# "Slaves lived a life of plenty, of simple pleasures" **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 11, 2004, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273 "2004-12-11T05:17:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Chotii](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/71e660/32.png) [@Chotii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chotii)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2004, 8:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/121 "2004-12-12T08:43:37Z")
> [@Zap\_Rowsdower](#): > > I remember reading that during the 1930’s, many ex-slaves were interviewed in a federal works program to get their first hand accounts. These were compiled in to the Slave Narrative Collection by the Federal Writers Project. In a vain attempt to drag this thread kicking and screaming back to the original topic…I was able to find a page with a few of these narratives linked in: [Voices and Faces from the Collection](http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snvoices00.html) It’s not a very friendly website. But this page looked straightforward enough. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2004, 9:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/122 "2004-12-12T09:19:09Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > There are no passages that explicitly encourage slavery or command that it be instituted. Passages addressing slavery follow the pattern of saying that slaves should be treated in humane ways and that slaves should behave in certain ways. One may eliminate slavery without violating any precepts in the bible, but if slavery exists, the bible provides rules of conduct regarding slavery. If you believe that the Bible is historically accurate, and that there was an Exodus, you’re wrong. The rules were for a society that did not yet exist. There were no slaves in the Sinai. Why didn’t a god of mercy and justice just say that slavery would not exist in the new land of Israel? Of course, the Bible was actually written many centuries later, when there was slavery supporting the ruling class. So thanks for yet another disproof of the supposed authorship by Moses, or of any divine inspiration. Why would the God of all give a crap as to what was there, without ever saying it was wrong? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2004, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/123 "2004-12-12T09:26:42Z")
> [@Carcosa](#): > > Huh? If I read a book and find I agree with something in chapter 1 I cannot disagree with some point that the author makes in chapter 4? You can’t if the book was written by the infallible creator of the universe. If the book was written by several authors, only one of whom was infallible, then you can, but you need to figure out who wrote what. And I’ve never understood why the religious believe that God didn’t say what he meant. It is all pretty clear, actually, but no longer politically correct. To get around this, they say the Bible was written by someone who makes the author of a Japanese computer manual seem lucid. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2004, 9:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/124 "2004-12-12T09:37:46Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > Speaking of which, what’s your feeling on slavery? Does a person have the right to sell themself into slavery? Some libertarian thinkers, IIRC, support that. My feeling is that a man owns his body, and may rent or sell it as he desires, so long as he does so freely and of his own volition. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2004, 9:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/125 "2004-12-12T09:44:30Z")
> [@Apos](#): > > I’d like you to elaborate on this. I’ve heard things along these lines before, but you’re going to have to convince me that a) there is any Biblical support for the idea (as opposed to being a later theological rationalization, though in my mind it makes things even worse), and b) that is makes any sense at all for eternal torment to be the desire of anyone’s heart. I have to admit that I’m a little sketched out by what your attitude seems to be here. I know you’re very convinced and comfortable with your beliefs, but given how scary and potentially evil this one seems to me, and given that I certianly don’t see that its a necessary component of Christianity, I really wish you’d reconsider it. But it is neither scary nor evil to the person who desires it. I’ve gone over the basis for it in Jesus’ teachings many times before, so I won’t redress that here. As adept as you are in scrounging my posts, you can find it easily enough. That said, it certainly is torment from God’s frame of reference, just as you would be in torment in your own reference frame if your children decided to disown you because their treasure lay elsewhere, and they considered you an obstacle to achieving it. Morality is a search for treasure, and every moment of a man’s existence is given to attaining it. It is the nature of man as spiritual being. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2004, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/126 "2004-12-12T09:46:37Z")
Incidentally, it certainly is a necessary “component of Christianity” as you call it. Freewill is the very foundation of morality. Without it, a moral journey cannot take place. ---
**Author:** ![VarlosZ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d78d45/32.png) [@VarlosZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VarlosZ)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2004, 10:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/127 "2004-12-12T10:08:17Z")
If I may sidestep the massive diversion which is this thread, in which several posters are talking past each other and at least couple of people are being World-Class Jackasses. . . Regarding the OP, is anyone actually opposed to this school’s use of the booklet in question? If so, why? It _may_ be that the school teaches the material with an attitude such as: “and here’s [_wink-wink_] **another** perspective of what slavery was like . . . can you imagine what it would be like if things had turned out differently with slavery [_wink-wink_]?” We have no reason to believe that to be the case, however (at least, we certainly get no reason from the article). Why is anyone assuming some venal motive for the examination of a particular historical (albeit unfortunate) viewpoint? ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2004, 10:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/128 "2004-12-12T10:15:28Z")
