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Posts posted by Phylum of Alexandria
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32 minutes ago, Conflicting Thought said:
the people that are "defending" slavery
For clarity, who here has been defending slavery, even via a scare quotes version?
I certainly have not been. I've simply been trying for a slightly more nuanced understanding of it given different individuals with different behavior patterns, and given the cultural-historical progression that we today all benefit from, yet separates us from our targets of study.
But even that is too much for some people (though admittedly not Ripp).
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1 hour ago, IFR said:
It's not a patronizing explanation if it's an actual correction. And it was offered with good intentions.
I quote how wikipedia defines rhyme:
Gee, you must be so fun at parties.
The first commenter mentioned rhyming, and I went with it. The End.
Really not into pedantry, thanks.
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12 minutes ago, SeanF said:
We have an *extraordinary* capacity to rationalise terrible deeds, as a species.
There is one passage from the Old Testament that makes me think of exactly this point: Psalm 137.
It was written by people living in exile, captivity, and servitude in Babylon. It was written in memory of the horrors they had witness at the hands of the Babylonian forces. You feel nothing but sorrow and compassion for whoever wrote it.
And then you get to the final lines:
"Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
Happy is the one who repays you
According to what you have done to us
Happy is the one who seizes your infants
And dashes them upon the rocks."
It's the song of ice and fire, essentially. Completely relatable rage at injustice, leading inexorably to horrific, cruel revenge.
And that's without industry and bureaucracy making other people's horror abstract and easy to ignore.
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3 minutes ago, SeanF said:
I could not imagine myself as Amon Goth. I could imagine myself as an officer on the Eastern front, commanding the burning of a village and shooting hostages, in retaliation for partisan attacks.
Well, heck, I was just imagining myself as Carl Jung, staying silent in my cushy academic position as my Jewish friends and colleagues are quietly sent away. But your scenario is possible too.
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1 minute ago, SeanF said:
Broadening the discussion again, had I turned 20 in Munich or Moscow, in 1933, I could have ended up doing pretty evil things. Knowing what the Gestapo or NKVD were capable of, I would be taking pains not to offend them.
Even as early as 2003, my brother and I were convinced that our parents and sisters would have been happy, active members of the Nazi party in Hitler's Germany.
As to us? It's harder to say. You'd like to think that you'd be the hero who stands up, but those heroes were killed off. Most well meaning people just quietly did what they were told. It's quite likely that we would have done the same.
The guilt of accepting that truth was apparently what inspired Ingmar Bergman to make the films he did.
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2 minutes ago, Zorral said:
Your points don't make what you think they do, you know, which is to excuse Jefferson as not bad and only a guy of his time, who was actually really good. He was and remains a truly evil sob.
Well, you've failed to explain how my points don't make what I think they do. You're just going for that easy certainty again.
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1 minute ago, Zorral said:
Ya, who hardly progress or liberal, or believers in equal rights.
I concede that much in the comment you're replying to. It does not challenge any of the primary points I made.
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8 minutes ago, Zorral said:
Again, I ask you -- if this guy inspired abolitionists, why ever did that Davis family in Mississippi, determined to expand slavery throughout the US and the hemisphere -- name their kid JEFFERSON?
And when it comes to speech writing, for a very smart fellow wanting to get as many WHITE people on board, convincing them they don't need to be afraid of Black People, ya, you might quote a WHITE guy to make them feel better. As we know, WHITE people are very special snowflakes who find even the mention of slavery too much for their fee-fees. As we see every frackin' day with the laws that are being passed. Ya, quite an inspiration.
You're shifting the goal posts. My point was that many reformists were inspired by Jefferson's writing. Not very recently, but I'd say that's to our detriment as effective activists.
I did not say that Jefferson had only one legacy. Yes, libertarians owe him a debt. And political partisan hacks. That doesn't make my original points any less true. People can contain multitudes.
Also: the original point that mentioned Jefferson's ideals was all about relative comparisons. So: Blake > Franklin > Washington > Jefferson > Most Other Southern Homes. I wasn't trying to make Jefferson out to be some god, just noting that his mere ideals did have real impact.
