[ExI] History of Slavery

[Fred C. Moulton]

On Mon, 2007-05-28 at 21:46 -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:
> The Quakers started it, but it spread quickly (because of the reasons, I
> guess, that Thomas Sowell puts forth), and the most important point is
> that for some reason it really galls the left  that anti-slavery was solely an
> invention of the West, and even today is only vaguely supported by
> non-Western cultures. Moreover, any support for anti-slavery in non-
> Western countries can be traced to Western influence.

My understanding is that in Buddhist teachings slavery is usually
considered to be not in accord with the "Right Means of Livelihood"
teaching in the  Eightfold path.  See:
http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/bud-ser1.html
Although there seems to have been some Buddhists who broke with the
teaching and held slaves at various points historically.  Dating the
exact timing of the "First Sermon" is difficult however it appears to be
several centuries before some of the Greek Stoics condemned slavery.
However we need to be cautious since we are dealing with ancient
history.  My point is not that the first opposition to slavery necessary
came from either India or Greece rather that we need to be very careful
about these kinds of questions and also the interpretation and
application of the results.

There are several websites which contend that in the year 9 AD the
Chinese ruler Wang Mang tried (but was not totally successful) to
abolish either slave trading as a particular activity or slavery in
general  (the websites I found were not in agreement on this; some said
one thing and some said another).  Given that it was about 2000 years
ago I suspect that nailing it down precisely might be difficult.  He
also tried to do land reform which was not successful.

> So much for their demonization of the West.

And can we please drop these overly broad usages of "the left said this"
or "the right said that".  This is the Extropian discussion list and I
suggest we all aim for a higher level of discourse.   Overly broad
statements about "the left" and "their demonization of the West" is the
sort of overblown rhetoric I would expect from Fox News; not on an
Extropian list.

Fred


> Lee
> 
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