I’m in the middle of writing a paper discussing Aristotle’s views on slavery (he was for slavery) and I find myself bored, and tired. I’m tired because I waited for a long while to work on the paper, which is my own fault. I’m bored because slavery is such a non-issue today for me. I mean it is obvious that slavery is bad, no one should own another person. Even if you put all your human rights issues aside and look at it as a socio-economic system it is flawed. The biggest flaw is that in a system that starts out with people who are slaves because they are mentally incapable of making good decisions for themselves (the reason Aristotle says slavery is a natural thing), genetics will undoubtedly create a set of people who can govern themselves and be responsible enough to participate as a voting citizen. But that person will remain trapped within the slave system and would be unlikely to get out to participate in society at large.
To cure my boredom I was going to try to spend a page or so arguing about why Aristotle is right and some form or slavery should exist. I was going take some genetic superiority approach, and then make some third reich joke, and get back to why he is wrong and slavery is bad. But at this point I’m too tired to know if I can pull that off and make it funny enough to get the TA’s attention, and I’m afraid it will just end up sounding stupid or “insensitive” so now I’m sitting here, bored, and trying to waste time until I come up with a good way to continue from where I am sans the Nazi jokes. (did you know that the word sans is a preposition…new to me…yeah for www.m-w.com for making sure I was using the word correctly)
Well, back to my paper….tomorrow I’ll post a thing I have half written right now about homosexuality and the church. Don’t worry, it isn’t to homophobic, it is mostly about how to love those people, and the tone of the modern church concerning homosexuality.
Siberian says
Slavery.
Well, there might be more of an issue underlying it than you think. Imagine 100 years down the road when nearly every baby born has been genetically enhanced. Then try to make the same case that slavery is immoral on the basis that all men are equal.
I think you’d have a harder time there.
Lauren says
Watching a little too much Gattica.
I haven’t read Aristotle, and I don’t know what he thinks. I think the idea that someone should be a slave and treated as property because they are mentally inferior places much to high a value on intelligence. People are worth more than their IQ. That’s all I’ll say.
BigCat says
You would have to read it, the argument just isn’t that simple. I made it sound really simple in what I posted, but you have some factors to consider.
He basically says that slaves are people who can be owned. Not just people who are owned. People who can’t contribute to the governing of society either by participating in government directly or by making rational and resonable choices in electing government. In other words, everyone in America who votes based on the “news” they get from the Daily Show. He goes on to say that some people are only cut out for manual labor, and others are even cut out for that so they are best served in society by serving those who were given the capability to manage / instruct / rule over them. And they are gonig to be the most well adjusted when they are doing what they are cut out for, and these people, he claims, by nature are only cut out for simple tasks.
I didn’t say I agreed, I just said I was going to pretend to agree in a part of my paper for fun.
And I did talk about Genetic superiority, and I got my Nazi joke in there, and I think I did it in a way that will work well in the paper, and not soudn offensive….except maybe for the page and a half where I sound pretty set on seperating people by their genetic predisopositions and capabilities.