Whenever we find a modern and empirical fact through science and research, there’s often an anecdote that goes something like this (pure made-up for illustration) one :
“Did you know that even though aspirin wasn’t invented until 1942, historical documents show that people in ancient mesopotamia ate the plant that aspirin is derived from when they had a headache? Though they didn’t know why, it turns out that the chemical called seroquin is contained in both the plant and aspirin, and acts as a pain reliever.”
It seems like for every old wives’ tale, there’s some sort of actual empirical scientific truth at work behind it, even though the people didn’t understand at the time what this actual scientific truth was, just that “if you cut down a willow tree, you better burn the trunk!” etc. (while scientific research eventually found that the trunks harbor a certain bacteria that’s bad for humans and crops) [again, purely made-up]
With that in mind, racism, social inequality between men and women, homophobia, etc. have been around for a long time. But could there be some sort of biological, psychological, or sociocultural justification for such things? Will we eventually find, for example, that allowing women to hold an equal social status as men has serious societal ramifications or consequences? What about homophobia - once we accept homosexuality and legalize gay marriage, will it turn out that the homophobia was somehow justified all along due to some sort of biological consequence (drug-resistant STD’s that proliferate in the gay community, or something to that effect?). What about racism?
Has anything like this happened in the past, or are there any theories about this as we face the future?
Well, it’s important to remember that a lot of folk wisdom does not turn out to have a basis in fact. Night air is not bad air, after all, and bloodletting is not effective at curing disease.
Concerning sexism and racism, I think it’s likely that these attitudes were useful to someone at some point in the past, but that does not mean they always will be.
That’s knowledge, even if it’s pre-scientific method knowledge. I don’t know if it belongs in the same category as an old wives’ tale like “hair from the seventh son of a seventh son cures warts.” (And that’s one of the many old wives’ tales that has no truth at all behind it.) Personally I think the “science backs up old wives tale!” stories are the exception, not the rule.
No. Not a justification in the sense of “it’s better for everybody this way.” Sexism and racism work to the advantage of the sexes and races on top of the food chain, after all, but I don’t think there is or ever will be any evidence that proves men or white people and so on are smarter or more fit to be in charge.
It’s had serious social ramifications. But if you mean it will cause the breakdown of society and we were all better off with women in the kitchen, no, I’m pretty sure we’re not going to find that.
People have been trying to scientifically provide scientific bases sexism and racism forever. I’m sure you’ve heard of eugenics.
Of course there’s a factual necessity for racism, sexism and slavery. Historically, that is.
Like all great apes, humans are tribal by nature. How does a tribe survive? By being bigger and stronger than neighboring tribes. How do you make sure your tribe is stronger than other tribes? Partially, by encouraging internal cohesion. How do you do that? By convincing the members of your tribe that they’re better than members of other tribes. Hence, racism.
How do you make sure your tribe is bigger than other tribes? By making sure that all your women stay at home and have lots of babies. Hence, sexism. (Men who don’t breed are also useless - hence, homophobia).
What do you do when you defeat a neighboring tribe? Killing them all seems like a waste. Instead, it’s better to get them to work for you, make your tribe stronger. Hence, slavery.
Racism, sexism and slavery are not foreign concepts imposed upon mankind but part of our most basic social makeup, and it is our obligation as civilized people to try and overcome these original sins. So far, it hasn’t always worked; in fact, the joining of primitive mindsets with modern methods of thought have given us some of the worst examples of these social ills - “scientific” racism, for instance, or race-based chattel slavery.
Humanity is a work in progress. But make no mistake: we’ve carried these evils us from the very beginning.
Slavery doesn’t make your tribe stronger, it makes it weaker. Slavery makes the individual slaveowners better off, but it’s a drag on a society’s economy. Slavery is an indulgence, not a necessity.
As for racism; racism is not a necessity, nor some basic part of human nature, because the concept of race is itself only centuries old. As well as being arbitrary and artificial.
I’m not sure that’s historically accurate. Up until the 19th century or so, all of the (western) worlds most prosperous and advanced societies - Greek, Roman, Arab, Byzantine, Turkish, British - were slaveowning. That’s not causation, but there’s enough correlation there to give you pause.