Because of this board’s almost institutionalized bigotry against fundamentalist Christians. The bigots opine that the “fundies” — as they call them — are incapable of any motive but a venal one. ---
**Author:** ![davenportavenger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f8ce5/32.png) [@davenportavenger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davenportavenger)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2004, 10:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/129 "2004-12-12T10:20:32Z")
> [@Chotii](#): > > In a vain attempt to drag this thread kicking and screaming back to the original topic…I was able to find a page with a few of these narratives linked in: > > [Voices and Faces from the Collection](http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snvoices00.html) > > It’s not a very friendly website. But this page looked straightforward enough. I don’t know if that site’s supposed to be pro-slavery or anti-slavery, but I thought it was really gross how it wrote the ex-slaves’ testimonials in dialect. It didn’t make the stories seem historically accurate, it made the slaves look like idiots. **Liberal** : So if someone is forced to sell their body because of a failing economic climate caused by a libertarian government, that’s totally okay? It seems sorta weird that you’d promote economic plans that would effectively drive millions of people to the point where they’d have to sell their bodies to put food on the table (because Walmart and such, in absence of minimum wage laws, would drop their wages so low that it would be more cost-effective to sell oneself), yet you refer to the tax system we have now as “slavery.” (Not in this post, in another one about health care.) I do not believe anyone would willingly sell their body; there would have to be a compelling reason to do so, such as a ruined economy. Would you really give people the right to do something that they would only consider doing when society implodes? Wouldn’t legalizing voluntary slavery automatically lead to a country in which 95% of citizens are slaves? Please explain how it wouldn’t. ---
**Author:** ![davenportavenger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f8ce5/32.png) [@davenportavenger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davenportavenger)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2004, 10:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/130 "2004-12-12T10:31:30Z")
> [@VarlosZ](#): > > Why is anyone assuming some venal motive for the examination of a particular historical (albeit unfortunate) viewpoint? These aren’t college students deconstructing various slavery documents and comparing them for their relative historical accuracy. These are highly impressionable young kids (the school is K-12), who won’t look at everything they read with a critical eye, and aren’t exactly up on their deconstruction skills. Also, the booklet has been debunked by historians. It’s actually been pulled from publication because of “faulty footnotes and citation errors.” One of the authors is a member of the League of the South, which has been classified as a hate group. If they want to present a “South-positive” booklet, shouldn’t they look for one that is at least historically accurate, by accredited historians? I wouldn’t want my child to be taught anything in history class (or science class) that hasn’t been backed up by solid proof. They’re feeding these kids racist glurge. ---
**Author:** ![VarlosZ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d78d45/32.png) [@VarlosZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VarlosZ)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2004, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/131 "2004-12-12T11:18:51Z")
> [@](#): > > These are highly impressionable young kids (the school is K-12), who won’t look at everything they read with a critical eye, and aren’t exactly up on their deconstruction skills. Presumably, the material is put into context for them. Now, maybe the given context is “and here’s a more reasonable description of what slavery was like,” or maybe they don’t give _any_ meaningful context. I really don’t know, and neither do you. That the students are young does not mean that they are incapable of distinguishing between the study of an argument and its advocacy. Hell, when I was in 9th Grade (as are the students in question), I was a regular sophist – we called it “Speech & Debate.” ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Negative](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/typo_negative/32/484_2.png) [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2004, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/132 "2004-12-12T11:19:57Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > That said, it certainly is torment from God’s frame of reference, just as you would be in torment in your own reference frame if your children decided to disown you because their treasure lay elsewhere, and they considered you an obstacle to achieving it. What??? ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2004, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/133 "2004-12-12T11:52:20Z")
