This isn't wrong, just unacceptable by current moral standards. If they weren't human most people wouldn't even question it. Like a pet shop selling puppies. Thinking of them as androids might make it more palatable to you.
This isn't wrong, just unacceptable by current moral standards. If they weren't human most people wouldn't even question it. Like a pet shop selling puppies. Thinking of them as androids might make it more palatable to you.
That argument is based upon a presumption of relativistic morality. That is, that there is no such thing as an objective or absolute right or wrong set of moral values, and that any group of people can declare that they think murder and warfare are moral, while kindness and peace are immoral, and it would be just as valid as any other culture's values.
While that may be a philosophical position you hold, you state it as though no other philosophical outlooks on morality could exist, or at least, are valid... a rather ironic position to hold considering the position it is.
This isn't wrong, just unacceptable by current moral standards. If they weren't human most people wouldn't even question it. Like a pet shop selling puppies. Thinking of them as androids might make it more palatable to you.
And you don't use the blacklist... Why?
Because I'm new around here and I'm not really sure how things here work, but will do. And if this isn't wrong, then I don't know what is. 'pet shop selling puppies' for what, sex? You can't compare that with this.
Because I'm new around here and I'm not really sure how things here work, but will do. And if this isn't wrong, then I don't know what is. 'pet shop selling puppies' for what, sex? You can't compare that with this.
That argument is based upon a presumption of relativistic morality. That is, that there is no such thing as an objective or absolute right or wrong set of moral values, and that any group of people can declare that they think murder and warfare are moral, while kindness and peace are immoral, and it would be just as valid as any other culture's values.
While that may be a philosophical position you hold, you state it as though no other philosophical outlooks on morality could exist, or at least, are valid... a rather ironic position to hold considering the position it is.
Well said.
Now that this is out there, I'd like to say moral relativism is total bullshit. Moral relativism is an excuse degenerates use to absolve themselves from conscience or consequence so they can freely harm others for the sake of their base desires.
I like how people make such a big deal of this considering all the stuff this web site has to offer.
Yeah. There's about 500 pages of images that have the "rape" tag in them, and about 100 with the "slave" tag in them. I'm not sure how this is remotely the most shocking thing someone has seen on this site.
Relativism is a logical fallacy in and of itself--it claims itself to be true despite inherently claiming that nothing can possibly be true. In order to exist at all it must first make itself an exception to its own rule. The issue here should be obvious, and, as far as I can tell, it's one that nearly every philosopher in recorded history has been aware of.
Regarding the im/morality of whatever you find here, and of fiction generally: rhetorical performances are not a moral/ethical realm. The spectrum of like/dislike exists in these cases and is valid as a judgment of preference, but, as long as the performance remains rhetorical, right/wrong is never a topic of conversation (or is at least never a VALID topic of conversation, despite it persisting through the ages--violent games, gangsta rap, rock records, Mark Twain, Life of Brian, Samuel Richardson, and back through time we go).
Also, while I don't know how common it is, there is a decent bunch of people whose fantasm is to be one of the girls in the image. Dominations fantasy aren't alway being the master.
Also, while I don't know how common it is, there is a decent bunch of people whose fantasm is to be one of the girls in the image. Dominations fantasy aren't alway being the master.
Wasn't expecting such a storm of reactions. Before anyone starts telling me I should die in a fire (I hope I do die in a fire) or something I do want it to be clear that I morally object to slavery in reality (I also morally object to pet shops if that wasn't clear enough), I am simply not sure if my objections are right.
NWSiaCB said:
That argument is based upon a presumption of relativistic morality. That is, that there is no such thing as an objective or absolute right or wrong set of moral values, and that any group of people can declare that they think murder and warfare are moral, while kindness and peace are immoral, and it would be just as valid as any other culture's values.
While that may be a philosophical position you hold, you state it as though no other philosophical outlooks on morality could exist, or at least, are valid... a rather ironic position to hold considering the position it is.