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2 minutes ago, Zorral said:
Cite me one place where Civil Rights leaders cite Thomas Jefferson as a role model. Or feminists, for that matter. Or Native Americans
Seriously?
To choose just one prominent example:
"So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
King lays out what I said. Jefferson gave us the seed, and it inspired later action to live out the true meaning of its creed.
Now, if you're talking about activists since the 70s...well, probably not too many. But that's an unfortunate development.
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Just now, Zorral said:
Jefferson did not. Quite the opposite indeed! What history have you read?
Guys, please. Just a modicum of grace and good faith in interpreting what I say. Will it kill you? No. It sure would save time.
The most important word I used was "inspiring" (later) improvement of our society, including abolition and reform for civil rights. Jefferson's words were an important seed for later progressive flowering.
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@Zorral said:
But I wouldn't have been born in their place, would I, considering my gender and my background?
I mean, every imaginary leap into the past is going to have some conundrums to deal with, right? But hopefully you get the general gist of thought experiment.
My point was not that George Washington was the most advanced person with respect to the morality of slavery. Probably the absolute edge of the moral vanguard was William Blake, though he was younger and British.
Still, Washington was nevertheless rather advanced for his time...and extremely advanced among the Southern landed gentry.
And Jefferson may not have offered more beyond his ideals, but those ideals proved to be really fucking important for inspiring the improvement of our society, including abolition and reform for civil rights.
Needless to say, those ideals were way more advanced than most Southern families, who wanted to double down on America's hierarchical norms, rather than expand on the idea that everyone has an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
These are all important distinctions in my view.
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Dammit, I lost my comment.
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2 minutes ago, Zorral said:
You mean would I in his place not pull out all the teeth of an enslaved person in the vain hope they then could be transplanted in my mouth to the take place of all my rotting teeth due to all the sugar raised and processed by enslaved labor elsewhere I have consumed? Would I not hound throughout my life an enslaved woman who managed to escape to free territory, to force her to return? Would I carefully remove my enslaved people from Philadelphia before the term was up before by Pennsylvania laws they could become free? All while knowing slavery "was shitty"? And like Thomas Jefferson, stating slavery was for the United States "having the wolf by the ears," and Patrick Henry saying slavery is bad, but, "it's general convenience makes us have them"?
I see that you didn't make clear how you would have acted had you been born in their place.
That behavior you describe disgusts me. It still doesn't warrant our easy certainty about how we would have behaved.
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5 minutes ago, Rippounet said:
Of course, moral judgment should take into account the cultural environment and socio-economic structures of the times, or we all guilty of everything wrong in the world at any given moment. But there's also a limit to moral relativism, and I would say slavery is a pretty good one. Even if your society allows it, it's still a pretty shitty thing to do.
To be clear, I'm not making an argument of absolute moral relativism. Maybe a soft one, in terms of shifting societal standards across time.
I agree that slavery is terrible, no matter what the social norms are. My point was against the easy certainty, and the easy dismissal of past figures as shitty, because they took part in a shitty system that was quite normal for their time.
At least Washington knew it was shitty! Most of us would not even be that advanced in thought if we had been born back then.
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1 minute ago, Spockydog said:
I just reread your post.
And it does pretty much appear as if you are excusing slave owners on some basis.
So are you saying that they did in fact know slavery was wrong, but because everyone else was doing it (i.e. other rich people) we shouldn't criticises them?
Because that's horseshit too.
1. Don't Flatten History
We know that at least some slave owners openly described slavery as wrong. Ben Franklin, George Washington, and Jefferson are some examples, and they wrote about how conflicted they were about the issue.
My point was that individuals should judged individually, relative to what the norms of the time were. Obviously on the issue of slavery, the members of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society were morally ahead of people like Washington and Jefferson. Franklin at one point owned slaves, but later on became the president of the Abolition Society. Washington did manage to pay his debts and grant freedom to his slaves, but only at the end of his life. But he was better than Jefferson, who had big ideals but often didn't practice them in deed. Different people, different outcomes, different moral judgements.
