Imagining a world without the concept of ownership
Imagine some world of the future where people are picking up the pieces from some cataclysm and they develop a collective. No one owns anything. Everything that's produced is pooled and shared. I'm wondering about whether this is something that dwells in the human potential or not.
Is it possible? Could it last if it happened? What would the pros and cons be?
The background of the question is a kind of genealogy of ownership. Is it innate? Is it a resident of certain types of culture? If it's cultural, what kind of culture reinforces the idea. In what kind of culture does ownership become a ghost?
Is it possible? Could it last if it happened? What would the pros and cons be?
The background of the question is a kind of genealogy of ownership. Is it innate? Is it a resident of certain types of culture? If it's cultural, what kind of culture reinforces the idea. In what kind of culture does ownership become a ghost?
Comments (93)
One of the interesting aspects of any society is how it deals with the parasites, the people who take but don't give, especially through violence or theft.
Game theory is a lot about this - about studying situations where people cooperate or compete, figuring out what strategies give the most gain.
A society with no property might give unreasonably high rewards to the sociopaths, psychopaths and parasites. You can take anything without giving anything. Have what you want, give back nothing at all. Such a society would be stripped of its resources by leeches faster than you can say "maybe this wasn't such a great idea after all".
That's an interesting passage. It would stand as an argument against slavery. About 25% of the people in Aristotle's world were enslaved. He's saying that nature is being defied since they can't own property.
But apparently he would say a collective won't last because of quarreling. I think it's true that there would have to be a strong central authority to act as the backbone of the collective. That would eliminate the quarreling. A democratic collective will probably never happen (for long.) So maybe we're never without the concept of ownership, but it's a matter of who actually has possession. In a collective, the owner is everyone, and so it's really the central authority.
That's another reason a collective would need a chieftain or monarch. So maybe private property is a requirement for democracy. Ownership laws are taking the place of the chieftain when it comes to people who stray from the ideals.
What they do is slice the donut into as many pieces as there are people present. If there are 300 people in attendance at the conference, they have to make 300 slices. They might need some kind of laser slicer outfitted with a scanning electron microscope, and a robot to put the slices on individual napkins so there's absolutely no cheating.
Something like that, I suppose
Been there, done that. No thanks, OP. Hard pass. :up:
And no not in some distant past, I mean right now as you're reading this.
As well, I'm sure has or will be mentioned, people like to be rewarded for their contributions. If you're a raving intellect, and perhaps your peers have ostracized you or even worse, or perhaps you just don't consider them worthy of benefiting from your intellect, you become very disinclined to do anything but what can be called "quiet quitting", which as an intellect even your bare nearly-unconscious minimal effort far exceeds that which is "sufficient". So you live a quiet life, finding peace where you may, often in the bottle of a drink, and like always, because of the dregs of society, that society fails to progress. Or perhaps you have a bitter personal rivalry between a social better or even the leader for I don't know what's the classic, misappropriating your beloved, often due to circumstance outside any involved parties control (say the person was simply born larger than you and as a result would defeat you in a fight and due to the benighted nature of the society views that as some sort of character or quality of identity and great metaphysical worth and value instead of the transient happenstance it is, or perhaps is simply wealthier due to being born into a position, etc), and you don't want him to take credit for your work of exponentially improving the society, or something like that.
Whereas in this modern "free market" ownership type system, you can effectively work for yourself, make what you need to make, copyright it, make it private or closed-source, earn your money, and shoot even fly the coop to go to an entirely different nation or land and benefit them, leaving your doubting peers in the innovative dust and darkness they so desperately tried to sentence and prescribed unto you. So it works the way it is, sure there's some downside, but it's the only way you're going to get work out of certain people. So again, literally, "it works" :grin:
Yes, I believe it is, and that something of the kind has been practiced by groups in various settings since the beginning of people. It works in groups small enough to be personally connected, each to each, and doesn't seem to work in large, anonymous ones.
After the apocalypse, it will probably be the only way anyone can survive. Since it's unlikely that the survivors will overpopulate their territory very quickly, those communal habits will probably become ingrained even as the groups grow more numerous. But, I think they'll need to do what the bees and ants do: when the community grows beyond a manageable size, a portion must break off and settle elsewhere. Settlements can still trade with one another, get together for fairs and celebrations and exchange young people in marriage to keep the gene pool fresh.
I'll set aside one class of property for private ownership: clothes, tools, utensils, personal transport and shelter. People thrive better if they have some privacy and favourite things that are unique to themselves. It's possible to pool the care and training of the young, but parents like to hold on to their kids in the domestic sphere. And there will almost certainly be mate-pairing and sexual possessiveness: provision has to be made for handling those social issues.
We could do a lot worse than to educate our own children in the mores and structures of Native American cultures. Their traditional skills wouldn't go amiss, either.
Quoting frank
The kind in which every individual is valued and respected.
Respect for personal property is not enshrined in nature, it is established cooperatively in human societies. In an emergency, the government will requisition whatever it deems to be required for the protection of the people, and that limitation to ownership will also be cooperatively established. It seems hard for some to understand that one cannot have ownership unless others recognise and respect that relation.
