Some awful awful posting by the usual suspect over the last day in this thread. My god.
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What can I say? When I canât put down the bottle, these things happen.
Poeâs Law
You will never go wrong if you just remember that the âproduct of their timeâ myth is a gigantic lie for essentially every historical atrocity
Thereâs no magical Point Of Awakening
People knew atrocities were awful, but not enough of them had or used the power to stop it. The point where enough power was used to stop something, is not some magical point where before that, people didnât comprehend morality, and after that, suddenly the number of people in favor of the atrocity significantly, instantly decreased
Itâs like today, where activists are out there doing activist things while most people just go âyeah itâs bad but what can I doâ
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Ray Horton, er, NMW, you can simply abandon your childish Great Man Theory and it will actually help you see the world more accurately and will make the world better and safer, not worse and nihilistic or whatever fears you have
Your stunted worldview is the reason we have JoePa and Catholic priests
extrapolate
The reason I donât completely agree with this is that ignorance levels change and society evolves over time via scientific enlightenment. White people literally thought black people were sub-human (i.e. not fully human). Homophobes thought that being gay was a choice, etc.
If you truly believe these things (because itâs what youâve been told your whole life, thereâs no science pointing otherwise, and everyone around you believes the same thing) you are much less evil (in my book) than someone who knows these things not to be true and still engages in what we now know to be atrocities (slavery, homophobia, discrimination, etc.)
Like I said, weâd all like to think we wouldâve been different and morally superior to the people of past times, but we canât know that. Some of us can admit it, and I guess some canât
A lot of people were against slavery in principle then. Maybe a majority. Itâs not that bold to imagine that you would have been against it in principle.
Not that many people did anything about it or even complained a lot, but then thereâs still lots of slavery and few people are troubled enough to even spend more money for free trade chocolate.
Seems pretty similar.
Your whole post is a mess, but the idea that racism was due to a lack of science is bizarre and wrong. Anti-black racism in America is a relatively recent development that served to justify slavery, not the inverse. Everyone knew what they were doing was an atrocity. There is a library of research on this (to say nothing of a wealth of primary materials).
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Were black people considered full human beings (according to science) or something less? Yes or no?. Ditto for whether or not gays were considered to have a choice?
If youâre going to call a whole post a mess, you should at least be able to point out something thatâs demonstrably wrong within it
You may be right about this. I admitted Iâm not a history buff. But am I wrong about the role science has played towards enlightenment? Did science have to say what it does today in regards to equality amongst human beings, or gay not having a choice, etc.?
How many people (percentage wise) in the north and south were exposed to slaves on a daily basis? Do you know? Was it greater than 50%?
What did âaccording to scienceâ mean in the 18th century and how much impact did it have on the average personâs attitudes?
Missionaries first went to sub-saharan Africa in 1490 because they thought Black people were humans with souls. I think thatâs more relevant than what Copernicus thought.
The race science youâre talking about was much more common after the civil war.
I donât know, but it had to depend on the state. This might give you some idea.
I think so, yes. What little science there was on this before the civil war wouldnât have affected general attitudes very much I think. After the civil war, especially in the early 20th Century, a lot of âscienceâ was used to justify racism.
If youâre saying that most people knew slavery was evil 200 odd years ago, then Iâm obviously wrong. I thought there was a time when people literally didnât consider black people as fully human as a matter of science
Science impacts every century. But again, I do not know my history. Is it fake news that black Africans sold black people? Human slavery goes back to the beginning of time. Did mankind always know it was wrong, but did it anyway? Or did they genuinely feel that certain races were inferior to their own? Maybe I am wrong because I think some white people were also indentured servants, so maybe it was just wealth and might make right
But my main point is, that people now who want to retroactively think they wouldâve been morally superior to their counterpart of 200+ years ago, probably shouldnât feel that way
Cactus,
Thatâs not to say I donât think things have changed at all, just not that much and certainly not so much you have to imagine yourself a moral superhero to think youâd have been against slavery then, but also donât imagine youâre such a moral superhero that youâd go terribly far out of your way to do anything about it unless youâre doing that now.
I think most people would say âslavery is bad, but Iâm not paying 50% more for slavery-free cottonâ.
This was being talked about in the context of the founders and many of them were abolitionists and the big slave owners (Washington and Jefferson) thought it sucked, they just wanted the $.
If you or I were transported back to 1810, I think our activism against slavery wouldâve been epic enough to get make us well known or get us into trouble. Iâm not sure that wouldâve been the case if we were born and grew up in that era. And I think thatâs because of what we know now that we wouldnât have thought about then
Imo thereâs a misperception that thereâs this constant march of progression in history. Jefferson wrote a version of the Bible with the miracles extracted. Dude might get burned at the stake for that today. Abortion was not illegal until the 19th century. This stuff is always in flux
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I doubt the first part. Iâm sometimes willing to pay a little more for fair trade chocolate. USA imprisons more people than anyone anywhere, I think ever, I think many of those people for no good reason and people in prison are literally an exception in the 13th amendment and all I do is talk about that.
I have taken a few very mild risks in my life for political/moral reasons and I expect I would do the same if I were transported to 1810. Maybe a bit moreâŚshrugâŚthereâs a lot of âit dependsâ in there.
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I heard that he cut all the miracles out until what he was left with wasnât worth believing in