I was imagining having a debate with future AI/robots, and it got to the idea of body swapping and all periphery things to the experiencer being ultimately interchangeable. Then I said to the robot “ we built you, and therefore you don’t own your body/bodies” and the robot in all innocence replied “well do you own yours then?"
Didn’t someone else create and nurture your body into existence, using up its energy, resources, and efforts? Naturally we own what we the experiencer is ~ our own consciousness [as does a conscious robot own itself in those terms], although we would have to first state that there is a difference between consciousness and the physical body/brain. If we are onto body-swapping though, then if such technology is ever possible, there would be enough to denote that which is the conscious and what is the body [like a user and their machine], such for that idea to be possible.
Does it matter if we have ownership when we have utility? Namely that being able to use something is what you have when you own it, then as long as you have that, then you have the same as what ownership denotes.
Look, it’s not hard to understand. If you’re a part of the upper class of the giant farms known as civilizations you own yourself.
If you’re not a part of the upper class you’re a slave or cattle in which you’re owned by the plantation state through thousands of years concerning human animal husbandry. Any questions?
No you don’t. You’re owned by the 99% whether you know it or not and must act accordingly lest the 99% get upset and move against you. You are more slave and cattle than all the other 99% because you are responsible then, as that one percent, for 99% of the worlds problems.
That’s a very pragmatic way of seeing what it. As on that level being upper or lower class is a product of circumstance and inheritance [causality & randomness], then what of it does one own? Possibly around 5% is ‘your choice’, in as much that causality builds the device, the world manifests inheritance and circumstance, then [hopefully] we are the product of that and can make general utility of it based upon the given information. In my experience this varies, sometimes you realise that your thoughts are being driven, or are otherwise part of a sequence ~ the subconscious to conscious cycle, but sometimes you do make choices especially when we are disagreeing with some of the info coming through or up from the subconscious.
Some scientist or secularists think 100% of all info in your brain is causal. I think as above this ignores utility and the difference between the vehicle/body and its product the mind.
I’m a determinist and view civilization as a sort of grid or through the lens of a kind of socio economic game theory.
It should be noted that this socio economic game we live in predetermined does not revolve around nature but instead revolves around simulated constructs human beings create themselves ongoingly.
The lower you are in the hierarchy the less choices you have and worse your life becomes completely determined by others. Like any kind of rebel my solution is to burn the human animal farm down to the ground. I believe human liberation would be possible afterwards. Of course sometimes misguided farmers ruin their own farm through horrendous mismanagement which has the same effect.
It is odd how humans are seemingly the only thing in nature that construct gridwork. All the rest of nature seems chaotic but has a smooth, non-rigid structure of rhythm and harmony while humans create their gridwork and consider it above the natural order and have chaos exist in their midst. They consider their work beautiful while trampling down the natural beauty of the rest of the universe. Surely, humanity is the 1% that causes 99% of the universes problems.
This is a rather mad answer to a mad question: We do own our selves, in the sense that we are us and we are who we are and that is entirely ours in a way that is entirely our own and thus we do own ourselves.
At the same time, we exist surrounded by other people and things all of which could claim ownership of us through casual or non-casual relation. We belong to other people because we are humans, we are theirs as surely as they are ours simply because we belong to the same species. Similar arguments could be made of race, of family and of friends. Similarly, we are living and we belong to the living just the same as the living belong to us and we will die some day to which we belong to the dead and them to us. We are made up of matter that is similarly in everyday objects as tables and chairs and the like and therefore while owning those things, they own us as well. To the universe we have the universe mirrored within it and so belong to it at the same time as it belonging to us and all celestial bodies within the universe are like unto this sentiment.
Nature is its own equality which mankind seeks to distance itself from and claim sole ownership over another or claim that another has sole ownership of them or claim to be free and own themselves or that another owns themself while they remain enslaved.
And to anyone who thinks this is too ambiguous, this is simple statement; simple give and take; simple sharing and simple equality from the smallest of organisms to the largest. But don’t tell the ones who wish for inequality to have ultimate power… they might take offense to such a bland string of statements that puts them on the same level as livestock and cattle and worms and ‘lesser’ beings.
I mean the whole thing ~ what ‘you’ is. we may not be able to say what that is or if we exist et al, but if someone gives you a command then your entity is being owned. so here we don’t need the answer to the question ‘what am i’.
if nature doesn’t see ‘ownership’, it may help to explain why nothing and non-one seems to be in control. wills are thence something akin to the winds and the weather.
