Jump to content

[OB] Treatment of the parshman


Lazarus52980

Recommended Posts

3 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

I'd say if the humans wanted a fresh start but the awakened parshmen wanted to enslave humans in retribution, the humans would be fully justified in waging war to them. If the parshmen merely asked for monetary compensation, it's debatable. Certainly they are left stranded without resources but what they could carry on their back, they can ask at least for some equipment. On the other hand, human society just suffered major damage for the everstorm, and it lost what was a reliable and cheap workforce (think if our industrial robots stopped working) and it is unreasonable to assume that they'd also be able to pay huge money on top of everything else.

Let's get even murkier! Who owns the grain in the possession of the healed parshmen? Under Alethi law, it belongs to the villagers in Hearthstone, and the parshmen (in addition to being runaway slaves) are thieves. Kaladin noted that it was a dangerous position for the villagers to be without that grain after the harvest. But maybe the villagers owe the grain to the listeners? Maybe the Let's assume three options:

  1. Listeners keep the grain and survive the next couple months, but this results in many of the villagers dying from starvation.
  2. Villagers get the grain back and don't share. Many of the listeners die from starvation as a result.
  3. Listeners and villagers share the grain. Many survive, but some of the elderly and sick from both groups die due to insufficient nutrition.
    • Note, here I'm assuming the listeners will be more active than they were previously, and thus will require a greater amount of food than they previously did.

Is the a "right" option or just one that's less worse than the others.

1 hour ago, Mulk said:

This is incorrect.  Nearly every legal system I'm aware of holds that ignorance of the law is not an excuse for breaking the law.

...

This, btw, is the same logic behind the stop and render aid laws across America.  If you witness an accident, you have the legal responsibility to stop and render aid, and to report to the police what happened if they need assistance ascertaining the facts for determination of fault where that is necessary.

First point. I guess I should have been more clear. I was speaking in regards to intent. If you have friends over for dinner and serve peanut butter cookies, only to find out that the newest member of your group is deathly allergic to peanuts, you're not guilty of attempted murder. If you knew about the allergy, you may be guilty.

Second point. That's not actually correct. Stop and render aid laws apply when you are in an accident. They're in place mainly so that drunks can't flee from an accident and avoid trouble. If you witness an accident but aren't part of it, you're under no obligation to stop and help.

Edited by Salkara
Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 minutes ago, Salkara said:

Second point. That's not actually correct. Stop and render aid laws apply when you are in an accident. They're in place mainly so that drunks can't flee from an accident and avoid trouble. If you witness an accident but aren't part of it, you're under no obligation to stop and help.

Maybe not (I don't know the law in that regard) but you certainly have a moral obligation there to at least make sure someone called the medics. If you drive by a deserted road and you see a car crash and you do not send an alert, you are guilty in my eyes, no matter what the law says.

1 hour ago, Mulk said:

This is incorrect.  Nearly every legal system I'm aware of holds that ignorance of the law is not an excuse for breaking the law. There may be lenience in the sentencing based on ignorance, but being ignorant of (for example) a texting and driving rule in a city or state does not absolve you from the need to obey that law.  The position of law enforcement and of the courts is that it is your job to know the laws for where you are going. 

Let's not confuse ignorance of the law and ignorance related to a specific action. Ignoring the law does not let one get away, but ignoring the circumstances around your actions can and will.

It's clearer with an example. Buying cocaine is illegal. If you buy cocaine and claim you did not know it was illegal, you are guilty. But! If you buy some flour, and it turned out that some drug dealer had hidden cocaine in that specific flour pack - his accomplice was supposed to buy that pack but you just got it by happenstance before - then you're not guilty. Because you had no way of knowing that specific pack of flour would contain cocaine. Now, of course you'll have to prove it at a trial - if you buy a pinch of flour for a lot of money from someone suspicious in a dark alley, nobody is going to believe you really thought it was flour. But if you actually didn't knew it, you're not considered guilty.

As a real life occurrence, former italian prime minister Berlusconi had a big sex scandal several years ago, and one of his mistresses was underage. He claimed that he did not know it; and, to be fair, it could easily be true. She was 17 and she looked older, and he had so many escorts coming to his place that it is unlikely he asked each one of them for ID. Those called to testify all reported a very lax atmosphere, and some remarked that if they had wanted to bring a gun, they could have done so easily. So, while the whole business was a big blow to his political image overall, the judge ruled that he was innocent of paying an underage prostitute.

