Comments | xephyr: Cinderella never had it so good

xephyr

Cinderella never had it so good

Jun 23, 2007 13:24

In the ancient world, there were frequently household members known as 'slaves'. These people were unrelated to the head of the household, would work at the bidding of the head of the household, and would receive a share of household resources. In terms of the notion of Household discussed earlier, there is a need to socially and ritually bring ( Read more... )

law and culture, utopian communities, history

Comments 6

dhw June 24 2007, 05:40:07 UTC

You are contrasting the best condition of ancient slavery (the valued household slaves of the relatively affluent or outright insanely wealthy) with a very pessimistic view of modern employment.

Sure, it'd be better to be Tiro than working at Walmart.

It's a hell of a lot better to work at Walmart than it would be to work in the Roman mines, or on the great grain plantations.

xephyr June 24 2007, 14:30:37 UTC

Dave! How nice to have your comment ( ... )

dhw June 24 2007, 15:31:23 UTC

More problems ( ... )

xephyr June 24 2007, 16:52:30 UTC

You are absolutely correct in what you say. The Romans were jerks. I look to the Roman empire for good examples of how to mistreat people, and I would certainly not want to be a Roman slave. That arrangement is very different from that of ancient Mesopotamia, which was almost exclusively on the small agrarian or cottage production model where slaves represented a small fraction of the population. Since I'm not looking for how to more efficiently mistreat people, but rather how to better treat people, I'll be using the Roman model as a negative example ( ... )

Feudalism lillith156 June 25 2007, 02:03:47 UTC

I'd be interested in reading your thoughts about feudalism.

Not exactly slavery... a fair amount of personal freedom day to day, but many decisions managed by a better educated & resourced aristocratic authority who also provided resources (stored food in case of lean times, provided shared ox team, insured skilled folks like blacksmiths etc were available to all), and who took some responsibility to care for the land bound peasantry. Heavy family traditions and binds with land and filial relations going on for generations.

perhaps a future post?

Re: Feudalism xephyr June 25 2007, 05:45:43 UTC

Good idea, but I'll need to study that era again.