First things first. Im not trying to create some "christian standard" for morality. If Im doing anything, I suppose, its a Kantian exercise, trying to create a priori moral understanding of a subject so we can talk about its existence in game. You have no idea what my religion is, or if I even have one, by design.
Christian as a christian society. I included myself in the lot and being at the same time hanging between agnosticism and atheism RL. Yes, I have a christian upbringing, but that does not make me also a christian believer. Hell, I have even been baptized when I was a child and asked my parents why several times since ive never believed, and them not so much. It's just a question of societal traditions and structure, as well as education, etc. Even the calendar is a christian one, and even if the state tried to changed that after the Revolution, it finally didnt last past 10 years.
So no, I was definitly not assuming you were a believer or anything. I apologize considering how unclear I was, and also made the mistake to believe that you were also from a christian upbringing (culture again, not faith). I could have used western society instead, it would be the same. I assumed that you are from that upbringing right ?
Look, lets be clear here if a player needs slavery to be good and/or beneficial or even neutral to enjoying playing Amarrian characters, then your never going to be able to enjoy playing your character.
I wonder if anyone ever stated that ? Everywhere in this thread I have seen amarr proponents saying imaginary things like "assuming that slavery means that all slaves are mistreated is a fallacy" and opponents answering "assuming that slave abuses never happen is stupid", where it was actually not the point of anyone. Actually, everyone seems to agree on that. Cf Esna post where it is mostly a matter of :
Some people like to see the Empire's practice of slavery as the majority desiring being the faithful conversion of the Minmatar, with some minority indeed doing very bad things to their charges.
Some people like to see the Empire's practice of slavery as a means to abuse and provide a free and easily exploited underclass, with some minority actually intending to care for and uplift their charges.Of course, I can understand what makes you say that (and I definitly agree with you on this) : I know a lot of Amarr players that try to make the amarr look the best possible in their eyes because they can't accept what slavery implies in regards to their western/christian view and morality.
Your statement of "I couldnt tell you that slavery isnt abusive OOC, but I want to talk about non-abusive slavery" is part of the problem. If you create a make believe world that has no bearing on peoples historical and moral understanding, then people are going to react to it like its just that, make-believe.
What ? I am sorry but I never said that...
It just seems to be that some Amarrian players need slavery to be viewed positively or at least neutrally to enjoy playing their character. And thats simply not going to happen. People have a visceral negative reaction toward slavery. And I would say that if you need slavery to in anyway redeemable then dont play Amarr. You would enjoy another race more.
It just seems to me that a lot of players are putting forth descriptions of Amarrian slavery that doesnt jive with our historical, cultural, and popular understanding (or misunderstanding, as the case may be) of what slavery is. It doesnt make sense to me to say "well, Amarrians sexually abusing their slaves would never happen" because sexual exploitation has always been a factor of slavery when its occurred throughout history through a vast different number of cultures. Its part of what slavery IS.
There is a lot of confusions in that part in my opinion.
Yeah, a lot of Amarrians, especially liberals, do not like what slavery implies as I said above, and try to work around it instead of finding real justifications for it. Instead of embracing it as it is, they try to minimize or twist the concept.
And yes, of course sexual abuses are part of what slavery is. Sexual abuses are part of life, period. Sexual abuses in the context we speak in comes from a hierarchy syndrome, where the superior abuses the inferior. It happens everywhere, at work everyday, at home, whatever. Believing that slavery somehow facilitates the process is a fallacy, I think. It only does it when rules preventing it are non existing, laxist, or not applied. The exact same way hierarchy facilitates it when rules are not correctly applied IRL at work.
For example recently in France we had the only law that concerned sexual harassement at work completely scratched out of the law because it happened that it was outdated, and especially vague and a source of discrepancies. So we ended up with no law on the matter. They are currently working on it to recreate a new one. Guess how women feel at the moment at work ?
What prevents a society based on slavery to have enforced rules on the matter ? What prevents such society to have rules preventing slave owners to fuck their slaves because its seen as dirty, degrading, and totally unethical, while at the same time having breeding colonies like they breed cattle ?
That's what makes New Eden interesting. It's grimdark, but ambiguously grimdark, not grimdark for the sake of being grimdark, or its not even grey anymore, it just becomes pitch black.
So, eventually, yes, I couldn't find any reason to tell you otherwise that I consider OOCly slavery as abhorent and unethical as hell. But as I said, christian upbringing here. But I can tell you however, that I believe there are countless other forms of slavery with the exact same consequences and ethical issues in the world which are not seen the same way, precisely because of that christian morality. We all know what christians were in the Roman Empire when they started to spread everywhere, right ? No surprise that their views on slavery are so strong. It is part of our history and our culture.
And yet we did it again in our colonies because we did not considered them as our kin.
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Topic: Slavery discussion (Read 33767 times)