My argument is based on historical moral acceptance. Go back a couple hundred years and the majority of people would be more than happy to point you to the nearest slave market. At some point in the future slavery may return to being morally acceptable by the general public, very unlikely but we can't say for certain.
On the topic of relativistic morality I am not sure if there is an absolute right set of moral values, but I am willing to accept that there might be. However I have no idea how to determine what it would be, since my own view is shared by nobody that I've met.
idonthaveausername said:
Because I'm new around here and I'm not really sure how things here work, but will do. And if this isn't wrong, then I don't know what is. 'pet shop selling puppies' for what, sex? You can't compare that with this.
Why not? Pet shops sell living beings for money, they don't ask why the person is buying the puppy. A shop selling teenagers would also presumably not ask questions. For all they are concerned the girls are being sold to be someone's daughter(s), and the purchaser chose not to go to an orphanage (like going to an animal shelter for a puppy) and adopt because they wanted something specific. Is the comparison a stretch? A little, but buying a pet dog and buying a pet human are still quite similar... And selling men wouldn't be that different, probably even have some for sale at the same shop, just using the girls as a display.
Well, to be fair, if society didn't evolve towards abandoning slavery as a whole, while marketing continued to develop to current levels, then it would probably look somewhat like this. Pretty much this scene but 150 years later.
Or, if you want to feel really sick, sex slave markets currently exist on IS-controlled parts of Syria and Iraq.
Also while this is a very disturbing yet interesting topic to discuss, it's already on a track to spiral out of control. Keep your heads cool when you reply, please.
I think a lot of the reason people are reacting to this image and not the hundreds of explicitly more graphic things on this site is because our media does have a serious problem with objectifying women and seeing them as commodities rather than people, and this art takes that to its logical conclusion and lays it totally bare. There's tons more graphic stuff on this site, but none that are quite so on-the-nose.
I thought it was more due to the fact that ISIS does exactly this. They even standardised the pricing.
Exactly, this is stuff that happens all the time in many of the various Islamic factions yet I never hear anyone batting an eye about it. And it's not just grown women, they sell lots of little girls to be raised into the "perfect wife". As much as we joke about lolis on this website and in anime, IRL it is sick stuff. And that isn't even to mention the stuff happening domestically. We regularly find girls who were kidnapped here in the US being used as prostitutes in other countries (often sold in mexico for use there or for shipping overseas where it is pretty much impossible to find them unless a DOD branch stumbles on them and puts the dots together (that they often are not looking for). Personally, the concept is not shocking to me since it is not the first time I have seen it, but it still is wrong and something I would stop if given the chance.
Krugger said: (in response to comparing this to selling pets)
Oh yes we can
Not really because humans hold more value than other species. Some people want to deny this but there is a reason why we call them "pets" and not "people". Mainly communication barrier is the key. That said, just because something is "below" you, doesn't mean you can't treat them well. The slaves of the south for example were overwhelmingly treated very well (often better than the conditions of indentured servants) which is why the slaves tried to reunite with their owners and why there was very little bad mouthing of their owners until the civil rights era began. The underground railroad had many notes of how the difficulty of removing slaves wasn't so much tricking the owners, but in convincing the slaves to live freely as most were comfortable in their daily lives where they didn't have to think about much except church, family, and work. Freed slaves in the north were often treated much worse than slaves in the south, but due to wartime propaganda this fact was suppressed until the civil rights era.
The thing we forget about slaves is that while slaves were humans like us who could communicate, slaves were seperated by a nationalsitic border. Slaves were only brought into the country to work and be slaves due to America's labor demands before the industrial age. Slaves were not brought in as citizens and thus did not have the right as an American citizen. If they were to be made free then none of the buyers would even bother buying the slaves from Africa and the slaves would be killed or tortured by the African Kings who captured them. This was one of the big reasons the South was against the North because the war wasn't really started over the moral issue of slaves, that was an excuse. The core of the conflict was about political power as the growing west wanted a way to reduce the voting power of the South and they found the easiest way to do so were to convince the slaves into a northern mindset or move to the west. Making slaves free without the owners consent is pretty much equivilent to making illegal aliens US citizens. It isn't lawful and undermines why we have national soveirnty.
