We had an amazing local speaker to one of our North Devon Green Party autumn lectures a few years ago, Myc Riggulsford, on the Charter of the Forest, and potential modern adaptation of it. It was the first I had heard about the document, and I've been fascinated ever since. Myc suggested a Universal Basic Income would have a similar ideological basis, as well as ideas like reversing standing charges on energy bills ( so your first 100 units are free, then a steadily increasing rate per unit).
There are useful lessons we can take from the ideas of inherent and fair rights to access the means to survival we can assume exists long before this document.
I wasn't aware of Robinson's paper, and I like the thought that it was a precursor to environmental legislation, although most environments would now oppose many of the ancient rights, such as cutting turf!
An editor of mine when I was working on a piece about public lands found that paper for me and it was so eye-opening!
I'll have to look up Riggulsford, thank you for that tip. It does seem like a modern adaptation of it could be a way to invigorate the commons and restructure many of our property regimes and the way we use land, water, etc. Interestingly, Thomas Paine, the classic American political writer, wrote in some of his works passages that read very much like a proposal for UBI, based essentially on the knowledge that private ownership of land is unjust and you have to find a way to make up for it.
Thanks for your explanations, saved everyone a lot of work. This is history to which I had paid no attention and it is good to dip a toe. The Forest Charter is clearly about the use of natural resources, so I see why some view it as an early environmental statute. But I find my attention directed to the power relations it reflects. My question is not so much about the content as about the perversity (as I see it) of having a monarch whose power over others was so extraordinary that it had to be reigned in for even the most privileged people of the time to make reasonable use of resources that none of them created. The Forest Charter dimly reflects notions of reciprocity that had apparently been wiped 200 years before it was drafted. How/Why did we lose the economy of reciprocity in the first place?
Well, you still get to look up things like "scotal" and "chiminage" if you want! Though I have those definitions, too :)
I think you're exactly right, it's about the power relations. I think that's why the Robinson paper sticks with me. What he writes about along with the environmental impact is the role that the Charter played in actually defining and defending people's rights in the face of power and ownership. I can't remember which section it's in, but he talks about how the rights of the Magna Carta found their testing ground in the Forest Eyres (Courts) themselves. That's where your rights were defended in practice.
What I think is interesting about your question of the monarch's extraordinary powers is that the barons and so on even had a framework for insisting on their rights in the face of that. I'd guess it was in more recent memory, even 150-year-old recent memory?
Your last question is the one that keeps me digging into this subject. I keep coming back to a sense of separation from nature as the origins. But where and how did that start and how do we help enough people to find their way back to it? I think a lot of people are doing the work of finding the way back, but what is it about humans that fosters a tendency to reject the kind of reciprocity and interconnection that makes life possible? How do we mitigate that or temper it, make sure it loses dominance and people remain aware of it? I don't know but I can't help trying to find ways to answer.
I am guessing that the barons and the church had the ability to withhold taxes, levies of troops, blessings of royal enterprises, etc. And maybe if the barons were brought together by their antipathy toward a king instead of divided in pursuit of their own interests, they could pose a military threat. The freemen were few in number and trying to make a living under harsh circumstances, or else able only to be outlaws on the fringe of society, no serious threat.
I think the separation from nature is a key, too. J Scott's Against the Grain tells how it took a long time to impose state control on the folk of the Middle East, but fails (in my mind, at least) to answer two questions. First, was a certain level of environmental degradation necessary before the nascent states could succeed? That is, could people no longer retreat into the marshlands or upcountry and make a traditional living? And maybe it was also about a growing population.
But second, we are back to the question of the urge/need to dominate instead of relate. I guess you could start with George Lakoff's theory about parenting, but if that's partly accurate it still doesn't explain why those who were driven to dominate, were not driven out.
But then I think about our current events. The Democrats - who presumably have less of a drive to dominate (or at least seek better relationships) - are losing to the Republicans who are driven to win, no matter at what cost, even to their own integrity. And the Democrats (liberals) seem to have no clue about how to either change or oppose them.
I have work to do, so that's all for now. Will dig into the next reading at the end of the week.
"if the barons were brought together by their antipathy toward a king instead of divided in pursuit of their own interests, they could pose a military threat." -> that reminds me that the Magna Carta was signed by King John in 1215 under pressure from the barons, who were in open rebellion and had started a civil war over high taxation and a bunch of new fines levied to fund the Crusades and war in France. So there's a lot of power balancing/jostling here.
I really liked Against the Grain, and it helped frame a lot of things for me, but I was left with the same questions you state here. Rianne Eisler's most recent book "Nurturing Our Humanity" goes into the relationship between authoritarian parenting and an authoritarian society in ways that I found really helpful -- you might appreciate it -- but, like you say, it doesn't explain the urge to dominate in the first place.
Maybe in a way it's within all of us and it's more about trying to keep that instinct from running roughshod over our more pro-social instincts. (As far as the Democratic Party goes, I could probably be persuaded that it's hampered by its leadership's attachment to power and domination. I don't know how much of a different it could make to have more pro-social people open to change in charge of the party but it feels like a shift in that direction would be helpful!)
At some level, if you start "winning"--resources, status, power--by dominating, then of course it starts to make sense that it's attractive to some. It just seems to me that that's not what most people actually want. It's what a *lot* of people want, but not most people. I could be wrong about that. But if not, I wonder if it's a bigger problem that so many people believe that *other* people are driven by domination and individual winning. If we believe that other people are in competition with us, then we can be pushed to act even against our strongest instincts for community-minded relatedness and mutual care.
