[AFAIK]

The point is that moral theories and ideologies are fictions.
Why didn't you say that to begin with? Could have saved yourself 1000 words.

And if you eat meat you can sincerely shut the fuck up about your imaginary moral superiority over any herbivore.
How does being incapable of doing something make one morally superior?
If a peasant is incapable of buying slaves due to lack of funds is he superior to an aristocrat who has the means to own slaves?

[SolarCross]

How does being incapable of doing something make one morally superior?
If a peasant is incapable of buying slaves due to lack of funds is he superior to an aristocrat who has the means to own slaves?

No one is morally superior except subjectively. Morals, where they are rational at all, are contrived to support a success strategy. For soft civilians in a well policed polity, ie the human equivalent to domesticated herbivores, avoiding violent solutions to inter personal problems is "moral". For an apex predator like a gangster or hitman in contrast being tough and capable in the routine use of violence to solve inter-personal problems is highly "moral".

There is no universal standard of proper or moral behaviour.

[LV-GUCCI-PRADA-FLEX]

No one that slaughters a sheep for her meat wants to be lamb stew either. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", to paraphrase your argument, is not a realistic moral position, it is just a cheap psychological trick.

So stop eating lamb? I don't eat meat and haven't for years for this exact reason. It makes no sense to make another animal suffer for my benefit. (Nor human.)

Also, do unto others is a good argument in this scenario. If you don't want to be a slave for whatever reason, you shouldn't force slavery on others.

[Potemkin]

Also, do unto others is a good argument in this scenario. If you don't want to be a slave for whatever reason, you shouldn't force slavery on others.

Why not, LV? This is a serious question. The 'Golden Rule' seems to be based on two assumptions: the metaphysical equality of all people (sometimes extended to animals), and the belief that there is an essential moral order in the world. Both of these are essentially religious rather than rational ideas, and of course the 'Golden Rule' originated from religion - Judeo-Christianity to be specific. Jesus is the most famous proponent of the Golden Rule, but it was first enunciated by Rabbi Hillel about a century earlier. As Hitler once correctly observed, "Conscience is a Jewish invention." Yet we now live in a society which is profoundly non-religious: our thinking is, or at least strives to be, rationalistic and logical, and our economic system - capitalism - is based on individualism and the rational pursuit of self-interest. This means that our actual society, and the way in which we actually interact with each other, is fundamentally incompatible with the religious injunction to do unto others as we would have other do unto us. If we seriously followed that injunction, then capitalism would become immoral and therefore impossible, being based as it is upon competition and exploitation. Ayn Rand could see this, which is why her atheism was an essential aspect of her political and moral thought rather than being merely an embarrassing personal quirk, as most American right-wingers seem to regard it. Even meat-eating would become immoral and therefore impossible. Christianity made a token gesture in that regard - Catholics are not supposed to eat meat on Fridays, for example, but never made a serious attempt to enforce strict vegetarianism.

No, the Golden Rule is merely a left-over from a time when our society still took religion seriously. Its metaphysical underpinning has disappeared, leaving this abstract universalist moral rule hanging in mid-air with no visible means of intellectual support. It made sense back when people believed in the metaphysical equality of souls and the existence of a universal moral order in the cosmos. Because of the emergence of capitalism and the scientific worldview, neither of those beliefs is still operative in any meaningful sense. All that is left is an abstract rule detached from reality, and a system of morality based on systematic hypocrisy.

[Frollein]

Also, do unto others is a good argument in this scenario. If you don't want to be a slave for whatever reason, you shouldn't force slavery on others.

Don't see how one follows logically from the other. If you don't want to be a slave, get into a position of power so that it can't happen to you. Whether or not you yourself own slaves is irrelevant.

This may be news to you, but the world doesn't operate on the principle of poetic justice. Just because you never owned slaves doesn't mean you couldn't become one yourself. And just because you own slaves, doesn't mean that the universe has it in for you and somewhere down the road, karma will infallibly put you in chains.

Hilarious magical thinking, really.

[AFAIK]

Pote,
Aren't liberalism and communism secular ideologies? Don't they play the same role as religion by giving people a moral narrative to subscribe to?

[Potemkin]

Aren't liberalism and communism secular ideologies?

Indeed they are. And so is free-market conservatism. We live in a secular world, AFAIK.

