If Athens would be evil, how much worse would Sparta be?
Interesting think about Sparta, although it was a Warrior society it seldom started Wars, but it was good at finishing them.
I have my version of Sparta already, it is a human dominated(20% of the population is human)city with Orc and Goblin Helots(5% Half Orc, 25% Orc and 50% goblin) with the half Orcs tending to be a middle class of tradesmen and craft men.When asked why they are so harsh and militaristic, they reply "How else do you rule Orcs and Goblins, or would you prefer we slaughter them to the youngest child?
If you have a system of objective morality, as Pathfinder and D&D do, the societies and institutions that promote slavery and serfdom have to be considered evil.
That's falling into the old alignment trap of looking at a single action is isolation to determine a character's (or in this case, society's) alignment. Slavery is evil, but it is not the only factor in whether a society as a whole is good or evil. It's as ridiculous as saying that a character is good-aligned because they don't randomly murder orphans.
If you have a system of objective morality, as Pathfinder and D&D do, the societies and institutions that promote slavery and serfdom have to be considered evil.That's falling into the old alignment trap of looking at a single action is isolation to determine a character's (or in this case, society's) alignment. Slavery is evil, but it is not the only factor in whether a society as a whole is good or evil. It's as ridiculous as saying that a character is good-aligned because they don't randomly murder orphans.
For example, a good society that enslaves demons and devils to prevent them from doing their foul work.
The only thing I find immoral about slavery is basing it on race and/or ethnicity. Prisoners are slaves by definition, they lack freedom. The problem is we don't give our prisoners hard labor and an opportunity to prove their worth by doing productive labor, and the chance to earn their freedom. Slavery, yeah, I am very much for it.
Necessary had little to do with it. Slavery made a lot of things easier to accomplish.With technological advancements from the industrial revolution slavery became less and less useful to the point that humanitarian values won out over the convenience of slavery.
An example of that same system of values being used today can be found at your local Walmart. Convenience of cheap goods at the humanitarian cost of sweatshop labor.
I was specifically refuting the idea Kadasbrass Loreweaver presented that slavery was necessary for their society.
That's falling into the old alignment trap of looking at a single action is isolation to determine a character's (or in this case, society's) alignment. Slavery is evil, but it is not the only factor in whether a society as a whole is good or evil. It's as ridiculous as saying that a character is good-aligned because they don't randomly murder orphans.
True I guess, though you peeps seem to include indentured servitude and cultural assimilation as slavery which I don't. For instance I wouldn't consider the Hebrew "slaves" who were freed after a year of paying debts, slaves. That being said I'm not claiming that all non-slavers are good, just that all institutions of slavery are evil.
Demons are an interesting quandary. Essentially if they literally cannot commit good actions without outside intervention then enslaving them is an act comparable to enslaving an animal, as they lack free will. Preventing them from harming others is a good action but that is divorced from whether you do it by enslaving or slaying them. It would only be a good act to keep them in bondage if you were doing so to redeem them and turn them into a risen fiend.
Also Sparta being more or less evil than Athens is hard to really gauge. They are definitely more evil in their practice of slavery due to periodically killing slaves to instill fear in the others. However they treated women like actual people whereas Athens viewed them as property for much of its democratic existence. If the more recent view that Athens was an anomaly among Greek city-states and that most others treated women as well as Sparta did then, Sparta and Athens are neck in neck for worst city-state in terms of alignment.
Interesting discussion point:
How were Indentured Servants (about a half of the first European immigrants to the US) different from Roman debt/bond slaves?
Both served a fixed term to pay off a debt. Both were provided food and shelter, but not necessarily paid other than the service of their debt. Both were considered chattels to some extent and could be "sold". Arguably Roman debt slaves were better treated, as they were exempt from corporal punishment, while indentured servants were not.
NB - not all Roman Slaves were slaves in service to a debt, so this is not more genrally applicable. And I'm also being a little deliberately inflammatory, because discussion is interesting and makes people think.
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Slavery is pretty much always the same. In America, even in the height of chattel slavery, house slaves lived much better lives than northern wage slaves or low income southern farmers. That doesn't mean we have to give them a pass on the immorality of their actions.
Yeah, a lot of people tend to assume all slavery is like 19th century American chattel slavery. Probably because it's the most recent and well-known example.
This just isn't true. Chattel slavery of the sort you're referring to was basically unique in the history of slavery for a few reasons. The most prominent were it's racial component (and the consequent fact that you knew if someone were a slave by looking at them), and the fact that slaves weren't legally human beings or considered that way by most slave owners.
In most slave-owning societies throughout history, neither was true. Slaves were thought of as unlucky people or poor people, but almost never as less than human, or even as less capable, and you were rarely entirely sure that you were dealing with a slave or free servant if you weren't part of the household or hadn't met them before. That causes some rather profound social differences in the nature of free person/slave interactions. Heck, in the later Roman Empire (I'd have to check for the earlier period), slaves had most of the same protections under the law as free people (they were just also legally required to obey their master).
