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What if our fundamentals are exactly backwards?
New to The Motte, looking for constructive, critical discussion.
Here's an example of what I mean by a "fundamental":
Every economic system that has seemed credible to most people since the dawn of civilization has revolved around the legal establishment and safeguarding of property through the concept of ownership.
But what is ownership? I have my own ideas, but I asked ChatGPT and was surprised that it pretty much hit the nail on the head: the definitional characteristic of ownership is the legal right to deprive others.
This has been such a consistently universal view that very few people question it. Even fewer have thought through a cogent alternative. Most people go slack-jawed at the suggestion that an alternative is possible.
Here's something from years back, before I'd zeroed in on the perverse nature of ownership:
Anyone want to brainstorm a viable alternative to "ownership"?
/images/17459352527399495.webp
I'll admit, I did a bit of digging and found the ReLOVEution manifesto (You might want to work on the name, the first few web hits are for a clothing brand). The philosopher who kept recurring to me while reading your text was, of all people, Mozi. I mean, love is in the name, and universal love is his catchphrase. Obviously you guys diverge in practice and application, he was more concerned with the exorbitant cost ritual was imposing on the people and the state, but on the low you guys are coming from the same place: love as the solution to our tumultuous relationship with capital.
How does your universal love work in our factionalized world? I'm doubtful that my love is identical to that of someone in sub-saharan africa, just as his is different from someone in japan. How are we meant to square these conflicting desires? Also, how does universal love replace our existing system? How does empathy for others organize people to build spaceships or even just work long, hot hours harvesting food in the central valley?
I'm guessing you would reject the label of someone rejecting capitalism because that implies your idea would still reside in the greater system of ownership. I do really appreciate your highly unorthodox ideas and would love to engage further.
Overtime comment: Your post reminded me of this comic book in my middleschool that claimed to be a documentation of the development of civilization; one of the opening panels was the invention of the concept of property (via a fertile crescent subsistence farmer locking his wife in his house)
That piece of work is now 10 years old. I've changed much since then. Much more depth and far more confidence (which some take as belligerence!) You can imagine what it's taken for a guy who used to doubt his own intentions because others didn't fully validate them to tackle these things single-handed aside from some friendly "I get ya bro!" support. In the early days I was afraid I was headed towards losing my sanity, but when everything you see and understand diverges from the mainstream, and the mainstream has no sensible explanations, ya just gotta follow that little bouncy bunny tail of truth that no one you know of has ever refuted. So, yeah, I've still got oodles of work ahead of me. Working on my book, now: Law Itself Is the Violation. Side project: Truth and the Dishonesties of Belief. Lots more where they came from. I only wish I had the stamina and energy I did 20 years ago...
You're right on to see I'm coming from a place of love -- but it's not what you might think. It's not a moral or religious impetus, but my growing, evidenced conviction that the psychology of trust, love, mutualism, communality, cooperation, etc., are fundamental to our wiring, the result of millions of years of Homo evolutionary survival, and that virtually all the ideas we've had about "human nature" have been sourced from abused, traumatized, stress-damaged, cultified human nature, not human nature as it is prior to being compromised. If the only specimens you ever examine have lived lifetimes in sewage-fouled waters, you're gonna come to the conclusion that the whole species stinks, even that it's part of their "nature". Big mistake.
In fact, I don't promote "universal love" itself. And true, there are important variations in different people's experiences and expressions of love -- but it's about as significant, I'd say, as the fact that there are many flavors of ice cream -- not so different that we'd make the mistake of saying that the strawberry kind isn't ice cream merely because we grew up eating the chocolate kind. Our psychological similarities outweigh our significant differences by far.
I promote unapologetic, blunt, uncompromising honesty. Because of how we're wired, the only way to avoid love is to lie, deceive, delude and self-delude. Simply by committing to unflinching honesty, especially the kind and to the degree that scares us, creates feedback loops that inexorably tend towards recognition, familiarity, understanding, rapport, sympathy, empathy, and finally, love. There is only one response, ultimately, to seeing another person as they truly are in all the clarity of their preciousness, and that's to love them -- not really any different than beholding a masterpiece of art that really gets to us, resulting in a lifelong attachment to it and appreciation of it in the deepest sense of that word. As a result, I see both lies and bullshit (ala Harry Frankfurt) as the prime enemies of humanity, and I have a special interest and passion in obliterating them.
How does universal love replace our existing system? Emergently, stigmergically, through interpersonal attachment, person-to-person, along with enough intelligence to realize that human affairs that reach beyond the scope of our personal limits of awareness, attention, and empathy must be facilitated in ways that support and enable and align with the patterns of our ground-level, heart-to-heart humanness. What we have right now are antagonistic, adversarial systems designed to exploit our humanness. Short answer: honesty will blow the purple haze away and, seeing what's actually there and how it actually works, our humanness will ensure we separate wheat from chaff and find ways to properly, beneficially share the wheat.
You're right on about rejecting capitalism. I've actually come to reject -isms per se, because they're abstractions -- as are laws and moral codes and religious norms/commands, along with every other rules-based construct. We simply do not live on that abstract level -- not authentically, at least -- and imposing those abstractions on us is life-threatening, especially emotionally and motivationally. Huge psychological damage across the board and, in turn, relational damage.
Thanks for expressing your appreciation! I rarely get that. I'd love to engage further!
Interesting on that comic! I've dug for an explanation of where it all went wrong and came up empty, until several months ago -- an eventual result, as I can see now, of reading Graeber/Wengrow's book The Dawn of Everything a couple of years ago. What if the authoritarian supremacism which is foundational to everything we've ever called "civilization" turns out to be the simple, rather mundane result of a kind of severe cabin fever induced by taking wild, free humans built to roam and explore and imprisoning them in relatively cramped, stationary, bounded spaces under the "rule" of despots and their laws? I know it was making me crazy, at least. That's why I left the States for a little cabin on a hillside in central Mexico. I saw a video of Roald Dahl today, talking about writing. He writes in a little hut out back. Says he hasn't swept the floor for probably the last five years, and that was only because critters got in and pooped everywhere, LOL! Goes in, settles in, and 4-5 hours later emerges again, having been lost to the world. Yeah, Roald and me da same -- except I do sweep more than just every five years. 😁
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