I would say since there are physical restrictions there is an implied ownership. The owner would be nature. It is interesting that some went straight to economics and others went elsewhere on this topic. Personal perspective owns us as well. If you feel owned then you are wether or not someone or something is holding your reins.
As there is an objective level where we are instruments, then I can see where you are going with that, but we can add randomness, circumstance and observational change [form the experience] to that. Then we have something - a ‘game’ which is constantly changing, and with that the rigidity of causality is broken. There is at least potential for individuals to shine, and that to me means we have value as individuals.
A bit Nero isn’t it? Sure you can completely change Rome by burning it to the ground and rebuilding it, but then it would be to a single schemata. If we consider suburban developments built en masse, compared to those built individually, the latter is far superior [except in poor areas of course].
What you ideally need with respect to that, is for everyone to change the whole thing up. So now you need leaders and followers to change the causality, a fairer exchange rate of money would be a good start. In my mind if one guy has a mansion and another is homeless then a great deal of theft has occurred between the two. So rather than an anarchist who uses criminal activity to subjugate [not saying anarchists are that] the system, we need a world where theft is not allowed ~ that includes the city/capitalism.
Why would there be theft because one has a mansion and the other is homeless? Why must everyone be financially equal? I believe in helping and charity but, I give to those who are ill , children or people trying to get ahead or better themselves. The word bum was created for a reason. There are too damn many that figured out that charity and government programs are easy. They don’t want rent, mortgage, utility bills , etc. Food, clothes and maybe shelter when weather is bad. You want my taxes to go to that? Or how about the women who figured out that popping out babies is an easy way to make a living?
Help your neighbor, sure but, not if they do not deserve it. Those popped out kids need help not their conniving mothers and fathers.
well ‘they’ are human beings with a different causality to you, given the same you are them and they are you. they act like that because they don’t think they have a choice. having said that some people do take the piss.
or perhaps a less extreme dichotomy? At the bottom of the wealth chain, people work very hard in e.g. hot African nations, for a mere sustenance living. The cost of a loaf of bread there is about a 100th of what it is here, so if they want to buy the machinery of industry its going to be very difficult. That difference in the worth of a loaf, is in part relative to costs in shipment of grain and what have you, but in the most part it has arisen 100% wholly from capitalist machinations and manipulation of money. Otherwise all money would be worth the same or otherwise have barterable value, then the price of the west’s wealth is therefore partly paid for by that theft.
That doesn’t mean that people, companies and nations who do well shouldn’t be richer. It just means that given a level playing field there wouldn’t >generally< be such a vast difference in the worlds wealth, and the rich wouldn’t be living in part by getting labour abroad to do everything [grow food and makes stuff] so cheaply.
Having said all that, I am aware that the whole capitalist machine works like an engine, and that manifests the greater generation of wealth = growth.
In conclusion I don’t like how culture has been turned against those who have far worse lives than that of their complainers. I don’t expect it all to change and I do recognise that that’s how the world turns, but it needs to get less selfish and not more selfish, where entitlement can be the result of either but usually the latter. The rich philosophically don’t get to stand on the high ground, and we all got our hands dirty in this.
I am not sure thinking they have no choice is the sole reason. I would add fear of taking chances.
About other countries or even this country. Is a person poor if they do not know they are? If a way of life is all they know and it is accepted then what right do we have to force a different way? I know you mean well and I too would like to see more fair ways or even equal chances but, I also must think that bringing third world into first world may be wrong and even cruel to a point. Think about the mental transitions, outsiders bringing a new world. There are so many issues that can or will occur. I might be jaded about humanity but, I do know those people are at their core no different then us.
Ever know anyone that has won a bunch of money then blow it all even though they are poor or middle class ?
Reminds me of the above, but of course thats just the religious perspective.
If we didn’t own our bodies or minds, then it would be difficult to own anything else, as we need our bodies and minds to interact with everything else. For example, how could I own a car if I did not own the body which earned the money to buy the car, if the mind that read the buyers agreement etc. If nobody owned themself, then the concept of ownership itself breaks down. So, somebody has to own themselves if anybody is to own anything.
As Arminius astutely points out, though, it isn’t necessary that everyone owns themselves - only that some people do -for the concept of ownership to work.