Anyway, I was explaining the tribal point of view, not actual long-term effects. I’m sure you and I possess a measure of hindsight that, say, the medieval Scandinvians didn’t.
True; but was it a matter of them being prosperous because they owned slaves, or them being prosperous enough that they could afford large scale slavery without collapsing ? The question of the OP isn’t whether or not such behavior is a natural human tendency; it obviously is. The question posed is, are such things as slavery necessary ? I say not; I put it in the category of self indulgent and/or stupid behavior that people tend to indulge in given the chance, not that of something that’s necessary.
Rather like war; cultures engage in unnecessary or outright self destructive wars all the time. Just because a behavior is a human universal or close to it, doesn’t mean that behavior is a good idea.
True, but again, the question is was it a necessity. In that case, the “actual long-term effects” are what matter.
I don’t know. Obviously, slavery is unnecessary, even detrimental to modern societies; but could a culture such as the Romans, with their level of technology and social advancement, have existed without the institution? We ave no way of knowing.
Knowing your beliefs, I’m certain you feel that an egalitarian society is inherently more efficient and prosperous than one with clearly delienated social classes. That may or may not be true today, but I don’t think it’s true with regards tothe past; the fact that no egalitarian society larger than a few hunderd people has ever existed should indicate otherwise.
Is there some undiscovered factual necessity for slavery, sexism, racism?
Well, a lot of smart people have spent their whole careers studying tribalism, but if there’s an “undiscovered factual necessity”, it’s undiscovered, so we don’t know about it. Do you really think it’s going to come to light on a message board? I guess that would make an interesting anecdote for when they award the Nobel.
And out of curiosity, do you really know nothing about aspirin? Since you mention willow trees in your second example, I thought you might be funnin’ us.
Given that the definition of race changes over the years it stands to reason that the application of racist ideology has changed over the years. Today we might see a white Italian and a white German as being of the same race but I doubt a Roman would have had the same inkling. Another example of shifting race definitions is that of the Irish and Italian immigrants who were not generally thought of as white by the American population.
Could there be sociocultural justifications for these things? Sure, that’s what historians, sociologist, anthropologist, etc., examine. I can understand arranged marriages within the context of a society. I can also understand why in some societies they curtail women’s freedoms to make damn sure they can’t procreate with someone aside from their husband. I can look for the sociocultural reasons why these behaviors occur but that’s not the same as saying I approve of them.
Slavery, racism, and sexism may or may not be useful for a society as a whole, but they definitely are useful to some segment of a society in some conditions.
Slavery is useful for landowners in a situation where land is cheap and labor is scarce. This is especially true in an agricultural economy where very hard, unpleasant, and/or dangerous labor needs to be done to create a profit for the landowner. It’s very much in those landowners’ interest to have a labor force that can’t quit and can’t refuse to do any task they are assigned.
Racism is very useful to slaveowners in a system of racial slavery. It makes it harder for your slaves to escape and be able to support themselves.
Racism and sexism are also useful for workers. Barring people from jobs because of their race or sex means that there are fewer people available to do those jobs, which means that the people who can have them can ask for more pay or better working conditions. This is supported by the fact that, historically, it has generally been workers who didn’t want additional competition and lower wages for jobs who have supported policies like race-based restrictions on immigration in countries like the US and Australia.
None of this means that slavery, racism, or sexism benefit society as a whole. Nor does it mean that slavery, racism, or sexism are anything other than totally morally unacceptable.
I read an interesting book recently about evolutionary psychology, in which the author explains that humans haven’t really evolved much in 10,000 years. Therefore, physically and psychologically, we often behave in ways that would have benefitted us then, even if they might be detrimental to us today. I think that much of what we would think of today as “sexism” would probably have been irrelevant to our hunter-gatherer selves. For instance, expecting/assuming that there were particular gender roles for men and women. We evolved like any animal, in which “gender roles” are very specific, and in many ways necessary to the survival of a species. Males evolved to have certain strengths, and women evolved to have different strengths in some areas. The fact that these roles are now not nearly as defined or necessary doesn’t change our brains’ natural inclination to make these assumptions. That is, our modern selves with modern sensibilities are constantly fighting what our brains are naturally programmed to think.