Folks might like to read 'The Dispossessed', by Ursula K LeGuin, for a plausible imagining of a cooperative anarchy.
Quoting unenlightened
Terrific story. :up:
In a similar vein, Iain M. Bank's Culture series of an AI-managed post-scarcity, interstellar civilization-wide anarchy...
Quoting frank
I think property, not "ownership" (mine-ness), is optional a venn diagram from the least artificial and essential social arrangement to the most artificial and inessential: personal property (one's own mindbody (re: responsibilities), clothes, tools / labor, leisure), communal property (commons), public property ('republic', city / town, roads / waterways), and private property ('codified' scarcity-re/production, ergo class-caste conflicts) [personal [communal [public [ private ]]]].
Why do some societies enshrine private property? I think it may have to do with a lack of trust. Maybe it first started in chaotic times. Then once the order is reestablished, the property owners really want only one thing from a chieftain: protect their property rights. Whereas the chieftain was once the hub of the world, he or she has been reduced to constable. Property owners are now the hub.
Maybe there's a spectrum.
I think Marx went into it in detail, but the advent of agriculture, memorialised as 'the fall' from a state of nature into the condition of bring forth bread by the sweat of thy brow begins the idea of 'property' that could be cooperatively or privately owned, with title originating in the hard work of clearing and fencing and improving land. Before that, though a tribe had a territory, it was not clear whether land belonged to people or people belonged to land.
Isn't that what private property is about? What does it mean for it to be "mine" other than that you can't take it from me? Or have control over it? I'm asking.
The way you worded it makes it sound almost like ownership makes someone taking it MORE likely.
I didn't mean that, but that's the point of Augustine's City of God. He was saying that when cities pile up riches, they're practically asking to be raided. I guess another way to put his point is that there is no theft until there is ownership. Ownership makes thieves. Something like that.
It's not the same. You can kill someone whether there's a law against it or not. You literally can't be a thief if there's no such thing as private property. The concept of theft becomes meaningless.
edit. I'm probably wrong about that last sentence. Not sure if that affects the rest of what I said though.
I suppose that's because you think the fish are yours, and not public property.
Quoting flannel jesus
What about chipmunks?
Exactly, and I strongly suspect people felt that way about the shit they worked for, for as long as people have been working for shit. I don't think there's any point in homo sapiens history where someone is happy to lose their days work to a stranger for nothing.
It's true though.. Communism came first. Free markets came much later, when the old system was dying. I think property, as we know the concept has to do with chaotic conditions and a profound lack of trust. In other words, I think private property is an adaptation. Makes sense doesn't it?
Which certainly proved historically true. There is also another aspect to amassing treasure: it had to come from somewhere - through somebody's effort, or somebody's loss - and those people are naturally motivated to take it back, along with maybe a strip of your hide.
Quoting frank
Quite true. Hardly anyone is tempted to take another person's clothes or tent, unless they're in dire need of it. A mindful society makes sure that doesn't happen, simply by providing for all its members. Treasure amassing is partly a result of the lust for power. Once society is stratified enough to isolate its wealth under the control of a few people, it becomes the highest ambition to be one of those people - not the strongest, wisest, most skilled or best loved, but the richest. Another large part of amassing is compulsive or pre-emptive: the urge to grab everything you can before somebody else does. That's symptomatic of an indifferent society.
Quoting flannel jesus
Yes, that's right. People have always killed one another in various mental states, for various reasons and by various methods. Some forms of killing were socially condoned, or even mandated (as in ritual sacrifice or dispatching a dangerous enemy) and some were forbidden and required atonement, restitution, treatment or banishment. Such cases of private killing were usually considered by a meeting of elders and the outcome decided case by case, as each such incident is unique.
Only when it's defined and categorized in law does the process of justice become industrial.
Why would you need to assert ownership of something no one else wanted?
If you refuse to share and others are hungry, that's exactly what will happen. You can get upset, and a fragmented, selfish society will shrug and walk past you: "Finders keepers, losers weepers." That same society will send designated law-enforcers after the thief if he takes the fish from your kitchen. But a caring community would ask the one who took it why he thought his need was so much greater and yours, and ask you why you didn't offer a hungry compatriot some of your fish, then decide who is in the wrong.
Quoting flannel jesus
They can be quite protective of their food, especially treats, and whatever toy they happen find interesting at the moment. But once they're bored with the toy, it's fine for another ape to have a turn.
Quoting flannel jesus
But before that, there was a point - a quite large splotch, in fact - when people were happy to work, in teams or individually at all the tasks required for the welfare of their community. That's the big difference: in a sharing society, you never work for a stranger (there aren't any) and you're never underpaid.
Yup, I never contradicted that.
If it has been possible, there's reasonable grounds to believe that it will be possible again.
Actually, there are many communal arrangements in operation around the world right now. In most cases, they don't deny ownership of household goods or vehicles, but do share the land and labour of food production and maintenance. It's a step in the direction of a horizontal society.
In my experience with children, you have to teach them to share and the definately know what "Mine!" means.
The type of culture where ownership becomes a ghost is not one that exists or ever has. Even a fully Marxist society wouldn't actually suggest that I can pull food out of your mouth or take your shirt off your back. And what do you make of ownership of your own body? Do I have the right to do as I will of others without seeking their agreement, and if we should permit that allowance, why not allow it as to other physical items?
