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So, in intellectualizing away the emotional response to disaster, i mused that our reaction to disaster, disaster being a sudden change in state for the worse, was culturally bound to our sense of what is ours, what we own, what we need.
It's a theme in some science fiction: how the water planet culture in "A Door into Ocean" responds to the environmental storms that wreck the rafts offers a model of response to disaster, but arguably modified humans aren't human.
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seawasp nicely continued in the intellectual speculation vein and replied, "I would agree that if an entire culture had that [the coat parable] internalized you'd have very different actions. You'd also have, I suspect, a nonhuman culture. It's possible to be much less object/material focused than the (for example) current USA culture is, but I seriously doubt you can get a human culture that really doesn't have any attachment to dividing ownership of things-that-are-not-free. "
I disagreed, but my comment of 4607 characters exceeded the maximum character length of 4300. So here it is.
I think it's fair to start with a human understanding that there will be something considered territory, that the toddler's "Mine!" expresses a minimal sense of "I need this now and plan to use it." I am pretty clear that this isn't limited to humans: critters provide an interesting set of territorial behaviors that have an interesting dimension of how the critters behave in a group.
What i suspect is that sense of "now" is very culture described: our culture certainly takes "now" to mean "even after i'm dead, i can be using it," allowing individuals to construct constrained trusts and legacies. Other cultures have had rather different ways of understanding the extent of "now" when the owner was dead (or in the afterlife).
As far as what is considered "things that are free", a reflection on how the concept of the commons has shifted in Anglo culture over the past 600 years shows a strong shift in what is air-like. I think the whole point is challenging what is in the class of the commons. Comparative legal studies shows that the sense of ownership and what can be transferred and what can't be is culturally bound -- and we can see differences in Western cultures without referring to exotic tribes and anthropological studies. For example, EU law recognizes moral IP rights that cannot be transferred, US law doesn't even see that those rights exist. At the end of the middle ages, you would have found the frame most creators had was, "All IP is for the glory of God," with shifts at the beginning of the Enlightenment/Renaissance to "and the glory of my patron" and then quickly to "and to my glory and fame too!" Water rights, mineral rights are cultural constructs that we've developed given our cultural assumptions and principle. Begin with a different set (a different constitution, a different way of establishing responsibilities) and would derive a different set of water rights. There is at least one country where the government has sold the rights to the rainfall, and while i oppose that privatization of the commons, i don't think it's inhuman to have shifted the line: it's a cultural choice, a construct.
So, i think there are at least three axes of comparison: what is in the commons or is a material thing that is taboo to own? That is: i don't think humans can be considered in the commons in our culture but they cannot be owned, and we've created some weird legal constructs around the feathers of migrating birds*. What is the scale of the group that the commons supports? How long is the "now" that a personal thing is mine?
So i think you *can* construct a group that's recognizably human that considers "i'm using it now" to be a very short now and to be a very direct sense of "using." Groups like that exist at this point: many families have a strong sense of material commons with limited ownership. The red mug, that pillow case is "mine" until washed. Admittedly, families also have much more long-term ownership: that's my side of the bed, my place at the table. How big a group is sustainable? Is it a fractal issue of different things in common for different scale groups and one can be challenged to experiment wit moving different classes of things between different scales of groups and shift understandings of groups to use different bounds?
* this brings up another dimension i haven't thought about: what is the difference between owning and having the right to exchange? US culture's legal constructs in general tend to conflate ownership with a right to exchange, although one can surrender the right to exchange (covenants on property to keep farmland farmland, for example). Feathers of migrating bird cannot be sold: a legal taboo meant to protect the birds. So our culture accepts me finding feathers in the forest and incorporating them into my art, clothing, jewelry, home decor. I can *give* items using those feathers away, but if i try to sell them, i've crossed a legal bound. Because so many folks ignorant of the law find this weird, it's clear it's not a cultural understanding yet. Yet it reminds me of other senses of commons ownership: family heirlooms are a place where the cultural constructs of acceptable and expected behavior create a class of objects in the family-group commons that have a limited ownership and limited transfer possibilities. I can transfer my great aunt's china cabinet to any of my siblings or their children, but were i to sell it or give it away to someone outside the family group, i would have transgressed. The china cabinet is only mine in a limited sense in my family culture.
