So at some point in history we decided to stop killing and enslaving each other. Why? Well in that very statement I answered the question. Each other. At some point in history, we decided that other people were people, they were like us, just born somewhere else, born with different skin, and grew up with different beliefs. We were all however, human. This was not the result of rational thought. Aristotle, an early champion of rationalism, believed heavily in classism as the only workable structure for society. Rather it was the outgrowth of the marriage of rationality with religious thought. Many have commented on the proverbial pillars of "Jerusalem and Athens" as the basis for Western thought throughout the modern era. God gave us a painted ceiling, and government provided the pillars to hold it up.
This foundation was abstracted, as mankind enjoyed the fruits of the resulting society. What once was radical and fought for became commonplace, ordinary, expected, and most importantly of all, status quo. We became accustommed to civil rights. Of course it was not all smoothness, prejudices as old as culture itself still required working out, but they were worked out. In the most fortified cities of Western thought, some even posessed the temerity to suggest that this was the natural order of things, and that mankind may of himself attain such tranquility. Humans after all are notorious for appropriating credit. We think that because we think, we are better than those who think differently. Our own prejudice is so obvious and rational to us, we can't imagine that sensible folks could disagree.
But they did disagree, for most of history they have disagreed, we exist in the extreme minority of ideas, if those ideas are ranked by the length of time they have existed in common narrative. The rationalists flatter themselves that they could derive the axioms of the modern world, simply because they have no experience with aught but the modern world. It's obvious to them. Human rights exist because we are human; people are valuable because they are people, right? This is in fact so irrational that thinkers across the millenia would have scoffed at its impracticality. How is the conquered equal to the conqueror? They were conquered after all. What a crazy idea is this, that we are equal in value, regardless of wealth, or life accomplishment. Evolution is a process of eliminating the weak. If it got us this far, why turn back now? Why embrace the value of the helpless and feeble? Do we not sign the death certificate of our own species?
Comments