General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Thought-provoking article: "What 'Lincoln' misses and another Civil War film gets right".... [View all]JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)I'm not apologizing for the Southerners. I am simply explaining that they lived in their economic reality and believed (falsely) that they could not survive without the "institution" of slavery.
Similarly, we today live in an economy that relies on "institutions" like CEOs receiving many times the pay of other workers, like management hating unions rather than seeing them as a means of organizing the workplace, of at-will employment giving employers the right to simply destroy the life of an employee on a whim, etc. In business and the workplace, we continue to function in a master/servant economy.
Just as slavery is now considered to have been a huge, condemnable mistake, I am hoping that the oppression in the workplace will one day be viewed as a sin of our time. The workplace should be where we do our best and achieve things together, not a place where some are tyrants and some are only a bit better than slaves. But history moves slowly. The time will come when we achieve a more morally admirable society, but it will not be during my lifetime.