Now, none of that makes slavery a god thing (it's not a good thing at all), but it results in a profoundly different dynamic, and is a lot less Evil than chattel slavery tends to make the practice look.
If you have a system of objective morality, as Pathfinder and D&D do, the societies and institutions that promote slavery and serfdom have to be considered evil. It doesn't necessarily make every single person in them evil and there can be non-evil slave owners. However those people who participate in the culture are non-evil in-spite of an inherently evil system they are in, not because the institution somehow "works" when given to non-evil people.
Most historical slavery and serfdom are actually an excellent comparison, probably morally equivalent, and a definite tick in the 'Evil' column for a society. Though, as others note, one Evil practice probably doesn't an Evil society make.
Indentured servitude (even if called slavery) probably isn't inherently Evil at all, though certain uses of the practice certainly could be.
Indentured servitude (even if called slavery) probably isn't inherently Evil at all, though certain uses of the practice certainly could be.
Yeah, at baseline indentured servitude is really just a labor contract. "I will work for you for X years in exchange for..." Pretty standard stuff.
The problems tended to stem from things that were pretty similar to what happened to wage-slaves. Bond-holders would come up with nasty tricks to keep extending the indenture term, or use people who were near the end of their term as expendable labor to be worked to death. It's not so much that the system itself was inherently evil as it was that the system was easily abused without some kind of oversight.
Interesting discussion point:
How were Indentured Servants (about a half of the first European immigrants to the US) different from Roman debt/bond slaves?
Both served a fixed term to pay off a debt. Both were provided food and shelter, but not necessarily paid other than the service of their debt. Both were considered chattels to some extent and could be "sold". Arguably Roman debt slaves were better treated, as they were exempt from corporal punishment, while indentured servants were not.
NB - not all Roman Slaves were slaves in service to a debt, so this is not more genrally applicable. And I'm also being a little deliberately inflammatory, because discussion is interesting and makes people think.
Debt slave and slave of the same nationality almost always had more rights then foreign slaves. In Jewish law a male Jewish slave had to be freed after 7 years, while the Master had to either marry or free a female Jewish slave after a period of time. And if Jewish slave was injured by his master the master had to pay a fine to the slave or free him.
Might point out there where laws against mistreating a a slaves even in the OLd South. Problem was for the slave to find a Sheriff willing to take a complaint, a Judge willing to here it, and a jury willing to convict.
Heck, in the later Roman Empire (I'd have to check for the earlier period), slaves had most of the same protections under the law as free people (they were just also legally required to obey their master).
If you skip to the middle, here's a post I wrote a while ago with some stuff about the evolution of imperial law regarding slavery.
I think that far enough into the future, our society will look downright evil as wellWhat do you mean "into the future"? We've already past the point where Greed is considered a virtue.
Of the so called Seven deadly sins, I think only Wrath and Envy are not celebrated as virtues today, And Im not sure about those two.
Heck, in the later Roman Empire (I'd have to check for the earlier period), slaves had most of the same protections under the law as free people (they were just also legally required to obey their master).If you skip to the middle, here's a post I wrote a while ago with some stuff about the evolution of imperial law regarding slavery.
And to supplement (It's off topic for the thread, so, spoiler) here's a source or two on the strengthening of legal distinctions between slave-born and freeborn in the late Empire:
May this wickedness be far removed from our times, that it should be believed that poverty has been given as a dishonor to anyone, since often moderate resources have prepared much glory for many, and a rather small property rating has been a testament to self-control! Who would think that Constantine of renowned memory, when he forbade senators to contaminate their marriage couches with the dregs of polluted women, had put the gifts of fortune above natural good qualities and had put riches, which the vicissitudes of fortune are as able to remove as to give, above free birth, which cannot be taken away once it has been inborn?
But that man, who most loved the honorable and was a most holy censor of character, judged those women to be "humble and despicable" persons and considered them as unworthy of marriage with senators, whom either the shameful stain of birth or a life given over to disgraceful occupations has polluted with sordid marks of dishonor and has infected either through the turpitude of origin or the indecency of profession. Therefore, removing all the doubt which has been thrown into the minds of certain people, ... we judge that a "humble and despicable" woman is not at all to be understood as she who, though poor, has nevertheless been born from freeborn parents.
Libertum, qui ad nuptias patronae vel uxoris filiaeque patroni adfectaverit, pro dignitate personae metalli poena vel operis publici coerceri placuit.
(A freed slave who aspires to marriage with his patroness, or with the wife or daughter of his patron, is to be curbed with the penalty of the public works or of the mines according to the rank of that person. - my translation)
The last war Sparta participated in, it started, but Thebes cleaned it's clock so thoroughly that Sparta never took a leadership position again. Although it remained independent until Rome conquered the Grecian peninsula.Interesting think about Sparta, although it was a Warrior society it seldom started Wars, but it was good at finishing them.
Not actually the last time Sparta started a war and subsequently got stomped.