Don't they play the same role as religion by giving people a moral narrative to subscribe to?

To a certain extent, yes. In fact, in the early years of the Soviet Union, there was talk about creating a 'new morality' and a 'new Soviet man', free from hypocrisy and with a genuine fraternal love of their fellow human beings in a society freed from corruption, oppression and exploitation. Of course, that didn't last long.

The problem is that our own society has also failed to give its own people a convincing moral narrative. Hyper-individualism, rationalism and consumerism are not a moral narrative, but the absence of one. People who try to live by a moral code in our society are forced to either fall back on traditional religion (which is becoming increasingly discredited in light of the scientific worldview), or stubbornly stick to the secularised, recycled remnants of religious morality without the intellectual or metaphysical underpinnings which sustained that morality. Conservatives fall into the former category, and liberals into the latter category. Hypocrisy is an inevitable consequence for both.

[SolarCross]

Don't see how one follows logically from the other. If you don't want to be a slave, get into a position of power so that it can't happen to you. Whether or not you yourself own slaves is irrelevant.

This may be news to you, but the world doesn't operate on the principle of poetic justice. Just because you never owned slaves doesn't mean you couldn't become one yourself. And just because you own slaves, doesn't mean that the universe has it in for you and somewhere down the road, karma will infallibly put you in chains.

Hilarious magical thinking, really.

Myself as a rational buddhist, I understand karma to be identical with cause and effect. So the karma of:
Physical training is an improved physique but also the increased risk of sports related injuries
Infidelity is the increased risk of a divorce and possibly other even more severe reprisals
Driving aggressively is the increased risk of having a car accident
Manual labour is callused hands

and so on.

To me the lesson of karma is not that the universe is trying to punish sinners and reward the virtuous but that actions have consequences so it is wise to be aware of them and act accordingly.

[Potemkin]

To me the lesson of karma is not that the universe is trying to punish sinners and reward the virtuous but that actions have consequences so it is wise to be aware of them and act accordingly.

But bad actions often have positive consequences, and good actions often have negative consequences, SolarCross. If someone is consistently anti-social in their behaviour, then society may eventually catch up with them and punish them, but this is hardly a cause-and-effect thing. Besides, what is the origin of society's disapproval? On what moral grounds do they disapprove of certain individual behaviour and punish that behaviour? No, cause and effect are morally neutral; it is society which punishes or rewards, often according to quite arbitrary rules, which are historically contingent. There is no such thing as 'karma'; just human society at a particular historical and cultural juncture and its 'moral rules'. Lending people money at interest used to be a punishable offence; now it is rewarded and even praised. What sort of 'karma' is this?

[mikema63]

Hypocrisy is an inevitable consequence for both.

Hypocrisy is the grease on societies wheels, and I suspect if you dig deep enough into any society at any time or place your going to find it at the bottom of all the justifications for morality.

[B0ycey]

I agree with everything you write and clearly the universe is morally neutral. But I also agree with Solar Cross's point too. Because humans can make rational choices and decide the customs we abide by, there is a humanistic Karma in the universe. For example, if you a dick who always looks for trouble, eventually they will get a smack in the face and a trip to hospital. Unfortunately even this type of karma has limitations. People with power seem to avoid any fair karma because of the friends they know.

[blackjack21]

Africa was lots of kingdoms and empires.

By the standards of multiculturalism, a tribal sub-Saharn African mask is at parity with Michelangelo's David. I just don't happen to agree. Africa is a big place, and wasn't populated exclusively with sub-Saharan blacks. Carthage and the Phonecians weren't black, but did occupy a lot of North Africa. At their peak, the Phonecians were more powerful than the fledgling Romans. Clients paid tribute to either Sidon or Tyre. When Alexander the Great defeated Tyre, that ended for the Greeks. When the Romans won the Punic Wars, that ended for Rome.

Numidia was nomadic Berbers of North Africa. Again, it wasn't sub-Saharan Africans, and it was subject to Rome.

The interesting sub-Saharan West African states were the Songhai Empire, the Mali Empire and the Ghana Empire as they were extensibly trade based and had significant quantities of gold. Whereas, a state like the Kingdom of Dahomey was built on traditional African slavery. The Sao civilization of Central Africa was somewhat significant in the same way that the Algonquin peoples in North America were as metal workers. However, the Sao and much of Africa didn't develop larger states until Islam overtook them in the 16th Century.