Then what's the origin of sharing? Is that also innate, or is it an adaptation to circumstances?
You could, pursuant to another thread here this morning, elicit 'good faith' and collectively deal with 'bad faith' essentially as it arises. THe distribution of 'goods' wouldn't matter much until everyone was bored.
However, this is the story of humanity writ small. We're beyond it. We did this, a few thousand times, got bored and pooled further - now we're a 'global' society unable to even consider this type of carry-on. Rightly, imo. But there's no good justification - just an opinion.
making a great point there. What would 'ownership' relate to, in such a world? Would bodily autonomy matter? What about rearing children? Are we morally able to retain items for that purpose? Hm.
There is a notion that simply wouldn't occur to anyone who isn't immersed in ownership culture. Nor would the idea of taking food from a community member's mouth - unless he's choking or you have reason to believe it's unsafe.
Children are naturally possessive of their favourite personal things - a few toys and articles of clothing, but they're just as eager to share if they think of a suitable activity. Even quite young babies will offer you their slightly chewed cookie or some colourful thing they find on the floor.
They don't claim the house or yard or home furnishings as their property, because those things are familial domain, but when they get a little older, they like to stake a territory around their bed. (Now, in prosperous countries where they see the parents having special territories; in other times and places, they might well all be in the same bed, and that would be normal.) If two or more children share a room, after the first few disputes, they usually negotiate the borders, unless one is bully.
You can encourage sharing and generous behaviour by showing appreciation for their gifts from the very beginning, by returning things they're attached to, and by offering them something of yours, in trade, to borrow or to keep. I don't mean gifts meant for them, I mean your own stuff that you see them wishing for.
Isnt the idea of communal ownership a counter to individual ownership? Its not a counter to ownership.
If everything is pooled and shared, ownership is claimed by the poolers so they can share those things with everyone.
In other words, the debate between communism and capitalism isnt a debate about ownership, its a debate about who are the owners. People still claim ownership over the resources and fruits of labors, they just either claim it as an individual or by committee.
I dont see how personal property can possibly be avoided. If I pick ten apples and bring them to the pool of ten people, and we communally share them, each of us get one apple each. Now that the pooling and equal sharing is done, each person has one apple. Must not that one apple now belong to each person as their personal property? Who else but the individual is now accountable for whatever happens to that apple? Its theirs now. No one elses.
Over time, pooling everything and distributing everything equally, you will get people who conserve and people who dont. So you would have to pool everything everyday all anew to keep the community equal. Or never give anyone anything that they can take out of the rest of the communitys sight, where they could conserve it, amass it, etc.
I knew that if this thread went long enough, someone would comment on that. :grin: I wasn't proposing a debate between communism and capitalism. History already settled that debate.
But what about some science fiction future where there is no shortage of goods. Would boredom intrude there as well?
Got it.
So if everything is pooled and shared, how is that an example of no one owns anything? What happens to things after they are pooled and shared? Arent they then still owned, now personally, after the sharing?
1. Imagine a possible world W where there is no concept of ownership.
2. Let's say that in this world there's no way to say "my wife," but there is a word-whisker you can add to indicate that a certain woman is special to you (apparently there is a Native American language that is like this.)
3. So outside this possible world, you might claim that the word-whisker indicates ownership, but inside the world, they wouldn't know what you're talking about.
Is world W possible?
This means, we live in a world drenched and submerged in the concept and practice of ownership. From here, soaking wet, we have to imagine a possible world where there is no practice, not even a concept, of ownership.
I cant do it. Tried. Too wet.
John Locke defined personal property as ones own body first as a counter to the concept that our bodies are subjects of the king. He said all have a right to property, that property being their personal selves/bodies and the fruits of their own labors. This was a counter to slavery - no one can own another person.
I agree I not only have a right, but an unavoidable relationship to my own body. And to say this sentence I said my own body.
To skip to the end, in order to imagine a world where there is no concept of ownership, Id have to imagine a world where there is no concept my own, or no concept of me.
Cant bring myself to see myself as not myself. Similarly, saying all things are pooled and shared doesnt eliminate ownership, property, and personal property.
Problem solved.
Yea, I was just pondering the origin of the concept of ownership. I suppose it's somewhere in mammal evolution. Not sure where.
Physical individuation.
In humans becomes identity formation.
Which becomes a mine by the time anyone can speak.
Maybe.
I think we have to resist and overcome the concept of ownership when we get old enough to provide for others and give away ourselves and the things we labor over. Charity, giving to others what is owned by me, is a more realistic goal to temper the inequities of ownership, not communal pooling and sharing (which is bound to simply move inequity and ownership around as opposed to eliminate it).
What is immoral about taking food from your mouth if I'm hungry unless you have some right to ownership of that food just because it's in your mouth? This just sounds like you're arriving at rules for when ownership is obviously valid and then arguing that no one would ever violate that rule because it's just so obvious.