1 hour ago, kiapet said:

I would say moral culpability, as we've defined it, doesn't actually have that much influence on the overall situation. In a situation where you discover your culture has perpetuated a great evil, the last thing you should be doing is sitting down and saying, "Well, technically we can't be blamed for this." You see something as deeply wrong as the Parshmen enslavement and you fix it, period. Now the Alethi obviously have different cultural values than me, but that we're supposed to read them saying, "Parshmen are slaves and that's it" and disagree with them, because we know better.

Well, on the other hand, the parshmen now seem to want to kill them all for perpetrating that great evil. So, establishing that the humans do not deserve to be killed for keeping the parshmen as slaves is definitely something that needs doing. Because the one with whom kaladin talked? I didn't get much of a "well, let's fix this and move on" vibe from him. Incidentallly, I think if I went to him and tried to talk him into thosse arguments, he'd try to kill me, regardless of how well made or founded they are.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One thing that I think needs to be asked is was the initial enslavement right after a desolation? because if it was then I think the humans had a very good reason for enslaving the Voidbringers. If the vision of Nohadon shows us is what is normal for a desolation (90% casualties and humanity having undergone almost total societal collapse often to the point of being knocked back to the stone age) is true, then the humans weren't enslaving an innocent race they were stopping genocidal monsters who would probably try to kill all of humanity again if they were left unchecked. 

That said this does not justify keeping them enslaved. Once it became clear that there was no next desolation coming any time soon  (the heralds lied and said they won) the humans initial justification starts to wear off. By this point there is no justification other than that they no longer knew that the Parshmen were ever sentient.

Edited by Unhinged
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Many around here judge slavery by our modern occidental standards. I even saw people quoting American law to further up their points, which is a total nonsense when attempting to understand slavery in an old society. Allow me to give you a quote for thoughts :

 

"It was only slavery that made possible on a scale large enough, the division between labor and industry, and later on, the apogee of hellenism. Without slavery, no Greek State, no Art and Science produced by Greeks. Without slavery, no Roman Empire.

Without the basis of hellenism and of the Roman Empire, there would not have been a modern Europe. We should never forget that all our economic, political, and intellectual evolution has for condition a situation in which slavery was as obvious as necessary.
We could say that we have the right to say: without ancient slavery, no modern socialism. [note : the author is Engels, and he would be considered on the far left spectrum in America. Nevertheless, you can substitute socialism by capitalism in this phrase, if it better suit you as a motor of progress]. 

It cost us nothing to wage war against slavery with generic formulae, and to scorn such an infamy with all of our superior moral wrath. Sadly, we only announce by that what everyone already knows, that these antic institutions no longer correspond to our actual lifestyle, and to the sentiments bred by our modern lifestyle. But that teaches us nothing on how these institutions were born, on the causes of their survival and their role in history. 


And if we take a closer look at this problem, we are constrained to say that, as contradictory and heretic as it seems, that the introduction of slavery in the past circumstances was a great progress. 

It is an established fact that humanity was born of animals, and that it needed barbaric means, nearly bestial, to get out of its barbaric phase. The ancient communities, where they survived, constitute since thousands of years the basis of the most rough form of State, the oriental despotism, from India to Russia. It is only where they dissolved that people progressed, and their first progress consisted to an increase in productivity and production, by the development of [conscripted?] work. 

 

As long as human work was so unproductive that it did not produce much more than what was necessary to survive, the increasing of productive forces, the expansion of trade, the development of State and Laws, the foundation of art and science were possible only due to a reinforced division of labor that could only have as founding principles the great division of work between the masses dealing with simple manual work, and the few privileged that were in charge of distributing the work, dealing with the trading, the State's business, and later, busying themselves with art and science. 

The most simple, and most natural form of this division of labor was precisely slavery.

Given the historical antecedents of the elder Greek world, the progress to a society founded on class opposition could only be achieved with slavery. 

Even for slaves, this was a progress. War prisoners from which the masses of slaves were made, at least now had their lives spared, whereas before, they were butchered, and even before that, in the older times, they were put in a cooking pot. 

If Mr. Eugen Dühring gargles at the sight of hellenism because it was founded on slavery, he would be also right to blame the Greeks for not having industrial steam machines, or the telegraph. "

Engels.


I love this quote because it shows that judging an ancient society by our modern standards is absurd. Of course that we find slavery abhorant. It saddens me to no end that it still exists in the 21th century (hello Dubai) and if it depended on me and an easy omnipotent wish, I would make it disappear. But that's not a sufficient for me to judge the principle of slavery as evil (I don't even believe in the concept of evil). I just recognize that once a society has evolved enough, slavery shouldn't exist in it (and yes, Europe had no necessity to enslave some of the African population, it was just pure greed). Just like once a society and its neighbors  have evolved enough, there is no need for the death penalty, forced mass conscription, or the colonization of what is perceived inferior population. As it stands, we still have not evolved enough, we still have racism, bigotry, anti intellectualism, sexism, and modern forms of exploitation in our "modern" society. We may have better laws than the Alethi or the elder Greeks, but don't be so fast to cast your judgment with modern standards. 

