Do You Really Think The British Were Evil?

should we speak of colonialism and slavery in the same breath as if they were the same thing now one of the weird tensions that emerges for me there and I've tried to think this through clearly I'm reading out the moment of multi-volume history of slavery put out I think by Cambridge University press and my sense historically and you can correct me if you think I'm wrong here is that slavery is a ubiquitous feature of human societies and the conscious realization that slavery itself is intrinsically wrong even in the case let's say of prisoners of war or debt or debtors that was a that that notion emerged with great difficulty and it manifested itself most profoundly in the UK probably in the person of Wilberforce who and and the Christian Protestant evangelists who made a very strong case that slavery itself was intrinsically immoral and the consequence of that was at eventually that the British Navy fought for about 175 years on the high seas to make slavery a counterproductive Enterprise and one of the things that sort of terrifies me about the radical leftist Enterprise is that they really risk throwing the baby out with the bath water because whatever it was that impelled Wilbur Force and then the entire UK to stand against slavery is the only thing we know of in the entire history of the world that actually did stand against slavery with any degree of success so why do you what other cases do you think can be made that colonialism and slavery were not the same thing and why do you think there is this insistence on the radical left side to deny the very process that actually did free slaves insofar as they've become free in recent times so Jordan I think um the identification of colonialism with slavery is similar um to the 1619 project in the United States which identifies the foundations of the US with fundamentally racist and therefore fundamentally illegitimate I think what's happened is that the uh the the probably through black lives matter the killing of George Floyd in 2020 Minneapolis black lives matter movement came across the Atlantic with with uh no change of clothes landed in in Britain and our equivalent is to say contemporary Britain is systemically racist and the reason was the symmetically racist is that we continue to Revere our Colonial past let's say by having a statute of Cecil Rhodes and as we all know uh colonialism was essentially about slavery which was based on a a a um a racist view of Africans as sub-humans so colonialism equal slavery equals racism and that's the foundations of Britain and that's why we have to repudiate our Colonial Past full ancestral roads cool down Johnny McDonald in Canada and somehow therefore we liberate ourselves from systemic racism and that's that's the logic behind the colonialism and slavery Mantra uh so in this country those two things are commonly uh uh talked about as if they were the same thing and my very simple point in that second chapter is to say wait a moment as you've just said Jordan um yes for 150 years some British people by no means all were involved in slave trading and profiting from slavery in the West Indies uh but for 1807 uh onwards and then he's 33 first the slave trade then slavery itself were abolished by the British and for the rest of the Empire's existence for another 150 years roughly the British were involved in anti-slavery so you cannot you cannot identify British Columbia with slavery because for the second half of its life it was anti-slavery and and yes um um slavery in one form another and some forms more were more Humane than others has been around since virtually the dawn of time practiced on every continent by black and brown and red-skinned and yellow-skinned people as well as white-skinned people the Comanche nation in the southwest of the US ran what one historian is called a vast slave economy in the 1700s um that the Arabs were involved in slavery Africans were selling African slaves to their to the Romans and Arabs before they ever sold them to Europeans um so so you know we may um be dismayed at the fact that so many Europeans and British people up until the late 1700s um accepted this institution and the fact of of slave trading but we have to put it in context everyone did it including including uh slaves who escaped from from the plantations Jamaica into the forest of interior some of them kept slaves of their own so common was the practice so yes what happened in the late 1700s was that for the first time in in history um some Nations not just Britain also Denmark and France came to the view that only other people as your property without them having any Rights was morally a aborrunt and for the first time in history uh these nations um eventually led by Britain abolished the slave trade and slavery and then Britain used its Imperial power its power for humanitarian purposes to abolish slavery from Brazil across the Atlantic across Africa India to Malaysia um so so power can be a good thing and in that case it was used for humanitarian purposes they are in here is Jordan as you suggested just just before I started speaking the only here is in that case um the the Empire and those humanitarians who were lobbying for the Imperial power to be used to suppressed slavery they were the progressive people of their day I like knowing exactly where my meat comes from and with moink I know it's coming from small Family Farms all across the country Mike delivers grass-fed and grass-finished