Also, there’s a problem on this thread with the definition of ownership. I’d normally say that ‘ownership’ means the right to sell something. Some people here seem to think ownership is about control but I don’t think that’s accurate - for example you can be the owner of a company yet have no say in how it is run (through an unusually restrictive shareholders agreement, for example). And just because I own my car, that doesn’t mean another person can’t run their keys down it, break its windows or crash into it.
Ownership gives me ceratin rights but it does not give me 100% control. I think this is probably what is happening with the 1% examples - I think we own ourselves, but just don’t have full control over how we are run. That said, we can’t sell ourselves. Or maybe we can? (I’m thinking soldiers, not prostitutes!).
That depends on how much one has emancipated oneself from ones conditioning, and how much one has seen reality clearly as a result of the emancipation.
Many people worry about whether they are a slave to the state, or this or that outward power structure, but what about being a slave to ones native language, ones grammar? What about being a slave to emotional patterns that have conditioned oneself from an early age, have been subjugated by the Ego ever since, and being a slave to the narrative of the ego, rather than confronting nakedly the original conditioning and through the process of that confrontation, abolishing it?
As long as philosophical enquiry into the nature of freedom, liberation, and so on, does no include the linguistic, emotional, and psychological conditioning of the person, it can never complete the desired goal of emancipation.
If they have ever seen a TV or live near civilisation then i’d guess yes. They may not know what it feels like to have all the stuff we have, but they will know they don’t have it and that most things make ones life easier. There is also the question of maximising the markets, if we eventually reach a time when everyone can afford the product a business is making, then everyone including the rich will be richer [more profits etc].
I don’t want to see money spread out in one gulp – so to say, I can only imagine that would result in a financial catastrophe of epic proportions. It is machines and vehicles they need more than money per se. …well obviously food and sanitation too.
Seeing objects that another has does not mean jealous or desire. I meant poor as in wanting but cannot have. Did you not have wealthier friends or family but, have no desire or jealousy?
If you are happy , objects are not a priority. A person can see but have no need or desire especially if they know it is unattainable. A primitive survival mechanism, The old story about the fox and grapes.
If needs are met then emotions can be positive.
A question: thousands of years , hundreds of generations , knowledge of what others have or are capable of and yet these communities stay primitive. We know they are not stupid or incapable of learning or change. So why ? Held down by gangs or leaders ? They outnumber any of those. So could their spirits be broken? Most likely not. Why can they not be content with what they have?
We know how we would feel if we were in their shoes, so we tend to think it would be morally right to gift them with luxury that we think of as need. We need cars, electricity to run our gadgets, etc. we would be lost without power in our homes. I have been without power for extended times. After the second week it is not so bad. You start to connect with those around you and learn skills, sleep deeply. Don’t get me wrong , I enjoy having electricity but, I can see what it hides or takes away. I can see that those that have never had should not get dumped into the grid fully. Can we agree slow generational methods might be a good idea?
I have wondered this myself, but it all happened in Europe because the needs manifest it there. There was never any increasingly large and powerful nations, or city states organised around navies. Africa for example has no islands in areas of most activity [the Mediterranean]. In Europe and around the Mediterranean there many successive needs to manage, make and carry increasingly diverse goods.
If there is no need for a state then a state wont happen, they simply exist as the means of administration of goods and services. Once existent they will keep finding better ways to manifest wealth, and essentially invent things, eventually Europe had a world sized empire demographically ~ if we see it in terms of business and utility as opposed to nationalistic empires.
I wouldn’t want to give people what they don’t want, but their kids probably will want things and then we have an example of conflicts of interest in what’s given. In all the documentaries i’ve seen, you get people working for years to get a bicycle to make their journeys to sell crops easier, and if they could have a truck I am sure they would gladly take that too. So you give them clean water, fertilizer, sanitation, housing and the vehicles they need. These aren’t toys to them! They all have a very apparent utility.
All I am saying is that before we can talk about giving ‘them’ luxury, or complaining that the needy and mentally ill are lazy, we should consider they do have a right to the things they need. We ‘steal’ from them because a loaf of bread made in Africa is worth a 100th of one here, and through all the machinations of the capitalist machine. That is also the thing which generates wealth, then when it does it is the duty of the wealthy to fund sanitation etc in places which need it. All the nations are part of the world, I don’t think it is factually so that one persons wealth is entirely the product of their own efforts, everything is the product of every ones efforts.
I also don’t expect it to all happen over night, but a relatively tiny sum would clear a lot of the crap up. I just want to see an end to the very worse things.