One thing that I find somewhat surprising will all stories involving slavery is how masters are consistently portrayed as assholes in a way that goes further than what would be a "normal" master/slave relationship. Even if you think as a slave not as a human being but as, say, a working dog, or even a nice tool, it is not proper treatment. Most dog owners genuinely love their dogs and don't punish them more than what…
It could be simple memetics. Stories about slaves who are treated in an outrageous manner are more likely to be shared than stories about "nice" slave owners. Such stories might even be mistaken for endorsements of slavery.
So you're trying to tell us that your feeling of uncomfortness is the only thing stopping you from growing a spine and standing up for such an inhumane treatment, that apart from you nobody else can witness? Have some decency and confront your so-called friend. How can people be rich and not have the decency to give the person feeding you and your family a freaking room. And I really had to constrain myself from usin…
> Have some decency and confront your so-called friend. Sounds like you haven't been in this situation. You know, there's often a gap between how good we think we are, and how good we are. I feel terrible about it, and the subject comes up now and again of whether we should say something, and my wife and I feel bad. It's easy to tell people what they should do, I do it all the time as well, even to myself.
There is no question in my mind that I would confront anyone I knew engaging in the situation you're describing. Among my circles, injustices always seem to be a third person. Mostly bosses. Boss doesn't give you a day off despite a month of notice. Boss dicks you around on hours or a promised promotion. The people I consider friends are folks I can talk to about morality. I've grown as a person based on the critical things some friends have told me.
Never anything in the same time zone of FRIEND MISTREATS LIVE IN HELP, MIGHT BE SLAVE, I DIDNT KNOW WHAT TO SAY. This whole thread is hysterical to me. This is a parody of real life, right?
I hate to edge in on godwin territory, but this has reminded me that our society has not grown at all in the last 100 years. We've accreted a card house morality that collapses for SO MANY people at the slightest breeze. Can't let a slave come between friends am I right?
Great read! Many Asian countries have the concept of live-in housekeepers. I think the 'best' (scraping the bottom, here) arrangement is in Singapore, where the government, laws, and law-enforcement ensure that immigrant live-in housekeepers are treated fairly- kinda like au pairs, etc. in the US. I knew someone in India who brought their live-in maid's sister to the US in some capacity (and AFAIK, paid her wages- sh…
Humanity is both so strange and so static. We got 'rid' of slavery in most of the world no later than a century ago. It was bloody and difficult to do, but we managed it. Yet, there are still people living as just the same as slaves century or more ago, in a world of space ships and the internet. Yeah, tech has helped, we don't have smallpox anymore and the mass famines have stopped recently, but the deeper gestal psyche is the same. The old saying of history repeating itself if you do not listen to it comes to mind. But, what can we do, humans are still humans, basically the same for the last ~10k years. No matter how much we want to change, how much time and effort and writing and money and sweat and blood and death and war, we cannot. Its not that we are dystopian now, maybe, its that we have always been so.
> Have some decency and confront your so-called friend. Sounds like you haven't been in this situation. You know, there's often a gap between how good we think we are, and how good we are. I feel terrible about it, and the subject comes up now and again of whether we should say something, and my wife and I feel bad. It's easy to tell people what they should do, I do it all the time as well, even to myself.
Picture yourself telling this story to your kid one day. Then your kid asking you "and what did you do?" Then yourself telling them what you did or what you did not do. If you are honest throughout that mental exercise, your next steps, whatever they may be, should be a lot easier to take.
Going through it in my head now, actually.
It seems there's an opportunity to meet my friend in person soon. I'll use it to ask about what exactly happened. It's not the kind of thing that comes across well electronically, you really need to be there in real time looking at the reaction. It also needs to be managed properly because this friend is in a somewhat fragile state for completely separate reasons. The last time we met this other issue meant nothing else could even be discussed.
But the key takeaway for my kids is his parents aren't perfect. Hopefully he will have learned that in other ways by the time he's old enough to understand this situation.
> Have some decency and confront your so-called friend. Sounds like you haven't been in this situation. You know, there's often a gap between how good we think we are, and how good we are. I feel terrible about it, and the subject comes up now and again of whether we should say something, and my wife and I feel bad. It's easy to tell people what they should do, I do it all the time as well, even to myself.
There is no question in my mind that I would confront anyone I knew engaging in the situation you're describing. Among my circles, injustices always seem to be a third person. Mostly bosses. Boss doesn't give you a day off despite a month of notice. Boss dicks you around on hours or a promised promotion. The people I consider friends are folks I can talk to about morality. I've grown as a person based on the critical…
> There is no question in my mind that I would confront anyone I knew engaging in the situation you're describing. Among my circles, injustices always seem to be a third person.
But there should be a question in your mind unless you've actually confronted something like this yourself (with all of it's associated complexity). Until then, your certainty is only a fantasy.
> Have some decency and confront your so-called friend. Sounds like you haven't been in this situation. You know, there's often a gap between how good we think we are, and how good we are. I feel terrible about it, and the subject comes up now and again of whether we should say something, and my wife and I feel bad. It's easy to tell people what they should do, I do it all the time as well, even to myself.
There is no question in my mind that I would confront anyone I knew engaging in the situation you're describing. Among my circles, injustices always seem to be a third person. Mostly bosses. Boss doesn't give you a day off despite a month of notice. Boss dicks you around on hours or a promised promotion. The people I consider friends are folks I can talk to about morality. I've grown as a person based on the critical…
Well, youre not alone. The poster and people like them are simply selfish, spineless, complicit, or all of the above.
This is the second time a text has brought tears to my eyes. The first was "Where the red fern grows". Read this, it's well written and worth the time.
Yeah I was listening at work and teared up near the end.
There is no question in my mind that I would confront anyone I knew engaging in the situation you're describing. Among my circles, injustices always seem to be a third person. Mostly bosses. Boss doesn't give you a day off despite a month of notice. Boss dicks you around on hours or a promised promotion. The people I consider friends are folks I can talk to about morality. I've grown as a person based on the critical…
> There is no question in my mind that I would confront anyone I knew engaging in the situation you're describing. Among my circles, injustices always seem to be a third person. But there should be a question in your mind unless you've actually confronted something like this yourself (with all of it's associated complexity). Until then, your certainty is only a fantasy.
> Until then, your certainty is only a fantasy.
It's really not. There are many people who don't even have to think about this to understand what the right thing to do is.
>The night ended when she declared that I would never understand her relationship with Lola. Never. Her voice was so guttural and pained that thinking of it even now, so many years later, feels like a punch to the stomach. It’s a terrible thing to hate your own mother, and that night I did. The look in her eyes made clear that she felt the same way about me. The mother makes me wonder if losing your humanity means be…
For a lot of people with experience of abuse, animal relationships are arguably superior to human ones because animals are more emotionally reliable.
Another way to look at this is to consider humans as eusocial animals and speculate on whether someone is more concerned with their identity/position within a given or monolithic social body or their position as a discrete conscious individual. Over time the dichotomy between these positions might result in acute psychic stresses.
There's a conjectural argument that schizoid tendencies are an evolutionary remnant of social organization, most famously explore din Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, which is worth reading even if you reject his thesis.
Great read! Many Asian countries have the concept of live-in housekeepers. I think the 'best' (scraping the bottom, here) arrangement is in Singapore, where the government, laws, and law-enforcement ensure that immigrant live-in housekeepers are treated fairly- kinda like au pairs, etc. in the US. I knew someone in India who brought their live-in maid's sister to the US in some capacity (and AFAIK, paid her wages- sh…
Humanity is both so strange and so static. We got 'rid' of slavery in most of the world no later than a century ago. It was bloody and difficult to do, but we managed it. Yet, there are still people living as just the same as slaves century or more ago, in a world of space ships and the internet. Yeah, tech has helped, we don't have smallpox anymore and the mass famines have stopped recently, but the deeper gestal ps…