I laugh more about the pointing fingers to everyone except their own. US itself has a really underground illegal traffic. Before it was tobacco and alcohol, now it's synthetic drugs, organs and American girls. They just don't pop out of nowhere on Mexico or Europe, there's a insider infrastructure established legally to do illegal things like in bars, private properties, airports, ships and storage rooms.
There is also U.S. people who for some reason decide to cross the border and bribe poor Mexican people to sell their own newborn for a few dollars. Or worse, Mexican people who enter hospitals only to kidnap newborns they sell to Americans. This sadly is an everyday occurrence that happens not only in Mexico, Islamic countries or anything far far away. This happens right now and everywhere by legal citizens. But of course that's something Trump supporters won't ever admit because it's easier to blame everyone else.
I laugh more about the pointing fingers to everyone except their own. US itself has a really underground illegal traffic. Before it was tobacco and alcohol, now it's synthetic drugs, organs and American girls. They just don't pop out of nowhere on Mexico or Europe, there's a insider infrastructure established legally to do illegal things like in bars, private properties, airports, ships and storage rooms.
There is also U.S. people who for some reason decide to cross the border and bribe poor Mexican people to sell their own newborn for a few dollars. Or worse, Mexican people who enter hospitals only to kidnap newborns they sell to Americans. This sadly is an everyday occurrence that happens not only in Mexico, Islamic countries or anything far far away. This happens right now and everywhere by legal citizens.
Okay, first, that illegal trafficing of humans, narcotics, and organs are originating from illegal aliens from foreign countries such as Mexico. Yes, there are US criminals participating in the crime, but the operations originate in foreign lands which is why the DEA has strong operations overseas. The US is trying to stop it by controlling immigration and enforing the existing laws, but the globalist political parties want to stop law enforcement from doing their jobs, yet at the same time while the poltiicans protect the people causing the crime (sanctuary cities and dream act) the precints demand that we solve the problem without following the solution.
The baby selling crime ring you mention is less than 20 confirmed cases per year compared to the hundred of thousand foreign based crimes yearly. There are less than 60 pending as possibilly linked, but they have not reached enough information to decide. In most of those cases, they are illegal alien scams where the the couples (generally one of those globalists who want an "exotic/diverse" kid rather than the many orphans already in country who actually need a home) receive the baby, then the "mother" appears and threatens to expose the couple's participation in syndicate, has the baby transfered back to the mother, and now that the baby is considered a citizen, the baby is now an anchor baby for the mother who is then let in. Even this crime ring is executed by foreign criminals who we are trying to stop but political correctness is keeping us from doing anything even though we are literally watching these crimes happening in front of us.
Kitakami said:
I am seriously having a laugh at the morality discussion on a image site that caters to hentai images.
Is it not the best?! This is like the only place where moe can mix with the IRL world and frankly discussions here are far more civilized and productive than any court or political field I have seen.
Covering the sun with a finger won't make disappear the fact good and bad people exists everywhere. I know you like to blame ALL Mexicans and ALL Muslims for ALL the bad in the world. But the truth is the reason such illegal channels exists is because the distribution of good and bad people, while altered by socioeconomically elements, exists everywhere. In short, U.S. legal citizens aren't all good people who shouldn't be cleansed of committing illegal traffic acts they make business with other countries.
Let's not forget the illegal traffic of firearms, how could a country illegally own firearms coming from perfectly established U.S. weapon factories without legal insiders buying them legally for them? Yes, I know you'll play the "stolen" card to excuse the fact for all of them.
The fact that we're here does kinda suggest that we have free time to burn, after all.