Jefferson was morally suspect, but still, debt was real. I think that obviously the Northern states were right to condemn the Southern states for trying to spread slavery in the 1800s...but I can also accept that those Northern states were reliant on emerging factory labor rather than tobacco and corn, and so their economic dependence on slavery was easier to shake off. That doesn't make the evils the slave owners inflicted on fellow humans any less vicious--but it does dampen the righteousness of the North.
2. Talk Is Cheap
It's easy to judge from the 20/20 vision that historical hindsight grants. All I am suggesting is some personal humility, and the acceptance of the fact that most people in the world are not exceptional. They are basic, mediocre, muddling through the world as best they can.
Do you really think you could do better than George fucking Washington if you were in his place?
- Heartofice and Jace, Extat
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Here's a simpler take on what I'm saying:
1. Don't flatten history
2. Talk is cheap. (Sartre et al.)
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2 minutes ago, Spockydog said:
Yeah, what a load of horseshit. Pretty sure every single slave owner knew it was wrong.
Not what I said.
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2 minutes ago, TrackerNeil said:
Do you remember, two years ago, there was a flap about how a gay character in "Stranger Things" was portrayed? Critics charged that this character should have been presented as more out and proud and blah blah, which was a very 2022 view of 1986. Having lived in 1986, and been gay in 1986, I can say that those who were out and proud often had a very hard time of it, and I don't blame any of us for staying closeted. Maybe it wasn't optimal in terms of moving society forward, but expecting people to trash their lives so that future generations might or might not have it easier is a lot to expect.
That's funny. When watching that same content in Stranger Things, I found it odd how the gay character lacked any situations of terror, or even just casually cruel jokes from his friends. That's something that Stephen King got quite well in IT.
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1 minute ago, Zorral said:
In fact, many people born in the time, did behave differently, and think differently. One of the causes of the War of Independence, and certainly THE CAUSE of the War of the Rebellion.
So that argument does not, as it never has, carry any water.
Sheesh, even in the daze of the writers of the Old Testament, in a world in which the labor power of almost everything everywhere, was slave labor, there were those who opposed slavery and denounced it as a spiritual dearth and unwonted cruelty.
See my response to kissbyfire. Which in essence, points back to my original comment.
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10 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:
And yet there were people then who had very different stances on a variety of issues, including this one. So it's not like absolutely everyone was incapable of understanding how amoral some of their actions & opinions were.
I agree with you. I said in my original comment that further analysis was necessary to determine where someone fell on an issue relative to others in their culture and time.
But even there, can we really confidently say we would do better in their place? Rather than be weak, or mediocre? Talk is cheap, and so those judgments come off as cheap to me as well.
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43 minutes ago, Zorral said:
As for POTUSes generally being morally deficient persons, recall until 1860, the vast vast majority of them were slaveowners, and even slave traders -- like Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and James Polk. Buchanan, who did everything he could to facilitate the transfer of federal arms and money, sent the navy to the Pacific coast of South America, etc, the last president before Fort Sumter, wasn't a slaveowner himself, but his 'wife' owned one of the largest slave plantation in the South, before he died of yellow fever, or was it malaria or cholera? or something else of that nature? I forget. (So did Polk die, of one those. He earned it.) Just as before THE WAR even the few potuses who weren't slaveowners, were very sympathetic, such as Franklin Pierce, after Lincoln and Grant, we got all those glorious lost cause glorifiers as POTUSes such as Woodrow Wilson. Thank you very much.
Yes, that's true, but it's rather easy for us to insist that we would have behaved differently, if only we were born in their place, hundreds of years ago.
I am not against unflinching histories of our founding fathers sins and foibles. But to flat-out condemn individuals from the past as morally shitty people, without further analysis, is wrong. It fails to assess where they fell relative to everyone else in their culture. And there's always the implied, and conveniently untested, assumption that we could have done better in their place.
- Ran, Ormond, Jace, Extat and 1 other
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6 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:
I could be wrong but what I understood from what DireWolfSpirit was saying was, if a kid commits a crime where the parents bear responsibility for said crime, the parents should be held accountable as well.
I don't necessarily disagree, but I think it would really depend on the circumstances of the case, and I would rather lean away rather than toward a tendency to lock parents up.
