The moment that inspired this question:
A long time ago I was playing an MMO called Voyage of the Century Online. A major part of the game was sailing around on a galleon ship and having naval battles in the 1600s.
The game basically allowed you to sail around all of the oceans of the 1600s world and explore. The game was populated with a lot of NPC ships that you could raid and pick up its cargo for loot.
One time, I was sailing around the western coast of Africa and I came across some slavers. This was shocking to me at the time, and I was like “oh, I’m gonna fuck these racist slavers up!”
I proceed to engage the slave ship in battle and win. As I approach the wreckage, I’m bummed out because there wasn’t any loot. Like every ship up until this point had at least some spare cannon balls or treasure, but this one had nothing.
… then it hit me. A slave ship’s cargo would be… people. I sunk this ship and the reason there wasn’t any loot was because I killed the cargo. I felt so bad.
I just sat there for a little while and felt guilty, but I always appreciated that the developers included that detail so I could be humbled in my own self-righteousness. Not all issues can be solved with force.
It’s also better than actually surviving the journey and then being worked to death slaving in the fields, being stripped of your skin by whips, beatings, the rapes, being used as a whore, being forced to give birth with no real support or care, being purposefully and forcibly separated from your loved ones, being forced to walk around in chains like dogs, having body parts cut off to enforce compliance or to be executed if you piss off a white person or defy them in any way.
And that’s if you aren’t torn apart by their dogs if you try to run away.
And being recaptured and sold back into slavery after one of the five sane white people on the planet redeems you – the term redeem doesn’t mean to change one’s ways, it originally meant to be bought out of slavery – or being kidnapped in whatever country you ran to and brought back.
Yeah, I would take drowning any day of the week, and twice on Sunday, over that.