Early South African civilizations like Mapungubwe and the Kingdom of Zimbabwe were traders in gold. They were one of the few sub-Saharan civilizations to build in stone. However, to compare a recent civilization like the Kingdom of the Zulu to their European counterparts before colonization is rather absurd. The Europeans had long built municipalities in stone, and were circumnavigating the globe. The were still pre-capitalist, but were on the cusp of greatness last seen during the Roman Empire.

Egypt is still the main civilization or Empire by Western standards. Ethiopia had aspects of it, but Egypt and maybe Carthage are the only ones that really impressed Europeans.

Historically they weren't "savages" as much as you would like to make them seem as.

Well, compared to post-Renaissance Europe, they seemed that way to Europeans. Saying the Native Americans were "savages" is also not according their civilizations their accomplishments, but rather seen in contrast. For example, in Northern Europe, the Celts dominated for a long time, but never built anything that looked like an Empire. The fights between Romans and Celts is seen easily as a clash between Iron/Bronze-aged cultures and Classical culture of Ancient Rome. Clearly, the Romans were more advanced.

Hey everyone, we have someone that is bringing up what a victim he is. Let's go ahead and acknowledge Blackjack's hurt feelings, and maybe he'll discuss the topic and stop bringing up his blubbering victimhood.

I never claimed to be a victim at all. My father's ancestry is directly tied to the founding of the United States, and they were not exactly victims, unless you want to see their claim to "equality" as that of their not being the first born sons of the landed class and being "butthurt" about that. It's you Irish people who are constantly snivelling about how you weren't able to resist Rome, the Anglo-Saxons, the Normans or the "English."

That would be a more proper response if someone had stated that the Black Plague was the best thing to happen to Europe.

Well, again, it was terrible for the individuals that went through it. However, it also led to the end of serfdom and villainy in much of Europe. The Peasant's Revolt in England was directly attributable to it. Whereas, serfdom lasted in Russia into the 19th Century, where they had serfs working in factories.

It is worth stating that the reason for that is that white slaves were completely unavailable because at the time of colonisation of the Americas slavery had long been be abolished throughout Europe (possibly due to the influence of Christianity).

It wasn't so much Christianity as the Peasant's Revolt and subsequently the writs of manumission. For example, my father's ancestry traces back to Norman knights. They held lands, but they also held serfs they called "villeins." It wasn't quite the same as slavery, although the term "serf" or servant essentially means the same thing. They did have to pay duties to the lord of the manor, and they could not leave the demense as they were technically bonded by the land.

In contrast Africa had no such prohibitions. Hence why slaves were available from Africa but not from Europe.

Africa had states that were built on slavery, and had them from time immemorial. There just wasn't any sort of plague that gave skilled working people an advantage in a pandemic induced depopulation.

Not really true. A multitude of sources were tried but the African slaves were the only ones that could survive. Millions of new world Indians were enslaved but they didn't seem to last long.

Well, Native Americans knew the territory and how to live off the land. Africans did not.

Specifically, I doubt your claim that different slaves were bred for different purposes, and I doubt that you will provide evidence for this claim.

There is little doubt they had the sophistication to do that according to social status, but there is also little doubt that some slave owners bred their slaves in a manner no different from their livestock.

Slave breeding in the United States

In the antebellum years, numerous escaped slaves wrote about their experiences in books called slave narratives. Many recounted that at least a portion of slave owners continuously interfered in the sexual lives of their slaves (usually the women). The slave narratives also testified that slave women were subjected to arranged marriages, forced matings, sexual violation by masters, their sons or overseers, and other forms of abuse. Skeptics maintain that reports from witnesses were apocryphal, and never specified a particular place in which breeding practices were alleged to have occurred.[citation needed]

The historian E. Franklin Frazier, in his book The Negro Family, stated that "there were masters who, without any regard for the preferences of their slaves, mated their human chattel as they did their stock." Ex-slave Maggie Stenhouse remarked, "Durin' slavery there were stockmen. They was weighed and tested. A man would rent the stockman and put him in a room with some young women he wanted to raise children from."[13]

There is also a theory that says breeding was like banking and more or less a way of increasing the money supply.