I say the same thing applies to my house and all the belongings in it. You don't have any more right to take the food out of my mouth as you do to enter my home and sort through my belongings. And of course there are exceptions to these rules, as we live in a complex society, but those rules revolve around property rights and how they are to be administered. They don't suggest a dissolution of property rights.
But all this smacks of a naive Marxism, a sort no one really takes seriously, where we declare that ownership of property is the cause of all evil and that if we'd just dispense with it, people would live in a utopian harmony.
The society we live in holds that one's right to one's own body is so sacred that if another invades it, he will lose his liberty and be removed from society. It also holds that if you invade my dwelling, you may be met rightfully with deadly force. These are not archaic rules held by a primitive people. These are rules that simply respect your right to freely possess and live within the material world with your material possessions.
Quoting Vera Mont
Quoting Vera Mont
You can teach anything to a child. You can teach her to share, to love, to hate, and to injure. They are quite the sponges. I don't know of many children though who resist being given everything they desire, as if a child in the candy store complains things are given to him. By the same token, it's the rare child that would never want to share and never want to create a sense of kinship between herself and others.
You did use the term "familial" in your post, and here I used "kinship," both recognizing that sharing has something to do with those closest to you, particularly within your own family unit. You see sharing at its greatest within families, particularly mothers caring for their young. The idea that expanding the family dynamic to those outside the family into the community at large seems neither possible or even preferable.
Competition among societal members has its benefits, but that's not a suggestion that Darwinism should fully dominate society. It's just to say there is a place for worrying about yourself on the one hand and worrying about the commons on the other. It's not an all or nothing proposition.
It's not a question of morality. It's unhygienic, rude and icky. Why would you even think of such an act, unless you're a baby bird?
Quoting Hanover
To an extent, it is. Stretching the notion of 'property' to include one's body and its contents is somewhat absurd on the face of it. There are better words than 'ownership' for physical integrity, personal space and autonomy.
Quoting Hanover
I included clothes and shelter, as well as tools and personal items and transport in my original exceptions. I don't see anything to be gained by going over it again.
Quoting Hanover
No, people would never be that good, and less complex, screwed-up societies find ways to deal with the vagaries of human behaviour and relations. However, property as class distinction, property as power, property as weapon and in particular the jealous hoarding of property do cause a great of the complication and madness of our present societies.
Quoting Hanover
It works for a lot of people. If you can't or won't imagine it, you can't.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Why did you quote me?
I am physically trying to imagine a society of people where there is no concept of ownership. The best I can do is imagine a society of naked people who live on an island where cheeseburgers and soy milk grow on trees, and there are warmly lit caves everywhere to sleep in peacefully, no concept of work or labor, no concept of privation or awareness of satisfaction, so no concept of need or want so that one might invent the concept of labor to obtain the need or want or the concept of possessing the object of need or want.
Otherwise, show me how you could make any commune where no one has a concept of ownership. Can anyone imagine it?
Just saying Imagine no concept of ownership, where everyone shares everything creates no clear picture to me, other than fantasy world, or chaos, and an immediate need for ownership to regulate resources.
Communal ownership takes individual decisions out of ownership, but it doesnt take away ownership. It just creates a committee and voting process behind every allocation of resources. I can imagine that easy. Its communism. We dont have to imagine that. But its not a world where there is no concept of ownership or a world where everything is shared.
Because what you wrote seemed appropriate - not to mention eloquent.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Probably not. But there is a whole range of conditions, attitudes and social arrangements between. I don't generally rush to the extremes, so I can imagine some states of affairs where property is not an issue, and yet people have physical and emotional integrity, autonomy, personal possessions and amicable relations.
Quoting Fire Ologist
It's not a clear picture. It's not necessary to articulate a concept of ownership to feel possessive about some things and for other people to empathize with that feeling. It doesn't need to be an issue. those people can still share their land, labour, food and resources.
We have a semantic problem with the word 'ownership' and the various concepts of property and sharing. We're not imagining the same, or even perhaps a similar, world.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Yes, we do have to imagine it, because we don't know any real life examples, only grotesque travesties and caricatures.
Trying.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Quoting Vera Mont
Good example. Thats a realistic conception of communism. No ownership, the theory or imagination, applicable in reality.
Quoting Vera Mont
I agree, the real life examples of communism, certainly all of the ones on a large scale, have failed. But I believe there have been smaller groups who lived in a close knit and communal fashion who could imagine a realistic goal where property is not an issue, and yet people have physical and emotional integrity, autonomy, personal possessions and amicable relations. Thats as close as I can get to the OP notion of no ownership.
But absolutely no ownership? Seems impossible to imagine.
You (Vera at least) admit personal possessions are part of the picture. Which is the right admission from my view. Maybe such property is not an issue (which is also fine), but all I was saying is the fact you included personal possessions in the picture sort of justifies my simple point that I cant imagine a world where there is no ownership, no possessions. You imagined a realistic world where possession was not coveted, and shared freely, and received gratefully, etc. But possession is still an integral part of this world. No one can share what they dont possess; no one can borrow someones shoes, for instance, in a world without any ownership. No one can demand an equal share of what belongs to the community except when demanding it from the community, who possesses and own it.
I guess its a small point.
