Intergalactic Summit

Depends on the crime...if it is too severe then a Holder will be stripped of their status and can even become a trophy slave to another Holder. Everything depends on the crime but Holders are not above the law. For example the Holders who killed my parents got stripped of their status and now serve me as slaves. At the end of the day what matters is how severe both ethically and physically the crime is.

I hope this answers your question Mr Khross


Lord Ulfang

A most excellent post, Cpt. Momaki!
It illustrated the mercy that slavery is - to a degree that was maybe not intended by you, but none the less shines quite clearly in your words. A slave is in fact either someone who is not able to embrace the personal, moral agency that humans have been gifted with because of a fundamental disability (e.g. because of a lesion of the brain or something like that, which isn't curable - thanks and blessings to the Lord for giving us modern medicine and it's achievements, which make this a rare occasion) or because he does't want to embrace his humanity and thus personal, moral agency.

Every Amarrian would be happy if all people would take it on themselves to own their blame and take up moral responsibility. Unfortunately, human beings are fallible and do sometimes push their responsibility away, reject their constitution as moral agents and thus forfeit their freedom, trample on it with their own feet and reject their humanity, showing this in word and action.

It is, then, indeed a great mercy to take up those poor beings and carry their responsibilty for them, as one is responsible for what one's hands are doing, and, as the latter first need to learn to accept the divine gift God has made to all humans, to help them along the harsh way to enable them to do make good use of this gift to their fullest ability, to help them to see their failure to live up to God's plan and thus up to who they are meant to be.

What is really preserving slavery is not that others insist that the slave holders own the moral culpability of the slave - they doen't though it is as if he does - but the fact that some humans again and again cast their responsibility, their moral agency, their freedom away and prefer to live as beasts rather than humans.

Here you see the mystery contained in the practice of slavery: Just as the slave holder takes the cast-away freedom of the slave up and guards it for the unfree until he is ready to carry it on, God upholds us and keeps our divine sparks safe in our darkest times, in which we are mere shadows of ourselves.

Interesting, thank you for the education.

Wow. You Empire people are really, really, really strange sometimes, do you know that?

Okay, I have the next question!

If a naughty little drone malfunctions in the Amarrian Empire, do you start kicking the drone and hope that will make the problem go away, or do you instead kick the person who put the drone together?

Yes, I know it's really the same question, but the image is so funny, I just have to ask.

Do you make cartoons of this, by the way?

Oh, yes, I'm sorry! I keep forgetting! And they all love tea and biscuits, don't they? And dressing up? Awh!

I shouldn't really say this, but you Empire people act so cute sometimes, I almost forget that you are evil.

If the drone has a serious malfunction, it would probably be melted down for scrap.

If the malfunction is a minor one, it would be reprogrammed.

In the case of a slave, how does one reprogram a recalcitrant one? One of the methods is corporal punishment.

Ah. But I don't use religion as justification, Cpt. Momaki. I simply point out how slavery - if justified by aiming at the realization of a humans potential as moral agents - illustrates a point about the Lord that is otherwise not accessible to us. I'm also in no way racist in what I say: Racism has nothing to do with it.

Yes, I embrace the notion that people are different. We are not all equal. At least, not in all respects. But that doesn't mean I'm trying to elevate one race over another. Slaves can be of all races, just as free men can be.

There is no need to be offended.

I don't twist your words: I merely illustrated their consequences.
Wasn't it you who said: "The essence of freedom is personal responsibility."? What now with those who shirk their responsibility as moral agents? What if someone is not "embracing personal, moral agency", the, as you said, "first and most important step in gaining true freedom"?
You won't call those that didn't even make this step truly free, will you? But if they possess no true freedom, the best they got is a false freedom. A false freedom isn't freedom at all, thus, those people are unfree.

Now, how is it not a mercy to lead the unfree to freedom?

So, now that you're done with your rhethorics, will you be so kind and address - for a change - my actual argument, Cpt. Momaki?

You know what a petitio principii is, Cpt. Momaki? There's a certain irony in being accused to commit a fallacy by someone who makes such liberal use of them.
And, yes, if those so-called free societies would've had success in realizing that all humans living within them realize to be moral agents, you might have a point there. Somehow, claiming such would be counterfactual, though, I think.

Of course it doesn't logically follow logically that someone not able to embrace the personal, moral agency that humans have been gifted with because of a fundamental disability is a slave. This isn't an implication, after all, Cpt. Momaki, but a definition. The same goes for those, that don't want to embrace their moral agency.

If those people you freed are capable moral agents - and I highly doubt that they are - then, by the given definition they aren't slaves. It is quite possible that someone is held as a slave by law, while not being a slave. I'm sad to see that you didn't see this, but it's probably following from your misconstrual of my first premise there as an implication rather than a definition.

Also, it doesn't assign a fundamental disability to to everyone who is a slave. You noticed that there is an 'or' following, no? So it's either this fundamental disability or just the choice not to do so.

Also, the line "humans have been gifted" applies to all humans alike. Slaves are, as you know, humans as well. We agree on that. They are gifted with moral agency. They just are - by the given definition - not embracing this gift for one reason or the other.

The same goes for your allegation that I'd put my personal religously motivated definition of what moral agency is pragmatically in. Whether I do so or not has no impact on the argument. An implication isn't invalid because someone has a predefined understanding of the terms employed in the implication. That aside, taking that sentence up as an implication means misconstruing what I said. It's a definition.

So, please, I do hope your refrain from cheap allegations like "Don't you really mean, 'We enslave people because they don't want our religion and then call them morally inferior to justify it?'". You're conflating my argument here with things that have been said and done by others. If you want to criticize my position it would be helpful if you do take my position while criticizing it and not someone else or the one you assume to be mine.

Also, of course every Amarrian would be happy if all people lived up to their moral responsibility. Your confusion must lie with the ambiguity of the term "Amarrian". Given your argument, it should be obvious that I'm not referring to the Amarrian ethnic group, but to the normative meaning of "Amarrians". On this level it is by definition that an Amarrian is someone who lives righteously. It's unrighteous to keep someone in slavery is he is ready to and will take up moral responsibility. Thus every Amarrian will by logical necessity be releasing those slaves, as by definition those that don't aren't Amarrian.

Again you seem to assume a racist argument where there is none. Again, you conflate my argument with that of others. It saddens me to see that you seem to see and hear and read only what you expect to see, hear and read from an Amarrian. That, Cpt. Momaki, is racism.

As to: "Unfortunately, human beings are fallible and do sometimes push their responsibility away, reject their constitution as moral agents and thus forfeit their freedom" Your reading of it is such that the premise isn't true. (It is a premise, by the way, not an implication and thus it can't be a non sequitur.)

Of course, you're right - if I'd say that partial and temporal rejection of our constitution as moral agents would mean that the one rejecting is a slave it would follow that all of us are slaves. Indeed, I don't think any human is exempt form being infallible. Thus, it would have been safe to assume that I'm referring to those that are rejecting their moral agency in general or at least almost always. And yes, Cpt. Momaki, humans are able to do this and some do so. It happens even in the free societies you cited in an earlier post and they react exactly with curbing these individuals freedoms.

Again, the critique you given hinges on the truth of your allegation of what you understand as "Amarrian preconceptions". Of course, if you take any argument and construe it to consist of fallacies you pick, then the argument will be fallacious. This, is a misconstrual of the argument given, though.

So, Cpt. Momaki, again I'd ask you to stop your rhetorics and address my argument.