At Xmas+1? Free time? *insert foreveralone jokes here*
Then again prostitution has been, and would be always one choice women are forced to make in face of the humane needs to be alive. The fact that they are kidnapped and raped or sold somewhere, away from their homeland isn't the real problem, the problem lies on WHY that could happen.
Covering the sun with a finger won't make disappear the fact good and bad people exists everywhere. I know you like to blame ALL Mexicans and ALL Muslims for ALL the bad in the world. But the truth is the reason such illegal channels exists is because the distribution of good and bad people, while altered by socioeconomically elements, exists everywhere. In short, U.S. legal citizens aren't all good people who shouldn't be cleansed of committing illegal traffic acts they make business with other countries.
Let's not forget the illegal traffic of firearms, how could a country illegally own firearms coming from perfectly established U.S. weapon factories without legal insiders buying them legally for them? Yes, I know you'll play the "stolen" card to excuse the fact for all of them.
I'm by no means protecting criminals in the US. In fact, my biggest complaint is that we are too easy on criminals who go through that revolving door of a justice system where we release them only for them to do the same crime as soon as they get out (you wouldn't belive how many people we catch just by surveilling them hours after their release). However, in issues that you were discussing, foreign involvement is the primary catalyst that allows these crime syndicates to function. Criminals from the US doing crime in foreign countries is neglible compared to foreign citizens doing crime here. In addition, nearly the last century the US has pretty much been doing free policing work and training foreign countries military and police (something I am against because we are letting other countries exploit us at no benefit to ourselves), we are overwhelmingly a boon to countries than a bane. This is evident in that the amount of money that US based criminal organizations make is domestically sourced, while foreign criminal organizations make their money from US dollars. Foreign criminal factions are overwhelmingly a problem for us than it is for anyone else.
As far as firearms, there are two aspects to that. One is that the US arm our allies as a result of the containment doctrine where we don't want to put all our resources in an allies defense, but we do want to aid them. This is something all first world countries do and there is nothing wrong about it. However, who we consider our allies and enemies officially varies depending on who is in office. As an example, during the Republican adminstrations Israel is considered a key ally in the fight against muslim terrorists. In contrast, during the Democrat adminstrations they are considered a "bad player" and must watch target. For example, during the Bush Adminstration we disarmed Iran. During Obama adminstration we armed Iran.
The second aspect is that illegal firearms around the world come from only two sources. Military/Gov surplus, and Shop Built. It is practically nonexistant for illegal firearms to come from firearm factories because they make so much in government and citizen sales that to risk that for a relatively small couple hundred thousand dollar illegal arms deal is too great for a multi-million dollar companies to risk. Consequentially the firearms you see on TV used by terrorists and crime sysndicates were either recovered from military caches/lost/raided shipments, given to by the government, or clones made in shop. Firearms do not go directly from legal factorys to illegal factions. For this to happen, a third party has to be the intermediate "straw buyer".
Going back to the previous paragraph about how adminstrations matter, During the GWB adminstration we ran operation "Wide Receiver" whose goal was to place bugs on illegal firearms and follow them back to the organizations that were buying them. This successfully lead to the capture of many cartel leaders. Go forward a couple years and the Obama adminstration convered "Wide Receiver" to "Fast and Furious". This operation's goal was not to track the firearms (as the bugs were not used in a great majority of the weapons given), but rather to saturate the criminal market with weapons, and then when a mass shooting were to happen, to use that as the excuse to futher restric firearms. The Obama Adminstration ordered FFL dealers to sell firearms to known criminals who failed the background checks, and thus (going back to the second point) the Obama Adminstration was the straw purchacer for the FFL. This is a criminal act, but no cases have be held against them yet as the adminstration is still currently in control.
