In other scholarship on slavery, authors have tended to assume that once ideas and values are established, you can make sense of why people acted. Moral Capital is about showing just how wide the space is between holding a view and acting on it. My own view is that it’s actually unusual when people are mobilized around their notion of what is ethical. I think the more common experience is to find ways to justify things that are unpleasant or uncomfortable because it’s hard to know how to act on them.
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- [note::Very relevant to animal advocacy]

But historically, people also thought of slavery as a product of civilization and therefore found ways to justify it. They created ways to explain, for example, why specific groups of people should be enslaved, or why a particular system of slavery is justified, even a form of progress over a previous system. Anybody reflecting on this (and this is true in any of the times where slavery has been predominant) can see that slavery is wrong, but they would also see that that’s how the world works.I’ve always thought that the best analogy is how we regard eating meat. With modern science and the ability to manage food systems, we can nourish ourselves without killing animals. We also know that eating animals is unethical. We’re doing something cruel and unnecessary. But we do it because that’s just what we do. It wouldn’t be surprising to me if 30, 50 or 120 years from now, people look back on this time period and ask, “What was wrong with these people? They must have been like moral infants. They must not have realized this is a cruel way to treat animals.” But we know it perfectly well. It’s just what we do. I see slavery similarly: cruelty and brutality backed by all sorts of justifications that are built into the age.
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- [note::Relation between slavery and factory farming]

(highlight:: Instead, Quakers hold a set of values — like peace or the universal access to the Inner Light.
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As a result, it’s easier for changes to emerge from within Quaker life than it is in other systems where hierarchies serve as gatekeepers to what can be said. There are always dissenters in every tradition, but Quakers make more room for dissenters than others do.)
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- [note::Interesting - values-first organizations are more flexible and innovative than hierarchy-first ones]

Withdrawing from the slave system was a way of reinforcing what it meant to be a Quaker.
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- [note::Quakers are the original hipsters??? Lol]

That doesn’t make them insincere. It just means that when people are doing things, they’re usually bringing all of themselves to it. They’re bringing their social networks, their personal experience, their hang ups, their preoccupations. The search for the perfectly selfless person really misses what is in fact a complex set of motivations that move people to act. Everyone operates between these poles of selflessness and self-interest. It’s in that space that motivations emerge and decisions get made.
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- [note::"No one is selfless"]

If you decide to lead a movement, you have to think of yourself as someone who can lead a movement. You have to have grandiosity and a notion of having a capacity for unusual efficacy and leadership if you’re going to do something like that. I don’t see how you can be a major actor in the world if you’re not on an ego trip.
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- [note::Do a disproportionate number of egotistical/power hungry people end up leading movements/positions of power?]

Part of what I’m trying to do is to recognize — even destigmatize — that sort of self-absorption because those are the people who make unusual impacts in the world. They’re often not pleasant to be around, but you have to recognize the balance of virtues and vices. Even thinking about it on a local level, imagine someone who says, “I can run for mayor and change the city,” or, “I can take over as principal and make it the best high school in the district.” To say that is to say that you have something special that other people don’t have or won’t act on. Those two ideas can’t be separated. That sort of self-importance often rubs us the wrong way, but one of the purposes of the book is to make clear that heroism is grounded in some of the mucky stuff of being human.
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- [note::Maybe I should work on being more self-important. I think I could be a great leader, but I feel like I'm too conflict avoidant/timid to fully realize the capacity I have to do good.]

None of the abolitionists actually thought that slaves should be not only free, but fully equal and able to do whatever they wanted. Nearly all of the perspectives on abolition still expected enslaved persons to work — just without slavery. Antislavery did not mean pro-Black or pro-African, and certainly not anti-racist. You can oppose slavery and still believe in racial inferiority, as just about everyone did in some form or fashion on the European side.
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There’s a consensus by the 21st century that slavery is beyond the pale. But I don’t think that was inevitable. I’m not saying that it was unlikely or highly contingent, but I think it’s incorrect to think about abolition in the Americas or today’s global consensus against slavery as if it’s part of the natural process of modernization. Marx, for instance, treated slavery as a stage in economic development that advanced societies would grow out of. I don’t think any of that is true.I think slavery could have lasted well into the 20th century, despite the advantages of industrialization and mechanization. I don’t think abolition would have occurred without the pressure and power of the British government’s backing. No countries abolished slavery independent of the example or the force of the British Empire. Britain in the 19th century was the most powerful and influential nation in the world.
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We obviously have the largest global military footprint. Our economy has an outsize impact. In one way or another, every country has to maintain some relationship with the United States and American norms. It was the same with Britain in the 19th century. In the same way that the United States “exports democracy,” Britain exported antislavery — even if that was somewhat contradictory to the reality on the ground.
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- [note::Does this still stand today?
What kind of things can we change here in America that might be able to influence the rest of the world?]