Category talk:Property

"The advent of the institution of property is arguably the incest taboo. " OK, it's arguable, so I'd like to argue. :) I submit that even in a world with the incest taboo, or even without sexual reproduction, the notion of property would evolve similarly to our world. -- Gonzoron 14:52, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean "without" actually?

Well, you knock sexual reproduction and/or the incest taboo out of existence and who is to say. Every culture and every historical period known to us has had both. But by analogy, parallel morphology can immerge in species that are unrelated. So you can get to the same or similar ends by different means. But the experiment does make the interesting point that property relations could conceivably be substanially different, entirely absent, or essentially the same with some abberations or other such things that don't reproduce sexually. In other words, its suggests a way, among others, to make alien cultures properly alien.Cure 15:26, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I meant without. I realize it's hard to say what the absence of any particular element would have done to culture. But what I'm getting at is that I think it's a big stretch to say that the concept of Property has anything at all to do with the incest taboo. The idea of "This sharp rock is mine, go get your own" seems to me a much more fundamental idea than any taboo. Heck, my dog understands property, and was spayed before her first heat. I don't think she has any taboo against incest or even any real concept of mating at all. But she knows which toys are hers and doesn't want other dogs touching them. -- Gonzoron 19:43, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

On a completely unrelated note, dogs are awesome. Give your dog a hug today! --ChrisNichols 20:24, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Done! :) -- Gonzoron 19:01, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Many human institutions have antecedents in nature. But human institutions are born of profound mutations in those antecedents that render the resulting orders all but unintelligible to those on the outside looking in.

Dogs bark and, we can say metaphorically, talk. Dog barking is certainly communication, but its capacities do not permit of poetry let alone countless other useages that make human speech, which is to say language, categorically different from anything else that is known by us to exist.

Equally, your dog is convinced that her food is hers. Well and good. Under what conditions is it culturally obligatory among dogs for her to enter into exchanges concerning her food? Is not consuming her food and trading it for something else a practice she engages in?

Or going to the heart of the matter, if a father owns his daughter like your dog owns her food, based on "nature's concept of property", why on earth does he bother not consuming her and instead bothers trying to trade her? Whatever nature may be telling him, his daughter is not his property to consume according to culture, or more exactly according to the difference between nature and culture. Property, properly speaking, is as much about what is not mine to consume, even when it is otherwise my property, as it is about what is mine to consume. Property is a system of differences between owners. In that system a wife and a daughter are not the same thing just as a father and a husband are not the same thing. Whereas for your dog food is always food to be eaten. There is no such thing as food that is not to be consumed but instead traded and that on being traded becomes again food that is food to be consumed. For her, like the zombie, all flesh must be eaten. There is no dog or zombie equivalent of the daughter who must be traded away in a ceremony and of a husband who is such and who acquires the right to consume her only by becoming a son-in-law.Cure 21:57, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, firstly, there's the question of whether property needs to involve trade. In my opinion, no. The act of ownership makes something property, not whether or not the thing can be traded with another. An object need not change owners to have an owner. Perhaps a dog (awesome as they are) is not a good example. As you say, humans are quick to ascribe human-like behavior to animals when they are acting only on instinct. A better example is a child. Anyone with kids knows that "mine" is one of the first few words in any kid's vocabulary. The feeling of "I want this item and I don't want anyone else to touch it" is visceral and much more basic than trade/barter, etc. It's a pure pain vs. pleasure response based on survival instincts. Me having some food helps me survive. You taking my food makes me hungry and hurts my survival chances. Me having this toy makes me happy. Me not having it makes me sad. etc.

Even if we're talking about change of ownership, the concept is not synonymous with Trade. After all, change in ownership need not be voluntary. If I have a coconut, and you hit me in the head with a rock and take my coconut, property has changed hands, with no mention of incest.

Now if you want to say that voluntary trade/economy/etc. (rather than merely property or ownership), is based on the trade in daughters, that's another argument. I still disagree, but at least we're comparing apples to apples. ;) Here's why I disagree: the drive to reproduce is of course a natural and influential force. But it's not the primary force of instinct. The need for food and shelter has to be assuaged first, before reproduction is even an option. Two lonely, wifeless, daughterless primeval males can engage in trade based purely on survivalism. If I have 2 coconuts and you have 2 sharp rocks and we're both hungry, I can give you a coconut for a rock, and we can both break open our coconuts and eat. What does that exchange have to do with sexual taboo?

(Note: My willingness to engage in this debate should not be construed as conceding that this sort of debate even belongs here.  :) ) -- Gonzoron 19:00, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

If those two gentleman grew up together, not even being raised by wolves, but some how surviving to adulthood as a special boon of the Dark Powers or whatever, each might, like the dog or the child, have some sense, although probably not any words and explanations to the effect, that a given something is his rather than merely being part of the landscape to be picked up and put down by himself or anyone else at will. And like two dogs or childen occasionally another may be allowed to use that item. Well and good. But were those two gentlemen actually to have been raised within a culture and subsequently maroon together in the middle of nowhere, there would be quite specific and stable nicities, or rituals if you will, about the use of any item that was claimed by the other as property and was accepted, at least tacitly, as being such. One would, for example, ask "please" and wait for consent, in all circumstances short of emergency or perhaps pressing need. In the case of pressing need an apology for not asking might well be in order and the acceptance of that apology would be of some importance. Failure to follow the prescribed rituals might upset one of the men and perhaps he might scream like a baby or growl like a dog. But he is vastly more likely to do something that neither baby nor dog do. He will accuse the other of committing a crime, of transgression, of sacrificing the good that all receive from the existence of society for his own pleasure, and indeed perhaps of being an enemy of society itself. And the accuser will wonder, if the other is prepared to commit this crime and if the other refuses to admit it as being a crime and to seek pardon for his actions, what else is he capable of? Whatever other laws is he prepared to break, what other transgressions mean nothing to him? Is he not a dangerous savage, is he not a rabid dog, who the victim of the theft by right and by obligation must put down, in defense of law itself? For the safety of himself, but for the safety of his daughter and of daughters everywhere, for the other has respect for neither law nor right. The old saw from the 50's UFO movies about aliens coming to steal our daughters is no accident. They are alien not only in that they don't obey law (which we naturally conceive of as being human) but moreover in that they know enough to want to take what is most sacred (whereas animals carry off people indifferently and don't steal property).

Lurking behind this whole discussion is a matter that you might recall if you have read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle repair. A given building may have the shape of a church. But that doesn't make it a church. Indeed many buildings with the shape of a church aren't churches at all, having been "decommission" (for want of the correct word). And not a few buildings that don't have the shape of churches are churches having been so "commissioned". Now it is no accident that we think that some buildings are churches. But it was never their shape that made them so. A church is an institution, a symbolic system, and just because wolves get together and howl at the moon, doesn't mean that they are holding church. Equally, just because a dog growls or a child screams, doesn't mean that he or she has entered the world of property relations. The dog never will and the child is only beginning to learn what is and what is not permissible within the symbolic system of society, not that the child will necessarily ever receive a truly satisfactory explanation of the "no's" that are constantly aimed at him or her. Why indeed do we ultimately obey law? And why are those who systematic break it monsters? Or precisely, which of those who systematically break it are monsters?Cure 18:20, 6 May 2010 (UTC)