of alot) may not be a good thing to allow in a society. That's a pretty common state of affairs.
(August 13, 2020 at 1:24 pm)Greatest I am Wrote: I see life, even as a slave as good, as compared to death.
-also wanted to point out that this is a comparison between the instrumental bad of death, and the moral evil of slavery.
That's not weighing the good against the bad, it's weighing the bad against the worst. Exclusively sub-optimal, like I'm always yammering about. In a field with no good choices, we try to grasp for the least bad one. In a field full of instrumental goods, we grasp for the one with the least moral evil attached. Or, at least, that's what our functioning moral agency would do...allegedly. Since we're compromised, we can be swayed by things like convenience or fear or attachment or habit or predisposition. We can get it wrong, factually....and we can knowingly select the (self described) morally wrong option.
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