the psychology of ownership

Is it an ideological act to own something?
I believe not. A baby will take ownership of all kinds of goods without any notions in its little head.
Is it a similar thing to pain?
In the sense that not owning the mother is pain for the baby, its sort of up there with it, in how primal ownership is.
I would propose it is a psychological and a physical phenomenon.

But then there’s the fact that some people don’t feel this way, a lot actually - weirdly there are two parties here who cant seem to understand each others experiences.
Is it truly that babies are born who do not grasp at things to hold them for themselves?
Is “marxism” (ownership is ideology) born in some people and “capitalism” (ownership is real) born in others?

If an animal defends a territory from another animal she claims some kind of ownership doesn’t he?
I think there are several ways of seeing ownership in the animal kingdom. But humans have made it more elaborate, and have made laws for it.
Animals don’t have written laws of ownership. But humans had the idea of ownership before there were written laws, Im sure.

Does a squirrel own the nuts he collects, I mean, does she feel a sense of ownership about it? Or will he naturally voluntarily share it with the next squirrel?

As I said in the other thread, I don’t think babies have a concept of ownership. They do want things and they don’t like not getting them - for the time they want them - and they don’t care anything at all about ownership. They can bitch and scream if they don’t get mommy’s tit. And that is her tit. And maybe she needs a momentary break to pee, but they will act like they own that tit. Later, even, as toddlers, they are not respecters of ownership. They want what they want. And have to be repeatedly chastized for taking what is not theirs. They can also suddenly not give a shit about something that is theirs. They can give away shit on the spur of a moment. They have noticed that adults use the word ‘mine’ and possessive pronouns as a power move. They will use this word, when they want something, even if it is not theirs, often reacting with great indignance when it is pointed out the word doesn’t apply in that situation. And two minutes later they many not want to see that thing ever again. It wasn’t theirs, they called it mine, then they didn’t give shit about it. We are confusing the enactment of desire with cocepts of ownership. Kids mimic adult arguments and speech to get what they want and to avoid what they don’t want.

If ownership is innate it comes unfolds later and always in a cultural contexts, which to me means it is very hard to determine what ownership, if innate, is. What it’s qualities are. Tribal notions of ownership are very different from modern ones. To the degree that enormous misunderstandings arose with Europeans, for example. Of course, tribal members had stuff that they would be upset if others took without permission. But their relation to property and certainly ‘the land’ would put them way out on the left if we look at intra-tribal relations. If we look at inter-tribal relations it is very hard to say what is property and what is, we have to do this for our survival, with ideas of possession and property reifications of life strategies.

And by the way, I think my stuff is my stuff. I am nto sure what I would think in a society not parasitically run by an elite. But I would defend stuff I consider mine and refuse others access to and use of and confiscation of. Certainly in this cultural context, In a more tribal context, certainly a tribe I felt like I belonged in and was respected in, my notions of what is mine would radically shirt. I am much more focused, at root, on being able to do certain things, rather than in owning certain things. These are not necessarily easy to tease apart, but when I am in tribal situations - I don’t mean in some jungle somewhere with global holdouts - I notice my sense and desire for ownership shifts. And not a little. The commons expands.

Even under kings Europe had a strong sense of the commons. Capitalism, at least the modern, US driven one, is trying to eliminate the commons. Like shit, even governments and people’s bodies and water and plant and animals species have all come under attack as things that should be privately owned. Governments are, the rest are under attack.

I think if we look at the issue in vague abstract terms AND take the modern situation as a given, the two sides can assert their binary positions. Ownership is innate or ownership is contingent and ideological. My guess is that it is a mix of the two and it is facile to stay at the abstract level, but convenient for the construction of enemies. They may well be enemies, deep down, but we might as well get to the real reasons.

But babies, toddlers and even kids older than toddlers do not believe in ownership. They want stuff and they use whatever tools their are. They also just simply mimic adults. Given what we are, we are, I think, going to want boundaries, where each of us gets access and use of soem things in ways others do not. But given how fucked up the world is these days, what the great general tendencies for this must look like in practice, seems to me to be very hard to pin down.

Human attempt at pure ownership… Im not even gonna print those
nl.pinterest.com/pin/397794579590997113/

Hello Karpel,
Yeah but you don’t need to have a notion of it for it to be real in you. Hunger isn’t a notion either, the idea is more that ownership belongs to instincts.

I believed in ownership as a kid, certainly, and my friends did too, I remember well.
I want to have this thing so I can use it when I want to. I liked presents at my birthday.

Maybe I was trained to like it but Ive never met a human who wasn’t homeless or otherwise drifting and doing badly who didn’t believe in ownership - mostly not I h ownership by others of things they craved.

