Oct 22, 2022·edited Oct 22, 2022Liked by Antonia Malchik
So, one initial response to your first prompt from the Linklater chapter:
[“The way you own the earth requires the agreement of your neighbors, the society you live in, and the government of your country. In a very fundamental way, it is the glue that holds a community together. **And every society agrees that it cannot in fact be owned.”**]
I found this particular passage a bit confusing and even counterintuitive when I first read, so I'm glad you included it. The chapter seems to be foreshadowing how land's unique status as a set of collective obligations, "the glue that holds a community together, will be eroded or perverted by the new ideology of private ownership. But then he throws this rhetorical curveball that in fact, owning the *earth* is not a coherent or recognized concept; only owning whatever relates to use of that earth. So he's making two simultaneous distinctions: an exclusive (individual) vs. shared (communal) form of ownership, and owning rights (legitimate) vs. owning land (not legitimate).
I didn't quite understand why he needed to suddenly emphasize this subtle difference, which qualifies or even walks back what was implied earlier, when it doesn't come up in the rest of the chapter anyway. Is his point simply that people began to treat individual property rights *as if* that equaled individual "earth" ownership, so the legal distinction would eventually collapse? Or, that it wasn't necessary to own the actual ground for the ideology to have its pernicious effects? Maybe I'm overanalyzing this, but it just felt discontinuous with the rest.
I will check it out! So much of the contention about private gain and property is bumping up against problems that are planetary and not just about putting up a neighborhood fence. I did a very early post that wrestled with the litmus test of "the Public Good" especially as it relates to Big Tech. I think it is stylish to put them all together in a box when in fact it is quite easy to assess whether something is a public good like "providing universal access to books to promote knowledge and discovery". Because I dislike when people on Substack threads self-promote, send me a message and I can pass you the link about public goods if you are interested. It was a bit of a tongue-in-cheek at times play on the genuine dangers of social media. If you like it you can pass it on :)
Antonia -- I finally found a viable source for the book. By great irony it is part of the Google public project to provide broad access to the books of history! The preview includes the pages of interest at https://www.google.com/books/edition/Owning_the_Earth/AdduAAAAQBAJ This was an interesting read and provides interesting context to the concept of owning the land. In some peripheral way, it is similar to the erosion of the concept of corporation. In the beginning, the fundamental of a corporation was it MUST PROVIDE A PUBLIC GOOD. Broadly publishing books for assessment and no fee strikes me as such an example. I hope that the future reading is similarly available. We now have many corporations who privatize their worlds and the only public good is their shareholders. This is not unlike the trends in land ownership and the privatization of the public space.
After five years on the road, the concept of "home" is no longer what it was. What is it now? It might be simplistic to say that it's wherever my husband and I happen to be, but it's the closest to the truth. I'm sitting at on outdoor cafe here in Levanto, Italy, and while I'm a stranger in a stranger-ish land, I somehow still feel very much at home.
Oct 17, 2022·edited Oct 17, 2022Liked by Antonia Malchik
Thank you again for doing this with the regular subscribers. I still have to read the rest of the chapter, but a couple quick pieces of feedback:
- Personally, I'm fine with you putting as many passages and prompts and screenshots in the posts here; I like the idea that we're more or less tracking what you're posting over at Threadable (though of course if that creates more work and it's not just simple cutting and pasting, please don't feel obliged!). I can always ignore what I don't have time for and some weeks I may not even chime in.
-What would be helpful, though, is to separate out more cleanly your own (non-question) running commentary and observations, and Threadable screenshots, from the specific prompts and questions we would be responding to. Right now it all seems mixed together randomly - bullet-point commentary interpersed with prompts that don't follow obviously from the previous bullet - so it's potentially a little disorienting. I think it might be easier if you just did all your own commentary first, and then had the shorter prompts+questions at the end for us to sift through. Just my own feeling but maybe others differ.
-As for timeline, I assume a week is the longest we should take to respond since you will be moving onto a new reading anyway, and we certainly don't want to create additional work for you keeping up with back posts on older readings. Unless you really don't care. I have no sense of what volume of people is following either here or on Threadable.
> something we’re doing collectively, rather than something I’m leading.
I think if it as something you're leading and I'm so happy to follow
> Do you want more time to read and think?
The reading was great, not sure the best way to get me to fit "thinking about the reading" into my schedule.
> More quotes? Fewer quotes? Just one prompt to get started?
Fewer. And one prompt would make me more likely to respond to that prompt.
I liked all your prompts and quotes here, and I would love to discuss all of it with voices, but discussing it in a comment section feels sprawling and messy to me personally.
