Yes, they do.
They do so, simply because they would not want another to do the same to them. The Slave-holder knows he/she is doing wrong simply because they would not want to be a slave. The rapist would want to be raped, since rape is not about sex or satisfaction, but about dominance and control.
The same way you surmise that they held slaves only for agriculture.
There is always an initiator. Gangs always have a leader. There is always a beginning. Think about it carefully. Get out of the box.
Others have already made good arguments against this and I will add to those. It is quite ignorant and simplistic to believe the notions of good and evil you personally have today have any claim to universal validity through the ages or even today. Primitive men fought and killed without much thought to good or evil. At that time slavery was probably a huge improvement because it is better for both parties if the defeated enemy is enslaved rather than killed.
Many people believe it is OK to take advantage of others as long as they are “others”. This is true even today in advanced countries. Wars of conquest have recently been rationalized as being fpr the good of the conquered and slavery was lately also justified as being for the best of the enslaved who were not fit to be free or to govern themselves.
I think it is ignorant to assume that “primitive men” as you term them, had no conscience or thought about right and wrong. What makes you not primitive today? Are you through evolving? Are you the perfect human?
What constitutes an alarming rate of enslaved people killing their enslavers?
I’d posit that a rate of zero would be the most alarming rate.
“Alarming rate” to their captors. Towards the beginning of the civil war and during the civil war, many slaves figured they had an opening and started fighting back by killing their slave holders every opportunity they got. My grand father told me stories of how his grandfather and others got rid of many of the established slave holders of those times. Some by poisoning them, some by drowning them, others by outright smothering them in their sleep. It happened.
Alarming to who? For slaveholders any rate other than zero would be alarming.
We have had centuries of civilization, religion, and philosophy to give us ideas about what’s right and wrong, not to mention governments to prevent us from getting out of control. Cavemen didn’t.
You say that the masters knew it was wrong because they wouldn’t want to be a slave—does a butcher know killing animals is wrong because he wouldn’t want to be a cow? (I am not a vegetarian.) You are under the assumption that they thought the slaves were people like them—they had no reason to believe that. The other people looked different, talked different, worshiped the wrong god, and followed the wrong morals, so they obviously were not the chosen people who mattered. Besides, the others were in a weaker position than they were, and that opens the door to all kinds of rationalization.
If I’m a white European and I see a black “savage” with no apparent morality, civilization, or intelligence (not to say that they had none, but it was not apparent), why would I think that he deserves to be treated like I would want to be treated? Similarly, if I’m a primitive man and I see an attractive female captive, why should I not have my way with her? It won’t cause a feud between the tribes in *my *alliance, so I won’t face consequences.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
Nonsense.
I point you to Iraq, The Sudan, Afghanistan, Christians and Muslims, Russia and China and quite a lot many more primitive evil actions of mankind for any number of reasons.
We’re not too far removed from our so-called primitive ancestors. Oh sorry, I forgot to mention ---- George Bush.:smack:
Sure, they had a conscience, and thought about right and wrong. It’s just that different people and different societies come to different conclusions about what is right and wrong, and most slaveholders, throughout history, thought that what they were doing was right.
I disagree with the above underlined. You are assigning slave holders then a thought process not much different than a Serengeti reserve Lioness.
Do you believe George Bush believes what he is doing is evil? Do you believe those who support his war believe the war is evil?
I don’t have access to a time machine and a mind-reading ray, so I can’t really say for certain what slaveholders (or anybody else, for that matter) actually thought; but we can look at what they said. For one example, from the Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union:
They thought slavery was good and moral and Christian (and that “Christian” and “good and moral” were pretty much inseparable and synonymous), and even professed to believe that slavery was actually good for the slaves (“…mutually beneficial to both bond and free”).
He knows now that it was wrong. Many lives wasted because of a lie. Much wealth wasted, never to be recouped. A country’s image tarnished for a long time to come. Sure he knows. His ego will never let him openly apologize to America for his evil actions.
Yes they may have thought that then, but earlier as I said, it started with a few doing evil and evil gaining traction, and acceptance by the majority. It was then supported by passages in the Bible - which was the exact reason those passages ended up in the Bible to begin with. Evil men did evil things and to justify it, wrote that GOD inspired them to do it or condoned it.
I most certainly am not. Lions don’t think about what’s right or wrong, and what’s good or evil. People do. And people have used their moral sense to justify slavery. For instance, Aristotle:
“For he is by nature a slave who is capable of belonging to another (and that is why he does so belong), and who participates in reason so far as to apprehend it but not to possess it; for the animals other than man are subservient not to reason, by apprehending it, but to feelings.”- Politics
“For the slave has nothing in common with his master; he is a living tool, just as a tool is an inanimate slave. There therefore can be no friendship of a master for a slave as such, although there may be for him as a man”-Nichomachean Ethics
I contend that it is not their moral sense but their evil thought process. They had the choice of doing evil or good to another, but chose evil. The choice to dominate or enslave is evil. Aristotle in so stating is wrong because he seeks to state the consciousness of the controlled or dominated human as a free thinking human himself. I would never quote in him in this respect.
It’s evil because we accept that it is evil. It is not an instinctive thought process to recognize slavery of other groups as evil. No one decides that he’s going to be evil. He sets up a different morality where the action in question is not evil. You can’t choose to be evil; if you could, then it’s not really evil—something morally unacceptable—to you. A white slaveholder or racist doesn’t just wake up and say, “I’m feeling like oppressing the black man today because being evil sure is great,” he thinks that the black man either deserves it or needs it because he can’t take care of himself, like a child or an animal, but not like an adult human. Osama doesn’t look in the mirror and see the face of evil; he sees a valiant defender of the Muslim faith from godless tyranny.
Modern society stops this because we have a standard moral code. If I say it’s not evil to kill supporters of the opposing football team and accordingly do so, I get put on the gurney, not because we inherently know it’s wrong to kill members of opposing football teams, but because we have morals indoctrinated into us from infancy that say it’s wrong, and if we miss that indoctrination somehow, the threat of force keeps us in line.
Also, you disprove your own point about primitive man: you bring up George Bush and Iraq, giving them as examples of knowing evil. But while we may disagree about whether going into Iraq helped the Iraqi people in the long run, no one is calling for the Classical SOP: kill the men, rape the women, burn the city, and salt the earth. George Bush et al. understand that that would be evil because we have centuries of philosophy saying so, and even if they really are “evil” as you say, they have strict boundaries and must frame it as a beneficial action.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
Well, ok, how about Plato’s Socrates?
“No man voluntarily pursues evil, or that which he thinks to be evil. To pursue what one believes to be evil rather than what is good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he may have the less.”
I’m not saying that slavery isn’t evil…it certainly is. I’m saying that those slaveholders, most of them, didn’t think it was evil.