That's cool. If you can't conceive of it, I imagine it's because you're investing the idea with essential features of thought or the nature of animals. If someone can conceive it, they must be limiting the concept to... what? I guess the ways we deal with selfishness and conflict, so if you imagine a world with a strong emphasis on the group identity over individuality, ownership might become an alien idea.
For example, in Russia after the fall of the USSR, there was a factory where the owners wanted to lay off part of the labor force. Laying people off is an exercise of property rights, and the workers weren't up to speed on how that works. They thought the factory was a feature of the community and so they refused to leave it. This is how a society that emphasizes sharing is.
It's never been tried. Sticking a caviar label on a sardine can doesn't make the contents caviar. Even the Russian revolution was partly fake in its inception and largely fake in its revised history.
The regime that followed it (just as in China) was very stratified indeed; elitist, dictatorial and mendacious. Some half-assed attempts at socialist institutions did relieve the working people of the worst abuses of the feudal system, but it was nothing like communism.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Sure. Monastic orders spring to mind. And many intentional communities based on the principle of pooling and sharing resources and labour. They're usually not ideological or political, so they work out a viable interface with the larger society in which they operate.
Quoting Fire Ologist
It's impossible for some people to get over the word as it is tossed about in an intensively monetarist society and substitute more specific terms for belonging. The examples of owning one's body and owning one's spouse are especially repugnant, as they refer to relationships that are not - or should not be - equated with property. Nor is the food on one's table and the shirt on one's back or a faithful canine companion property in the same sense as a 2000 hectare ranch and 20,000 beef cattle.
Modern commercial ownership is an altogether perverse arrangement and we are, indeed, steeped in this culture to such an extent as to cripple our very imagination to the possibility of a healthy social organization. In order to consider alternatives, we also need more nuanced language to describe them.
Have you known anyone who could describe a coherent picture of a society of people where there is no ownership?
I havent seen it on this thread for instance.
What does a community look like where there is no ownership of anything?
Does everyone have a share of everything, or no one have a share in anything?
Who is in trouble when someone forgets to take the trash out? Anyone given ownership of failed trash duty?
This occurred to me as well. A society without the concept of ownership would have to be stranded and alone (like the original Berbers) or a global entity (or galactic as the case may be.)
There was a Hungarian writer back in the 1930's. The book is called Kazohinia.
But that doesn't matter.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Everyone has a share in the resources and the territory. Everyone contributes labour to the common welfare and takes care of the young, the old and the frail. Everyone respects one another's personal space - if you want to imagine 'owning' air, go ahead - and privacy, and nobody snatches food out of anyone's mouth. Nobody pulls the blanket off anyone else when they're sleeping, but if they have a spare blanket and another person is cold, they give him the extra.
It's not that hard a concept.
Quoting Fire Ologist
What's that got to do with ownership of the trash? Anyway, there wouldn't be a lot of waste in a property-free society.
As I said before, that 'absolutely' is a nitpick you can cling to if you're determined to avoid the idea of a communist society.
I dont see it as a bit-pick. Its a massive game changer. If there is any ownership (which I cant see avoiding) then there is no need or possibility of imagining a world where there is no concept of ownership (which the OP asks). Further if we admit some ownership, we have to address all that would follow, such as ownership disputes, selfishness, accounting for those who share more than others, etc, etc. It becomes the same world we have today just maybe with disputes over socks and whose trash is piling up over there, instead of percentage of owner profits and whose war has to be cleaned up. (And Im sure there are people who would go to war over socks.). But any ownership (which I see as unavoidable) refutes the possibility of true communism as an economic and political structure.
But Ill check out Kazohinia.
And I do think that if people were more charitable, sacrificed their personal wants more for the good of others, were more compassionate and less selfish, greedy and proud, the society would look more communal and communist. I dont resist communism. The utopian vision is a good one. I just dont see it happening as a political or economic structure - instead it would have to be a daily, voluntary effort involving daily sacrifice for the good of others - otherwise if a communistic lifestyle had to be imposed from above, it would only be oppression and additional suffering and less equality and less access to all of the things that are supposed to be shared. Ownership will never go away. We all need to be more responsible for others using the the things we own.
OK. They should have avoided the word 'concept' and been more specific.
Quoting Fire Ologist
People managed to work all of that out among themselves for at least 50,000 years.
Quoting Fire Ologist
That kind of social dysfunction is not due having our own homes and clothes; that's due to very bad social organization.
Quoting Fire Ologist
"True communism" is one of those loaded phrases. People can and do live in communal arrangements of sharing with and caring for one another. If that's false communism, fine.
Quoting Fire Ologist
There's some tail-chasing! How, in a monetized, competitive, profit-driven society, where, if you don't hustle, you end up living in the street and having police clear out your encampment on a regular basis, because the sight of have-nots upsets the haves, are children supposed to learn unselfishness?
Quoting Fire Ologist
No imposed political or economic is sustainable. The capitalist lifestyle has survived as long as it has because the people in it - including those who get the least share - were convinced that it's the correct way to live. There is no need for daily sacrifice if the resources are not owned and controlled by a privileged few while the undervalued many do all the work.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Maybe not, but sure will change after the present civilization collapses.
The same way they would in a communal society.