Kind of like the issue of using song lyrics as evidence of criminal behavior. Could it be relevant? Sure. But in many instances it seems wrong to do so.
Fines, maybe. For parenting, not spicy lyrics.
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5 hours ago, IFR said:
It's a homonym, not a rhyme.
lol. It's a homonym that rhymes. I'm a guy, and yet I feel like I was mansplained.
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2 hours ago, DaveSumm said:
1Q would rhyme with 19
It rhymes if you sound out the numbers separately: "ichi kyuu " rather than "jyuu-kyuu," or 19.
US Politics: Sitting in Judgement
in General Chatter
Posted · Edited by Phylum of Alexandria
I don’t want to belabor this topic of slavery too much more, but I wanted to frame it in a light that’s relevant for our own politics going forward.
I recently read the book Democracy Rising by the historian Heather Cox Richardson. The whole premise of the book is how American history has been a constant tug of war between two very different visions for the country: limiting freedoms to a restricted elite vs expanding on the notion that everyone has the same inalienable rights. Obviously, Richardson tells this history in the hope of advancing the cause of that latter vision.
Now, Richardson has mentioned in interviews that she can’t stand Thomas Jefferson as a person. She does not hold back in her criticism of him, and that’s good.
But also, importantly, she doesn’t let her criticism of the man diminish her deep reverence for the ideas that he put into the nation’s foundational documents. The entire premise of her book, the fight toward fully achieving the promise laid out in America’s founding creeds, is almost entirely centered on the words that Jefferson put into the Declaration of Independence. Those are the seeds that the heroes of later generations took great pains to cultivate and flower into something worthwhile.
An early hero was Frederick Douglass. I can’t think of anyone better justified in despising Jefferson for owning slaves than Douglass, as he himself was a former slave who had escaped his captors. Maybe he did hate the man, I don’t know. But he also looked to Jefferson’s passage that “all men are created equal” as the brightest beacon of light for the soul of the nation.
Booker T Washington (another former slave), Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Abraham Lincoln. They all invoked the words of the declaration for their causes of social progress. W.E.B. Dubois framed it more critically, as a dream far from being realized, but nevertheless sought to bring the nation closer to that dream.
(Yes, I know that a chunk of these names are on the current demonization list as well, spare me the lectures. Despite their severe blind spots, they are nevertheless important figures in American liberal and progressive history. Frederick Douglass would probably rage at such decadent idealism if he were alive to see it.)
I already mentioned Martin Luther King Jr. New Left activists today always highlight the fact that King had a radical vision for America, one that’s been whitewashed in national tributes. True, but those same activists minimize King’s deep belief in the need for pragmatism, and in the need for an inspirational vision to call people to action. Like Dubois, he still took time to highlight the many hurts and injustices that needed correcting, but he wove that into a larger story, filled with soaring rhetoric, to lead the way forward.
After King’s assassination, civil rights activist culture (understandably, but tragically) got a lot more cynical. Still, it’s not like no one invokes Jefferson’s ideals for activist causes. Let’s not forget Barack Obama. Whatever one might think of how he governed as president, it’s pretty much objective fact that Obama is a genius in bringing broad coalitions together with his soaring rhetoric. Not surprisingly, Obama has hit on the promise of achieving Jefferson’s dream quite often. Like Dubois and King, he doesn’t shy away from our current shortcomings. But he never fails to present a positive way forward for us to eventually realize that dream. It’s a balanced approach, not a flat one.
If we can’t find the nuance to highlight the most inspirational aspects of our nation’s founding documents—which were truly radical for their time—in order to expand upon that promise, then our cynicism has rendered us dysfunctional. If we’re treating Thomas Jefferson as basically as repulsive as Adolph Hitler, then our moral righteousness is taking us into cloud cuckoo land.
Nowhere in this argument have I advocated for shying away from real sins and real limitations. I’m saying, don’t flatten history with moral absolutism. Don’t forsake pragmatism for change with convenient idealism. Don’t forgo the responsibility to inspire others into action because of the seductions of outrage and pessimism.
I don’t’ know what Loretta J Ross thinks about Thomas Jefferson, but I love her approach to activism. We need more of this type of stuff, so I’ll just include a video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw_720iQDss