Twitter mob gets fantasy novel cancelled.

[Estebonrober]

The oppression Olympics (though not by that name) seems indeed to exist. I've read some hard social liberal articles and material that basically amount to just that. A lot of is as ridiculous as @Estebonrober's arguments here, and along similar lines. I've seen the "my suffering was worse than your suffering, so stop complaining, or you're going to ruin my chances at maximal sympathy and social benefit," mentality and argument quite a few times before.

I didn’t do this, I stated American chattel slavery imo was worse and it’s all horrible. I didn’t say others shouldn’t complain. I didn’t say the rest of the world was much better about this stuff. I can work on fixing my country which still needs to be better. I can’t stop Saudi Arabia from being terrible.

You are still punching a straw man and I’m starting to get annoyed.

 

[Patine]

Ok well we will have to just disagree then. Is there a particular reason you think this matters? This is all African slavery and Arabs and Europeans both partook in the debauchery. Are you trying to just say everyone’s evil so why should Europeans feel bad about what they did in Africa?

"Why do you wish to decide and acknowledge the most evil man, the most evil nation, the most evil race in history? Is it to give them an award and a place of honour? Is that a productive, healthy, moral, and God-fearing to do? Or is it work made for idle hands by the Devil?"
-Reverend Rick Warren

 

[Estebonrober]

The slavery taboo tied specifically to African-American sensibilities in all cases, even if unrelated, is plain ridiculous. Practically every pre-Industrial, urban, sedentary, large-scale-agrarian society that had any military or political over it's enemies at any time has, at some point in it's history, practiced slavery to fill a perceived need (or convenience) for large amounts of unskilled labour, work, and other duties. It was NOT just the Trans-Atlantic Black slave trade. And, it must be remembered, that the narrative of ALL those West African slaves being kidnapped by European coastal village raiders in the night is utterly false. Pre-colonial West African nations like Songhai, Ghana, Mali, Bornu, Egibo, Dahomey, the Fula Empire, etc., who practiced slavery of each other's people captured in endless wars, sold those slaves to the Europeans in exchange for firearms and other manufactured goods of the day, because, to those West African monarch and merchants, who grew very wealthy off the trade, viewed said slaves as commodities, the same as the gold, ivory, and black pepper they also traded (a reason I disagree with debt forgiveness for those West African nations because of slavery, as all of them, except Liberia and Sierra Leone, claim continuity and succession from one or more of those pre-colonial monarchies, some even in their national Constitutions, and Ghana and Mali actually carry the same names as two of them). Mauritania, the last internationally-recognized sovereign nation in the world to criminalize slavery formally, did so as recently as 1984. The terms "serf," "thrall," and the Hebrew word translated in modern English Biblical translations as "servant" are also effectively words for "slave" in their contemporary contexts, and the "Immortals" of the Achaemenid-Dynasty Persian Empire and the Mamelukes of the Abbasid Caliphate were originally slave soldiers. So many Wonders of the Ancient and Medieval World were built partially or completely by slave labour. Aesop and Shaherazade, legendary serial storytellers, were both slaves in life. African-Americans were not unique as victims of institutional slavery in world history.

You started this discussion so accusing me of playing oppression olympics is a bit rich.

All I did was mock that basically you were excusing the Atlantic slave trade because everyone else was doing it and it served an economic purpose.

 

[Patine]

You started this discussion so accusing me of playing oppression olympics is a bit rich.

All I did was mock that basically you were excusing the Atlantic slave trade because everyone else was doing it and it served an economic purpose.

No, that's not quite how it started, or what I meant by that post. And you're still backtracking on effectively what you had been saying. I see no reason to carry on with this. Cleaning my bathroom will be more enjoyable.

 

[Estebonrober]

"Why do you wish to decide and acknowledge the most evil man, the most evil nation, the most evil race in history? Is it to give them an award and a place of honour? Is that a productive, healthy, moral, and God-fearing to do? Or is it work made for idle hands by the Devil?"
-Reverend Rick Warren

I literally laughed out loud at you quoting this to me.

 

[Estebonrober]

No, that's not quite how it started, or what I meant by that post. And you're still backtracking on effectively what you had been saying. I see no reason to carry on with this. Cleaning my bathroom will be more enjoyable.

You were equivocating and I still don’t understand why.

The article from @Silurian was interesting and though I knew of the Arabian slave trade I was not aware of the extent or nature of it. Even within his article though and taking it for the sole authority since it agrees with your premise this is a convoluted topic that seems difficult to parse. I think I can say ty for teaching me a bit more about Arabian slavery. I still stand by my take that the Atlantic slave trade was worse, more racist, and still culturally defining.

 

[Silurian]

That is false. Death rates for African slaves in the American colonies were extremely high. Slaves were also more severed from the rest of society than in the Catholic parts of the New World where slavery law was based on the milennia-old Catholic law, ultimately derived from the law of the Roman Empire. One manifestation of this is that Catholic slaves were actually encouraged to form families whereas in the US splitting up families to be "sold down the river" was the norm.

That article itself notes that for example for the THOUSAND YEARS between 600 and 1600, 1.5 million slaves were imported from Africa. By contrast in just a couple of hundred years tens of millions were shipped to the New World, on journeys in which the mortality rate was regularly 50+%.

Trying to pretend that African slavery in the New World was not a particularly brutal manifestation of the general phenomenon (the racial component obviously adds another dimension to it) is a white supremacist meme, nothing but.

Male African slaves were castrated to stop them breeding, I would not regard that as encouragement to have a family. They did not have the chance to see their wife and children sold down the river.

Yes that article states that slaves were being taken from East Africa for nearly a thousand years before the Atlantic slave trade started and continued into living memory. The longer society has to put up with slavers the more harm it will suffer.

I have not stated that slavery in the USA was not brutal.

Ok well we will have to just disagree then. Is there a particular reason you think this matters? This is all African slavery and Arabs and Europeans both partook in the debauchery. Are you trying to just say everyone’s evil so why should Europeans feel bad about what they did in Africa?

The slavery in East and West Africa was equally brutal. Slaves where treated brutally in most places they ended up. The people who carried it out should all be condemned. There is nothing unique about the suffering of African Americans and people should acknowledge that others have been treated the same way and most likely some have had it worse. If you do not acknowledge the equal suffering of others you are forgiving in part the people who caused them to suffer.

 

[Estebonrober]

Male African slaves were castrated to stop them breeding, I would not regard that as encouragement to have a family. They did not have the chance to see their wife and children sold down the river.

Yes that article states that slaves were being taken from East Africa for nearly a thousand years before the Atlantic slave trade started and continued into living memory. The longer society has to put up with slavers the more harm it will surfer.

I have not stated that slavery in the USA was not brutal.



The slavery in East and West Africa was equally brutal. Slaves where treated brutally in most places they ended up. The people who carried it out should all be condemned. There is nothing unique about the suffering of African Americans and people should acknowledge that others have been treated the same way and most likely some have had it worse. If you do not acknowledge the equal suffering of others you are forgiving in part the people who caused them to suffer.

I don’t know enough about current Africans dispositions in Arab states? Do any Arab states hve African populations the way the US has? Is there something that I can do about it? Again I’m not for what this Twitter mob did. I’m not for the continuing of oppression or persecution of any people.

I’m done being your straw man.

 

[Silurian]

I don’t know enough about current Africans dispositions in Arab states? Do any Arab states hve African populations the way the US has? Is there something that I can do about it? Again I’m not for what this Twitter mob did. I’m not for the continuing of oppression or persecution of any people.

I’m done being your straw man.

The children of the African women merged into the local population. The article I posted that African descendants in Pakistan are treated as an underclass.
All you can do is acknowledge that the experience of African Americans is not unique.

 

[adcarrymaokai]

All you can do is acknowledge that the experience of African Americans is not unique.

But it is unique, just like the experience of African descendants in Pakistan is also unique.

I can't believe I have to state something so painfully obvious.

 

[Silurian]

But it is unique, just like the experience of African descendants in Pakistan is also unique.

I can't believe I have to state something so painfully obvious.

