Are you really able to resist Taylor Swift? I'm impressed.
The topic of walking plugged-in brings to mind a neat book (Personal Stereo) by a college friend who also went to my high school, Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow. She wrote about the history of the Sony Walkman, and all the complex issues and debates stirred up by this seemingly trivial technological innovation that we now regard as a nostalgia piece. https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/personal-stereo-9781501322839/
It's interesting that the alarmist concerns about its pernicious effects have so little to do with the kind of tradeoffs you're describing here! I feel like you'd appreciate that book though (and Becca's thoughtful, very sociological style).
But also, your quote: "by the late twentieth century, mainstream economics had reduced the focus to just two: labour and capital—and if ever land did get a mention, it was just another form of capital, interchangeable with all the rest."
This reminded me of an book-in-progress I've been meaning to tell you about, which would be tying together some of these questions around land, capital and political economy: Free Gifts by Alyssa Battistoni, a political theorist. Her premise is almost the opposite: that there's always been this weird disconnect in the capitalist system between how we value most commodities, and how we exploit nature as a "free gift." But that there also a paradox in the very idea of "free gift" that turns some of the capitalist logic on its head. It also brings in critical work she's done on the free care work economy.
Her angle is much more academic and Marxist - and I don't think she focuses much on land itself - but I see so many points of connection between what you write about here and how she's described that project.
I fear there's an inevitable tension between recognizing how much has been lost and how that leads us to "question the basic underlying structures of almost every part of the culture I live under," and the challenge (implausibility?) of being able to question our most basic underlying structures all at the same time, convincingly enough that a critical mass of the population will embrace an utterly new paradigm upending everything they've known all their lives, at great (perceived) personal risk, sometimes against their own prevailing values and ideologies. Maybe we have to start with questioning just one basic underlying structure. Could land ownership be that Trojan horse?
Well, you’re assuming I do any resisting of Taylor Swift! I have had many a snowy walk to the lake listening to Swift. Ask my kids how many times they’ve been subjected to Midnights. I am listening to it right now. 😊 I am extremely unimaginative in music and have to rely on friends and relatives with better taste to introduce me to wider varieties. Spotify’s year-end synopsis thing gave me an even split of Taylor Swift and Nine Inch Nails.
Ooh, an Object Lessons book. Those are addictive and if it comes recommended …
I vaguely remember when personal Walkmans first came out and how much comment there could be around how they isolated people, etc., etc. I also remember when my grandmother gave me one for Christmas one year, with a set of headphones and a cassette tape of Mozart. Listening to music like that, in stereo, was a revelation. I grew up with only a record player and not a good one. It was something else.
Battistoni’s work sounds right up my alley! I’ll dig in after the holidays. That perspective is what Henry George’s point was about land: that all wealth is in fact derived from land. Her writing is probably more in tune with ecological understanding and factors like, say, soil fertility. Talk about a free gift. (The context of the Raworth quote, when looking at Smith and Ricardo, might be interesting to combine with Battistoni — I think that at the time they were theorizing and writing, they couldn’t even conceive of things like soil exhaustion or deforestation on the scale we see so much of today. There was just a lot they didn’t ocnsider.)
Yes, I think you’re right about questioning the underlying structures. I think this is why I’m so fixated on ownership as a subject, because the very idea of it is central to every way that society is structured. Land ownership is one that people can get their heads around more than some others because it has defined borders — unlike water — and a lot of rich discussion in property law. Plus people feel safe abstracting it. Dig into it enough and who knows where it could lead!
Some friends who I thought insane for listening to podcasts at 2x speed cajoled me into giving it a try. At first it was stressful, but over time, but pushing a little faster for a few minutes and then dialing back, my mind adjusted to the speed. I listen at 2x to 2.3x most of the time, now. Not if there is good sound design, or if I'm not comprehending due to accents or poor audio, or if I can't hear well due to ambient noise. It's great for long interviews that I never felt like I could get through, but I really only wanted the one or two tidbits out if the whole thing.
Pocketcast has great features to modify listening.
I’ve accidentally tapped on the speed before, and have heard people say they listen at 2x habitually now. Two things hold me back: Mainly that I frequently have to backtrack because my mind wandered, especially if I’m listening while cooking or something. I can see that happening more, and me missing more, at higher speed. The second is I don’t want to speed up anything in my life! If I don’t have time, my instinct these days is to slow down even more.
However, for some of those longer interviews I might find myself there. But how would I then get to appreciate Hal Herring’s accent?!
Haha, the BHA Podcast and Blast is a great example. I usually have a handful of bullet points I expect from the interview, and the rest is just sitting in while friends chat.
I'll say this: it took me a long time to get here. 1.5x was my max speed for a years. As long as I can understand the words, the speed of speech is much much slower than the speed of thought. In the right conditions, it works out to speed it up, pause and write notes, or skip back if I missed something. It has its utility, like skimming does versus attentive reading. I don't want to skim everything, just like I don't want to read everything attentively. Each has a place to find signal in the noise. :)
I went through about 5 hours of that one recently while driving. Got really frustrated with the episode that was supposedly about public water access worldwide. It was all about fishing and technique and poles! It was kind of hilarious in the end, or my eye-rolling was. That’s one I could have sped through. I like fishing, and eating fish, but am not *into* it in that way. They just kept. Talking. Fishing.