It's a theme in some science fiction: how the water planet culture in "A Door into Ocean" responds to the environmental storms that wreck the rafts offers a model of response to disaster, but arguably modified humans aren't human.
seawasp nicely continued in the intellectual speculation vein and replied, "I would agree that if an entire culture had that [the coat parable] internalized you'd have very different actions. You'd also have, I suspect, a nonhuman culture. It's possible to be much less object/material focused than the (for example) current USA culture is, but I seriously doubt you can get a human culture that really doesn't have any attachment to dividing ownership of things-that-are-not-free. "I disagreed, but my comment of 4607 characters exceeded the maximum character length of 4300. So here it is.
I think it's fair to start with a human understanding that there will be something considered territory, that the toddler's "Mine!" expresses a minimal sense of "I need this now and plan to use it." I am pretty clear that this isn't limited to humans: critters provide an interesting set of territorial behaviors that have an interesting dimension of how the critters behave in a group.
What i suspect is that sense of "now" is very culture described: our culture certainly takes "now" to mean "even after i'm dead, i can be using it," allowing individuals to construct constrained trusts and legacies. Other cultures have had rather different ways of understanding the extent of "now" when the owner was dead (or in the afterlife).
As far as what is considered "things that are free", a reflection on how the concept of the commons has shifted in Anglo culture over the past 600 years shows a strong shift in what is air-like. I think the whole point is challenging what is in the class of the commons. Comparative legal studies shows that the sense of ownership and what can be transferred and what can't be is culturally bound -- and we can see differences in Western cultures without referring to exotic tribes and anthropological studies. For example, EU law recognizes moral IP rights that cannot be transferred, US law doesn't even see that those rights exist. At the end of the middle ages, you would have found the frame most creators had was, "All IP is for the glory of God," with shifts at the beginning of the Enlightenment/Renaissance to "and the glory of my patron" and then quickly to "and to my glory and fame too!" Water rights, mineral rights are cultural constructs that we've developed given our cultural assumptions and principle. Begin with a different set (a different constitution, a different way of establishing responsibilities) and would derive a different set of water rights. There is at least one country where the government has sold the rights to the rainfall, and while i oppose that privatization of the commons, i don't think it's inhuman to have shifted the line: it's a cultural choice, a construct.
So, i think there are at least three axes of comparison: what is in the commons or is a material thing that is taboo to own? That is: i don't think humans can be considered in the commons in our culture but they cannot be owned, and we've created some weird legal constructs around the feathers of migrating birds*. What is the scale of the group that the commons supports? How long is the "now" that a personal thing is mine?
So i think you *can* construct a group that's recognizably human that considers "i'm using it now" to be a very short now and to be a very direct sense of "using." Groups like that exist at this point: many families have a strong sense of material commons with limited ownership. The red mug, that pillow case is "mine" until washed. Admittedly, families also have much more long-term ownership: that's my side of the bed, my place at the table. How big a group is sustainable? Is it a fractal issue of different things in common for different scale groups and one can be challenged to experiment wit moving different classes of things between different scales of groups and shift understandings of groups to use different bounds?
* this brings up another dimension i haven't thought about: what is the difference between owning and having the right to exchange? US culture's legal constructs in general tend to conflate ownership with a right to exchange, although one can surrender the right to exchange (covenants on property to keep farmland farmland, for example). Feathers of migrating bird cannot be sold: a legal taboo meant to protect the birds. So our culture accepts me finding feathers in the forest and incorporating them into my art, clothing, jewelry, home decor. I can *give* items using those feathers away, but if i try to sell them, i've crossed a legal bound. Because so many folks ignorant of the law find this weird, it's clear it's not a cultural understanding yet. Yet it reminds me of other senses of commons ownership: family heirlooms are a place where the cultural constructs of acceptable and expected behavior create a class of objects in the family-group commons that have a limited ownership and limited transfer possibilities. I can transfer my great aunt's china cabinet to any of my siblings or their children, but were i to sell it or give it away to someone outside the family group, i would have transgressed. The china cabinet is only mine in a limited sense in my family culture.
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