So in either situation the answer to me is clear: every country must have responsibly for controling their own borders and keeping the bad guys out. Criminals be it foreign, federal, or citizen must be dealt with swiftly and to the full extent of the law and not allowed to escape to do the same crime twice. Globalism has no place in any nations politics. Poltical correctness has no place in law enforcement. Until these changes are made, we will end up making the same discussion with zero results as we have been doing the past couple of decades. We cannot be afraid to fight crime.
BlastingNaba said:
The fact that we're here does kinda suggest that we have free time to burn, after all.
Christmas? Oh, that time when couples are doing it like rabbits while us ronery single men watch fantasy girls doing moe things? Yeah, I know that time... *weep*
Although actually right now I'm not trying or even want a girlfriend. I have too many things on my plate to be dating. I'm actually typing this at work while we are on standby and trying to finish my lunch that I have been eating on and off the past 5 hours.
Yeah. There's about 500 pages of images that have the "rape" tag in them, and about 100 with the "slave" tag in them. I'm not sure how this is remotely the most shocking thing someone has seen on this site.
So, you're OK with a world-- even a hypothetical one-- where not only the prostitution of frightened young women is not only mainstream, but this sort of thing is OK to expose to your 8-year-old son? And don't say the real world is like this. Yes, there's plenty of trafficking out there, but in the country where this artist comes from, and a lot of other countries, prostitution and slavery is an actively prosecuted crime. I won't judge you if you're turned on by this, but don't judge me or lecture me or tell me "it's subjective" if I'm horrified by this, OK?
Wasn't expecting such a storm of reactions. Before anyone starts telling me I should die in a fire (I hope I do die in a fire) or something I do want it to be clear that I morally object to slavery in reality (I also morally object to pet shops if that wasn't clear enough), I am simply not sure if my objections are right.
My argument is based on historical moral acceptance. Go back a couple hundred years and the majority of people would be more than happy to point you to the nearest slave market. At some point in the future slavery may return to being morally acceptable by the general public, very unlikely but we can't say for certain.
Except the statement was this:
Astrojensen said:
That is just disturbing and wrong.
DarkSpar said:
This isn't wrong, just unacceptable by current moral standards. If they weren't human most people wouldn't even question it. Like a pet shop selling puppies. Thinking of them as androids might make it more palatable to you.
Whether something is socially acceptable or not is not at all the same thing as whether something is morally wrong or not. In that statement, you are conflating social acceptability with morality, which would, again, be Moral Relativism.
(And to be clear, I'm a philosophy nerd that reacts to philosophical statements, I'm not here to preach the moral way to peruse porn.)
To give a real-life historical example, the Ancient Egyptians believed that whether one went to their version of "Heaven" or not was, after passing other trials in the afterlife, ultimately determined by weighing the heart of the deceased against a feather of Ma'at, with those whose hearts sink having their existence fed to a crocodile-like beast. This isn't "seeing if your heart is as light as a feather" however, Ma'at was the deity of social order, and her test was one of social acceptability. Basically, whether you go to Heaven or get eaten by a demon beast is determined by the people in your neighborhood. Whether you believed your actions were moral or they adhered to any absolute moral code was irrelevant, it was whether or not you could win a popular vote with random yahoos that lived near you. It is essentially The Complainer is Always Wrong to its logical extreme: Conformity is good, individuality will be eradicated.
It should also be stated for the sake of thoroughness that there could, for that matter, be debate over the morality of selling sentient gynoids or even puppies. (And you then go into doing so, yourself...) To get Ghost in the Shell for a second, if robots can pass a Turing Test, then the definition of what is a "real human" deserving of rights and what is "just property" becomes a really flimsy one. (A concept played with in GitS by saying humans have souls, even if they happen to download their brains into multiple robot body copies of themselves, while those "born" as robots never can...)
However, that's beating around the bush, and a cursory look at this artist shows they are clearly enamored with the idea of sexual slavery in particular. (For some reason, in this world full of slaves, they're never male, they're always naked or nearly so, and never being used for labor...) To say this is a social statement or that it would be just like puppies is obviously missing the point.
