Another comment the other day by one of our readers also got me thinking. And when that happens, well . . . you know the rest. (smile)
But this time, there aren’t all that many numbers involved.
What got me thinking was the comment made by someone that no one in their family had ever been engaged in human trafficking.
This isn’t meant as a slam at anyone. But the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that the individual is almost certainly wrong.
Because the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that very few people on earth today can make truthfully make that statement. And outside of a very few isolated populations, I’d guess that number is almost certainly zero.
. . .
Slavery is an evil human practice – but it’s also an incredibly old human practice. Until relatively recently it was allowed, and was often fairly common, in virtually every human society that practiced agriculture (some of the cultures of Pacific Oceania are believed to be the only cultures having agriculture that are exceptions). Slavery occurred on every continent except possibly pre-Colonial Australia (even that appears uncertain) and Antarctica (no human population).
And yes: it appears very likely that all races practiced slavery and/or participated in the slave trade, too. The sole racial exceptions may be from Pacific Oceania, and even that’s not completely certain.
Agriculture is thought to have begun around 10,000 years ago. Allowing a couple of thousand years (I’m being generous – I personally doubt that it took more than a couple of hundred) before slavery developed as a human evil, that means slavery has been around for roughly 8,000 years.
Bottom line: only those societies that never progressed beyond hunter/gatherer – plus possibly a few isolated societies in Pacific Oceania – seem to have never practiced slavery. (Even then, we’re not absolutely sure.) So unless someone can verify that all of his or her ancestors were members of one of that small number of societies, that means you have ancestors from a society that practiced slavery.
And that’s the problem. In any such society, go back far enough and the numbers essentially guarantee you have at least one ancestor that either owned slaves or was otherwise involved in the slave trade.
. . .
OK, the numbers.
A human generation is generally accepted today to be a period of 20 to 30 years. That wasn’t always the case – children were generally born earlier on average in the past than is the case today in much of the world – but for convenience we’ll use 20 years throughout for the length of a generation.
That means a century is 5 generations; a millennium, 50 generations. Since we’re assuming above that slavery began around 8,000 years ago, that means slavery has been around for about 400 human generations.
Ignoring the possibility of consanguineous relationships, the number of ancestors each of us has can be expressed as a by a simple expression: 2 to the Nth power, where N is the number of generations “back” one looks. I’ll represent that as “2^N” here.
So, going back 100 years – to 1915 – means going back 5 generations. In that generation you have 2^5 = 32 ancestors. You can usually check that far back.
In fact, going back even 300 years isn’t easy, but it’s not that bad. That’s the year 1715, and is 15 generations back – which gives that generation 2^15 = 32,768 ancestors. One can probably determine that far back with reasonable certainty whether any of your ancestors ever owned or trafficked in slaves if you are willing to put enough time and energy into the task.
The problem occurs as you continue to look back further.
Looking back 600 years, or the year 1415, and that’s 30 generations back – which works out to 2^30, or 1,073,741,842, ancestors in that generation alone. Even if the records were available, that’s problematic.
It’s estimated that the world population in 1400 was somewhere between 350 and 400 million. That’s far less than the number above. Since every child has 2 parents, either that means everyone alive in 1415 was an ancestor multiple times over – or that something else is in play. (The latter is obviously the case.)
Unfortunately, allowing for the obvious fact that family trees eventually must “fold back” on themselves somewhere in the past doesn’t help much. Even setting the effective number of “unique ancestors” per generation at the low level of 1.5 (e.g., the equivalent of each set of parents being half-siblings – something we would consider today an abomination and an unthinkably high level of consanguinity) only pushes out the problem a few centuries. Even under those conditions, the number of unique ancestors still grows exponentially and can be approximated by 1.5^N – and 1.5^50, which works out to the number of unique ancestors in the year 1015 for 20-year generations, is roughly 637,621,500. Again, that’s far greater than the estimated world population at the time.
So, even the above is actually rather an oversimplification. But I believe it gets the point across – partway.
And that’s only part of the problem. The next is the real “killer”.
For the claim of “no slavery in my family” to be literally true, that means every ancestor in every past generation must neither have owned a slave nor been otherwise involved in the slave trade. Um, I don’t think that’s going to be the case.
Even if only 1 individual in a million on earth was a slave owner at any given time since slavery began, go back far enough and the number of ancestors in a given generation eventually becomes large enough that having a slave-owning or -trading ancestor becomes a virtual certainty. (I’ll pass on providing the mathematical explanation why and a simplified sample calculation unless someone requests it.) Bottom line: somewhere in the past, it’s a virtual guarantee that an ancestor owned a slave or traded in slaves – even if the vast majority did not.
For what it’s worth: by the same analysis, go back far enough and it’s probably equally certain that every one of us has at least one individual in our family tree somewhere who was once a slave, too. So we’re all “victims”, too.
. . .
My point in writing the above wasn’t to make anyone feel bad, or to point fingers. My point is to set the stage for the following.
The whole “guilt about slavery” discussion today is based on the concept of “inherited guilt” – that people living today can be deemed “guilty” for the acts of their ancestors. That concept is specious as hell. Let me say it plainly: the whole concept of “inherited” or “historical” guilt due to the past actions of one’s ancestors is absolute and unadulterated bullsh!t.
Guilt cannot be inherited. A person is guilty for wrongs they themselves commit, or which they have a duty to prevent and willfully (or through negligence) fail to stop. For such failings, a person legitimately can be held accountable.
However, a person cannot legitimately be considered “guilty” of something done before they were born. Even the dullest village idiot understands that.
A person living today had absolutely nothing to do with what happened 100 years ago – because they were not yet born at the time. Regardless of what their ancestors did or did not do, those living today are legitimately “guilty” of absolutely nothing with respect to what happened before they were born. Guilt for those living today is due solely to their own wrongdoings, not those of their ancestors.
Further, the argument is bullsh!t for another reason as well. Go back far enough, and it’s a virtual certainty that each of us has an ancestor that was guilty of the same. I find the hypocrisy in the argument as odious and offensive as the argument’s premise.
. . .
This idiotic concept of “historical” or “inherited” guilt IMO has fueled as many conflicts throughout history – if not more – than has religion. It’s fueled blood feuds (think Hatfields and McCoys). IMO, it’s the real basis for today’s conflict between Palestinians and Israelis (each believes it has has been historically wronged by the other). The same is true for the current tensions in the Balkans and in Central Africa and Asia. Ditto many if not most tribal conflicts throughout history. Today, it forms a big part of the basis for the historical Arab-Persian enmity as well as the India-Pakistan hostilities – more, IMO, than do religious differences. It was a causative factor in most if not all of Europe’s wars.
And yet, some still cling to the inane concept of historical or collective guilt. Humans are sometimes incredibly slow to learn, both individually and as societies.
Regardless of how much we wish otherwise, history cannot be changed; we can’t “fix” the past. The best we can do is remember it, learn from it – and hopefully avoid making the same mistakes yet again.