You dont think anyone can learn of unselfishness in any society?
Any one, given the right temperament, an optimal home environment and excellent guidance can be unselfish relative to his peers, but he can't influence the society.
The global/galactic situation would fall apart as societies of that size would subdivide into minisocieties
The US is made up of subgroups. Couldn't that work on a larger scale?
I don't hear much from other parts of the about the galaxy; it could be different there.
I agree. People turn to religion when they don't feel good about the world. I think the old religions are worn out. Maybe a new one will appear shortly. Historically, religion doesn't get along well with money grubbing, so the idea of ownership might wane, but continue to reside in the collective psyche, waiting for it's next appearance as God.
I wouldn't be so sure about that. We've come a long way from "lilies of the field!" - though these guys "sow not, neither do they reap."
And if you look at the evolution of religious organizations, the tendency is to adapt to the prevailing economy and play it successfully.
No, that's not our best hope. Tribalism is far more likely to become the norm. The collapse of this civilization will leave an awful lot of wreckage, and very slim pickings for the survivors. They will have lost pretty much everything they owned. They'll have no option but to co-operate and trust one another if they have any chance of making another go at human society. They might be cannibals, but they won't be capitalists.
You're doing the Socialism fallacy: because Socialism didn't work in China, it won't work anywhere, except you're saying that because the Church ended up being greedy, it never stood for selflessness. It did, and I think in general, religions are about social well-being as when the people gather to repeat the phrasing of the voodoo priest. It's about us, ideally anyway.
Quoting Vera Mont
For a while, yes, but the world's biggest religions came out of tribal societies who lived in the devastation that followed the Bronze age collapse. History repeats itself.
Tribalism has always been the norm.
In order to unite the world, we have to admit that tribes are good, and respect each other despite differences we dont understand.
When it comes to the urge to herd into narrow tribes, we are still basically scared monkeys with iPhones and air fryers.
No, that's the communist fallacy, which I'm on extensive record of not having made. Communism could not have worked in China, because it was never attempted in China. A new emperor simply took over under a different flag. As also happened in Russia.
A capitalist-socialism hybrid of some type has worked quite well in Europe.
Quoting frank
The Church, as an institution never did: it did stand, quite firmly and consistently, for the poor staying poor and accepting their lot, though it also encouraged the rich to drop a few crumbs here and there, if they wanted to keep their heads. The poor listened better.
Christians have been unselfish, altruistic, communal, and some still are. But organized religions, especially state religions, have always historically supported and been supported by the ruling class. The churches aren't greedy; greedy and power-loving men dominate the churches.
Quoting frank
Organic religions, ones that arise from a people and their experience, do unite the community through ritual, chanting, fire (there is always fire involved; burning a bush or some wax is as close to our gods as we ever seem to get) and often mind-bending substances or self-hypnosis. Something of the kind is almost certain to arise in the post-apocalyptic age. But I don't think institutional religions, which are a completely different thing, will make a comeback.
:grin: According to Trotsky, Communism wasn't the kind of thing anyone tries. It was supposed to be the inevitable unfolding of events according to the internal integrity of the universe. That didn't happen. Marx was wrong.
Socialism, on the other hand, is the sort of thing we bring into being by our own wits. The Russians did socialism. They just did it while simultaneously placing the USA, recently morphed into Godzilla, on their shit lists.
It hasn't happened. Nor could it have happened in those circumstances, in that environment, with that beginning. The ends do not justify the means; the ends result from the means. Marx wasn't Trotsky - he was considerably smarter and less hyperbolic (integrity of the universe, my sweet Fanny!) and he was right about a great many things. Try to put in historical perspective what he was writing about.
Quoting frank
The Russians did a half-assed imitation of socialism, like the Vatican did a half-assed imitation of Christianity. Better that the Czars had done, but still fatally flawed.
Quoting frank
And cordially vice versa. They were sort-of-allies in WWII, big shots in the UN.... and implacable rivals for world domination, each terrified of the other.
The AI answer:
"Yes, Karl Marx believed that communism was inevitable. Marx's theories of history and economics, which he called economic determinism, argued that capitalism would be overthrown by revolution and replaced by communism. Marx believed that capitalism was inherently flawed and unsustainable, and that it created contradictions that would eventually lead to its downfall. One of these contradictions was the exploitation of the working class, or proletariat, by the capitalist class, or bourgeoisie. Marx believed that this exploitation would lead to a growing class conflict between the two classes, which would eventually result in a communist revolution."
It's not likely that we'll have a global proletariat revolution before climate change destabilizes the present global order. Maybe after we reestablish stability? A few thousand years maybe? I doubt it though. All signs suggest Marx was just wrong.
A-yup! Revolution or civil war, it falls down. If climate change and its human detritus gets there first, Marx was off on the time-line. I said he was right about a lot a lot of things, not everything. He underestimated the gullibility of the masses - no question about that!
Quoting frank
re-establish? I don't see much stability now, nor any time in recorded history. It looks as if there was stability before, and there may be after. That's if environmental conditions favour social stability. Obviously, our descendants won't have all the resources we burned up.
I think the kind of stability you're looking for only exists in the grave.
