Let’s imagine that a chronal wormhole catapults you back in time to 1851 Mississippi, with your current personality and knowledge intact but transformed into the semblance of a black person of that period (assuming that you’re not a black person now). Let’s further assume that you have extraordinarily sound reasons to believe that this is a 1-way trip, and that you needn’t concern yourself with paradoxes or contaminating the time stream or anything else startrekky; the grand scheme of history will unfold in the same way no matter what you do.
Looking like a black person and lacking anything to say you’re free, you are swiftly arrested and auctioned. A week after your arrival you find yourself toiling on a plantation.
Bearing in mind your current moral and ethical belief system, how much force are you justified in using to escape to, say, Canada? May you kill your overseer? A fellow slave who happens upon you when you’re making plans and threatens to rat you at? A bounty hunter hired to bring you back to the plantation? A non-slave-owning white farmer who catches you in his barn, hiding from the aforementioned bounty hunters, as you make your way north? A sheriff’s deputy who, though personally opposed to slavery, feels obliged to follow the Fugitive Slave Act and turn you in?
I’d say what I find most problematic about answering it is trying to apply today’s moral/ethics system to the past… at a time when moral standards were obviously a lot different. I consider myself to be a nonviolent person, but for some reason I have a hunch I’d kill any sonofabitch who stood in my way.
The only possible thing I could relate this to in my own life is a war situation. Were I in enemy territory, being kept captive, and wished to escape, I would use just about any means necessary to do so and would feel justified in my means, even if they involved killing someone who was “just following orders.” The same would go for finding myself in a specific time period and situation where I was being kept as a slave.
However, as far as reality goes, I recognize that I probably wouldn’t do any of this, and neither would the majority of posters here. The majority would be psychologically terrorized to such a degree that they’d be unable/unwilling to attempt an escape, though they might fervently wish for freedom. The reality of being in such a situation is daunting beyond all reason, after all. Yes, there would be people who would sympathize and wish to help, but most would be indifferent at best or actively supporting the current system at worst.
I feel justified in using force equal to what they are bringing to bear to keep me in slavery. If they are willing to escalate to the point of lethal violence, I have no compunctions about returning the favor in kind – regardless of the motives of the person attempting to (for example) kill me. Force is force.
To take your examples:
May I kill my overseer? I won’t deliberately set out to murder him, but I’d have no problems with subduing him non-lethally to keep him out of my way while I hop the fences. If he resists, I’ll scale up my efforts accordingly.
A fellow slave who has threatened to rat me out? Again, subdue if possible, bearing in mind that this person has already threatened to kill me, in essence (by ratting me out). He made his choice.
Bounty hunter? Again, I won’t murder him in his sleep if I can avoid it, but it depends on his level of involvement. Is he supposed to bring me back ‘dead or alive’? If so, I have (in my mind) all the justification I need to kill him, since I won’t go back alive. He’s trying to kill me, after all.
Non-slave-owner farmer? Subdue, again. If he whips out the rifle, he’s committed to lethal force. See above. A pitchfork, whip, etc. is not necessarily lethal force and I’ll try to avoid killing him when I fight him, but I’m not going to hold back too much.
Sheriffs deputy opposed to slavery? Again, subdue/avoid. He can talk at me until the cows come home, but I will fight if he attempts to restrain me physically (or if I think he’s stalling for backup and tries to stop me from leaving), and I will respond in kind if he escalates to lethal force.
Well, in the specific reality I don’t know that I would have the courage to even try to escape, since I could be raped, beaten, or killed if recaptured. If I tried to escape, I would do my best not kill anyone, because as a slave if I killed anyone and I were caught, I would be promptly hanged, if not worse. But these are “worried about my skin” considerations. Ethically, if you are a slave, I think you can kill anyone who gets between you and freedom.
You may be right, but so what? The question wasn’t “how well would you adapt to enslavement” or “how well would you deal with being chronally displaced.”
Assume for the sake of argument that the time-traveller is a Navy Seal. How much force may he ethically and morally use?
I can’t go quite that far myself. Yes, in all the cases I named, I’d kill the person standing between me and Canada and waste a bullet on the corpse to be sure. But if I were confronted by a child–defined as apparently under 12–who was about to scream out my location to the bounty hunters, I think I’d rather be recaptured than a child killer.
In my view, killing those who would return me to slavery–which might very well be a death sentence or worse in the midst of an escape attempt–is ethically sound. Even if it were a fellow slave threatening to rat me out, even a non-slave-owning white farmer, even the sympathetic sheriff’s deputy. If they don’t do anything to try to stop me or to alert others to my whereabouts, then live and let live. If they threatened my freedom or life, however, my morals and ethics of the present day wouldn’t stop me from killing them.