DarkSpar said: On the topic of relativistic morality I am not sure if there is an absolute right set of moral values, but I am willing to accept that there might be. However I have no idea how to determine what it would be, since my own view is shared by nobody that I've met.
Do you truly have such strange moral guidelines?
As social creatures humans instinctively understand and desire at least a few basic norms they can all agree upon. Even the most depraved psychopath at least understands that having a functioning society around themselves is preferable to having a murderfest where all human interaction is defined by violence. (They would, at least, care about their own safety, and will need to sleep at some point...)
DarkSpar said: Why not? Pet shops sell living beings for money, they don't ask why the person is buying the puppy. A shop selling teenagers would also presumably not ask questions. For all they are concerned the girls are being sold to be someone's daughter(s), and the purchaser chose not to go to an orphanage (like going to an animal shelter for a puppy) and adopt because they wanted something specific. Is the comparison a stretch? A little, but buying a pet dog and buying a pet human are still quite similar... And selling men wouldn't be that different, probably even have some for sale at the same shop, just using the girls as a display.
Depending on locality, they may well ask questions about who is buying animals. Many nations have laws specifically protecting animals, as well as laws requiring the spaying or neutering of animals which would also then entail veterinary care...
Beyond that, to go back to the topic of slavery, however, things aren't as cut-and-dry as you would like to make them out to be.
A great many societies have practiced slavery, however few societies ever actually wholly believed the practice was actually moral... just those who directly profited from the practice convinced themselves it was moral. Because of some basic facts of economics, a society that is almost totally comprised of either slaves or slave-owners is simply unsustainable. Slaves are always expensive things, because, again, of some basic facts of economics. (It's basically like saying that everyone should either be millionaire factory owners or bulters/maids... someone has to do some of the other jobs in society that can't afford to own other whole other people. Someone has to work those factories, and there are relatively few jobs slaves are suited towards doing, what with not wanting to be slaves or do someone else's bidding and all...)
I could write an awful lot more on the topic, but to try to keep this as (relatively) brief as possible, I would point out the book Debt: The First 5000 Years by David Graeber, which spends a very large amount of time talking about how slavery, coinage, and debt were intertwined. In particular, he talks about how the concept of debt was turned into a moral term for the express purpose of, essentially, making anything terrible that happens to poor people their own fault for being poor. (If someone breaks into your home and steals your things, they are criminals. If someone forces you into a loan you cannot repay, demands repayment, then breaks into your home and steals your things, you are a criminal because you didn't pay your debt to this person, even if it wasn't your fault for being in their debt.) In spite of the popular perception that slavery was overwhelmingly the result of military prisoners, historically, slavery was overwhelmingly the result of debt. The laws of the land would be changed to suit the needs of the slavers in charge. For example, when Balinese girls became fashionable as sex slaves in the capital,
David Graeber said:
As Adrian Vickers explains, even Bali's famous cockfights — so fa- miliar to any first-year anthropology student — were originally promot- ed by royal courts as a way of recruiting human merchandise:
Kings even helped put people into debt by staging large cock- fights in their capitals. The passion and extravagance encour- aged by this exciting sport led many peasants to bet more than they could afford. As with any gambling, the hope of great wealth and the drama of a contest fuelled ambitions which few could afford and at the end of the day, when the last spur had sunk into the chest of the last rooster, many peasants had no home and family to return to. They, and their wives and children, would be sold to Java.
The rules of debt payment were rewritten specifically so that if a man went into debt, his daughters, sisters, wife, or other relatives were sold as slaves to repay his debt first, before he paid repercussions directly... because the point of the system was explicitly to force people into slavery. (The infamous West African Slave Trade was even more stacked against the native populace, as the whole social structure put in place at the behest of the Europeans was based upon the notion that they had to fill a slave quota, and any wrongdoing - even completely fabricated ones - would be met with enslavement. If the people put in charge of this system failed to meet this quota, they and their own families would be taken as slaves, so they had all the reason in the world to be corrupt. The European slave traders, meanwhile, found they had little market in Europe itself, because the common classes found the slave trade morally repugnant after it had been visited upon them in the not terribly distant past... It was only the new lordlets of the New World that would buy.)