What kind of stability do you think I'm 'looking for'? North American native nations were pretty stable for several thousand years before Europeans arrived. By stable, I don't mean they had no conflict among nations, but even those were brief and less destructive than the 'civilized' peoples' conflicts. Within their own societies, they managed things very much better.
I don't foresee US subgroups sharing between themselves at the scale required to abandon ownership.
I don't think such a society could develope on it's own.
The selfish human desire is both nature and nurture. It is built into us (selfishness means more food means better chance to reproduce; therefore evolution makes us selfish), and built into our society, too (ex. capitalism). The urge to own private property is an example of selfishness. But selflessness is, too, built into us, though not to the extent that selfishness is (selflessness means community means protection; therefore evolution creates a selfless element within us. This is furthered within our cultures regarding respect, kindness, honour, and other traits that integrate one into a society, and make us protected). To be able to give up on property is to be selfless.
I do believe that, with enough nurturing, the human selflessness can be made to overcome the human selfishness. This, however, takes dedication, effort from others, and ideally, a lack of preexisting selfish notions in the mind. And to instill such selflessness in an entire people, this would logically have to be pushed to the extreme. As such, the development of this collective society would take extreme dedication and effort from an outside, nurturing source, be that divine, or a pregenitor or "parent" civilisation; this is impossible in the scenario you describe, as there is no nurturing force (other than perhaps a divine one, though I don't believe in such a thing).
Even if we are to assume there is a divine nurturing force, we would still be missing the other component in the development of a selfless society: the lack of preexisting selfish notions. In the societal breakdown you have described, the human selfish instinct overpowers the selfless one (after all, if one find himself in a wasteland, he would naturally prioritise himself and his family). Therefore, these selfish notions are ingrained in the people of this cataclysmic world, and it would be nigh impossible to nurture it out of them.
As such, because of the lack of a nurturing force, and the preexisting selfish values of these post apocalyptic people, such a society is impossible to form.
Alright. Then let us imagine a scenario where this selflessness is possible: this world must be bountiful and abundant with resources, with no dangers as to not provoke the natural selfishness in people. The people of this world, as such, are mellow and easygoing, not very hardworkers (as they have no reason to work very hard when all is abundant), and not desiring much (as there is nothing left to desire).
In this world, there must also be a nurturing force to mentor these people, and bring out the selflessness within them. As humans are inclined to do as their mentors do, this force must necessarily be selfless, else the people would copy the mentor's selfishness. I see two possibilites for this mentor:
The first is that the mentor is a group, perhaps a progenitor or parent civilisation as I have previously described. I will presume this civilisation is comprised of a species bound by evolution (I will cover the opposite later on), and as such, has an inherent selfish component. This raises the question of, who mentored them to be selfless? And who mentored the mentor of the mentors? And so on. The logical endpoint: there must be an inherently selfless mentor, with whom this cycle breaks.
The other option is to simply skip this cycle, and assume the mentor is inherently selfless. As all species subject to evolution are inherently selfish, this mentor must necessarily come about outside of evolution, and is therefore what we may label "divine." (This is not to say that this divine being has those powers we so often associate with divinity, however.) I will refer to this being as Mentor. As Mentor is completely selfless, even if they were a collective, the goal would be the exact same: the best for everybody around them. Therefore, as the objective is the same, we may refer to Mentor as a singular entity. As for Mentor's role in this selfless society, I see two options:
One: Mentor claims no power over the people, and takes on a soley guiding role. In a selfless collective, this leaves a gigantic vacuum of power. As there are no outside dangers, this vacuum can only be filled by one of the people. As these people are taught selflessness, and their human selfishness is simply dormant, it is logical that eventually, one (or multiple) would awaken their selfishness, and come to fill this power vacuum---and these mellow, non-hardworkers would not be able to fight back. These new, selfish rulers would undoubtedly shape this society to their needs, and ultimately, corrupt its selflessness (see: the Soviet Union).
Two: Mentor fills the power vacuum. This is the only scenario in which, I believe, such a selflessness can be taught as to allow for the giving up of private property and the creation of a collective.
To conclude: it is my belief that a collective as you describe, with a complete lack of ownership, is possible only under the best of conditions, with complete abundance and safety, and requires direct divine rule. That is to say, it will never happen.
Quoting Frog
Yea, I also thought there might be a spectrum with extremes of selfishness and selflessness on the poles and a mixture in middle. Conceptually, at the extremes of selfishness, no society is possible. No one can compromise. No government is possible. At the extreme of selflessness, the society is like a pervading super identity eclipsing individuality completely. I would speculate that we never see either extreme in reality, but we can see cases where the pendulum has swung toward the extreme.
What I was wondering was: what causes the pendulum to swing? What are the conditions that result in society where selfishness dominates? I hypothesize that the answer is that selfishness dominates in a world where a strong government exists. Nobody really ever worries that the society will fall apart. They're so sure of that that they let their selfishness free. It would be in a world where government is fragile that people reflexively become sheep-like, sensing their vulnerability. So I'm leaning toward saying that what's really innate is dynamic tension between the two.
