Modern Slavery
So I was listening to a guy (on the Daily Stoic podcast) who wrote a book about the international slave trade (and the movement to abolish same) and I was so struck by the uncanny similarities to industrial animal agriculture now:
Everyone back then was like, “Yeah, we know it's not great, but we've always done it (the Greeks and Romans did it!), and it's pretty clearly never going to change, and also it's out of sight (so we can generally keep it out of mind), and we do like the taste (of cheap sugar!), and yeah it's probably not ideal for those trapped in it, but we have it on good authority their welfare is looked after (and, hey, they don't look like us so you're just being sentimental to think they're smart or sensitive enough to know their lives are living hells), and anyway, what are you gonna do, throw 30,000 sailors (on slave ships) out of work?!”
And then a tiny handful of people sat down in a cafe in London and undertook to abolish the entire giant multinational industry. Because they knew it was wrong. (And for the first time in human history, a few individuals undertook to fight for the rights of others, when it stood to benefit them not at all.)
