Slavery is Also an Affront to Human Exceptionalism
Slavery is evil because it treats human beings as if they were mere objects to be used for work, sex, or other purposes of the slave "holder." In doing so, the slave holder shatters the intrinsic human worth of both the slave and the "master," since treating humans this way is, in fact, anti human. Thus slavery is also a relevant concern for Secondhand Smoke. Apparently human trafficking is getting out of hand in the Ukraine (along, apparently, with everything else).
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 1:23 PM
11 Comments
11 Comments:
Okay, this may sound strange, but it's something that bugs the heck out of me.
A number of people are involved in a socio-sexual form of slavery where one member of a partnership (or traid, or whatever, depending on the flavor you like) voluntarily surrenders all control and becomes, for all intents and purposes, a slave to the other person.
There's a lot of literature out there defending the status, explaining that spankings, punishments, etc. are designed to bond the master and slave together, rather than to objectify the slave, and practitioners, both masters and servants, are firmly opposed to forced slavery, such as that in the Ukraine and in other countries where kidnapped victims are abused, etc.
If you were to talk to some of the masters about the intrinsic value of their slaves, they would say that yes, each slave has a value based on his own existence, and that their relationship enhances taht value - the slave becomes a sort of "prized possession" that the master feels obligated to pamper and protect.
Where do these cases fall in regards to this subject, especially here on Secondhand Smoke?
Just for the record, I'm opposed to this kind of mentality - why be in a relationship if it's not a meeting of equals? It's user behavior "justified" by the sexual glamour of it, in my humble opinion.
First. Tabs, I'm old. That is WAY beyond my frame of reference. (Good thing too or Secondhand Smokette would kill me). Second, self degredation for sexual satisfaction isn't what I am talking about. These people aren't real slaves as I understand what you are describing--meaning they could leave any time they wanted, they wouldn't be killed or beaten if they tried to leave, etc.
As to relationships, I'm with you.
Wesley:
"First. Tabs, I'm old."
...you are?
>>Wesley J. Smith was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA, where he practiced law from 1976-1985, during which time he was a partner in his own law firm and served on several bar association committees, including the California State Bar Committee on Public Affairs.<<
Oh.... Dude, I wasn't even BORN in 1976!
Well... Stop acting so damn young then! Heaven help me, I thought you were like in your early 40's.
Anyway, I just wondered if that kind of thing qualified because I'd always been under the impression that it had, and I appreciate your clarification. So, I shall be hiding under the bed if anybody needs me...
I am wondering what your take on the new BBC story of allegations of ESC harvesting from live babies in the ukraine will be. The General European Counsel is taking them seriously and in a report on this said that they found a culture of human traficcing and it is tied to the previous allegations about children bbeing snatched at birth in a Kharkev hospitable.
Raskolnikov, what was the connection betw. human trafficking and the newborn-snatching report supposed to be? I'm curious, because that sounds incredibly sinister. (Heck, _everything_ out of the Ukraine sounds incredibly sinister these days. What the dickens is wrong with that place??) Is the idea that these are trafficked prostitutes whose newborns are being taken? That would tie together, as the slavers wouldn't want the "girls" burdened with babies.
I will just say that the libertarians who hold that all would be well if we legalized and "regulated" prostitution so that it is always entered "willingly" as "legitimate sex work" are living in a dangerous dream world. The best work on this has been done by Donna Hughes at the University of Rhode Island, I believe. She's the only professor of "Women's Studies" I've ever heard of who seems to me to be _adding_ to the stock of human knowledge rather than _subtracting_ from it. :-)
R: I blogged the Ukraine baby story when it first came out. And, Tabs verified that I am old. Early baby boomer, don't you know. (Yes, that does explain a lot, doesn't it?)
The issue I am raising is the seeming increase over various areas of concern of treating human beings and/or nascent organisms as objects. To some degree we have always done so, of course. But I thought we were supposed to be improving on that score and I detect an awful lot of back sliding.
As to prostitution, let's not go there. I don't want Secondhand Smoke picked up by some unsavory search engine in the X rated categroy.
I think the increase in human trafficking and the way it is being treated by certain activists are indeed signs of "backsliding" particularly in the area of the strong preying on the weak. Here the concept of legalization of that p- activity (abbreviation to avoid search engine pickup) is very relevant. It is astonishing how much acceptance of outright slavery and even the abuse of minors in that activity one finds in a certain kind of "world aid" worker. Some have made out-and-out deals with slavers not to tell the enslaved women how to escape in order to get access to them with "health" information. I have blogged about this under the heading of "Choice Devours Itself" over at Right Reason. My posts are all listed under my name at the right. Secondhand Smoke seems to have a little trouble with pasted URL's, so I won't try.
Lydia,
Right Reason looks very interesting. I don't want to distract from the point that Wesley Smith is making so I recommend googling "Ukraine babies in stem cell probe". I don't think in this case it is necessarily about women i the sex trade but rather that in a general environment of human traficking, there have been babies snatched from mothers that gave birth in this hospital in Kharkev that Wesley Smith discussed and now they have apparently found the corpses of babies dismembered. When the mothers asked where their babies were the staff said they were dead. When they asked to see them the staff refused and there has been repeated stonewalling of this sort. As far as this touches on the topic of this thread, the report was discussing the commodification of not only umbilical chord stem cells but also embryonic stem cells from aborted foetuses that are sent over seas to the Barbadoes where wealthy US women go to get beauty treatments using the remains of dead babies. Talk about vanity! How can people stop objectifying and commodifying human life. I am sure it seems to many like doing that would be an abandonment of science out of weakness. (I put a link to Right Reason on my favorites It looks excellent. I am curious to read about Donna Hughes too. Good arguments against libertarian enablement are valuable.)
But that is such a gross weakness! I certainly believe in slippery slopes morally and physically. Materialists methodically makje themselves unable to acknowledge such spiritual moral realities in a coherent framework but that is because they have pathologized their methodology to the point that it begins to crippled them as persons and distort their moral outlook, it seems to me. So they objectify away and decry the anti-knowledge of morality. Raising whether we may after all do eugenics as Richard Dawkins for instance does to me seems to indicate a derailed logic that is like a runaway train that has lots its bearing. The heirarchies of delusional evolution begin to be raised again that are the working apparatus for eugenics and the lowest on the totem pole are the most objectified so they can be dismantled for the greater good in the sick, hubristic calculus of the damned.
I think we should ask whether the thesis that humans are exceptional is sufficient to rule out slavery and other affronts to individual human worth and dignity.
It seems to me that it needs to be supplemented by an outright denial of all forms of utilitarianism or consequentialism. It needs to be a specific version of human exceptionalism according to which each individual man is intrinsically valuable.
It would be possible to acknowledge and even stress that man, the race, is exceptional and higher than the animals while simply coupling this with old-fashioned utilitarianism according to which what we do should maximize _human_ happiness. This would allow us to "justify" all sorts of horrors in the individual case on utilitarian grounds.
Preach it, Lydia!
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