Edited by Rasha
Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 hours ago, Salkara said:

Juries get things wrong. Does that mean we shouldn't have juries?

If we get sick, we go see someone who spent many years learning how to treat illness. If we need a weather forecast we see someone who spent many years learning to forecast the weather. If we need to organise the finances of our business we see someone who spent years studying finance and accounting. If we need to make a decision about the life, death and liberty of some accused of something we grab a phonebook, select a bunch of random names, go through a process of removing anyone qualified to make judgements about human behaviour and the law, then call it justice. I would say there is a very compelling case against using juries. Literally any other method short of having a politician make the decision would be better. The evidence against juries making correct decisions is overwhelming, impartiality is not in their nature.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, Rasha said:

I love this quote because it shows that judging an ancient society by our modern standards is absurd. Of course that we find slavery abhorant. It saddens me to no end that it still exists in the 21th century (hello Dubai) and if it depended on me and an easy omnipotent wish, I would make it disappear. But that's not a sufficient for me to judge the principle of slavery as evil (I don't even believe in the concept of evil). I just recognize that once a society has evolved enough, slavery shouldn't exist in it (and yes, Europe had no necessity to enslave some of the African population, it was just pure greed). Just like once a society and its neighbors  have evolved enough, there is no need for the death penalty, forced mass conscription, or the colonization of what is perceived inferior population. As it stands, we still have not evolved enough, we still have racism, bigotry, anti intellectualism, sexism, and modern forms of exploitation in our "modern" society. We may have better laws than the Alethi or the elder Greeks, but don't be so fast to cast your judgment with modern standards. 

This is an interesting concept, but it holds the problem that history is never objective. It will always be colored by modern ideas and not enough sources.

You quote the idea that ancient slavery was a necessary piece of developing modern civilization, but then you conclude that European use of African slaves was pure greed. Isn't it likely that someone in 1000 years will look at modern civilization and conclude that the European slave system was necessary for growth? At what point has a society outgrown the "need" for slaves?

I am not disagreeing with the quote, which I don't believe I'm qualified to refute or support. But I do think you are arbitrarily deciding when slavery is good or bad for humanity based on your temporal proximity to it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, aemetha said:

If we get sick, we go see someone who spent many years learning how to treat illness. If we need a weather forecast we see someone who spent many years learning to forecast the weather. If we need to organise the finances of our business we see someone who spent years studying finance and accounting. If we need to make a decision about the life, death and liberty of some accused of something we grab a phonebook, select a bunch of random names, go through a process of removing anyone qualified to make judgements about human behaviour and the law, then call it justice. I would say there is a very compelling case against using juries. Literally any other method short of having a politician make the decision would be better. The evidence against juries making correct decisions is overwhelming, impartiality is not in their nature.

Considering one of the most important parts of most legal systems is what the average or ordinary person would do or think, don't you think that having ordinary people is important? Yes we could do better in terms of impartiality but you say it's all but the single worst option, however, having any individual that has to consistently work with "officers of the peace" (police, judges etc) would form a significant bias even compared to the one juries tend to have towards the police.

 

in fact you specifically say that we remove anyone qualified to make judgements about human behaviour and the only person more capable of speaking about human behaviour then ordinary people would be psychologists and sociologists, and they already tend to get called in to testify about exactly that.

Edited by Blacksmithki
Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, soulcastJam said:

This is an interesting concept, but it holds the problem that history is never objective. It will always be colored by modern ideas and not enough sources.

You quote the idea that ancient slavery was a necessary piece of developing modern civilization, but then you conclude that European use of African slaves was pure greed. Isn't it likely that someone in 1000 years will look at modern civilization and conclude that the European slave system was necessary for growth? At what point has a society outgrown the "need" for slaves?

I am not disagreeing with the quote, which I don't believe I'm qualified to refute or support. But I do think you are arbitrarily deciding when slavery is good or bad for humanity based on your temporal proximity to it.

 

If you believe that I am trying to declar that slavery is good or bad based on its temporal proximity, then I have not made myself clear enough and I am sorry.Slavery in itself is neither good or bad. It is a process that fitted the old times, but no longer fits our modern ideas of society. Our ideas of society evolved in the 17th / 18th century ( based on Greek / Roman philosophy, but still), and as a consequence slavery didnt fit anymore. Our ideas evolved even further, and slavery still don't fit in there.

