The internet is one of the modern wonders that we all get to enjoy, but it has its drawbacks. Decentralising the sharing of information has meant that there is a lot of disinformation that is not true, or misleading, that pops up when you search through various topics. Now, if this was just the free expression of ideas, that would be a great things, but what we have seen recently is that large US based internet companies, such as google, have started to infect their activities with political and ideological bias that misleads the attention poor younger generations into believing falsehoods.
For example, put "what ended slavery" into google, and the top response will be a quote from the wikipedia page for "Slavery in the United States". It was only the 6th results of the google search that started to give me real information regarding the abolition of slavery that directly answered my question. Put the same thing into youtube, and the top result will be a short video describing the slave revolt in Haiti as being the key to ending slavery.
Another example is using google to search for "when did slavery begin?" or "Who started slavery?". The answer that unequivocally comes back is 1619, sourced from the wikipedia page titled "History of slavery". For those of you that are unsure, slavery actually began at the dawn of civilisation, as soon as humans changed from living as hunter-gatherers to farmers, and the economics of slavery first began to make sense (It doesn't make much sense to feed a slave if you're a hunter-gatherer, where food is scarce and labour requirement are low, but a farmer lives in a different situation.
There is a significant lack of transparency in the way that google and facebook operate, and services as important as the worlds largest search engine and the world's largest social media platform should be operated for the benefit of the public. This introduced a cognitive dissonance for me, as I was learning about how slavery actually ended, and who was responsible, and why. It's not OK for google to present slavery as a crime perpetuated by "white people" against "black people", and to distort history and claim that only "black people" fought and stood against it for the simple reason that it's not true. Slavery is as human as apple pie, and has certainly been around for longer. Slavery was common in the ancient world in Africa, a few islands in Oceana, in the Malay archipelago, in a considerable number of Indian and Indo-Chinese aboriginal tribes, along the Pacific coast in North America, and scattered parts of South America. Similarly, during ancient times, slavery was unknown in Australia, Siberia, most of Asia and most of North and South America.
We have to keep in mind that slavery meant different things in different places and times, and also had other names such as indentured servitude and other names. What a slave-owner was allowed to do, and the duties of the slave varied widely from place to place. these differences persist for the entire history of slavery. But even in ancient times, slavery was a global phenomenon, perpetrated by all races against all other races.
It is already evident that slavery in the Americas did not begin with Europeans who had settled there, but rather began with the native peoples who migrated there during the period of human migration. Requirements for slaves to only procreate with other slaves existed in these early societies. Among the Kwakiutl there are accounts of the killing of slaves to provide food for the members of the cannibal society; and among the Tlingit slaves were killed and buried under the house posts when a new house was being erected.
In Africa the indigenous primitive institution of slavery was magnified by the impact of the world slave traffic, as is shown by the fact that intertribal trade in kidnaped slaves has been developed most extensively in areas where there were slave raids for the European market. Besides, the purchase of men and women from other villages with the express purpose of enslaving them, and the subjugation of prisoners of war or persons received as a form of tribute from a defeated foreign power, the practise of voluntary and involuntary servitude as security for debt subject to redemption appears to have been developed more extensively in Africa than elsewhere. In certain localities persons enslaved as punishment for crime might also as a rule be redeemed.
Slavery existed as a constant factor in the social and economic life of the Near East and Europe throughout the entire period of ancient history, differing greatly in intensity and effects according to time and place. Its validity as a system of labor was never seriously questioned. No attempt to abolish it was made by any ancient government. Nor did any ancient religious body, even Christianity, challenge the right of its believers to own slaves. Greek political philosophy discussed the institution of slavery, but only as to whether it was a condition grounded in natural law or made by man. Ancient slavery differed fundamentally from modern slavery in that the problem of race entered into it but slightly and only in theoretical discussion. Because of its essential differences as a social institution and the differences in the attitude toward it the subject cannot be approached successfully from the abolitionistic-moralistic point of view of the nineteenth century. To the ancient mind slavery was a fixed and accepted element of life, and no moral problem was involved.
I would like to continue, but I appreciate that not all people enjoy long posts, so if the community wants me to continue, I'll do it, and if not, I won't.
References:
https://whyy.org/articles/africa-slavery-and-the-blame-game/
http://www.ditext.com/moral/slavery.html
http://crab.rutgers.edu/~glasker/SLAVERYANCIENT.htm