So yes, I agree with you that the extreme of selflessness isn't realizable. Thanks for hypothesizing with me! :grin:
Hmm... Why the pendulum swings? If I had to say something, I think I'd go with suffering. Suffering brings out the best and the worst in people, it allows for our human selfishness to take hold, but also for a selfless dreamers to dream.
Take, for example, the formation of the USSR. The people under the Tzar we're suffering terribly, with famines, war, deaths, you name it. It was because of this suffering that Lenin dreamed the dream of a communist Russia, and Lenin meant it. He truly wanted an equal society for all, he wanted complete selflessness. Some people rallied behind the banner of communism with their hearts on their sleeves. They were the dreamers.
The rest, however, used communism in a bid to take power. Take Stalin, for example. He road on the coat tails of Lenin's dream, and then he turned it on its head for his own benefit.
I think a better metaphor might be a car. This suffering is the fuel, and the steering wheel decides which way we go: to selfishness, or to selflessness. Now it's all up to the driver.
Our greater potential lies in taking a fanciful idea and producing a tyranny out of it.
For instance your passive voice leaves to our imagination what group of people or institution is to redistribute the wealth. Those people or that institution are in effect the owners, and everyone else the serf, because the distributors get to decide what is to be done with everyones things and who gives and takes what. Once the distributors are revealed it appears the transaction is less and less sharing as it is a racket.
I think ownership is innate rather than cultural. I believe it extends from self-ownership, the sense that ones self is ones own. Like ones self, the things we create and apply our productive energies towards would not be the way they are without our being. We often treat objects like tools or vehicles as extensions of the body, and I believe something of this process inheres in our instincts towards things we own. This, in combination with a sense of justice and desert, is enough to fill out a theory of ownership.
In the quoted scenario, there is no wealth to redistribute or even distribute. These people narrowly escaped from a burning city, clutching their children. They're in a barren landscape, with scarce food and shelter. Alone, each of them would perish. Their options are very limited.
Quoting NOS4A2
Yes, it's enough for the ownership of intimate objects - not of land, water and other people.
By wealth I meant goods and resources, like food. If there is nothing to distribute, then there is nothing to share.
I think it is enough for land. What is more intimate than the ground youre standing on?
How do you distribute what you haven't found yet? In order to ensure co-operation, they have to agree on a plan for sharing the effort - food and fuel gathering, shelter building, child-care, guard duty, first aid, tool-making, scouting - and the rewards of those efforts, then trust one another to keep to that plan, or discuss any proposed changes and get consensus. Otherwise, none of them is safe.
Quoting NOS4A2
There is nothing intimate about the ground; it's just something you walk on, trying to avoid obstacles. They won't stand in one place: if they want to keep living, they'll have to keep moving. It's going to be a very long time, 50 or more generations, before they can settle down to permanent architecture and agriculture (as opposed to seasonal or short-term cultivation) If the weather stabilizes by then. That may be long enough to become accustomed to a communal culture and train the young accordingly.
That's true. But if you rely on a government to enforce your property rights, that also becomes a racket. You'll have to protect your stuff with your little arsenal out there in northern Canada.
Try it out: insert any governing body you can think of. It will still be true. This is one of the main problems of a society without ownership.
I also described something similar earlier: I am sure others have described this too.
If there is a power vacuum, someone will fill it, and no matter who does, the nature of power is to corrupt, and so they will be corrupted and will take advantage.
Ownership isnt the problem.
Getting rid of owning things to make the world better is like getting rid of things to make the world better.
We need food. Sometimes one person has it and another doesnt. Ownership isnt the problem. Peoples fears, greed, desire for power over others and their own future, gluttony, etc - those are the same problems in any world, at any time, whether sifting through the rubble, or through search results on Amazon.
I think cultural forms always express the same story arc. They start with a golden age where everyone is strong and true. Then they progress to greater maturity and what was black and white starts to become grey. In the final stages pessimism is rampant. Listen to some of the people on this forum and you can hear the sound of profound pessimism, where it just seems absurd to love yourself and your culture's ideals. It's all turned to shit and there's nothing can be done. In this world corruption is common because nobody believes in anything anymore. And then a reformer comes and starts the cycle over.
What I'm saying is that every cultural form goes through these phases. The adage that power corrupts is mainly true in the final stages. How does that sound?
Elders, who have earned the tribe's respect through honesty and wisdom, and who listen to every voice with considered attention.
Quoting Frog
If. Why should there be a power vacuum? Why should there be power to hoover up in the first place? What kind of power? How attained? How retained?
Quoting Fire Ologist
I haven't proposed any such action. I predict that, as has happened many times before, it will happen again, only on a much, much larger scale: people lose what they own, their homes, their land, their livelihood, their social structure, their whole way of life. Then they have to adapt to whatever they find, or die.
You may be right: our genetic predisposition to insanity may prove stringer than our reasoning and need to belong, in which case we will destroy ourselves utterly. But I'm not convinced that it's inevitable.
The greatest hope I see to conquer our insanity is the fact that there was a man like Jesus, and he didnt own anything, so maybe you are right.
And look what we did to his legacy!
There would probably always exist some sentiment of favoring the smarter and stronger, but if this is a society of civilized people that is recovering from something like a nuclear war, then I think it could be possible.
:up: