this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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It's really sad how lionized Lee is despite being worse than average even by slaver standards.
Like, history is my center of interest. I am acutely aware that morals and norms are deeply contextual things, and that most people will grow up absorbing the morals and norms of the time and place.
But how can someone be such a piece of shit that their own slave overseer refuses to carry out their orders? The man's job is literally to brutalize slaves, and HE thinks you've gone too far?
I mean, shit, at least lionize some blinkered fanatic like Stonewall Jackson. He was a slaver, but at least he was willing to break the law for the sake of treating slaves more humanely, rather than less humanely. It doesn't absolve him from being a slaver at a time when it was increasingly clear that slavery was not some fundamental piece of existence, but it at least absolves him of being worse than his fucking peers.
One of the things I appreciate about Behind the Bastards is the acknowledgment that historically people were more racist and misogynist, and to then clarify that the subject of an episode was notably racist or misogynistic for the time. Like Dewey of the Dewey Decimal System, who had a colleague write about how horribly sexist he was.
Same for LGBT rights. There's been a seismic shift since I was a kid in the 80s. Here in America we're rolling backwards a bit, but that's the nature of societal progress, two steps forward, one back.
Maybe more than one, dear.
Without warning, heart attack
Librarian here. One of the reasons librarianship was dominated by women was bc Dewey convinced people they could pay them less. Also, he likes to use his power to form sexual relationships. The subject headings that his decimal system uses are still problematic to this day.
Jackson was a 19th century Christian jihadist.
On the other hand... instead of Lee or Jackson, James Longstreet is right there.
I mean, to be fair, Jackson was a 19th century Christian fanatic. He wasn't an advocate for some radically changed theocracy to take charge of the pre-war USA or the Civil War CSA. His fanaticism affected his personal behavior more than his political positions.
Longstreet 'betrayed the cause' by daring to make peace with the fact that they lost the war and Black folk were citizens, that's basically treason to a Lost Causer. Jackson died before any such thing could theoretically happen, so he remains pure.
The only reason that “morals are deeply contextual” is that average people are dumb as shit in all the ways that matter. Moral reasoning is similar to mathematics, but whereas we have formalized math, which people study in school for 12+ years (and are still terrible at it), morality is a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants-and-do-your-best endeavor.
That’s why there’s such a discrepancy between the opinions of ethicists and those of average people. Why we had slavery for 10,000 years, why Trump was elected. Why billionaires, religions, and cruise ships exist. Because average people are dumb as shit in all the ways that matter, and no discipline in the world reminds us just how close the average human is to a mindless animal than ethics.
We had slavery for thousands of years because the enlightenment occurred only a few hundred years ago and it brought about the concept of liberalism (not like liberal/conservative but liber like short for liberty or liberate - meaning freedom). Up until that point there was only basic pathos that would allow people to feel bad for a slave's conditions but usually not to the extent that it would lead to a full abolition movement.
Yes. There were countless folks of every generation since time immemorial begging their fellow humans to use basic reasoning to see the evil of their actions. To no avail. It took thousands of years of social progress and education to convince (a plurality of) people of the most rudimentary and blatant moral facts. Because the average human is dumb as shit about everything that matters.
Are you a vegan by chance?
I feel like that's the next big moral shift. People lionize dogs and cats, and harming one makes you literally Hitler. But there's not a lick of difference between a dog and a cow.
I think that an objective ethicist would absolutely say veganism is the only moral choice, and that anyone who isn't a vegan is knowingly participating in unimaginable cruelty.
But in our current context, only a small fraction of people care. Including a lot of people who look down on people of the past for not being as amazingly moral as they are.
I mean, in the end an animal is an animal. I have had cats and dogs and don't really like to see them hurt because (in the West) there is no purpose for their existence besides being pets.
Cows and livestock, on the other hand, only exist for food and we keep breeding them for that.
At the same time, is don't really see a problem with the cultures that eat cats and dogs, in the end, it's all just animals and it doesn't matter if I think that some of them look cuter than others
Many animals are smarter than severely mentally-disabled humans, yet we don't torture and eat severely mentally-disabled humans. So it's not about intelligence. It's obviously also not about being able to feel pain, because animals can feel pain.
