slavery + reversal of social roles

1. we had a nice talk today. we started with david's point of looking at slavery from the past, in a different theater of operations. i concurred. but that's not a conversation about ethics (which is the discussion of what makes an action right, etc). rather, we're talking about anthropology/history/social evolution.

true, in first century AD 60% of the roman population was made up of slaves (not racial, rather geopolitical, i.e., whether you're a roman or not). so this is a different predicament from, say 19th century america. many plebeians offered to become domestic slaves during roman times. why? they had a better chance of surviving than just being homeless in the streets of rome.

rothschild made a nuanced point about slavery, after which i recommended reading frederick douglass's memoirs.

karl marx, for instance would argue that slavery was a necessary step in the march of history ("necessary" here means it is caused by a previous socio/economic cause).

this brings the following point in favor of social evolution: what made slavery disappear around 500 AD? not a decree from a consortium of european states. it was a social supervinient phenomenon!

here marx has a good point: the old relations of production just changed! in other words, slavery wasn't economically viable anymore. we see this happening again in the 19th century america. no doubt it's industrial capitalism that erodes the old system in the south. the civil war is not the cause of the eradication of slavery but the effect of this paradigm change.

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2.  another interesting point concerning patriarchy, which i took from my tuesday night class is this: what if we flip the existing social hierarchy from patriarchy to matriarchy? 

you ready? very little would change. the mother now has financial power, while the father takes care of the child. the mother now incarnates what man used to be, yet we feel no big overall change.

it's like commutativity in math: the order of factors doesn't change the product. we have the same moral norms: incest is wrong, adultery is wrong, breaking promises is wrong, killing is wrong, stealing is wrong, disrespecting the elders is wrong, etc. family would still be paramount since we need family cohesion for cultural flourishing. why? the paramount cultural value is survival, i.e., LIFE.

see?

so, patriarchy -as social development- is not the result of some obscure cabal of evil elders trying to exploit women into submission. that's bunk. whatever we do in our milieu is already predetermined by our culture.