So, one initial response to your first prompt from the Linklater chapter:
[“The way you own the earth requires the agreement of your neighbors, the society you live in, and the government of your country. In a very fundamental way, it is the glue that holds a community together. **And every society agrees that it cannot in fact be owned.”**]
I found this particular passage a bit confusing and even counterintuitive when I first read, so I'm glad you included it. The chapter seems to be foreshadowing how land's unique status as a set of collective obligations, "the glue that holds a community together, will be eroded or perverted by the new ideology of private ownership. But then he throws this rhetorical curveball that in fact, owning the *earth* is not a coherent or recognized concept; only owning whatever relates to use of that earth. So he's making two simultaneous distinctions: an exclusive (individual) vs. shared (communal) form of ownership, and owning rights (legitimate) vs. owning land (not legitimate).
I didn't quite understand why he needed to suddenly emphasize this subtle difference, which qualifies or even walks back what was implied earlier, when it doesn't come up in the rest of the chapter anyway. Is his point simply that people began to treat individual property rights *as if* that equaled individual "earth" ownership, so the legal distinction would eventually collapse? Or, that it wasn't necessary to own the actual ground for the ideology to have its pernicious effects? Maybe I'm overanalyzing this, but it just felt discontinuous with the rest.
I will check it out! So much of the contention about private gain and property is bumping up against problems that are planetary and not just about putting up a neighborhood fence. I did a very early post that wrestled with the litmus test of "the Public Good" especially as it relates to Big Tech. I think it is stylish to put them all together in a box when in fact it is quite easy to assess whether something is a public good like "providing universal access to books to promote knowledge and discovery". Because I dislike when people on Substack threads self-promote, send me a message and I can pass you the link about public goods if you are interested. It was a bit of a tongue-in-cheek at times play on the genuine dangers of social media. If you like it you can pass it on :)
Antonia -- I finally found a viable source for the book. By great irony it is part of the Google public project to provide broad access to the books of history! The preview includes the pages of interest at https://www.google.com/books/edition/Owning_the_Earth/AdduAAAAQBAJ This was an interesting read and provides interesting context to the concept of owning the land. In some peripheral way, it is similar to the erosion of the concept of corporation. In the beginning, the fundamental of a corporation was it MUST PROVIDE A PUBLIC GOOD. Broadly publishing books for assessment and no fee strikes me as such an example. I hope that the future reading is similarly available. We now have many corporations who privatize their worlds and the only public good is their shareholders. This is not unlike the trends in land ownership and the privatization of the public space.
After five years on the road, the concept of "home" is no longer what it was. What is it now? It might be simplistic to say that it's wherever my husband and I happen to be, but it's the closest to the truth. I'm sitting at on outdoor cafe here in Levanto, Italy, and while I'm a stranger in a stranger-ish land, I somehow still feel very much at home.
I’m a tad overwhelmed, but I’m going to begin, I think?
Thank you again for doing this with the regular subscribers. I still have to read the rest of the chapter, but a couple quick pieces of feedback:
- Personally, I'm fine with you putting as many passages and prompts and screenshots in the posts here; I like the idea that we're more or less tracking what you're posting over at Threadable (though of course if that creates more work and it's not just simple cutting and pasting, please don't feel obliged!). I can always ignore what I don't have time for and some weeks I may not even chime in.
-What would be helpful, though, is to separate out more cleanly your own (non-question) running commentary and observations, and Threadable screenshots, from the specific prompts and questions we would be responding to. Right now it all seems mixed together randomly - bullet-point commentary interpersed with prompts that don't follow obviously from the previous bullet - so it's potentially a little disorienting. I think it might be easier if you just did all your own commentary first, and then had the shorter prompts+questions at the end for us to sift through. Just my own feeling but maybe others differ.
-As for timeline, I assume a week is the longest we should take to respond since you will be moving onto a new reading anyway, and we certainly don't want to create additional work for you keeping up with back posts on older readings. Unless you really don't care. I have no sense of what volume of people is following either here or on Threadable.
Hope this helps.
> something we’re doing collectively, rather than something I’m leading.
I think if it as something you're leading and I'm so happy to follow
> Do you want more time to read and think?
The reading was great, not sure the best way to get me to fit "thinking about the reading" into my schedule.
> More quotes? Fewer quotes? Just one prompt to get started?
Fewer. And one prompt would make me more likely to respond to that prompt.
I liked all your prompts and quotes here, and I would love to discuss all of it with voices, but discussing it in a comment section feels sprawling and messy to me personally.