this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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It's really sad how lionized Lee is despite being worse than average even by slaver standards.
Like, history is my center of interest. I am acutely aware that morals and norms are deeply contextual things, and that most people will grow up absorbing the morals and norms of the time and place.
But how can someone be such a piece of shit that their own slave overseer refuses to carry out their orders? The man's job is literally to brutalize slaves, and HE thinks you've gone too far?
I mean, shit, at least lionize some blinkered fanatic like Stonewall Jackson. He was a slaver, but at least he was willing to break the law for the sake of treating slaves more humanely, rather than less humanely. It doesn't absolve him from being a slaver at a time when it was increasingly clear that slavery was not some fundamental piece of existence, but it at least absolves him of being worse than his fucking peers.
The only reason that “morals are deeply contextual” is that average people are dumb as shit in all the ways that matter. Moral reasoning is similar to mathematics, but whereas we have formalized math, which people study in school for 12+ years (and are still terrible at it), morality is a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants-and-do-your-best endeavor.
That’s why there’s such a discrepancy between the opinions of ethicists and those of average people. Why we had slavery for 10,000 years, why Trump was elected. Why billionaires, religions, and cruise ships exist. Because average people are dumb as shit in all the ways that matter, and no discipline in the world reminds us just how close the average human is to a mindless animal than ethics.
We had slavery for thousands of years because the enlightenment occurred only a few hundred years ago and it brought about the concept of liberalism (not like liberal/conservative but liber like short for liberty or liberate - meaning freedom). Up until that point there was only basic pathos that would allow people to feel bad for a slave's conditions but usually not to the extent that it would lead to a full abolition movement.
Yes. There were countless folks of every generation since time immemorial begging their fellow humans to use basic reasoning to see the evil of their actions. To no avail. It took thousands of years of social progress and education to convince (a plurality of) people of the most rudimentary and blatant moral facts. Because the average human is dumb as shit about everything that matters.