That has been the conventional wisdom for many years, but some evolutionary biologists are beginning to challenge that hypothesis. It’s still too early to tell how the chips are going to fall, but it’s an interesting field of inquiry*. For example, one thing we now know is that the condition we call “lactose intolerance” is actually the basal condition and adult tolerance of lactose is a mutation that only happened in certain populations that began herding cattle (and drinking the milk)-- which would put it well within the 10,000 year timeframe. There are other hypothesis about behaviors and mental function mutations that could very well have taken place since the dawn of civilization.
One hypothesis holds that our not-so-distant ancestors were more war-like than we are, and that there has been some behavioral modification in the last 10,l000 years or so that has allowed us to form larger and larger societies. Frankly, I find that a bit difficult to swallow, as it would also imply that some extant populations are behaviorally at a disadvantage in that area, but we don’t really see any evidence of that. Additionally, we see that there is a tendency in every society to split allegiances down to every decreasing circles of relatives and acquaintances.
As to the OP, racism is just tribalism, which as others have noted is deeply rooted in our primate past. It serves (or served) the function of group cohesion and territorial protection. Sexism is a natural outcome of sexual dimorphism and the heavy investment women have had to make in raising kids-- also deeply rooted in our primate past. Homophobia is a more recent thing, and we’ve seen many societies (both pre- and post-civilization) which tolerate same gender sex even if the concept of being gay isn’t fully understood. Much of our modern sense of anti-gay feeling seems to derive from religion more than anything else, and religion does seem to be something that is very much a part of being human and probably has been so at least as long as our species has been around.
*If you want to read more about this, it’s pretty well covered in the recent book “After the Dawn” by Nicholas Wade.
Oh, I think you are right…I can’t imagine that there has been zero evolution in 10,000 years. On the other hand, I don’t think that’s quite enough time for a radical overhaul, either. The book makes the point (and you are right again…this guy didn’t invent the idea) that civilization, especially in terms of technology, has progressed at breakneck speed, especially recently, and there is no way that evolution could keep up with it. Certainly, the idea of women in a role other than family caregiver is pretty new. But I’m not trying to imply that there’s something “wrong” or unnatural about women wanting to be in the work force or fill other roles that are traditionally taken by men. Maybe what drove that over the years is the change in our society away from close-knit families and communities…that some sort of feminine need for a large social network has piqued womens’ interest in careers. Not trying to sound condescending here, I’m a woman with a career! I guess I’m just trying to point out that it’s not necessarily “sexist” for women and men to occupy different places in society.
Slavery does result in a division of labor, which, at least in theory, should get things done more efficiently. It also makes deciding who should do which job less complex, because you don’t have to take into account which of your workers want to do which job- you can just assign them based on who’s best at what, and you don’t have to give people extra incentives to do the distasteful jobs. Slavery also lets a farm or factory owner spend less on modifications to working conditions that make the job more pleasant or less dangerous without increasing production. This is supported by history- most slaves who weren’t domestic servants (probably doing jobs that nobody in the master’s household wanted to do) did potentially dangerous and/or unpleasant jobs like military service, mining, agricultural work, and prostitution. These are also areas in which modern-day slaves are found working.
The necessity of slavery seems to me to correlated to the level of available technology. If you want to have time to create art, literature, politics, philosophy etc… you need the time and resources to support a class of people to do that thing. They have to be able to devote their time to those pursuits, so cannot be busy farming, herding, hunting etc. As technology improves and makes the level of work decrease, the usefulness of the institution of slavery decreases. So in the past, yes, slavery was probably necessary to provide the needed space for the advancement of culture beyond those areas needed to secure the necessities of life.
They don’t need to be slaves to be part of your society.
I dunno. Although some form of slavery seems to have been all-pervasive in the past, the Romans had some pretty sophisticated technology, and probably could be comparable to European technology just before the Age of Discovery, and slavery in Europe at that time was not very significant. The rise of slavery in the 17th century coincided with the rise in technology.
I read that slavery retarded technological advancement, by creating a disincentive for saving labor, although I suppose it would be more accurate to say that it fixed labor costs, more than anything.