Ned Sublette, co-author of the The American Slave Coast, states that the reproductive worth of "breeding women" was essential to the young country's expansion not just for labor but as merchandise and collateral stemming from a shortage of silver, gold, or sound paper tender. He concludes that slaves and their descendants were used as human savings accounts with newborns serving as interest that functioned as the basis of money and credit in a market premised on the continual expansion of slavery.[16]

Were there ever human breeding programs?

There was intentional interbreeding of Irish and African slaves in England's Caribbean colonies:

It would be interesting to see if African-Americans and Afro-Carribeans would share their DNA so we could study their ancestry and see if there are significant European influences, or if their is a statistically significant degree of relation to a person of common ancestry, suggesting breeding. We could establish this scientifically now.

Human breeding is Eugenics.
It used to be very popular with the left until the Jews started campaigning against it after WWII.

[Frollein]

Myself as a rational buddhist, I understand karma to be identical with cause and effect.

But that's not the Richard Gere version of Buddhism, which is prevalent in the West. To the typical Westerner, "karma" is just the supernatural executioner that dishes out poetic justice in the form of "Golden Rule" backlash. That's how you get LV's nonsensical reasoning that if you don't want to be a slave yourself, you better don't own slaves.

[Potemkin]

But that's not the Richard Gere version of Buddhism, which is prevalent in the West. To the typical Westerner, "karma" is just the supernatural executioner that dishes out poetic justice in the form of "Golden Rule" backlash. That's how you get LV's nonsensical reasoning that if you don't want to be a slave yourself, you better don't own slaves.

Besides which, any system of morality based upon the threat of divine reward or punishment isn't really what I would call 'morality' at all; instead, it is a form of discipline. It's as though we are slaves being told by our overseer: "Do X, and I'll reward you; don't do Y or I'll flog you!" To me, the Golden Rule is an entirely non-rational and arbitrary rule which we freely choose to follow (or not), regardless of punishment or reward. On those terms, I can accept it as being valid. It's when people try to tie it into metaphysical notions of 'karma' or whatever, as LV implicitly did, that I reject it as being nonsensical. The world has no 'moral order', there is no 'karmic wheel', and there is no self-restoring balance of justice in nature.

[SolarCross]

But that's not the Richard Gere version of Buddhism, which is prevalent in the West. To the typical Westerner, "karma" is just the supernatural executioner that dishes out poetic justice in the form of "Golden Rule" backlash. That's how you get LV's nonsensical reasoning that if you don't want to be a slave yourself, you better don't own slaves.

Indeed, but to be fair I think this kind of interpretation of karma as supernatural judge, jury and executioner is not uncommon even in Buddhist majority countries particularly amongst lay people.

[SolarCross]

It wasn't so much Christianity as the Peasant's Revolt and subsequently the writs of manumission. For example, my father's ancestry traces back to Norman knights. They held lands, but they also held serfs they called "villeins." It wasn't quite the same as slavery, although the term "serf" or servant essentially means the same thing. They did have to pay duties to the lord of the manor, and they could not leave the demense as they were technically bonded by the land.

This is not correct. The peasant's revolt was a revolt mainly against high taxation not slavery, a serf though burdened with many obligations, so not truly free, was not a slave; slaves don't pay taxes or tithes they are property. Slavery up until and during pagan Roman times was exceedingly common across Europe as much so as anywhere else in the world. Then with the Christianisation of Europe that all largely stopped and all long before the peasant's revolt. A few samples from history:

870AD - Pope John VIII commands under penalty of sin that all Christians who hold other Christians as slaves must set them free.

960AD - Doge Pietro IV Candiano reconvenes the popular assembly and had it approve of a law prohibiting the slave trade in the Italian city-state.

1080AD - William the Conqueror prohibits the sale of any person to "heathens" (non-Christians) as slaves.

1220AD - The Sachsenspiegel, the most influential German code of law from the Middle Ages, condemns slavery as a violation of man's likeness to God.

Abolition of Slavery timeline

[The Immortal Goon]

I never claimed to be a victim at all. My father's ancestry is directly tied to the founding of the United States, and they were not exactly victims, unless you want to see their claim to "equality" as that of their not being the first born sons of the landed class and being "butthurt" about that. It's you Irish people who are constantly snivelling about how you weren't able to resist Rome, the Anglo-Saxons, the Normans or the "English."