Keep in mind that most slavery was not racially divided as it was in the Americas. Most societies that had slaves had slaves of their own ethnicity, and the vast majority of the people lived in fear that they could fall into debt to some lord who could claim their families as their slaves and do with them as they willed. Many free people had relatives or even ancestors who were slaves. When the shoe could so easily be put on the other foot, do you really think they would so cavalierly treat the notion of slavery as moral?
In this world the artist draws, that boy's mother was probably also a slave bought this way. This seems to be a world in which ALL relations with the other sex is inherently a master-slave one... and do you really think that absolutely 100% of people would have zero problems watching their own mothers being whipped or sold when she gets too old to be sexually gratifying? It is apparently a world entirely comprised of psychopaths only capable of empathy towards their own gender.
And yes, that's thinking a little too hard about the ramifications of something nobody would generally think about... but, well, you're pushing philosophy into the conversation, and I'm responding.
That was a good read. A point well made. To your comment about slavery and economics, Social Darwinism is probably what you were thinking of. I actually belive in Social Darwinism but in its truest sense. The people who are rich are the best fit for the economic spectrum they reside in, but just like biological Darwinism, in a truly capitalistic society no one is static in their SES. Tomorrow the poor may be the rich, and the rich the poor if one innovates while the other stagnates. One reason government should never be involved in domestic trade, since there is the poential for politicall pulling power to suppress innovation that could compete with the establishment businesses.
The founder of Uber had a talk a couple years ago about how Taxi and Public Transportion Labor Unions would get the local governments to stop Uber operation in order to prevent their taxi drivers for going for the higher pay of Uber and prevent customers from using the lower costs of Uber, and on the public transportation side, avoid losing funding by the government for losing relevence to the more affordable and convient private transportation.
OK, there's kind of a lot being said in this thread, but it's already late and I've already written more than most people would care to read, so I'm just going to respond to one more thing I can't let go without response before going to sleep...
79248cm/s said:
That said, just because something is "below" you, doesn't mean you can't treat them well. The slaves of the south for example were overwhelmingly treated very well (often better than the conditions of indentured servants)
OK, this is a LOT to unpack, and there's a TON that comes after it, but I want to start with this notion that being a slave was great compared to being an indentured servant...
This statement is basically like saying, "For example, being burned alive is much better than being impaled on a meat hook, because you'll die much faster that way." It's something that obfuscates the gravity of the situation purely through the magic of being a situation so outlandish to us that people generally lack the context to form any empathy for anyone in such a situation.
First off, "Indentured Servitude" is essentially just marketing PR BS. "Indentured servitude" is slavery with a fancy name slapped on to make it seem "not as bad" as "real" slavery. (Especially since that makes it less morally repugnant when white people do it to other white people!) "Indentured servants" were people with some form of "debt". Sometimes, this was incurred willingly for the purposes of paying the seafare over, but it more often was not. Free citizens of the colonies could be turned into "Indentured Servants" if they could ever be compelled into debt, and debtors in the Old Country could have their debt sold overseas to force them into "Indentured Servitude". (This, incidentally, could also be incurred by fines from a court that could not be payed by those individuals, whether or not there was any actual evidence of wrongdoing or some constable just felt he could make a pretty penny cleaning some "riff raff" off the streets... and yes, there has always been an industrialization of the courts to extract money from the poor who cannot afford to defend themselves.)
"Indentured Servants" were bought and sold exactly as slaves (technically, the debt was what was bought and sold, but the de facto meaning was the same), and treated exactly as slaves. The only difference was that "Indentured Servants" had a time limit on their slavery... exactly the same way that the vast bulk of the rest of slavery practiced by the rest of humanity did. Again, most slavery was debt-based, and slavery was enacted by courts for several years to fulfill an "obligation" created by some "debt" in a way much like a modern criminal "pays their debt to society" through several years in prison.
