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yam wrote

Debt is the language of economics it wasn't exactly oppression until the age of capital

When did this "age of capital" begin then? What about biblical rules, like Jubilee, meant to free people from debt oppression? What about indentured servitude of biblical times? How could there be a large movement centered around debt forgiveness if debt was not oppressive? I don't understand.

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d4rk wrote

late 1500s if I remember correctly. I think this was a criticism from Atheists a long time ago in terms of Islam and Judaism in that Debt and Debt forgiveness wasn't an "evil" the way we see it today rather "necessary evil" would be a better temporal translation.

Note how only during Jubilees can such a thing occur, an event that was rare because of the frequent imperializations. The freeing of indentured servants are a much more common occurence since it's debt forgiveness. Therefore, debt was just part of the whole thing, even with Jubilees they can still oppress the next year.

Similarly, Bilal, the man who sang the first Athan wasn't Liberated from slavery, he was bought by Muhammad. Yet somehow the pseudo-language of oppression is there due to, yes, hindsight.

Lastly, when I say that the language of oppression did not exist it means that there was no actual effort to desystematize because there was no language to describe it at the time. Like the contemporary language of rape, such an idea did not exist before because everyone was a misogynist and patriarchal systems were favored. Only in the advent of the 1800s did such an idea been introduced and was called wrong.

the idea that there was a language for it from our perspective is hindsight bias. That they wanted to get rid of debts and not the entire imperial system in general. Culture is constricted through Language and translation from our time to that can cause misinterpretations. Just accept the fact that most people in the past was shite.

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yam wrote (edited )

Makes sense. Thanks for the long explanation! Interesting stuff.

So this language of oppression is not neutral descriptions of oppressive concepts, like debt, slave, king, etc, but the labeling of oppression as being harmful, I guess.

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