Unfortunately I had to word the question this way, but for context:
For context this PragerU video sparked a discussion about whether or not slavery was better than death in the eyes of enslaved people since the majority preferred to live. Christopher Columbus states that "being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no? I don't see the problem."
The rational in affirmation of this statement was that a) a majority of slaves chose to live and endure the tenets of slavery rather than commit suicide; that b) since it is Christopher Columbus saying this statement, at the time period it would have been true since slaves valued their lives more than death (again since they stayed alive); and c) that the statement can only be applied in the time period of slavery as we must view being enslaved through the eyes of an enslaved person since they "chose" life over death. The affirmation also included the concession that yes, slavery is better than death in the time period that slavery was around for and is not necessarily true in the present.
In my eyes I only agreed with this statement in its technicality, since yes, it is factually true that if people preferred enslavement over death then it MUST also be true that it was "better" since they were presented two choices. I could not agree with the original statement PragerU put out since that is an overall generalization.
My disagreement lies in the fact that it cannot be true because it is not a fact that everyone chose to stay alive, and some people chose to value death and liberation from slavery over being enslaved. We also cannot assign two moral values to something based off of a statistic – in the same way I cannot say Jews preferred to live in concentration camps instead of killing themselves, concentration camps cannot somehow be "better" than death. However the person in affirmation said that slavery and the idea of concentration camps could not be applied as slavery was different.
I then brought up the fact that if you "agree" to slavery you must also agree to everything else that occurs as a result, which cannot always be true. You cannot always agree to be raped – sexual assault is the definition of nonconsensual sex so therefore slaves would agree to have sex and bear children like Thomas Jefferson's child with his slave? Again the person in affirmation stated that this strayed from the topic.
I posed the question of statement in inverse: if slavery > death then death < slavery. To me that cannot be true of all people in the time period of slavery as some people would agree that they want to die but cannot bring themselves to do it or value death as a preferable alternative. This statement was shot down as "the majority of slaves preferred to be alive".
I cannot fathom how the piece of evidence "the majority of slaves chose to live therefore they "chose slavery" as possible factual evidence to PragerU's claims. It is completely illogical to say "I was forced into choice A and therefore I must support action B that resulted from A" as a true statement. I cannot say "A resulted from my support of action B because I was forced into choice A" – that is clearly not true as I can disagree with all the possibilities that come with slavery whilst I still stay alive and yet the statement "I stayed alive and therefore I accepted slavery and not death" is factually correct.
This defense of PragerU's statement led to this argument and I am starting to believe that it is TECHNICALLY true BUT morally you cannot assign values to one or the other. If I was asked yes or no only would the answer to the question be yes or no?
Posted by Xryphon