We had an amazing local speaker to one of our North Devon Green Party autumn lectures a few years ago, Myc Riggulsford, on the Charter of the Forest, and potential modern adaptation of it. It was the first I had heard about the document, and I've been fascinated ever since. Myc suggested a Universal Basic Income would have a similar ideological basis, as well as ideas like reversing standing charges on energy bills ( so your first 100 units are free, then a steadily increasing rate per unit).
There are useful lessons we can take from the ideas of inherent and fair rights to access the means to survival we can assume exists long before this document.
I wasn't aware of Robinson's paper, and I like the thought that it was a precursor to environmental legislation, although most environments would now oppose many of the ancient rights, such as cutting turf!
An editor of mine when I was working on a piece about public lands found that paper for me and it was so eye-opening!
I'll have to look up Riggulsford, thank you for that tip. It does seem like a modern adaptation of it could be a way to invigorate the commons and restructure many of our property regimes and the way we use land, water, etc. Interestingly, Thomas Paine, the classic American political writer, wrote in some of his works passages that read very much like a proposal for UBI, based essentially on the knowledge that private ownership of land is unjust and you have to find a way to make up for it.
Thanks for the observations!
Thanks for your explanations, saved everyone a lot of work. This is history to which I had paid no attention and it is good to dip a toe. The Forest Charter is clearly about the use of natural resources, so I see why some view it as an early environmental statute. But I find my attention directed to the power relations it reflects. My question is not so much about the content as about the perversity (as I see it) of having a monarch whose power over others was so extraordinary that it had to be reigned in for even the most privileged people of the time to make reasonable use of resources that none of them created. The Forest Charter dimly reflects notions of reciprocity that had apparently been wiped 200 years before it was drafted. How/Why did we lose the economy of reciprocity in the first place?
Well, you still get to look up things like "scotal" and "chiminage" if you want! Though I have those definitions, too :)
I think you're exactly right, it's about the power relations. I think that's why the Robinson paper sticks with me. What he writes about along with the environmental impact is the role that the Charter played in actually defining and defending people's rights in the face of power and ownership. I can't remember which section it's in, but he talks about how the rights of the Magna Carta found their testing ground in the Forest Eyres (Courts) themselves. That's where your rights were defended in practice.
What I think is interesting about your question of the monarch's extraordinary powers is that the barons and so on even had a framework for insisting on their rights in the face of that. I'd guess it was in more recent memory, even 150-year-old recent memory?
Your last question is the one that keeps me digging into this subject. I keep coming back to a sense of separation from nature as the origins. But where and how did that start and how do we help enough people to find their way back to it? I think a lot of people are doing the work of finding the way back, but what is it about humans that fosters a tendency to reject the kind of reciprocity and interconnection that makes life possible? How do we mitigate that or temper it, make sure it loses dominance and people remain aware of it? I don't know but I can't help trying to find ways to answer.
I am guessing that the barons and the church had the ability to withhold taxes, levies of troops, blessings of royal enterprises, etc. And maybe if the barons were brought together by their antipathy toward a king instead of divided in pursuit of their own interests, they could pose a military threat. The freemen were few in number and trying to make a living under harsh circumstances, or else able only to be outlaws on the fringe of society, no serious threat.
I think the separation from nature is a key, too. J Scott's Against the Grain tells how it took a long time to impose state control on the folk of the Middle East, but fails (in my mind, at least) to answer two questions. First, was a certain level of environmental degradation necessary before the nascent states could succeed? That is, could people no longer retreat into the marshlands or upcountry and make a traditional living? And maybe it was also about a growing population.
But second, we are back to the question of the urge/need to dominate instead of relate. I guess you could start with George Lakoff's theory about parenting, but if that's partly accurate it still doesn't explain why those who were driven to dominate, were not driven out.
But then I think about our current events. The Democrats - who presumably have less of a drive to dominate (or at least seek better relationships) - are losing to the Republicans who are driven to win, no matter at what cost, even to their own integrity. And the Democrats (liberals) seem to have no clue about how to either change or oppose them.
I have work to do, so that's all for now. Will dig into the next reading at the end of the week.
"if the barons were brought together by their antipathy toward a king instead of divided in pursuit of their own interests, they could pose a military threat." -> that reminds me that the Magna Carta was signed by King John in 1215 under pressure from the barons, who were in open rebellion and had started a civil war over high taxation and a bunch of new fines levied to fund the Crusades and war in France. So there's a lot of power balancing/jostling here.
I really liked Against the Grain, and it helped frame a lot of things for me, but I was left with the same questions you state here. Rianne Eisler's most recent book "Nurturing Our Humanity" goes into the relationship between authoritarian parenting and an authoritarian society in ways that I found really helpful -- you might appreciate it -- but, like you say, it doesn't explain the urge to dominate in the first place.
Maybe in a way it's within all of us and it's more about trying to keep that instinct from running roughshod over our more pro-social instincts. (As far as the Democratic Party goes, I could probably be persuaded that it's hampered by its leadership's attachment to power and domination. I don't know how much of a different it could make to have more pro-social people open to change in charge of the party but it feels like a shift in that direction would be helpful!)
At some level, if you start "winning"--resources, status, power--by dominating, then of course it starts to make sense that it's attractive to some. It just seems to me that that's not what most people actually want. It's what a *lot* of people want, but not most people. I could be wrong about that. But if not, I wonder if it's a bigger problem that so many people believe that *other* people are driven by domination and individual winning. If we believe that other people are in competition with us, then we can be pushed to act even against our strongest instincts for community-minded relatedness and mutual care.