YES -- though "most" was never a true statement, not even in classical times.
Yes. Most is a true statement. If you are saying most the world didn't practice slavery in the past, you are wrong, Very wrong.
It was practiced on every continent in every part of the world by well over 50% of the cultures of the world. Slavery was practiced in Asia by the Chinese and Japanese and even the Koreans. It was practiced in Europe by the Icelandic peoples, specifically Viking raiders, the Portugese, and just about every culture. It was practiced in the Amercas by many of the native tribes that would take their captured enemies as slaves when they didn't outright kill them. And it was heavily practiced in Africa by the tribal cultures there often for the same reason as the American tribal cultures. Same thing with South America and Central America by the Aztecs, Mayans, and Incas.
Also as stated practiced by the Middle Eastern peoples, specifically the Persian empire. It was practiced Rome, Babylon, Egypt, Israel, and amongst the Mongols and in India.
This does not change the answer above one iota. My answer is still resoundingly and unflinchingly "YES".
How we do love to judge the people of the past with modern sensibilities. I doubt you would have even known slavery was wrong in the past. It would have been part of life back then like killing during war or raiding and pillaging other groups.
No - your answer is that. Mine remains a clear and unequivocal "YES".
I am certain that unless you are prepared to change your view on this matter that we will never, ever, agree on this point.
I am not prepared to change my viewpoint because someone decides they can judge the past by the present. It tooks human beings thousands of years to decided slavery was wrong. I highly, highly doubt all those people in the past you claim were evil, were evil.
You have little respect for history. You judge it based on modern values with no idea what it was like to live in the past or what you would believe. I find your presumptions misguided.
Moreover, were any modern state to purport, in this day and age, to re-establish the institution of slavery and condone the sale of a human being, at auction, to another as chattel? That is a nation that I will do everything in my power - legal or otherwise -- up to and including personally committing acts of terrorism and cold-blooded murder -- to see its ruling class and slaveowners wiped from the very face of the earth at the point of a gun -- my gun -- if necessary. This is not a negotiable point.
I wouldn't willingly die for much - but I would die for that. It's at the very top of a very short list, in fact.
No. You would most likely not die rising up against slavery. You would most likely do as you do nowdays and have little to no power to change the world as it was around you. You would be a part of it. Quite possibly a slave owner if you were born into a powerful, high born family, possibly a free man with no connection to slavery whatsoever, or a slave, possibly taken when your particular tribal or cultural group was conquered. Or maybe wandering the plains in some tribal culture lucky no group has shown up on your doorstep to attack you.
People would vary greatly as they do now. You wouldn't be able to judge them evil save bassed on their own actions. You might even find some slave owners loved by their slaves. Which a person with your modern sensibilities would have trouble processing.
Judging people of the past by your modern values is a useless exercise. And you are quite wrong that all the people of the past are evil. Quite, quite, extraordinarily wrong. Many of these people you accuse of being evil, built many good things you benefit from now in terms of thinking and improving the world's philosophy on life.
Life was what it was in the past. And it took humans thousands of years of life just to come to what they are now. No longer accepting of slavery, but still very warlike and so paranoid of each other they have created weapons capable of wiping out the entire human race.
This was an attempt to provide you with some education on slavery and its past. You turned it into an argument of moral absolutism on your part, arrogantly presumptive that you know all the people of the past that engaged in slavery were evil. You don't. You never will know. You are an arrognt, moral absolutist with little to no respect for history.
As far what I told you to do, I leave my opinion their for others. Judge a slave owner by how he treats his slaves as to whether he is good or evil or lawful. Not by the act of slavery itself, which is a part of most of human history for thousands of years. It has been less than two centures that slavery was abolished worldwide for the most part (though it exists in certain parts of the third world still though named differently), and humans have existed for untold thousands of years. And all those people, moral absolutists or not, were not evil and did not think of themselves as evil and will not be judged as evil save by modern day moral absolutists that think they can somehow assume they would have known slavery was wrong even if they lived in a culture where it was considered an accepted form of human treatment.
I am done with the "debate", I use the word losely since you weren't debating, you were attempting to shove your opinion down my throat. You weren't looking for guidance on how to handle this matter in a game world. You were looking for people that accept your moral absolutist opinion. If that had been the case, why did you even bother posting? I'll probably never know. You had already decided slavery was evil, why ask if you have your own answer already set in stone if your head?
Your answer for how to handle slavery was already there. Make all players that would use a slave in your game world evil no matter how many good acts they do or how they treat their slaves or what gods they pray to. None of what they do matters once they have done an act so heinously evil as purchase and have slaves. There's your answer. You stated it yourself. And if it works for you and your players, great. Do so even if it gets you banned. Make a stand on it even in a fantasy game world. Don't let those gamers that like accurate world history get in your way, take a stand and impose your moral will upon the game world. Maybe you'll get backing and the PF world will change.
