In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

As I think about it, there have been words written about slaves in the
ancient world concerning how they often came to be the greatest defenders of
their owners' families, identifying with those families as if they were
their own. I suppose the same applies to a fully subjugated woman and that
the ancients were quite familiar with the methods.

Yes. But I don't think it was too complex - well-treated slaves (male
or female) reciprocated the treatment, even if they were slaves.

That may well be true, but to the extent that it is, that isn't the
Stockholm Syndrome. For anyone following this and wondering what we're
talking about, the Syndrome was named for the WWII phenomenon in which many
residents of Stockholm, Sweden identified with the Nazi occupiers, even
calling themselves "Nazis" and, without being asked, becoming informers for
the Nazis with no direct coercion or promise of favors for ratting out their
neighbors. At least, that's my recollection, not having studied it for close
to 40 years.

One would think that the indirect coercion implicit in being ruled by
Nazi occupiers would be more than sufficient. Those Nazi Swedes may
have also believed in the creed professed (if not exactly followed) by
the Nazis, who had a following in the US as well.


Stockholm was an extreme case of a phenomenon that had been identified
throughout history. Other examples were Jews in the Nazi concentration camps
who became overseers and informers on other Jews in the camps. In the US, it
applied to black slaves who were trusted with overseeing other black slaves,
often becoming more brutal enforcers than the brutal breed of whites who
were usually hired for the job.

And it may be old-fashioned boot-licking.


Again, referring to the understanding of 40 years ago, it was attributed to
a psychological defense mechanism that came into play only when the
oppression was extreme and inescapable, or when the individuals succumbed to
high levels of intimidation that were applied for a long time. The victim
eventually snapped and identified with the aggressor in order to escape the
oppression. It isn't a conscious thing; psychological pressure takes over.

The kind of generous and familial treatment you're describing could well
have led to compliant and supportive slaves, but that's a lot different from
the psychological reversal that's traditionally been called the Stockholm
Syndrome, or, more generally, "Identification with the Aggressor."

Again, I think that it's not all that complex. The survival instinct is
perhaps the strongest of the instincts, so it's the "inescapable" part
that counts the most, where the deep likely unconscious calculation is
that one must conform or die. A little kindness goes a long way in such
an environment.


The modern development of this theory came sometime in the late '50s or
early '60s, when psychologists and social scientists applied it to analyze
the claim by white Southerners that many black slaves actually had been
happy in their enslavement, and that slavery was therefore a beneficent
institution. If it was the Identification with the Aggressor syndrome at
work, the truth was closer to the opposite. Most likely, there were examples
of each. But compliant slaves of any kind -- including the enslavement of
women implied by Deut. 21:10 -- are hard to explain in terms of beneficence.
The Stockholm Syndrome has been strongly identified as the source of many
such examples. The behavior of some Jews in the WWII concentration camps can
hardly be explained by beneficent treatment by the Nazis, and there is
considerable other evidence that slaves and prisoners who identify with
their oppressors do so most often when the oppression is extreme.

Again, way too complex and post hoc for my taste. Psychology is an
effect, not a cause. Coming back to women, the fundamental test of the
evolutionary success of a woman is lots of grandchildren. In other
words, her children were numerous enough and well-enough provided for
that they were able to carry on. Nothing else matters.

Specifically, it doesn't much matter who the fathers were, so long as
they bring home the bacon, don't treat her too harshly, and don't kill
too many of her children. And the fiercer the menfolk, the better
defended the women and children. So there's a tradeoff here.

After a million years of evolution under the pressure of endless tribal
conflict and warfare, the gene pool will have a large component of women
who accept the periodic forcible replacement of their menfolk, as did
their mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, ... This acceptance
became hard-wired into their brains; no conscious thought required.

That same gene pool will have a large component of fierce menfolk - they
got, and kept, the girl.


One way for a man of that day to "marry" was to buy a female slave. The
book "Harem ..." was written by the daughter of such a union, and she
commented that her mother (or was it grandmother?) was for all intents
and purposes her (grand)father's wife, although legally her
(grand)mother was literally a slave.

By the way, it turns out to be the grandmother, not the mother.

Turkey outlawed harems in the 1920s.


Another of the stories in this book recounts an Englishman walking
through the slave market in Istanbul being surprised to hear the women
calling to him "Buy me!".

They probably thought he was rich. g

By their standards, any English gentleman was. More to the point, rich
enough to take them out of the slave market.

The book "Harem ..." also tells the story of one Englishman who did buy
an odalisque (female slave, implication being young and fetching) at the
market. Suffice it to say that she was not a prisoner in his home.


And the Ottoman Empire came to be ruled largely by the Eunichs and the
Harems of the titular rulers.

"Harem - The World Behind the Veil", Alev Lytle Croutier, Abbeville
Press, 1989, ISBN 1-55859-159-1, 224 pages.

Anyway, the point is that not all slaves were unhappy with their fate,
whatever we might think of it, centuries to millennia later, and we need
to be very cautious in applying the mores of today to the situations of
past ages.

Again, the caution should be informed by what has been learned about the
Stockholm Syndrome. Reading the historical apologia for slavery in the
South, it's easy to be misled.

While we are well rid of slavery, and many other practices of past ages,
it does not follow that the historical documents as a whole are
misleading, even though individual documents may well be.

That said, documents from the North or the South during the run-up to
the Civil War would be particularly suspect, given the politics of that
day.

I recall reading that after the Civil War, many of the just-freed slaves
in the South stayed where they were, becoming employees or tenant
farmers for their former masters. It makes sense actually. Most slaves
had known no other life, and if the master wasn't too bad a sort, given
the paucity of options in rural areas, it may have been the path of
least resistance. By the same token, I'm sure that the terrible masters
suffered swift depopulation of their enterprises once the former slaves
were free to go.

And I've also read my share of present-day stories about small towns
with only one employer, a famously ugly one, where the employees might
as well be slaves.

Anyway, the real problem happens when isolated documents are wrenched
out of their historical contexts and misused in present-day political
disputes.


It appears you've given this some thought and that you're more familiar with
the texts. What's your take on the attitude toward abortion in ancient
times?

Well, I cannot claim to have read all those texts, but my take on the
attitude of the ancients on abortion is that they thought it a bad idea,
but on practical grounds, not moral grounds: It was too likely to fail
and/or kill the mother, given the medicine of the day, so it wasn't
often attempted in practice. Nor did they put much store in "the
sanctity of life" and such concepts; one was doing very well to survive
to 35, and most children died before the age of ten.

Joe Gwinn

It's interesting that we come to a similar conclusion from different angles.
I've only read the timelines compiled by people with an ax to grind, without
much biblical education, but I've tried to do it from both sides.

Yes. I would tend to dismiss out of hand any analysis claiming that the
ancients, cared a fig for, or would even understand, the present-day
abortion debate. It's simply too remote, in every sense of the word.

That said, one perhaps relevant datapoint comes to mind, the Vikings.
Basically, while there was no such thing as abortion in their world,
their law was that a couple had one week to decide to keep a newborn.
If the answer was No, they abandoned the child on a hill after
announcing their intention in the public square. If the newborn was
healthy, a childless couple would be hovering, and would take the
abandoned baby home. If the newborn was not healthy, nobody would come.

Ref: The Icelandic Sagas, which are oral traditions from 800-1000 AD
written down in the 1200s, and are still in print (Penguin). There is
also much academic literature on the laws and social mores of the
Vikings. (The Klingons of Star Trek are modeled on the Vikings.)

Joe Gwinn