> [@](#): > > **VarlosZ** : Regarding the OP, is anyone actually opposed to this school’s use of the booklet in question? If so, why? I am all for presenting accurate information about slavery that might include relevant information such as the documents that **monstro** referred to, a history of slavery that includes the time period (150-200 years?) when Northern states, including New England, held slaves, and the fact that most Southerners and other Americans were not slave owners. But the notion of depicting slavery as benign in any way is obscene. The Southern Poverty Law Center is an honorable organization and if they say that the source of this publication is a hate group, I believe them. > [@](#): > > **Excalibre** : I don’t remember anyone in a previous post trying to claim that the south is uniquely responsible for slavery. You might be surprised how many people think or suggest that the Northern states, especially New England, did not have slave owners but only traded in slaves. For example: > [@](#): > > **MMI** : The fact that slavery was not particularly profitable in New England was certainly a contributing fact behind the absence of slavery here. As the South changes, the image needs to change and perhaps the economy here will also. When the economy changes, surely our public schools will improve and bigot mills such as the one described in the O.P. won’t have as much drawing power. Does anyone know if this school is accredited? ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2004, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/134 "2004-12-12T12:32:52Z")
> [@Continuity eror](#): > > Liberal: So if someone is forced to sell their body because of a failing economic climate caused by a libertarian government, that’s totally okay? Libertarian governments do not cause economic climates; they do not interfere in economies except to suppress coercion within them. I’m afraid you’ll have to look beyond the convenience of blaming others if you fail. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2004, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/135 "2004-12-12T12:34:27Z")
> [@spooje](#): > > What??? Let me turn on the special filter that will ensure the words are not garbled for you: That said, it certainly is torment from God’s frame of reference, just as you would be in torment in your own reference frame if your children decided to disown you because their treasure lay elsewhere, and they considered you an obstacle to achieving it. ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_Ellis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/977dab/32.png) [@Michael\_Ellis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Michael_Ellis)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2004, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/136 "2004-12-12T12:35:43Z")
> [@Reeder](#): > > But when you came in and totally denied that the bible did not support slavery it got on my wrong side. Reeder, you have nothing but wrong sides. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Negative](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/typo_negative/32/484_2.png) [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2004, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/137 "2004-12-12T12:38:40Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > Let me turn on the special filter that will ensure the words are not garbled for you: That said, it certainly is torment from God’s frame of reference, just as you would be in torment in your own reference frame if your children decided to disown you because their treasure lay elsewhere, and they considered you an obstacle to achieving it. But I, in response, would not set them on fire. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2004, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/138 "2004-12-12T12:46:03Z")
> [@spooje](#): > > But I, in response, would not set them on fire. Neither does He. “You judge by human standards; I pass judgment on no one.” — Jesus (John 8:15). When your children have disowned you to go on the joyride they treasure, you did not set them on fire just because they hit a tanker truck. I’ve never understood this business of both “I want nothing to do with God” and “Damn Him for letting me leave Him”. ---
**Author:** ![davenportavenger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f8ce5/32.png) [@davenportavenger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davenportavenger)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2004, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/139 "2004-12-12T12:48:02Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > Libertarian governments do not cause economic climates; they do not interfere in economies except to suppress coercion within them. I’m afraid you’ll have to look beyond the convenience of blaming others if you fail. What about the coercion of citizens by major multi-national corporations? Seriously, if libertarianism (including voluntary slavery) was instituted tomorrow the first thing Walmart et al would do would be to drop their wage to twenty-five cents, thereby forcing workers to live in company houses, eat food provided for them by the company, etc and so forth. All the companies, even the supposedly “liberal” ones, would jump on this chance to have indentured workers. The amount needed to house, clothe, and feed workers with the bare necessities is way less than the amount currently being paid out as wages. And because libertarians don’t believe in policing human rights violations within workplaces (because that would be an impediment to the “free market,” which is sacred beyond all other things), workers would be more and more underfed, and more and more under-cared for (Why pay for the healthcare of that sick worker? Take him out back and shoot him in the head, he’s our property!). Never interfering in an economic climate allows an economic climate that feels it can do whatever the hell it wants. But I guess that in your mind there’s a difference between the “slavery” caused by the big, bad government and a quasi-feudal state imposed by corporations. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Negative](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/typo_negative/32/484_2.png) [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2004, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273/140 "2004-12-12T12:55:13Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > Neither does He. “You judge by human standards; I pass judgment on no one.” — Jesus (John 8:15). When your children have disowned you to go on the joyride they treasure, you did not set them on fire just because they hit a tanker truck. I’ve never understood this business of both “I want nothing to do with God” and “Damn Him for letting me leave Him”. So you are saying that Hell doesn’t exist and no one really **sent** there to suffer for all eternity? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/slaves-lived-a-life-of-plenty-of-simple-pleasures/279273.md?page=8)