Once again I find myself dragged back to classics I ignored. Thanks.
Being charitable, it is not easy to wade through all the issues and all the situations for which one must account in a discussion of propery, without contradicting oneself. But it is absolutely amazing that one of the cornerstones of our law hangs together so poorly. Or maybe not. The Founding Fathers relied on both Blackstone and Locke, who were not in agreement on what one would think is a fundamental point, but they all managed to stumble to the same conclusion. "Without private property there is chaos."
Except that wasn't true and they must have known it wasn't. The enclosures (it would be interesting to know how much Blackstone knew about them or if he wrote anything about them) created chaos in their time, although I guess much of that was localized and spread out over many years, maybe not big news to England's educated elite. The colonists must have known about the enclosures, but they weren't relevant over here.
So, I guess we boil it down to the privileged getting to write the definitions that suit them, even when .they know better
I keep wanting to tone down some of my language or conclusions because who am I, really, to be questioning these people and their theories? But I keep reading them over and bumping up against, "Who are they, really?"
That Coke file is so big my computer choked trying to open it. But don't worry about that..
Who are they? They are old (well, Blackstone wasn't all that old) privileged white men, a class that all of us (including me, who is also an old privileged white guy) ought to be wary of. Descartes was emblematic, but they have all set themselves apart and above. There is no need for you to moderate your thoughts.
Why do they have such influence after all these years? They apparently appeal to something deep-seated, archetypal, that it takes a great of thought and self-examinaton to try to uproot from one's own psychie. Indigenous peoples knew this shadow (let's go Jungian here) well and had mores and mechanisms to address it that our forebears abandoned. One of the interesting things I have never read (though surely someone has thought of this), but think must be true is that the enclosures also served the function of depriving whatever folk wisdom remained in England of a place to persist. Folk wisdom is a commons, too, and they would soon make healing a private (and profitable) enterprise.
Enough, or I will ramble on wildly. Going to go turn on some Faun.
Thinking about the folk wisdom and enclosures -- that gave me chills. In "Enlivenment," Andreas Weber mentioned something similar. That enclosures not only removed people's access to physical survival; it also stole their ability to have a relationship with the land, and the land with its people. It's a pretty powerful thing to consider. What kind of emptiness, what kind of loneliness, does that engender?
I read this comment yesterday evening and have been listening to Faun since -- thank you for the reminder!
I think there are a lot of indigenous people here and around the globe who have answers to your question about loneliness. What I don't understand is how it plays out with us white settlers. Have you stumbled across Glenn Albrecht's concept of solastalgia (the homesickness you get when you haven't moved, but your world has been changed)? His book is Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World. Australian. That probably belongs on your list (I have it on the shelf next to Putnam's Bowling Alone). I have been thinking of Wendell Berry as a voice of white settlers trying to becoming indigenous and also as an observer of how difficut we make that for ourselves. Our society is shot through with solastalgia, and also with efforts to re-create what is missing, but we don't see to be able to tackle the big systemic reasons for our alienation.
"What I don't understand is how it plays out with us white settlers." <-- That's exactly the question I get stuck on, constantly.
Solastalgia I came across as related to climate change, but it makes sense that it's broader than that. "... also with efforts to re-create what is missing, but we don't see to be able to tackle the big systemic reasons for our alienation." That's kind of all of it, isn't it? I don't know if it's some kind of soul-sickness or not, but thinking about it that way is helpful for me, only because it helps me clarify an approach. Which could be wrong but what we have, as you know, is *definitely* wrong.
Albrecht invented the term solastalgia to describe the impact on people whose homes had been overwhelmed by strip mining coal, but it does apply very broadly, I think. I see it in the changing resort towns of the West and in areas where rapid suburbanization has overwhelmed peoples' ability to adapt. I think the soul-sickness is compounded by a feeling that we have no agency, no ability to choose in the face of the relentless work of the Invisible Hand.
yes! 😠 black stone was also referenced at some point and made me think of the coverture laws. Insanity that we’re citing laws that erased people’s personhood as precedent. Just like RBG (why rbg??) citing the doctrine of discovery and ruling against the tribes in a decision (can’t recall the specific name). ugh!
City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York, 2005 -- yeah, I'd love to think of RBG as the best of them but citing the Doctrine of Discovery is just about the worst!
(It's also just so fun seeing the almost blatant hankering for coverture laws to come back -- thanks, guys.)
I can't stop thinking about coverture laws and Blackstone's definitions of marriage, how a husband and wife become one person in the law and the person is the husband. The wife is basically erased. And that Alito referenced Blackstone repeatedly in overturning Roe. The roots of property and ownership lead back to disenfranchisement of non-white men, women, and children, as well as the land. Property as the root of oppression. This details in all of this reading are really fascinating to learn.
Once again I find myself dragged back to classics I ignored. Thanks.
