Slavery and the Spawning of the Age of Piracy

History has a lot of lessons, but a primary one is that every incident or eventuality creates unintended and often unexpected opportunities.

The advent of the European slave trade was one example.

The Europeans were late comers to the slave trade, trailing the Arabs’ Zanzibar trade by a few Centuries.

Short shrift is given to the fact that the initial European slave trade involved the Irish and was part of Cromwell’s attempted and nearly successful extermination of that race.

Throughout the 17^th Century, Ireland saw its population drop from 1.6 million to under 500,000 as England’s war against the Irish proceeded. Not disposed to pass up an opportunity, Cromwell’s forces saw the legions of homeless Irish, many of them women and children dispossessed in the wake of their husband’s and father’s death, were scooped up and shipped to the America’s as slaves NOT “indentured servants.”

Until the early 1700s there were far more Irish slaves in the America’s than there were Africans.

Debtors and others found in the workhouses were often plied with drink to get them to sign on to work onboard slave ships.

Large crews were necessary on the voyage to the Americas to reduce the possibility of any slave revolt, but few were needed on the return trip when the ships were laden with tobacco, sugar and other crops.

The slave-ship seamen’s lives were brutal and often short, as well.

While about 12% of the slaves died in passage from Africa to “The New World,” fully 21% of the crews did, as well. Many more of them were often left stranded penniless in the Americas when the ships returned to Europe. Many of those starved to death, since there was no work available in such slave-based economies.

The Captains of these ships were supreme rulers, in effect, “gods” to their men...their word was law.

Many delighted in inflicting brutal punishments on their crews, often keel-hauling (pulling a man’s body from stem to stern along the bottom of the ship by means of a rope and pulleys) or fastening iron bolts into the mouths of those who complained “too much.”

As luck would have it, this created a fertile opportunity for the new breed of pirates, who’d moved from the ranks of “official Privateers,” under the aegis of various governments, to independent “enemies of all mankind.”

These independent pirates constantly needed an infusion of manpower, given the violent and often short-lived nature of their work. Slave ships became a favorite target of pirates for exactly that reason – to “recruit” their crews.

Often the crews of such ships were more than happy to see their officers punished and often pirates would put such officers “on trial” before their crews.

Most crew members saw a much better chance of survival aboard a pirate ship than with the slave-ships they worked on, making them more than willing recruits.

That’s how Bart Roberts (the most successful pirate in history) was recruited into piracy. He was a reluctant 3^rd Officer on a slave-ship attacked by the pirate Howell Davis’ crew.

They found themselves in need of a navigator and Roberts could read maps and navigate so his skill-set was valuable to the pirates.

When Captain Davis was killed in a battle a short while later, the crew appealed to the reluctant Roberts, a non-drinker and one who did not delight in the violence he’d been immersed in and he accepted.

Throughout the 18^th Century the slave trade fueled the growing pirate menace until the Caribbean became an untenable pirates cove, from which neither American nor European ships were safe.

In that regard, the rise of independent piracy is a testament to unintended consequences and expanding variability.

Atheism and Agnosticism

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) atheism is the disbelief in, or denial of, the existence of a god, while agnosticism is the view that the existence of anything beyond and behind the natural and material phenomena is unknown and (so far as can be judged) unknowable, and especially that a First Cause and an unseen world are subjects of which we know nothing.

People who don't take enough variables into account, often find themselves confusing the two. Occasionally, some "gnostic atheists" (those who believe "god does NOT exist") seek to include empirical agnostics into their midst by erroneously claiming "Agnosticism is a form of atheism and vice versa." THAT is patently UNTRUE.

Agnostics are empiricists who merely acknowledge that there are some things that appear humanly unknowable. They tend to hold this position because reason compels them to doubt the existence of any specific god/gods, yet they resist calling themselves atheists because they hold to that view tentatively.

Agnosticism is the position counter to Gnosticism - the belief that a human being can possess knowledge about a god. It's an epistemological term - about the possibility of knowledge in regard to 'god' claims - and not a statement about matters of belief. 'Agnostics' hold to the epistemological position that human beings can't actually know anything about something beyond nature, something theists call 'supernatural'. So they believe that there's no way for a human to know anything about a 'god' and there are many theists who agree with agnostics on that.

Theists can be agnostics, in fact, many theists say that they hold to their god belief on faith because they agree that we humans can't know things about the supernatural, or 'god'. Some very famous theologians have agreed that man is limited and that this means that man cannot have 'god knowledge". The list of theologians would include people like Martin Luther or Soren Kierkegaard.

It is this empirical doubt that separates agnostics from both Gnostics AND atheists, who, all too often imply that there is some (“scientific”) reason or some evidence to support the view “God does not exist,” whereas ALL empirical thought leads ONLY to the conclusion that “we DO NOT know.”

What is Expanding Variability?.....

“Expanding Variability,” merely acknowledges the very real conundrum, that the MORE information/data we have, the MORE new (or previously unseen) variables/unknowns we find ourselves faced with. In other words, problems become more complex the closer we look at them.

More data uncovers more variables/unknowns. It DOESN'T create or generate new variables/unknowns, it merely brings into light variables/unknowns that were previously unseen or unconsidered.

This is why so many "experts" are wrong so often.

Most experts were good students and as students (especially in math and physics) we are often given problems that "assume a perfect vacuum," precisely to sidestep the thorny problems that an increasing number of unknowns poses.

UNFORTUNATELY, many such good students take such practices with them into the real world, where unknowns cannot simply be ignored.

But even when we look to take into account as many variables as we're aware of, the more data we input, the more new information we glean, the more variables/unknowns we come across.

it is this "Expanding Variability" that often presents us with the greatest obstacle to solving our problems. It inevitably leads to over-simplification and "sloppy thinking."

I will devote this blog to highlighting instances where expanding variability has stymied some of our "best and brightest" who've operated earnestly and out of "the best of intentions.