(no subject)

[novapsyche]

How do you feel about the concept of ownership?

Comments

[jennkitty.livejournal.com]

of material goods or people?

[simianpower.livejournal.com]

That was my first thought, too. "Who is it that I'm supposed to consider owning?"

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

Ownership period.

[blue-lightning.livejournal.com]

1) Material goods:

Rather uncomfortable. I've never been much of a materialist, save for in my love of collecting books. Even then I don't see books so much as mine as the result of gathering knowledge into one easily accessible library, from which all people can and do borrow volumes.

This reaction is likely related to how detached I was from the concept of "home" as a child. There was a house, to be sure, but I never connected positively to it because of all the negative childhood memories. Having to move out, first for university and second for personal safety, furthered my sense that home was where my feet were, completely dividing my sense of self from any one location. The smallest term I can use to describe my "home" is Canada, which obviously leaves a lot of leeway without any real, tangible sense of ownership.

Furthermore, the act of buying things as a child was always wound up with a lot of guilt and a lot of manipulation. On the one hand, my family was not well off, and my sisters and brother always clamoured for items so I would severely limit my own requests to counterbalance their ignorant and selfish pleas. On the other hand, my mother would often try to binge shop with us, but those shopping trips always led soon after to a great deal of manipulation - not just in the sense of buying love, but also in buying our silence and cooperation. Even helping me get to university my first term with a money loan was a "gift" with too hefty a price tag - her constant claims in my first term that my being at university was going to make my family lose the house (which was actually not true, since they've long since paid off the mortgage), and her insistence that I had to finish school quickly so I in turn could pay for my sisters' and brother's education.

So... in short, I learn to distrust most things materialistic, and I maintain that present discomfort to this day. If I could, I'd live without anything of my own. But in a library, of course. :)

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

Man, to live in a library! That would, indeed, be fantastic.

[entheo.livejournal.com]

one day you should come and stay at my place and check out my book collection :)

[blue-lightning.livejournal.com]

2) People

I think I would be more comfortable with the concept of Master/Slave relationships if people coupled cultural glorification of submissiveness and "slave training" with an equal glorification of training the masters as well. It disturbs me how little emphasis is put on training someone to be dominant, as if seeing a loved one being punished, or punishing a loved one by your own hands, should come naturally - as should, apparently, the ability to control.

That said, if you know of the equivalent of The Story of O, one focusing more on the dominance than the submission, I'd be very intrigued to hear of it!

Outside voluntary Master/Slave relationships, of course, the concept of ownership is utterly sickening and debasing. But that should be obvious.

Good question, if broad! Sorry about the length (and possibly tangential nature) of my responses!

[xiombarg.livejournal.com]

I think that society would be better without it but it's psychologically part of the human brain on an unconcious level, so it needs to exist so we don't go crazy, but it needs to be moderated better than it is in the typical capitalist society.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

but it's psychologically part of the human brain on an unconcious level

Is it? That's quite an assertion.

Humans are born with an instinct to own?

[xiombarg.livejournal.com]

Ever hear of the "mine" stage of child development? You know, the bit where the kid's like "mine mine mine".

Territoriality is very natural in mammals, and ownership is an outgrowth of that. That doesn't mean we can't route around our instincts, but they're there.

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

I think it's probably hard-wired, too. Very young children think EVERYTHING belongs to them and have trouble sharing.

I think that in America, you don't really "own" land; you just rent it from the gov't. If you don't think that's true, try getting away with not paying your property taxes (the generic 'you' here).

'minds me of a joke....

[pachamama.livejournal.com]

Q. Why did Marx only drink herbal tea?
A. Because proper tea is theft.

yeah I know it was really Proudhon who said property is theft, but most folk associate it with Marx

[hopeevey.livejournal.com]

It's a concept too ingrained in how I think for me to really consider it seperately.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, I don't follow.

[hopeevey.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if I can make myself clear, but I'll try.

Ownership is such a basic concept in my mind that I have a hard time thinking about it as anything other than Part Of How Things Are. It's just to central for me to be able to look at it as a seperate thing from all the other central basic things in my mind.