Every individual is unique.
We are talking about groups of people and unfortunately brutal treatment of slaves is not unique.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Can't? There's more than enough work to go around. Especially if we're trying to meaningfully reduce horsepower generated through petroleum and calories produced via processing. I'd say make it pay. There's lots of green space growing a void calorie non-cash crop in the suburbs already.

So turn all the parks into farms? You do realize that some neighborhoods are practically nothing but houses and cement now, right? There's such an area in Calgary where there are almost no lawns. Some people who do have lawns aren't allowed to turn them into gardens because of "standards" or they're "unsightly." (of course the real reason is that people with gardens spend less money at grocery stores)

What the hell do you think farming and agriculture is? Everyone with a penis has to walk behind an ox?

Close the schools and fire all the MDs?

Instead of getting indignant, why not outline how you would carry out Mouthwash's idea?

To say nothing of the fact that you can't produce, like insulin or antibiotics with Amish-level technology.

Exactly.

We're far from using every bit of land available, seeing as it's more profitable to turn some into suburbs and shopping complexes. Plus, the way productivity of farms is calculated is often by manhour. That doesn't mean as much if we look at it as a way of life rather than a hamster wheel in a capitalist machine. The more modernized Amish farms use more labor, but are indeed comparable to industrial agriculture in terms of yield and use less fossil fuels.

You haven't said anything about the money and technology and materials needed to reclaim the land from suburbs and shopping malls. Most are built on land that used to be arable (I can remember when at least a dozen subdivisions in Red Deer used to be farmers' fields but are now houses, malls, and light industrial areas - including the acreage where I grew up, which is now buried under asphalt and warehouses), but it's now contaminated with many toxic substances. Before you can turn the suburbs into an agricultural utopia, you need to make sure the soil is healthy and what's grown there won't kill people via cancer and other such diseases.

 

[Peuri]

Ok well we will have to just disagree then. Is there a particular reason you think this matters? This is all African slavery and Arabs and Europeans both partook in the debauchery. Are you trying to just say everyone’s evil so why should Europeans feel bad about what they did in Africa?

Slavery was and is terrible. Africa and African-Americans should be helped for the general solidarity between fellow humans.

But what does "so why should Europeans feel bad about what they did in Africa" even mean? I did nothing in Africa. My peasant forefathers did nothing either. Maybe they sold some tar to slave ships and maybe they had some cheaper and comfier cotton shirts and were able to afford sugar thanks to slavery. Maybe the capitalist system was able to flourish thanks to it. Fine. But even if all that is true and some of my forefathers was there cracking a whip, so what? How is that my faul, or the fault of present day Europeans? What even is an European? Isn't that just one more imagined community? I will not carry the sins of my real and imagined forefathers, and neither should anyone else.

Maybe I'm just a nihilistic sob, but I really don't understand.

Anyway, what does all this have to do with the OP.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Moderator Action: A few pages back, we drifted into a discussion on genocide and mass culling of humans, etc. Please be very careful when discussing this kind of thing. I quote from the rule book:

We do not allow people to advocate for the death of anybody. In particular, DO NOT make anything that could even remotely be construed as a death threat (joking or otherwise) to anyone, or encourage them to harm others or themselves. This is illegal, and will result in an immediate ban. Threats of violence will also result in a ban. This applies to PMs and visitor messages as well.

Do not even joke about that kind of thing. We have a zero tolerance policy for this and have a set policy in place to deal with it. Please respect that. Thank you.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Aleksey_aka_al]

Either the novel is too bad, or all that is a part of the marketing campaign, or both.

 

[Aleksey_aka_al]

But what does "so why should Europeans feel bad about what they did in Africa" even mean? I did nothing in Africa. My peasant forefathers did nothing either. Maybe they sold some tar to slave ships and maybe they had some cheaper and comfier cotton shirts and were able to afford sugar thanks to slavery. Maybe the capitalist system was able to flourish thanks to it. Fine. But even if all that is true and some of my forefathers was there cracking a whip, so what? How is that my faul, or the fault of present day Europeans? What even is an European? Isn't that just one more imagined community? I will not carry the sins of my real and imagined forefathers, and neither should anyone else.

Your fault is that you have all the fruits brought by that and also the present day ongoing neo-colonialism. And you won’t give it up willingly.