 

What I should have said, is that slavery in Europe and Ancient Greece were not built on the same premises. At what point does a society outgrown the need for slaves ? Well, when it has operated the division of Labor that renders slavery necessary. Society has evolved upon this division of labor since Anciant Greece. In a Feudal Society, the serf replaced the slave, granting its force of work, keeping the kingdom fed and provisionned, in exchang for Law, Order and Protection from the Lords. This allowed the apparition of some progress, such as the imprimery, the developement of Art and Science due to the patronage of some Lords. Does it means that Serfdom is good, or evil ? Such questions are meaningless as it does not explain how or why Serdom appeared or survived so long. Was the apparition of Serfdom in Europe progress ? I guess you could argue so if you compared it to the conditions in which it was born. Serfdom was made possible due to a demographic explosion that took place at the tim. Thus, in Europe, slavery was disappearing, due to the absence of necessity for it, and an edict of the Church that made it forbidden to enslave another Chrisitan. Still, it would have been possible for Christian to enslave Muslim populations, but it was never done, for the absence of necessity, and due to a rust ton of other reasons I am not aware of. Slavery was replaced by serfdom. So that's progress. Was it necessary ? I have no idea.

 

The resurgence of slavery in the 16th century with the Triangular Slave Trade was a matter of opportunity. The slaves mostly originated from prisonners of war during the intern tribes conflicts. or prisonners of war taken during the colonization that were sold to the Europeans. The European society was at an altogether different stade of developement than the ancient Greeks. The slave Trade was not necessary for the development of the European continent, which had all the cheap labor necessary for its development. It allowed the Europeans to colonize America at a faster rate that's for sure. Was it incorporated deeply in the society ? No, it was juste a trade like another. Did it led to progress ? I don't know. Was it necessary ? I doubt it. Was it driven by greediness for more land and riches and rampant imperialism ? In my opinion, yes, there is no doubt about that.

 

The idea of necessity is a flimsy one, and you can always find people eager to provide justification for their deeds. And yet. Was the Terror necessary ? I would say yes, that it was necessary as the product of its circumstances, but some historians disagree and label it as the darkest period of the French Revolution.

I hope someday in the future, we will judge our 21th century as barbaric, for it would mean that we have progressed enough to leave behind some our our most reprehensible ways.

 

Edited by Rasha
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Blacksmithki said:

Considering one of the most important parts of most legal systems is what the average or ordinary person would do or think, don't you think that having ordinary people is important?

No, I don't. What the ordinary person thinks and does is a matter of community standards, it is relevant to the making of law, but not to the adjudicating of it. The adjudicating of law is a matter of impartially adjudicating whether the accused had the motive, method and opportunity to commit a crime and that the evidence supports their commission of it beyond a reasonable doubt. To properly assess that a person needs a minimum level of training in psychology, criminology, the law, criminal investigation and critical thinking. The ordinary person is just not qualified, which is why we keep institutionally killing innocent people. If it were up to me I would address the issue by replacing juries with panels of experts trained specifically for the task. It minimises the bias and ignorance that causes poor judgements. Having the ordinary person make the judgements isn't justice, it's a popularity contest.

7 hours ago, Blacksmithki said:

in fact you specifically say that we remove anyone qualified to make judgements about human behaviour and the only person more capable of speaking about human behaviour then ordinary people would be psychologists and sociologists, and they already tend to get called in to testify about exactly that.

I wouldn't include sociologists. They study groups of people, not individual cases of human behaviour. They would be more relevant to the making of law, not the adjudication of it. The problem with expert testimony is because you've excluded the experts from the jury, they have no way to judge the veracity of what the expert is saying. There is also the issue that you get cherry picked experts arguing both sides of a case - is an ordinary jury member with no expertise capable of deciding which experts testimony is more broadly supported? This is why a minimum level of expertise needs to be a requirement in order to have a judgement based in fact, and not on opinion or popularity.

Okay, I'm going to stop now. This is heading way off topic. I'd be happy to debate it further in a direct message if you would like to.

Edited by aemetha
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/13/2017 at 5:41 PM, aemetha said:

If it were up to me I would address the issue by replacing juries with panels of experts trained specifically for the task. It minimises the bias and ignorance that causes poor judgements.

There have been systems with professional jurors before. As with any system, there are upsides and downsides. With professional jurors, you do gain expertise but also have a higher chance of corruption. If you want to buy off a jury, it's a lot easier to do it when the pool of potential jurors is known in advance. Additionally, it's harder for professional jurors to remain impartial due to their closeness to the system and need to maintain a working relationship with the court and both sides of the bench. Your attorney pissed off some of the jurors last week? Don't expect a fair trial.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Argent changed the title to [OB] Treatment of the parshman
  • Chaos locked this topic
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...