It would be areas where the threat wasn’t quite so obvious where it would become more difficult. What if an armed man stands between me and a potential escape route, he doesn’t see me yet, and I have the opportunity to kill him before he does? I can’t know for certain that he would kill or capture me, after all.
In instances where the threat is understood, lethal force seems justified. Torture or pre-emptive attacks, less so. On preview, I see mention of a scenario involving a child, which is a very good point. Let me revise this to say that I would feel justified in using lethal force against those I feel are knowingly and purposefully threatening my life/freedom. Anyone under about sixteen or so, I couldn’t bring myself to stop, unless they actually offered me direct physical harm. Even then…ish. That’s hard.
Ditto. My first inclination would be to apply my present outrage at the ideal, but then it would be levied against someone who didn’t have the advantage of my perspective, someone for whom the idea of slavery may have been a legal, wide spread and time honored necessity in a much more difficult period.
I suppose I’d be just as driven to escape as anyone in history who tried and the means I’d employ would all depend on the nature of the constraints anyone tried to place upon me and what I judged their worth to be as a person.
I would die trying and I would do everything possible to avoid killing anyone except an actual slave owner. If I somehow found myself in the position of killing a sheriff’s deputy or going back to the plantation, I guess that might be one dead deputy. Somehow I doubt I would win the confrontation and thus I would be back to my “die trying”.
Yes. Just as I could be hit on my great big bikers at my local library, but the chances are much better if I’m in my local biker bar. Context is all. I trust that no one else read my post to mean that the only time anything bad could ever happen to me would be when I tried to escape.
Out of curiosity, would anyone’s answers change if the time and country was changed? Would you try to escape if you were a Greek slave in Ancient Rome, for example? If so, what level of violence do you deem ethical - same, different?
I’m of the belief that United Statesian slavery was of a particularly cruel, brutal and inhumane variety. I do think that a slave in such conditions is ethically and morally entitled to kill to escape it. I don’t think the same was true of some other forms of slavery in some other times and places. If the slave is not treated poorly (no more poorly than other working poor members of a society) and has the opportunity to earn his freedom in some manner, and most especially if he was part of a society in which he or his close analogs were once slave owners themselves, than I think it’s less justifiable.
So ultimately, I think it comes down close to what **Sofaspud **said: the force the escaping slave brings to bear should not greatly exceed that which his pursuers meet him with. (I think it has to exceed it a little, because otherwise, logically, he won’t be able to escape.)
I don’t think anybody thought you meant that. What Pygmy Rugger was pointing out was that, as a slave, you were already in a situation in which beatings and rape, at least, were far more likely than average, thus suggesting that the attempt to escape doesn’t change the odds nearly as much as you seemed to suggest.
Another question: how much force may be ethically used to free someone ELSE from slavery? Take as a given that we’re not talking about involuntary servitude as a punishment for a duly convicted crime. At what point does on the spectrum from John Adams to Harriet Tubman to John Brown–and beyond–does one become unethical? (If ever.)
But I don’t think you really mean this. Sure, against people who threaten to use lethal force against you unless you return to slavery, lethal force is ethically justified. But what about innocent third parties? I don’t think you could ethically do something like kill your master’s child before you escape, even if you knew that the child’s death would distract him long enough to guarantee your freedom. Or you couldn’t ethically rat out a fellow slave and send them to their deaths, even if you knew the reward for ratting out a fellow slave was freedom.
Masters, overseers, slavecatchers, heck, even ordinary folks who would do nothing more than report you to the slavecatchers you would be justified in using force against, since by helping those who would use lethal force against you the ordinary person is in effect using lethal force against you. But you don’t have the right to use lethal force against those who don’t offer any sort of violence against you, even to save your life or freedom. You don’t have the right to murder someone and take their kidneys, even if you would die without a kidney transplant. You don’t have the right to kill a witness who is going to testify against you in a trial where you face the death penalty, even if you are innocent (Unless you know that the witness knows you’re innocent and is deliberately framing you for the crime, in which case they are trying to murder you and it would be self defense). The fact that your life or freedom is in danger does not give you license to kill indiscriminately.
Now I am trying to figure out who the other poster is. Was it WhyNot?
WhyNot: I may not have tried to escape as a Greek slave in Rome. In many ways, the slaves could have it better in Rome than a person outside of Rome. This would be a very different circumstance. It depends on what kind of slave I was in Rome. Educating a Rich Merchants kids could be a simple life. I could potentially get married, eventually buy my freedom, and save money. I would have far more rights than a Negro Slave of 1840 or many serfs in the dark ages.
We had a debate a while ago about how much force an innocent person wrongly convicted of a crime could use to escape prison. After all, the guards are authorized to use lethal force to prevent you from escaping. So could you ethically kill a guard to escape? I don’t think you could.