Who cares what “most people” think, they’re fucking wrong!
You are supposedly criticizing other people:
We want to believe that as moderns we are better, more rational, so much more wise than people of the past, and it is this very conceited and highly sympathetic view of ourselves that is just so unthinkably blind.
If you are criticizing other people, you have to criticize what they are actually talking about. And pretty much none of them are saying that moderns under your definition are better than religious people. People who believe that “we are better than the past” count the 1800s as the past.
And there is no denying the modernity in the African slave trade
Of course there’s denying the modernity. Because you’re not defining “modern” to mean today, you’re defining it to make your answer come out the way you want.
You also already gave the explanation:
Maybe ancient people would have worked harder to ship slaves across oceans and displace more peoples, if only they had better sailing ships. They simply couldn’t afford to house prisoners in massive systems before the industrial era made food incredibly cheap.
And you made the odd concession before:
The Islamic world did not in fact only enslave pagans.
Okay, so religious people, from your own specified time period, not only enslaved pagans, they also enslaved others. And somehow it still doesn’t count as religious people from that time keeping slaves?
Serfs were not property of any master and ideally had protection against displacement and violence. In practice this didn’t always play out, but neither do liberal human rights.
Liberal human rights tells me to not keep serfs at all. And serfdom is evil at its core. “Serfs ideally weren’t mistreated” means nothing, because they were being inherently mistreated by being serfs.
You are supposedly criticizing other people:
If you are criticizing other people, you have to criticize what they are actually talking about. And pretty much none of them are saying that moderns under your definition are better than religious people. People who believe that “we are better than the past” count the 1800s as the past.
Of course there’s denying the modernity. Because you’re not defining “modern” to mean today, you’re defining it to make your answer come out the way you want.
You also already gave the explanation:
And you made the odd concession before:
Okay, so religious people, from your own specified time period, not only enslaved pagans, they also enslaved others. And somehow it still doesn’t count as religious people from that time keeping slaves?
Liberal human rights tells me to not keep serfs at all. And serfdom is evil at its core. “Serfs ideally weren’t mistreated” means nothing, because they were being inherently mistreated by being serfs.