[m0n90053.livejournal.com]

Uh, it's problematic, that's for sure...

Between property rights, patent, and copyright, there's a whole bunch of stuff going on, some of which applies in one of the arenas but not so much in others.

First off, basically, if you sweated over something and worked your ass off making it work, you own it. Or at least, that's the way it should be, but then some goof came up with work-for-hire and changed that shit all around...

And that's provided that you worked like that for all of it, from the very start. If you're building on someone else's work, then you own the part you did, but they own the part they did, and if your work couldn't have been done without their work happening first, then they own some of your work- not all of it, because you did work, but only part of it.

If you worked your ass off to take something away from somebody who worked their ass off to create it, however, your work does not constitute true ownership- that's thievery.

otoh, if you buy somebody else's sweated-over work from them, then you have, via the agency of money or barter, enacted a sort of transfer which in effect replaces their labor with your labor, so, provided that the sale is mutually consensual, it's all good (- unless you ripped them off by paying a fraction of the true value...)

Uh, this is all too abstract, but I'm not right now in the mood for trying to concretize it... what's worse is that I know that there's more to it than that, but again, lacking motivation to continue...

If the question is, Is ownership a good thing?, a.k.a. the problematic question on the other side of 'property is theft'-

yeah. often exploited, often abused, but in a closed system, you can't just have just anybody walking up and taking whatever they want without transacting some kind of transfer which is beneficial to both (all) parties, instead of benefitting one and being detrimental to the other.

[m0n90053.livejournal.com]

otoh, if you buy somebody else's sweated-over work from them, then you have, via the agency of money or barter, enacted a sort of transfer which in effect replaces their labor with your labor, so, provided that the sale is mutually consensual, it's all good (- unless you ripped them off by paying a fraction of the true value...)

...Or, the other way around, if the actual cost of what you buy is significantly less than what you're paying for it...

This gets into, as a concrete example, the problems I have in dealing with recording companies at face value- when I buy a CD for 14.99, the greatest part of that money goes not to the store from which I bought it (which nevertheless underpays its employees by as much as it can get away with, in order to pass as much as possible of the profit from that sale to management goons), not to the studio at which the music was recorded (but again, generally speaking, more goes to equipment purchases and maintenance and to management than to the guys (& gals) who actually twiddle the knobs and make it come out sounding good, unless the place is self-owned), nor to the artists themselves, but to the management goons at the recording companies who write contracts that backbill performers for everything from material costs to performance hall rentals and studio time in order to gank back every penny that can be taken away.

...but I digress...

We get into the area of "intellectual property", in which making a copy of something that already exists does not destroy or remove from someone else's grasp the already-existing original...

If I buy a CD and burn a copy of it on my computer, there is no physical 'theft'- it's not the same as if I walked back into the store from which I bought the original and walked out with another copy without paying for it-

But that's how the recording industry wants it to be treated...

Now, if I make a copy and sell it, that's one thing- and that's where my point about sweating to take something away from someone sweated to who creat it not being equal sweat comes in- that is theft-

But if we take into consideration what it actually cost the recording company to produce that CD, other than the genius (whether real or supposed) of the artist featured thereon, and divide it into what the recording company charges me to purchase it- let's say, in a spirit of generosity toward the recording company for the sake of making a point, that it cost them a dollar to produce and distribute the particular CD in question in the example, and they charge me 14.99 to purchase it- round to 15.00- I should be able, in my opinion, to make 14 copies (14 copies + 1 original @ 1.00/ea = 15.00), provided that they are for my own personal use, before the record company has a right to accuse me of theft. That's more copies already than I'm liable to make unless it's for other than personal reasons... but the recording company wants to limit me to 1 copy ever- and that's hardly fair.

I'm thinking that that's enough for now, but it's not the end of the story- unless you think I'm going too far beyond the bounds of what you wanted to hear about it?

[m0n90053.livejournal.com]

ummm...

someone sweated to who creat it

s/b

someone who sweated to create it

[kittenkissies.livejournal.com]

It is comforting. I would at least like to know my thoughts and feelings are mine...