I don’t see that the want to have something is different from the want to own something. If you eat something you own it forever.

is ownership innate?

find me the evidence…

for I doubt it…just watching people suggest to me
that the “idea” of ownership is taught, the concept of
the child grabbing mommy tits isn’t about ownership,
it is the basic, fundamental need for food that drives
a baby for mom’s tits…the drive from instincts to possession
isn’t always about ownership, but it has other more basic needs,
food, water, shelter, health care, education…the fundamental
needs of all beings… to possess isn’t always about ownership,
but about the instinct to territory which isn’t about ownership…

watch lions in the wild… the need to territory isn’t ownership…
but to fill needs…

Kropotkin

Hm PK I honestly don’t see the difference between the human and animal tendencies to take a territory and guard it by force… both are ownership I think.

I don’t understand the difference between “have” and “own” maybe. Im sure I don’t actually.

Well part of it passes through you of course and the values you eat are also processed and pass through, so eating isn’t necessarily the same as owning, I can see that, unless you take it as self-ownership. We own our own molecules.

Habeas Corpus, which is important to me, means you shall own yourself. This is of course a tenuous situation, but is this because the wish to self-own isn’t innate, or because other wishes of other people sometimes trump it?

This is interesting: self-ownership of citizens in general suspended in order to fight for the self-ownership of slaves.

Squirrels lose nuts to other animals all the time. And they also lose them to the becoming an oak tree, for example, process. AGain, this is binary. If they would try to keep their own nuts - and they use fake caches to make it harder on thieves - is this because they think they own them, or is it because they want the nuts. Desire, strategies, having them. Ownership implies that have some abstract concept that I don’t think they have. They definitely want them. Dogs and Apes can have a sense of fairness it seems. But I am not sure what is necessitated by an animal having developed strategies of getting what it wants and needs. This often means trying not to let others get certain things. I am not sure we can reify this to ownership. Pack animals share food. There can be dominance distribution, but the general idea is that everyone gets a share, period, sometimes even sick and non-productive members of the pack or herd or group. In relation to other groups we will see territorial actions. But then if we were all packs, would we then be some form of socialist packs that related to OTHER packs in ways that were more capitalism or ownership based. Bonoboes don’t seem to own each other. She is mine. At least no sexually. Other species do have ownership or at least only one member gets access period, thank you very much. Upon which animal to we base the mineness of lovers? The polyamorous will find their role model species and the ‘traditionalists’ might feel sympatico with another species. What is the concept of ownership in dolphins?

If animals struggle over a corpse - crows, wolves, vultures, coyotes, say, over an dead moose - are they fighting for ownership? or are they each just trying to get what they want but remain safe, the wolves in that scenario the safest.

Humans have words and these words can reify desires and needs into abstractions that can then be used as tools to maintain, create, get, access to, sole use of, digestion of, sex with other things nad people.

We definitely want stuff. And often we want certain things long term.

What is purely innate here, I don’t know.

I don’t think the ownership of six mansions is simply innate ownership conception that is also found in squirrels and babies. I also don’t think it is completely ideological. Diseased, yes, but there is some seed of natural tendencies inside something metaphorically cancerous even for the person who owns those mansions.

Which doesn’t mean I want to pass laws taking away those mansions. I’d like to start, as said in the other thread, taking away the abuses of power and the undermining of democracy the rich engage in. I am not even sure my urge is natural. Though somewhere in there my disdain and contempt has a natural root, at least that’s my best sense. But then I’m fairly tribal. If you lead, should we need a leader, it’s only to the degree you seem to know what you’re doing. It’s ad hoc and dependent on tribal approval and other individuals skills and qualities. It sure has nothing to do with how many bear skins you have. I can’t see how that means you get to send us to war against the next tribe over. Let’s spank him and put someone else in charge. And time for a potlatch.

Only if you’re constipated.

As far as not needing the notion, sure. I don’t think you always have to have a notion of something for it to be a facet of you. In fact I think people are often ignorate of real things in themselves at the conceptual level. But I wasn’t arguing that. I was saying that babies and toddlers and even older children (and animals) do not behave in ways that show ownership conception. Babies are not respecters of ownership and do not enforce ownership even over their own bodies much of the time, for example. I have worked with children, and young ones also, a lot. What they are doing is not ownership. It is a poor description of what they do with the word mine. Which is why even the parents of teenagers cannot leave them alone in the house over a weekend, often. I see ids that consider anything theirs. My argument is not that there is a lack of a thought or concept so they can’t have them. Children are, yes, hungry, but as babies they don’t have a notion of hunger. They have a feeling. Hunger is a desire. Ownership is something much more complicated and so far undefined. And ownership in non-civilized peoples, presumably closer to our instincts, is nothing like that of civilized humans. Especially intra-group. And I am NOT saying there is nothing innate. I am saying, well, what I said in the other posts.

