It's easy to forget amidst the art and architecture and military accomplishments of the Roman empire that it was a particularly brutal slave state.
To be clear, most civilizations of the time had slavery in one form or another, but the combination of the fact that Romans implemented chattel slavery where slaves were purely property, and the dictatorial powers the patriarch of the family had over slaves, women, and children in his family combined to have a wide range of permissible behavior towards those who didn't have any social power.
Though to be fair, we need to also remember that just because a state didn't have slavery didn't mean it was a modern liberal democracy. Often, they didn't have slavery in name but the lowest classes of society might as well have been slaves for the level of control they had over their lives.
As an example, after the roman empire fell many European states didn't have slavery but feudalism tied people to the land and gave their lords overwhelming power over them meaning they had a similar lack of control over their own lives.
To be clear, most civilizations of the time had slavery in one form or another, but the combination of the fact that Romans implemented chattel slavery where slaves were purely property, and the dictatorial powers the patriarch of the family had over slaves, women, and children in his family combined to have a wide range of permissible behavior towards those who didn't have any social power.
Though to be fair, we need to also remember that just because a state didn't have slavery didn't mean it was a modern liberal democracy. Often, they didn't have slavery in name but the lowest classes of society might as well have been slaves for the level of control they had over their lives.
As an example, after the roman empire fell many European states didn't have slavery but feudalism tied people to the land and gave their lords overwhelming power over them meaning they had a similar lack of control over their own lives.
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Assuming bad faith or ignorance of our ancestors and also assuming that oneself is not either of those things is a bit naive.
In my view, nothing we've done in the past 30 years justifies thinking we're the best people in the history of the world. Even before the collapse into wokism (itself a green eyed demon in a pretty mask), the movies of fight club and the matrix both spoke to generations that sensed something was going wrong even then, and far from improving since then it seems we've gotten worse.
Even the boomers I think if we apply the same standards to the millennials it becomes clear we are their children, and we carry the same critical flaws and are doing a lot of the same things. The debt rose to 32 trillion dollars on the signature of presidents elected by millennials.
It's easy to judge our ancestors for not living as we do, but we live with the benefits of many things they do not. You need food, and you need shelter, and you need protection from people who would otherwise take your food and shelter because they don't have any. Living in global civilization that all seems simple and straightforward, but youtube channels like how to make everything or primitive technology challenge these ideas by showing how hard it is to make these things even if you know that they can exist, and if you don't need to figure out where your next meal is coming from, and if you don't need to worry about raiders coming and taking your stuff, or bears and wolves coming and eating you. And you can't rely on the wealth of a global civilization to bootstrap you because you are that bootstrap of future civilizations. So you end up using less than ideal solutions -- like the Romans used slavery or the kings after Rome used feudalism.
I'm not intending to be a moral relativist here. Good and evil exist because we are humans and such things are fundamental to our being, and enslaving others is evil. But the world isn't so easy that everyone can afford to be good and have their civilization survive.
In my view, nothing we've done in the past 30 years justifies thinking we're the best people in the history of the world. Even before the collapse into wokism (itself a green eyed demon in a pretty mask), the movies of fight club and the matrix both spoke to generations that sensed something was going wrong even then, and far from improving since then it seems we've gotten worse.
Even the boomers I think if we apply the same standards to the millennials it becomes clear we are their children, and we carry the same critical flaws and are doing a lot of the same things. The debt rose to 32 trillion dollars on the signature of presidents elected by millennials.
It's easy to judge our ancestors for not living as we do, but we live with the benefits of many things they do not. You need food, and you need shelter, and you need protection from people who would otherwise take your food and shelter because they don't have any. Living in global civilization that all seems simple and straightforward, but youtube channels like how to make everything or primitive technology challenge these ideas by showing how hard it is to make these things even if you know that they can exist, and if you don't need to figure out where your next meal is coming from, and if you don't need to worry about raiders coming and taking your stuff, or bears and wolves coming and eating you. And you can't rely on the wealth of a global civilization to bootstrap you because you are that bootstrap of future civilizations. So you end up using less than ideal solutions -- like the Romans used slavery or the kings after Rome used feudalism.
I'm not intending to be a moral relativist here. Good and evil exist because we are humans and such things are fundamental to our being, and enslaving others is evil. But the world isn't so easy that everyone can afford to be good and have their civilization survive.