Comment by pc86
24 days ago
"Slavery was right 200 years ago and is only wrong today because we've decided it's wrong" is a pretty bold stance to take.
24 days ago
"Slavery was right 200 years ago and is only wrong today because we've decided it's wrong" is a pretty bold stance to take.
Not "slavery was right 200 years ago" but "slavery wasn't considered as immoral as today 200 years ago". Very different stake.
By definition if you're using the word "considered" you're making some claim that slavery is objectively bad. You can't simultaneously say that morality changes, that what is right and wrong changes, and then say "slavery though is bad objectively it's just people in the 1700s didn't consider it as bad as it is."
Don't you see how that seems at best incredibly inconsistent, and at worst intentionally disingenuous? (For the record I think 99% of people when they use a point like this just haven't spent enough time thinking through the implications of what it means)
I was explicitly trying to avoid making a personal judgment over the matter on the posts. I do have a negative opinion about it, but that was not of importance.
I don't know for sure how people considered slavery 200 years ago, I haven't studied enough history, but the slavery that is more commonly known as slavery was legal. That implies that at least more people accepted that than nowadays.
Nowadays that kind of slavery is frowned upon on at least on the first world.
Modern day slavery has plenty of aspects, and some of them are not considered bad by some part of the population, or not considered a modern iteration of slavery. Working full time for a job that doesn't pay you enough to survive and needing subsidies, not having enough time or energy to look for something better, is IMHO bad and slavery, while for lots of people it is the result of being a lazy person that needs to work more.
Is that situation bad? According to me, yes. According to some economical gurus, no.
Is that situation objectively bad? That is a question I am not answering, as, for me, there's no objective truth for most things.
Perhaps that statement could be read to imply the existence of an objective moral status, but I don't think societal "consideration" does in general. Does this statement? "200 years ago slavery was considered moral; now slavery is considered immoral."
I don't think it implies either is objectively correct, and perhaps this was the intended meaning of the original statement. It might appear to put weight on current attitudes, but perhaps only because we live in the present.
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