But then again, those assimilated Blacks and other non-Europoid ethnicities residing in Europe or USA have all the same fruits nowadays. So the whiners from among them have this luxury of whining limitlessly.

 

[Silurian]

Very few people will give up the fruits that they have gained.

It is also true that not all people have equal access to those fruits.

 

[Estebonrober]

Slavery was and is terrible. Africa and African-Americans should be helped for the general solidarity between fellow humans.

But what does "so why should Europeans feel bad about what they did in Africa" even mean? I did nothing in Africa. My peasant forefathers did nothing either. Maybe they sold some tar to slave ships and maybe they had some cheaper and comfier cotton shirts and were able to afford sugar thanks to slavery. Maybe the capitalist system was able to flourish thanks to it. Fine. But even if all that is true and some of my forefathers was there cracking a whip, so what? How is that my faul, or the fault of present day Europeans? What even is an European? Isn't that just one more imagined community? I will not carry the sins of my real and imagined forefathers, and neither should anyone else.

Maybe I'm just a nihilistic sob, but I really don't understand.

Anyway, what does all this have to do with the OP.

The species has done a lot of introspection since the advent of the printing press. most of that introspection has led to insights that have brought great prosperity, freedom, and happiness to all. Much of that introspection though requires we look back upon human history with some measure of horror. Without at least some feeling of shame about what this species has perpetuated on itself I think we are guilty of a mass (truly mass ) sociopathy that borders on insane. It would certainly show an inability to empathize with our ancestors. So do I think the guilt should keep you up at night? No. Do I think their is a collective guilt in the culture. Yea and I think its demonstrated by this very conversation, the topic, and the defensiveness around Europeans supposedly not supposed to feel bad about what their ancestors did. So yea you should feel bad when you reflect on it. It shouldn't be some passive fact you just file away under "Stuff that happened before me". How far back do I think this stuff should carry this kind of emotion? I guess that would depend on how it effects the current world. At some point it loses active relevance. The diaspora of the Jews is still playing out in the world as a fact, but it is hard for me to put a finger on a collective guilt there. It is not so hard with the Atlantic Slave Trade.

Anyways feel free to ignore this, I'm not asking you to have empathy for others in your life. I realize its not a trait all people are capable of, especially when the people are "others". Including others who are not alive anymore.

 

[Traitorfish]

Trying to pretend that African slavery in the New World was not a particularly brutal manifestation of the general phenomenon (the racial component obviously adds another dimension to it) is a white supremacist meme, nothing but.

Silurian specified "African-American" slavery, that is, slavery practiced in the United States and its predecessor-colonies. And it's largely true that, while British-American slavery was brutal, it was markedly less brutal than practices in the Caribbean and Brazil, although it's probably over-stating it to say that it was no more brutal than, say, Medieval Islamic slavery.

I think that we sometimes get a distorted picture of this because Americans have tended to present the Chesapeake tobacco plantation as the default model of slavery, when it was really the exception, being modelled more or less consciously as an English country estate, and while it was built on the assumption of unfree labour, could and historically did operate with convict or debt-peon labour as with slave labour, so there wasn't quite the same degree of brutality built into the system a a very basic structural level. In contrast, the quasi-industrial models developed in the Deep South, which assumed a scale and intensity of work that was only possible on the assumption of chattel slavery, is largely overlooked, but that system is which absorbed the majority of American slaves at the institution's peak in the nineteenth century. That form of slavery points much more clearly towards the almost absurd brutality of the sugar and coffee plantations of the Caribbean and Brazil, and makes it much harder to hold up a clear distinction between "abominable Latin slavery" and "misguided Anglo slavery".

What's really important isn't whether American slavery was worse than Roman slavery, because American slavery still has deep structural implications for the societies of the twenty-first century hemisphere in a way which Roman history simply does not, both for the descendants of the enslaved, but more generally from a capitalist system which was build on the back of slave-profits, and which established a lot of its basic organisational logics, perhaps above all its sense of work-discipline, on the slave plantation.

 

[Lexicus]

Silurian specified "African-American" slavery, that is, slavery practiced in the United States and its predecessor-colonies.

Oh, I was interpreting "African-American slavery" as meaning all of the Americas.