• shalafi@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      Go read The Grapes of Wrath and The Concrete Jungle. Get back to me on today’s unrelenting misery.

      • jerkface@lemmy.ca
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        5 hours ago

        There are more human slaves alive on Earth today than at any previous point in history.

        • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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          3 hours ago

          I doubt it. The Roman Empire alone at its height had a population of 50-90 million with roughly a quarter of that enslaved.

          Even with extremely inclusive definitions of slavery (which are also not included in the classical count) the modern estimates of the total number of slaves is like 40-50 million. It’s too many, obviously, but classical period Europe, Africa, and Asia alone would crush those numbers, and the 'New World" didn’t appear out of nowhere when Columbus stumbled into it.

      • blackbelt352@lemmy.world
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        22 hours ago

        One kind of misery does not negate the existence of other kinds of misery. The pain of living through the Great Depression is different from the pain of seeing reality eroded away into propaganda for the highest bidders, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be fighting to end misery.

        • Grail@lemmy.world
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          16 hours ago

          Reality has always been propaganda designed to serve the highest bidders. It’s just more obvious now because they’re changing the propaganda more often.

          http://soulism.net