Ownership

As I see it, ownership is,

• The result of enclosures brought about by robbery, mostly violent (i.e., Marxists rejoice).
• The best ever human invention (i.e., Neoliberals rejoice).
• Fundamental to the Radical model (i.e., everybody is puzzled).

Attachment

In Fun Facts about Ownership, Science of Ownership magazine says, Awareness of ownership rights already emerges in children as young as 2 or 3 years.^∇ But that is careless nonsense. Our brains come wired for attachment, but not ownership

We learn ownership from those around us, As children get older, they gain social skills and learn to negotiate conflicts on their own.^∇

Possession

The process of legitimizing lang-grabs is still going on, although these days is more about things like,

• Forever copyrights
• Never-ending patents
• Digital data about you! (i.e., businesses like Facebook and Google use that information to their heart’s content without asking you)

MINE! MINE!

Anything a toddler comes in contact with is “MINE! MINE!”. It likely has to do with the fact that,

• Anything and everything we come in contact with, and doesn’t harm us, can, according to our brains,^∇ extend our bodies and it appropriates it easily and swiftly (i.e., unconsciously).
• And, of course, anything that is part of our body cannot be let go just like that.

It all goes to say that possession is a very real, intrinsic thing and we should not pretend otherwise. We tried believing that “a new man”^∇ would rise who would not be attached to possessions. However, that’s not the way it went. Not at all.

What about the farming-led-to-ownership story? Well, let’s just say that it is just a story, and not very convincing. In any case, none of us were there and we are all guessing. These days, it makes more sense to me that the whole possession-to-ownership thing had more to do with the invention of coinage,^∇ another grand human invention.

Going Forward

What happened in the past cannot be changed or fixed in the present. What counts is what we do going forward (i.e., and preferably, what we do to make sure that long-term errors of the past do not persist).

We have to make things work for everybody, not just a subset of humanity. If ownership is a good thing, then let’s make it work for everybody. We can do it in a steady-eddy, gradual way, without violence.

And that is what RAD Distributions are about: A tool for revolutionaries (without explosives).

ENDNOTES

• Eckhart Tolle. A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. 2005. <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/A_New_Earth>

• The Science of Ownership. Fun Facts about Ownership. <https://thescienceofownership.org/resources/fun-facts/>

• Dr Cathleen McGreal. Parenting: how to teach your kids about ownership. October 2004. <https://diigo.com/0qu8c4>

• Nidhi Kumari. Ownership As A Social Concept. April 6, 2015. <https://radicals.world/9l2zmn>

• Kinds of Ownership. Toppr. <https://diigo.com/0qu8ma>

• Daniel Kahneman. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Wikipedia. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Soviet_man>

• Daniel Kahneman. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Wikipedia. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow>