What happens when the slaves accept master morality?

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I basically have a democratic epistemology, whatever the majority of the people believe is true. Now that brings up a question from Plato. Does to the advantage of the stronger, mean what will actually benefit the strong, or what they think they want? That opens to many worms. So I believe whatever the majority of people THINK they want, is TRUE, regardless. This means "truth" has changed from 1500 to now, but so be it. Those are problems for a historian of truth. For me what is true is 2009 America. And since power over the majority is equivalent to the actual views of the majority it is OK to be Amerocentric since in 2009 America for all intents and purposes is the Rome that rules the world. So if it is True for 2009 America it is True for the 2009 world. So those are the metaphysical "facts" I deal with.

I was never a Church goer. But I used to believe in a version of hard Puritan Calvinism combined with a gentle Dicksonian meek shall inhertness. Yet at the same time I admire the hard Republican military virtues of Greece and Rome but that went along nicely with my Calvinism. So as you can see as a Philosophical Christian both the fire & brimstone and gentle lamb cheek turn were reflected in me. I wasn't a Christian but I accepted the Truth of the Age. But in college I discovered that was not the Truth. In fact the ones I had polemicized against for all those years Nietzsche, Marquis de Sade, the Social Darwinists. They were right! It was a cruel sadistic torture orgy. The will to power to be able to dominate hurt others, was all that ruled the world. Now I could use logic to show that it ought not be true, but if the majority of people, if the Herd accepted Master morality, even if by coercion or deception, it was True. So thats the world I live in. Its a frightfully cruel and dark one. Its the world we all live in, some just have blinders on, or delude themselves into thinking they can outcruel the next guy. So you see the world really is as bad as I say it is, if Truth is defined by majoritarian epistemology. I would say empirically I see little evidence that America's social values are about to erupt and change in a major way in the next few years. So my conclusions about the cruel nature of humanity and existence, might as well be true even if they are not.

So if the Sadist view of life is right, if it is all about dominance, power, cruelty and inflicting pain, what is one to do? You can be cynical about it and try to game the system. But the problem is you aren't unique if you discover this. EVERYONE else is pursuing the exact same thing, the exact same way. So you can't beat EVERYONE, at their own game. Now if you LIKE sadism, than I guess you can accept any place in the hierarchical great chain of being, because tis the best of all worlds. But if you don't like it its hardly recompense. I suppose the only good life in world like this is Robinson Crusoe.

It depends upon what interests you and what you want to accomplish. All sectors of the world are not uniform. You are given one opportunity in life to use time and it's up to you to make the best of it. Time is the only wealth.

the slave waits, while the master baits

That is not what Spartacus, the slave, did.

ruveyn

No, that's what they said in 'History of the World, part 1'...

If the slaves accept their lot, the trains run on time...

if the slave is told they're free


but have to follow certain rules and pay certain dues. and look a certain way. and act a certain way.


are they really free?

Everybody is a slave to physiology. Psychology and a functioning society add other layers of necessary conformity for even bare existence. Freedom is a very debatable conception.

ok, first paragraph, if 'the majority' believed in purple elephants goose stepping down fifth avenue would you immediately accept this as true or would you assess the truth-value of this for yourself? And how do you assess what is the truth for the majority? And how do you define this majoity, 51% in a poll or election? And how the hell is 'power over the majority equivalent to the actual views of the majority?'


Also de Sade is simply the negative of Kantian morality, the implicit, unspoken part of Kant (according to Zizek)

Ok, here is a mild problem that I think exists then. You say: "whatever the majority of the people believe is true" however, do the majority of people believe that? I think they do not believe that as most people seem to instinctively like the correspondence theory of truth. Therefore I argue that your belief about truth is untrue because of it's own definition.

That being said, do the majority of people then believe that the world is an evil hateful torture orgy? No, of course not! The average person is in some ways optimistic and thinks that his own life is worth it and a good thing. In fact, the average person says that life in general is a good thing.(so long David Benatar) The average person in fact, believes that they are a good person and likely even that the guy beside him isn't so bad. Your utter pessimism is unlike anything I see, I even tend to have some very pessimistic streaks but you are closer to my depressive depths than anything else.

In any case, if the Sadist view is true, then the Sadist view is true. Frankly though, as we can basically see from the life of Marquis de Sade and the workings in his writings, the Sadist view is untrue, as the average brutality of it is less than the brutality of his writings. However, there is nothing necessitated by this fact. Nor is being original or unoriginal really a criterion for anything.

Enamdar, this looks like a case of microscoping in one dynamic (or perhapse your own life experience's coctail) in such surgical detail that your seeing one nerve so brightly that you can't see the rest of the organism. I'm reading what also seems like a truly brilliant book by a well-known Canadian author who insists that the tyranny is of the managerial/courtier/technocrat class based on their...well...rather aspiish traits of mindless system worship as well as trying to figure out to build better and better systems at the expense of how well they can even work - thus also divorcing our sense of reality as well from actual reality by their insistence that if it should work on paper that they'll jam what works on paper down onto reality and by golly they'll win! (its quite a fascinating escapade through French, British, German, Corsican, and Canadian politics as well - whether I buy his theory as a leading dynamic or more of a collected background hum I'm still learning some crazy historical tidbits that I never would have otherwise).

I think all kinds of things like this are good to at least look at and think about, just that if you will tunnel in that deep on a concept and make a world explanation of it - be sure to write a book and find plenty of random bits of Voltaire, Neitze, Machievelli, Destoyevski, and Cicero to back it up . Even if its not an accurate explanation of reality, if its enough to convince you then its enough for other people to read, test their realities, find the points that they agree and disagree with you on, either shift a little one way or another, but come out of it - hopefully - intellectually stronger than they went in; whether they found the book 60% true or 60% crap.

There were people who could not be made slaves.

The American Indians and the Australian Aborigines come to mind.

They did not understand the concept.

"You can attack me and I will fight you. If I lose then I will die a free man.

Some American Indian tribes held black slaves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in ... ted_States

actually the american indians only started their fight back after they were made slaves by the white colonisers, if you see documents such as Thomas Hariot's A Brief and True Report (1588) amongst others you'll see the colonisers (mainly soldiers) were revered as gods because of there superior technology at first (or something along those lines), they then went on to massivley exploit the indians; it's a simple fact that the first colonisers in North America would have starved to death without the Indians at that point, they sat back and had food put in their mouths by them. When the American Indians had enough of their crap they stopped; that's when the violence started. They were made slaves first, revolted, and were exterminated over time. They certainly understood the concept of slavery after that point.

I don't know but I certainly wouldn't want to live under the rule of Caligula or Hitler if I was considered "inferior"....ugh.

Of course I think Caligula considered everyone inferior if I'm not mistaken.

That makes sense, so yeah, usually, truth by consensus is often the accepted Truth, and the imposition of truth seems to have been a neccesity in all societies.

what if the slave, never knowing freedom, is merely told they are free their whole lives...how are they to know different?