Im not so sure of that.
Arent we conflating the map and the terrain here?

Ownership became a notion only after it exists, I think.
No need for the notion to be absolute when ownership in reality is never absolute.

So thats a straw man already inserted in the argument a priori, if we look at it as notion-first. Or a circular argument. If we propose that ownership begins as a notion then we must always conclude that it is only a notion, right?

Yes and families share resources together, isn’t this group-ownership?
Pack don’t share with other packs.

Ownership in the US Constitutional idea comes down to something that must be defended by guns.
It doesn’t take it as a god-given thing but as a real thing which like many real things must be worked for.

Well ok but, not all commodities are rebellious birds like love is.

Seriously I don’t see the difference between wanting to have something and wanting to own something, or between having and owning.

I think this goes for everything though, excess is poisonous.

Im not totally sure what you re saying here but its kind of interesting to compare how leadership and ownership do or do not correlate.

I think ownership evolves form the need to keep to be able to use later.
This is sometimes necessary to survive.
So here the instinct or phenomenon of ownership would have evolved.
In this sense the fat layers of an animal are their ownership.
(I do not like abstrahizing things, they always drift apart. I like to keep it real, earthy.)

Yes, meaning, if you’re not gonna use it.
You, or your gene-pool, your progeny.

I think human ownership of things is often meant to be passed along to children.
Dawkins of course argues that not we but our genes are in control and, if keeping-for-using is sometimes necessary to survive and evolves into our genes, then even inherited ownership is an innate thing.

Also its the case that a baby cant really control what it is doing at all - but some of the main tendencies they do express have to do with desires as well as preferences for certain things and places and situations and aversion to others, and I think that ownership is just a sense of security about being able to be in the preferred situations whenever you want.
I think maybe in the negatives sense, ownership is a neurosis, more than a construct.

A whole other level, or angle;

“this is MY baby, you wont taking MY baby from me!!!”

Is the mothers (or fathers) drive to keep a child related to ownership?

A terrible logic occurs to me. If what I mention earlier is true, then people originating from lower classes and castes actually could be lacking the genes that cause appreciation of ownership, because their ancestors were owned rather than that they owned themselves.
So these people would have a better understanding, instinctively, of other-ownership, of being owned by others and so of the general idea of ownership of humans by other humans, than of owning oneself.
Because where in free people the sense of ownership is about self-possession and not about being possessed, so the urgency of other-possession is not in the blood whereas, in bondhuman-lineages this urgency is in the blood so there is a feeling of its either owning or being owned; this is kind of a slave-revolt sort of mechanic; if I cant own myself then I must abolish ownership so at least no one owns me. A valid concern, caused by other peoples excessive ownership.

In two words: egoic projection.

Sure, if You acceed to reject Darwin, and can hold to Lamarkianism ,where one can conceive of only limited regress of inherited traits, before which such was not notable.

I don’t think Lamarck is entirely wrong actually.

Darwin never did explain the in-between stages. I do believe a greater flexibility is suggested by our history.
We might by the way draw a dangerous conclusion here about the genders, so lets not.

Felix - ill keep that in mind when I visit your house. Ill just kick you out to liberate you from your ego.
Hell, - why not give it to me now? Sign over your so called “property” to me please.
Why? Because I ask. You have no valid reason to hold on to it.

Same goes for all deniers of ownership - I request you all hand all your so called “possessions” over to me or to other people who can use it. If you refuse on grounds of wanting to keep it, you prove that property is real, at least your property is real.

It is all oh so simple if you actually become conscious of yourself.

Meno - ancient conception has it that at least 8 generations are still fluid in us. What we now know of genealogy might not be the whole picture, like Newtonian physics is correct but leaves out the subtleties that make for such dynamic things as life, which are not reducible to the blueprint.

What I’m suggesting is that there are layers to our genealogy, much of it having been entirely “set”, but recent generations still working, active, alive, on an imperceptible level (as we do not observe genes through time, but in snapshots far apart)

Considering Dawkins in this light is very provocative.

Haha! I didn’t say egoic projection is a bad thing. And besides, it’s supported by socially constructed laws that support a system of social order that is working, more or less.

Both animals do.

Both animals are saying (through their actions, of course) that it is them who should be using that territory.

And they don’t even have to be animals. They can be brainless organisms, machines or any other thing that acts in a way that implies a goal and an idea about how to attain that goal.