beef and lamb pastured pork and chicken and sustainable wild caught Alaskan salmon straight to your door Mike lets you choose the meat delivered in every box select an existing box or create your own set your delivery Cadence and enjoy delicious meat you can cancel anytime but you won't want to if you're not sure where to start check out their standard box it comes with a little bit of everything chicken ribeye burgers and steak moink is all about supporting the Family Farm think about it this way two percent of Americans are farmers but 100 of Americans eat we need to show our support for the families that keep us well fed after receiving my first moike box I was floored the salmon and chicken are both fantastic and the steak might be the best I've ever had and keep in mind I cooked it myself with a freezer full of moink products I can without a doubt say it is a fantastic deal on a ton of delicious and well-produced products you won't be disappointed and you can rest assured all of Mike's Meat comes from wholesome American farmers so keep American farming Going Strong by signing up at moinkbox.com jbp right now in Dr Peterson's listeners can get free bacon in your first box and let me say it's the best bacon you'll ever taste I re-upped my subscription because I ran out too fast Mo ink box.com jbp that's moinkbox.com jbp but it also seems to me and you're in a great position to comment on this so first of all we have to accept to some degree that the willingness to use power and compulsion and to keep slaves is relatively ubiquitous across the entire Human family let's say and that opposition to that emerges with difficulty and rarely and then you have to ask yourself what are the preconditions for that kind of opposition and certainly the case with Wilberforce as far as I can tell that he was driven by the conviction that all men and women are made in the image of God and that it was a violation of a Transcendent ideal that slavery in and of itself is the violation of a Transcendent ideal and that is something that's deeply rooted in the in the Christian tradition and and deeper than that I mean there's certainly the dawning of objection to the notion of slavery and tyranny in the book of Exodus that's much older than Christianity but it's it's still an idea that emerged with difficulty and I I have tried to think my way around this right because I don't like to multiply unnecessary metaphysical presumptions but I can't see at all that opposition to slavery would have emerged the way it did in Britain if it wouldn't have been able to draw on a well of metaphysical and religious presupposition that was predicated on the idea that each person has a soul and that that soul in some manner has a Divine value yeah yeah so um you're quite right the the main impulse for the evolution movement was uh Christian Evangelical Christian um and so John Wesley in 1774 uh publisher treaties called upon thoughts of slavery and on the front page of of the treaties um is a quotation from The Book of Genesis where um is it is it Kane says something like am I My Brother's Keeper uh that God's answer being yes yes you are and the implication being that that that all uh human beings regardless of race and cultural development are equally children of of the one God and that was clearly uh the the main conviction that that drove um um Evangelical Christians non-conformist Christians initially uh to to to found I hadn't yep I didn't know about that comment by Wesley so that ties the story of Cain and Abel in with the opening chapters of of J of the of the earlier parts of Genesis the verses of the early report of Genesis right so you have the proposition that human beings are made in the image of God and you have the later proposition in the Cain and Abel story that that means that you have a Divine obligation to act in relationship to others with that Divine value in mind that's right and so I know we're getting on to chapter three on Race here at Jordan so uh this this Christian conviction of the fundamental basic equality of all human beings regardless of race um that that that persists throughout um the the British Empire uh there was um um in the second half of the 1800s the development of a contrary view uh which you might call scientifical biological racism which holds that you have a hierarchy of races and the white races are naturally biologically Superior to uh to non-white races so you have a kind of permanent fixed heart racial hierarchy um um but this this notion of some people's being naturally inferior uh um Vibe with the Christian notion but never displaced it so for example I was reading and I caught this in in my book an account of debates in the parliament of Canada in the 1880s and it's reported by the historian that every time someone would stand up and say that the Native Americans are naturally inferior others would stand up and other MPS would stand up and say no that's not British that is not Christians um yeah

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Keywords: psychology, philosophy, Jordan B. Peterson, Jordan Peterson, JB Peterson, jordanbpeterson, jordanpeterson, personality, understandmyself, selfauthoring, neuropsychology, jordan peterson clips, jp peterson clips, jp clips, jordan peterson podcast clips, jordan peterson live, jordan peterson livestream, jordan peterson shorts, jordan peterson tiktoks, jordan peterson motivational clips

Id: GJSBdnRz2fw

Length: 12min 6sec (726 seconds)

Published: Tue May 30 2023