Then I have no idea why you insist on bringing up white people suffering too in a thread about black slavery. Nobody denied this, but you just wanted to underline white butthurt? Thanks for the contribution...

So far as Ireland, it did—in fact—resist Rome. Everything else, I don't know why you're obsessed with talking about white people in a thread about black people. It's like some kind of mental tick where you can't let anything go without white people suffering come up. It's hard not to think you're trying your best to be a victim.

Well, again, it was terrible for the individuals that went through it. However, it also led to the end of serfdom and villainy in much of Europe. The Peasant's Revolt in England was directly attributable to it. Whereas, serfdom lasted in Russia into the 19th Century, where they had serfs working in factories.

Yes. This is why I brought it up. How clever of you to see that. Though, I suppose, since it implies white people are victims of something, I suppose it's no surprise that you are going to go through and itemize your victimhood. But there you go. I'll be it feels really good to be a victim and to have derailed any conversation about anybody except for white people having been the victims of history in any sense at all.

[blackjack21]

Then I have no idea why you insist on bringing up white people suffering too in a thread about black slavery.

The thread is about human breeding, not whether people are suffering. If people die in transit, during seasoning periods, etc., that is selection in Darwinian terms. Natural selection would involve dying due to environmental conditions. Selective breeding involves choosing who pairs. As I said, this was common in the past whether it was with slaves or otherwise.

Everything else, I don't know why you're obsessed with talking about white people in a thread about black people.

The first question is whether human breeding is possible. He asks a secondary question with respect to slaves. Human breeding was common. For example, Irish kings would frequently marry their daughters to Norman knights to create political alliances. Most of the upper classes of Europe are as interbred as hillbillies in West Virginia. I suppose you could call that suffering, but that's just because today's political left is obsessed with emotions over reason. It's not a sentiment I share.

It's like some kind of mental tick where you can't let anything go without white people suffering come up.

Whether people suffered is immaterial. What matters in the case of the United States is whether or not the culling--due either to environmental factors, or selective breeding--created a people that were more able to endure as the weaker folks were weeded out of the gene pool. Just as the question among aristocratic interbreeding is whether or not it made people who were more capable of ruling or conducting warfare.

Though, I suppose, since it implies white people are victims of something, I suppose it's no surprise that you are going to go through and itemize your victimhood.

How many times do I have to point out that I'm from Norman ancestry? We did the victimizing according to people like you. We're the baddies. Whatever dude.

[Frollein]

TIG is reaching such ridiculous heights with his constant whining about "snowflakes," "victims," "precious emotions" and "suffering" which he projects on everyone he disagrees with, that he makes me wish for a comeback of the ignore button. Then I'd have a nice red bar covering all that whiny nonsense.

[The Immortal Goon]

The thread is about human breeding, not whether people are suffering.

And yet you would not stop whining about white people suffering.

He asks a secondary question with respect to slaves. Human breeding was common. For example, Irish kings would frequently marry their daughters to Norman knights to create political alliances. Most of the upper classes of Europe are as interbred as hillbillies in West Virginia. I suppose you could call that suffering, but that's just because today's political left is obsessed with emotions over reason. It's not a sentiment I share.

Of course it is. Your first response to anything about the African slave trade was to take a nice cry break about white people suffering that had nothing to do with the topic:

Part of the reason is that many more whites died than blacks under contracts of indentured servitude. Part of the reason is that many more whites died than blacks under contracts of indentured servitude. A slave or servant that lasted more than one year was considered "seasoned." Since indentured servants got their freedom at the end of their term, but typically died in the first year, it was simply more profitable to enslave blacks because they did so much better under the Southern US climate than the pasty white folks of the British Isles.

The British Empire didn't get rid of the indentured labor system until 1920.

Which has nothing to do with anything, but you got to say you're a big victim. Congratulations.

How many times do I have to point out that I'm from Norman ancestry? We did the victimizing according to people like you. We're the baddies. Whatever dude.

1. Congratulations on being Norman. I don't know what you want me to say about that.

2. Please cite where I said people of Norman ancestry do the victimizing.

3. Being a white guy that demands to be in the victim spotlight does not make you a, "baddie."