Do you agree with "Don't do to others what you wouldn't want done to you"?
If yes, would you be okay with genetically modified people who are much smarter and crueler than you, treating you like factory farmers and fishermen treat animals? 1-3 trillion fish are enslaved in torturous factory-farm conditions every year, and together with fishermen torture about 2-6 trillion fish to death annually, usually by slow asphyxiation. Hundreds of billions of land-animals (mostly chickens) are enslaved in torturous conditions every year and slaughtered. About 1% of chickens are boiled alive because it would cost more money to make sure the machines that kill them don't miss that 1%. Dairy cows are repeatedly put on rape racks to be artificially inseminated, because they only give milk after delivering a calf. The calves are removed from their mothers, because the farmers don't want the calves to drink the milk. Would you like to be kept your entire life in torturous conditions? Be tortured to death? You and/or your female family repeatedly artificially inseminated and made to give birth, then have the babies taken away so you and/or your female family's milk can be harvested, eventually killed for hamburger when not yielding enough milk to make a profit?
livestock aren't tortured
Hundreds of billions of livestock are kept in torturous conditions every year. Dominion, Land of hope and glory, Earthlings.
1-3 trillion fish are kept in torturous conditions every year on factory farms.
in torture, the point is to cause pain. the pain incurred by animals in agriculture is incidental. it's not the point of the practice. if there were some other options that were just as cost effective or cheaper, farmers would use them.
comparing the mentally disabled to animals is gross
The reason many people say it's OK to be complicit in factory farming animals, but not humans, is because humans are smarter: "they're just animals". Pointing out that factory farmed animals are smarter than severely mentally-disabled humans, shows it's clearly not about intelligence. Speciesism is therefor similar to racism and sexism.
What's important is whether they can feel pain or not, not intelligence.
Pointing out the lie isn't gross. What is gross is torturing 3-6 trillion fish to death every year, and enslaving 1-3 trillion animals in torturous conditions every year.
Dominion, Land of hope and glory, Earthlings
comparing other races to animals is what racists do. comparing women to animals is what misogynists do. their fight for their own rights isn't premised on their ability to feel pain, but the fact that they, too, are fully human.
"They deserve rights because they are human", ah, okay. So being human is just a magical qualifier that determines whether or not you are entitled to the ability to live unimpeded. Every other species on the planet exists to serve the whims of humanity, for being human is special.
You're getting a lot of pushback and I can see why, but I've actually been coming to similar conclusions in a different way. It's essentially species narcissism, just like we have racial narcissism, gender narcissism, physical narcissism, etc.
But we exist within this planet and evolved with it as well. Factory farming, monoculture, and industrial farm practices are harmful for the planet and us and is pretty bad for many reasons. Being a heterotroph is not something we have control over, however. We consume other species, plant and animal and microbes alike, to get nutrients as do many other species. Even some autotrophs will eat other species.
So it's important to not continue to engage species narcissism and thus remove ourselves as participants living with this world.
It would be gross if the comparison sought to belittle the mentally disabled, but the comparison is to point out the cruelty and inhumanity. It's gross that you think it's okay to cause pain and suffering because animals are "lesser" in your worldview.
I never said they are lesser. you are fighting a strawman
Yes, I agree. In about a century folks will look back on modern humans as irredeemable monsters. And they would be right! This is an objective fact, and downvotes don’t change normative reality. More’s the pity.
I only see this happening if lab grown meat takes off in a really big way. Which I'm in favor of, but with how it's been going I'm not so sure.
Assuming civilization (i.e., democracy) survives, it will happen. Democracy is almost ineluctable in promulgating moral progress. That’s one of the chief reasons that it’s under such sustained attack. Can’t have the poor and ignorant learning right from wrong.
dogs can be housebroken
Puppies aren't housebroken and their meat would be very tender.
they can be housebroken, though.
Cows can be housebroken.
There have always been societies that didn't have slavery, they have happened on every continent (except that one) and in every sufficiently long era.