The difference in treatment, then, is one of a hypothetical abusive person who won't mistreat their regular slaves SO badly that they kill them, but then have the full freedom to do so against someone who they are about to have to turn over because their time as a slave is almost over. If the only thing keeping a slave from being butchered by their master just for the giggles is that they might squeeze more economic benefit out of them by keeping them alive, how well do you think they're going to be treated on a general baseline level? (And that makes the highly dubious presumption the sociopaths have enough self-control to put their cold, hard economic interests first before whatever sadistic passions drive them when we already are in agreement that they're the sort of people who dismember people for the giggles... which has always seemed a rather massive flaw in such economic-based arguments.)
The entire notion of "Indentured Servitude", itself, is honestly quite telling. It shows the underlying lack of moral justification for the whole premise when they need to invent two whole tiers of it just to say one is OK because there's something else that's hypothetically worse, except when we need to justify that worse thing by saying those other people get better treated than this first classification since, hey, economic incentives.
Besides that, it entrenches itself in racism as the dividing line between these two castes of slaves. White people need a special class of not-exactly-called-slaves to belong to in their slavery to keep them above the blacks. The blacks, then, need to be somehow incapable of living on their own so that their slavery is somehow justified into perpetuity. Anthropologically, racism was, if not invented to help justify the slave trade, at least vastly intensified for that purpose. To paraphrase a pre-American Civil War quote of a preacher, "If we are to practice slavery, then we must believe that the slaves are less than human, for if we did not, then we would be forced to believe ourselves less than Christian." The book Lies My Teacher Told Me goes into this concept in rather thorough detail. (It's also where I found that quote.)
79248cm/s said: Is it not the best?! This is like the only place where moe can mix with the IRL world and frankly discussions here are far more civilized and productive than any court or political field I have seen.
But I fail to see the correlation between some of the discussion and a fictional fetish image that triggered a morality discussion. It's a fetish and not a real thing. I just find it hypocritical of the guy who say it is disturbing and wrong and all but stumbles on such a hentai image in the first place lol. I am like what and suddenly it transcends into a morality discussion lol in a hentai image site(mostly nsfw that have tags). I don't even think anyone who could be so shallow and say that is wrong and disturbing/hating the artist/criticizing a fetish in such a shallow matter about a fetish on a hentai image site could ever understand such deep philosophical discussion here is what made me laughed.
Also well I never prevent anyone from going all full discussion. Just to comment that I laughed only at the irony of morality discussion in a pornographic image/fetish, that's all lol.
That said, imma start fapping to the comments instead.
wow it's the first time to see so many comments in this site. From the source pixiv page seems no such mortal discussion and little people feel the picture is disgusting. interesting...
Incredible how you excuse everything only to justify a chauvinistic hatred towards everyone non American. First those who brought slaves to America were the colonies themselves. Yes you could argue the British were first all you want, but the truth is established America continued the event chain to where we are now, including the illegal traffic of people worldwide and coming from U.S. legal citizens (making pacts with more legal citizens everywhere else).
Second, the reason America sticks their noses on other countries' business is so they can have control over them. They won't let Japan have a powerful army again, they also fear the Yuan could grow strong over the U.S. Dollar. They won't let their "allied" nations alone because they could be a threat to U.S. economy.
And with weapons is not different, why close the most profitable business the U.S. has? Selling weapons to "allies", declare them "enemies" next so they can sell even more weapons to new "allies" and repeat. We all could say U.S.A. is both part root of good and evil this planet has. But of course that won't let you sleep peacefully. Keep blaming the Afroamerican, Hispanic and Muslim then.
Moral grandstanding really is found in the strangest places. If people cared about their own communities and social circles as much as they do about things like this I wonder what kind of world we would be living in.