Being charitable, it is not easy to wade through all the issues and all the situations for which one must account in a discussion of propery, without contradicting oneself. But it is absolutely amazing that one of the cornerstones of our law hangs together so poorly. Or maybe not. The Founding Fathers relied on both Blackstone and Locke, who were not in agreement on what one would think is a fundamental point, but they all managed to stumble to the same conclusion. "Without private property there is chaos."
Except that wasn't true and they must have known it wasn't. The enclosures (it would be interesting to know how much Blackstone knew about them or if he wrote anything about them) created chaos in their time, although I guess much of that was localized and spread out over many years, maybe not big news to England's educated elite. The colonists must have known about the enclosures, but they weren't relevant over here.
So, I guess we boil it down to the privileged getting to write the definitions that suit them, even when .they know better
Someone else emailed me and pointed out that I'd missed Edmund Coke, who wrote on property in the 1600s. I'll have to find a more readable copy for myself but: https://irlaw.umkc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=coke_institutes_lawes
I keep wanting to tone down some of my language or conclusions because who am I, really, to be questioning these people and their theories? But I keep reading them over and bumping up against, "Who are they, really?"
That Coke file is so big my computer choked trying to open it. But don't worry about that..
Who are they? They are old (well, Blackstone wasn't all that old) privileged white men, a class that all of us (including me, who is also an old privileged white guy) ought to be wary of. Descartes was emblematic, but they have all set themselves apart and above. There is no need for you to moderate your thoughts.
Why do they have such influence after all these years? They apparently appeal to something deep-seated, archetypal, that it takes a great of thought and self-examinaton to try to uproot from one's own psychie. Indigenous peoples knew this shadow (let's go Jungian here) well and had mores and mechanisms to address it that our forebears abandoned. One of the interesting things I have never read (though surely someone has thought of this), but think must be true is that the enclosures also served the function of depriving whatever folk wisdom remained in England of a place to persist. Folk wisdom is a commons, too, and they would soon make healing a private (and profitable) enterprise.
Enough, or I will ramble on wildly. Going to go turn on some Faun.
Thinking about the folk wisdom and enclosures -- that gave me chills. In "Enlivenment," Andreas Weber mentioned something similar. That enclosures not only removed people's access to physical survival; it also stole their ability to have a relationship with the land, and the land with its people. It's a pretty powerful thing to consider. What kind of emptiness, what kind of loneliness, does that engender?
I read this comment yesterday evening and have been listening to Faun since -- thank you for the reminder!
I think there are a lot of indigenous people here and around the globe who have answers to your question about loneliness. What I don't understand is how it plays out with us white settlers. Have you stumbled across Glenn Albrecht's concept of solastalgia (the homesickness you get when you haven't moved, but your world has been changed)? His book is Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World. Australian. That probably belongs on your list (I have it on the shelf next to Putnam's Bowling Alone). I have been thinking of Wendell Berry as a voice of white settlers trying to becoming indigenous and also as an observer of how difficut we make that for ourselves. Our society is shot through with solastalgia, and also with efforts to re-create what is missing, but we don't see to be able to tackle the big systemic reasons for our alienation.
"What I don't understand is how it plays out with us white settlers." <-- That's exactly the question I get stuck on, constantly.
Solastalgia I came across as related to climate change, but it makes sense that it's broader than that. "... also with efforts to re-create what is missing, but we don't see to be able to tackle the big systemic reasons for our alienation." That's kind of all of it, isn't it? I don't know if it's some kind of soul-sickness or not, but thinking about it that way is helpful for me, only because it helps me clarify an approach. Which could be wrong but what we have, as you know, is *definitely* wrong.
Albrecht invented the term solastalgia to describe the impact on people whose homes had been overwhelmed by strip mining coal, but it does apply very broadly, I think. I see it in the changing resort towns of the West and in areas where rapid suburbanization has overwhelmed peoples' ability to adapt. I think the soul-sickness is compounded by a feeling that we have no agency, no ability to choose in the face of the relentless work of the Invisible Hand.
yes! 😠 black stone was also referenced at some point and made me think of the coverture laws. Insanity that we’re citing laws that erased people’s personhood as precedent. Just like RBG (why rbg??) citing the doctrine of discovery and ruling against the tribes in a decision (can’t recall the specific name). ugh!
City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York, 2005 -- yeah, I'd love to think of RBG as the best of them but citing the Doctrine of Discovery is just about the worst!
(It's also just so fun seeing the almost blatant hankering for coverture laws to come back -- thanks, guys.)
no kidding. oof
I can't stop thinking about coverture laws and Blackstone's definitions of marriage, how a husband and wife become one person in the law and the person is the husband. The wife is basically erased. And that Alito referenced Blackstone repeatedly in overturning Roe. The roots of property and ownership lead back to disenfranchisement of non-white men, women, and children, as well as the land. Property as the root of oppression. This details in all of this reading are really fascinating to learn.
Matthew Hale? That's the horror show of "it's not rape if it's marriage" jurist I looked up after that decision came out: https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a39918468/alito-draft-opinion-roe-citations/