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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   26445 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023

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The idea that Ted Kaczynski is a good emissary of antitechnological thought needs to die.

Was John Brown a good emissary of Abolitionist thought? If your arguments are correct, they should apply to Brown as well, no? There's a pretty clear split happening here of "effective at advancing values" versus "persuasive in a polite conversation about abstractions". Not all people rate these two traits equally, and they tend to trade off against each other.

Would it be fair to say that your core assumption here is that the Civil War was a standard-deviation or three out from the optimal solution-space?

You describe Brown's results in negative terms: he sidelined other forms of resistance, exacerbated existing tensions, didn't resolve anything, divided rather than unified. Only, it seems to me that what he actually did was polarize the situation: he made it abundantly clear that the existing conditions could not last, and that something had to be done one way or the other. That unified each side within itself, even if it grew less united across the aisle.

Five years from his execution, Slavery in America was done. Not winding down, not slowly declining, not coming to a middle, not hotly contested, but ended decisively and permanently for so long as the society he operated within might survive. The cost was high, but it could be and in fact was paid. It seems hard to imagine that he himself would not see this as a near-optimal outcome, and many of his contemporaries seemed to see it likewise.

“But when John Brown stretched forth his arm, the sky was cleared. There was an end to the argument. The time for compromises was gone, and to the armed hosts of freedom, standing above the chasm of a broken Union, was committed the decision of the sword. The South at once staked all upon getting possession of the Federal Government, and failing in that, she drew the sword of rebellion, and thus made her own, and not John Brown’s, the lost cause.”

  • Fredrick Douglas

But in every other state in the world where slavery used to be practiced, it was dismantled without civil war. I'd say that puts Brown's legacy into question rather strongly.

Every other state in the world where slavery was practiced was not the United States, an extremely vigorous expansionist empire with access to an entire continent's worth of sparsely-populated, effectively undefended land and natural resources, which had embedded slavery deep into the core of its identity and social structure, and which was spreading slavery westward as it expanded.

Maybe the practice would have died off with time. If so, we have no clear idea how long that would have taken. Another generation? Two? The southern states were firmly-enough attached to the practice to be willing to fight a ruinous war to attempt to preserve it, and fixing that the slow way means millions of people living and dying in bondage while the problem sorts itself out.

Nor is there any assurance that the practice would have died out at all. We see the end of slavery and the rise of universalist humanism as an inevitability, because that's the way things went. On the other hand, our timeline benefited from a social consensus forged through miserable warfare and tragedy. Slow-walking the end of slavery would not have that benefit, and it is not obvious to me why we should believe that without that consensus slavery's end would have been equally inevitable.

Wait a minute. Most of the "sparsely-populated, effectively undefended land" in the US is prairie, mountains, deserts etc., which is all unsuited for chattel slavery. On a different note, Brazil also has enormous quantities of sparsely-populated, effectively undefended land as well, and much more African slaves were trafficked there than to North America, and yet slavery ended there peacefully.

I understand that we can make all sorts of arguments on how US history could have turned out much worse this particular way or that particular way. But I think the important point to make in this context is that hundreds of thousands of war dead could have been spared.

Most of the "sparsely-populated, effectively undefended land" in the US is prairie, mountains, deserts etc., which is all unsuited for chattel slavery.

Why? Not enough cash-crop/resource value in the land?

On a different note, Brazil also has enormous quantities of sparsely-populated, effectively undefended land as well, and much more African slaves were trafficked there than to North America, and yet slavery ended there peacefully.

A fair counter-point. On the other hand, was brazil's approach and attitude toward Africans at all similar to that of America? It's hard to imagine American culture, north or south, producing Ham's Redemption.

But I think the important point to make in this context is that hundreds of thousands of war dead could have been spared.

And those lives spared are trading off directly against the millions continuing to live and die in bondage, with a good many of those spared being the very people benefiting from and enforcing that bondage. It's not obvious that the tradeoff would be worth it.

Not enough cash-crop/resource value in the land?

Yes.

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