How We Excuse Slavery

I thought you all should know - slavery's alright. Alright, it's "not wrong." Just thought you should know. Clear that up. You know. Because it's okay.

Evolved and Rational (a great blog anyway) has a really good take down of this. Let me give you the basic argument:

Slavery's okay because Christians are supposed to be slaves to God, wives slaves to husbands, and children slaves to their parents. If we try and claim slavery is wrong, then society will collapse because children won't obey their parents and wives won't submit to their husbands, etc, etc. Also, Paul says it's okay and Jesus doesn't say it's not.

Great. I'm going to try to collect myself before the jump...

Okay. Let me see about this. Slavery is wrong - it is a system of abuse in itself - it is not wrong because sometimes owners abuse their slaves, but because the system of relationship is abuse itself. In this way, sometimes a marriage or relationship between people can be abusive in itself. It doesn't require physical abuse. Of course, we've also seen that this woman is perfectly fine with mental abuse.

I'm sorry. I almost threw up a little over that one (another hat tip to Evolved and Rational).

Now, for another perspective, I'm going to turn to Tom Sheepandgoats, a guy I've had arguments with before, but whom I respect a good deal.

Tom argues that we seem to rabidly condemn people from another age, as if we would not have fallen victim to the same ways of thinking. Well, when that's true, it should be argued against - that is an important lesson for any historian. There is a certain leniency that you can grant when you're talking about people's social situations.

Now, likewise, you have to be really careful with that kind of forgiveness - "Oh, it's just their culture" is a dangerous path to tread. I'm not a fan of strong moral relativism, as I've noted before. Tom wants to argue that times were different back then, that we shouldn't condemn the actions of our ancestors because they lived in a different context, and that biblical slavery, as compared to modern capitalist socio-economic divides, wasn't all so bad, and, of course, that there was a voluntary element to it, and that Christians are slaves to God.

Well, first, yes, times were different. I don't condemn people in ancient times for owning slaves. I find it regrettable, but I don't banish them from history or argue that they shouldn't be listened to at all. The extent that I go to is to say: "It's unfortunate that so-and-so held this view on slavery or society, but he's a product of his time, like all of us, and I'm not surprised that he didn't see far past it." Now, another important point that Tom raises is the sometimes voluntary aspect of Biblical slavery - you sell yourself for a period of time to an "owner," you get certain protects, you do your work, and then you're set free.

Maybe this is pedantic, but that's more like indentured servitude. Actually, in some ways, it's more like a contract job. I wouldn't call this slavery, although that is the word the religious would use themselves (sorry, I take an etic perspective). Basically, if you get poor enough, then you can sell your services for a period of seven years, and then he'd be given his hereditary property back. In some ways it sounds like a pretty sweet deal. In some ways, it's a smart move. But...it's not slavery as we understand it, or as was practiced towards non-Jews among Israelite society. That's one of the little things that Tom almost manages to brush away - this is a very specific system of relations among Jews in Israel. These agreements do not hold towards others, like prisoners of war.

Lastly, Tom argues that our solutions to poverty, in fact our modern world, is really much worse off than this agreement was or would be (if we were all Jews...or Jehovah's Witnesses...I'm not really sure). Here's the really interesting part for me. Instead of saying "Man, slavery...pretty bad. Here's an interesting kind-of-like-slavery system in Biblical times, and it's unfortunate that it would ever have to be used, but it works better than modern poverty...maybe we should do something to improve that," we instead get "Modern society is terrible. Even slavery is better. Actually, this form of slavery is actually good, and approved by God. They were better off. It's okay."

That's the interesting twist for me in both of these posts - it's not an argument that people were wrong to practice slavery in their times (although, I'd argue they were, even if they were justified in doing so [Thank you, Jeffery Stout]), but instead it's a rejection of the modern world. It's an argument that whatever was going on in Biblical times was okay and approved by God, and thus it had to be better than the modern world. But this is the scariest part, and where I severely disagree with Tom. In doing this, they perpetuate the systems of thought which make things like slavery and abuse in the name of religion, country, or family okay. They continue to bear the torch of our ancestors and try to bring these ancient systems of practices and beliefs into the modern world. They want a critical rupture in modernity - the breakthrough of ancient paradigms into modern life. It's an extreme form of Romanticism.

And that's the exact problem - the truly religious among us still carry with them and want to enforce ancient modes of thought and social relations. This is not an argument about the glory of "progress" or the "wonderful modern age." We have a hell of a lot of problems today, very serious ones. My argument is simply that arguing from ancient paradigms and trying to return to ancient worldviews and modes of being is not the answer to any of our problems today. In fact, it's a major hindrance. I'm arguing that we should deal with what problems we can, and should be open to all possible solutions, including progressive, forward-thinking ones.

Otherwise, we run into situations like these. Situations in which religious, denialist, or general anti-scientific thinking leads to a real body count. To the suffering and death of children through wholly preventable diseases. These are real world problems being affected and effected by the kinds of thought-patterns I've been discussing. And it's heartbreaking.

Actually, I'm really too tired to get into this in a truly intelligible way right now. Maybe I'll come back to it later. In the mean time, what's your guys take on all this?

General hat tip to PZ for inspiring this all.