Yay to walking without listening to something besides what’s around you! Walking as an act of presence in the world. Yes yes. Learning and unlearning and forgetting and remembering. Yes.
That quote, I hates it. Exactly my feeling--is there a word that could be more bereft of beauty, nuance, or substance?? Ugh. Fascinating about how the legacies of witchcraft keep popping up in our world, how many things are still tied to these legacies of misogyny, racism, property. That private property is a thing we've come to expect feels like the root of everything that allows exploitation--whether its the world, animals, women, people--if one thing can be seen as belonging to another individual, the whole entire structure of care and well-being for all fails. Cannot believe we are still citing papal bulls and explicit, colonizing imperial documents as part of a legal framework that is supposed to have precedent and therefore is in any way sound. Truly maddening.
That podcast was really eye-opening on how the papal bulls still dictate Native American law in the U.S. It’s crazymaking to see it in action.
I’ve got a chapter in my book planned on women as property but had never put together the witchcraft and property angle. I think you’d like that podcast episode. She said something at the beginning about how the church knew that you needed to control two things to have power over people: control over reproduction (women), and control over daily reproduction (food, water, other daily needs). She didn’t say “land” but once you control land and access to it, you control food 😕
Working my way through “mapping the doctrine of discovery“ slowly. Finally got to episode four. A certain quote about indigenous women’s real connection to spirituality really hit me, so I paused my workout to write it down. Searched the “quotes“ folder in my Notes app for “doctrine of discovery“ and found a screenshot from this post! You shared the exact same quote I was going to write down! I was also considering writing down the following quote, about the wealth of witches bankrolling the invasion of the Americas! So, uh, thanks for saving me the effort of transcribing 🙃
Are you really able to resist Taylor Swift? I'm impressed.
The topic of walking plugged-in brings to mind a neat book (Personal Stereo) by a college friend who also went to my high school, Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow. She wrote about the history of the Sony Walkman, and all the complex issues and debates stirred up by this seemingly trivial technological innovation that we now regard as a nostalgia piece. https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/personal-stereo-9781501322839/
It's interesting that the alarmist concerns about its pernicious effects have so little to do with the kind of tradeoffs you're describing here! I feel like you'd appreciate that book though (and Becca's thoughtful, very sociological style).
But also, your quote: "by the late twentieth century, mainstream economics had reduced the focus to just two: labour and capital—and if ever land did get a mention, it was just another form of capital, interchangeable with all the rest."
This reminded me of an book-in-progress I've been meaning to tell you about, which would be tying together some of these questions around land, capital and political economy: Free Gifts by Alyssa Battistoni, a political theorist. Her premise is almost the opposite: that there's always been this weird disconnect in the capitalist system between how we value most commodities, and how we exploit nature as a "free gift." But that there also a paradox in the very idea of "free gift" that turns some of the capitalist logic on its head. It also brings in critical work she's done on the free care work economy.
https://www.alyssabattistoni.com/research
https://terrain.substack.com/p/alyssa-battistoni-on-care-work-organizing
Her angle is much more academic and Marxist - and I don't think she focuses much on land itself - but I see so many points of connection between what you write about here and how she's described that project.
I fear there's an inevitable tension between recognizing how much has been lost and how that leads us to "question the basic underlying structures of almost every part of the culture I live under," and the challenge (implausibility?) of being able to question our most basic underlying structures all at the same time, convincingly enough that a critical mass of the population will embrace an utterly new paradigm upending everything they've known all their lives, at great (perceived) personal risk, sometimes against their own prevailing values and ideologies. Maybe we have to start with questioning just one basic underlying structure. Could land ownership be that Trojan horse?
Well, you’re assuming I do any resisting of Taylor Swift! I have had many a snowy walk to the lake listening to Swift. Ask my kids how many times they’ve been subjected to Midnights. I am listening to it right now. 😊 I am extremely unimaginative in music and have to rely on friends and relatives with better taste to introduce me to wider varieties. Spotify’s year-end synopsis thing gave me an even split of Taylor Swift and Nine Inch Nails.
Ooh, an Object Lessons book. Those are addictive and if it comes recommended …
I vaguely remember when personal Walkmans first came out and how much comment there could be around how they isolated people, etc., etc. I also remember when my grandmother gave me one for Christmas one year, with a set of headphones and a cassette tape of Mozart. Listening to music like that, in stereo, was a revelation. I grew up with only a record player and not a good one. It was something else.
Battistoni’s work sounds right up my alley! I’ll dig in after the holidays. That perspective is what Henry George’s point was about land: that all wealth is in fact derived from land. Her writing is probably more in tune with ecological understanding and factors like, say, soil fertility. Talk about a free gift. (The context of the Raworth quote, when looking at Smith and Ricardo, might be interesting to combine with Battistoni — I think that at the time they were theorizing and writing, they couldn’t even conceive of things like soil exhaustion or deforestation on the scale we see so much of today. There was just a lot they didn’t ocnsider.)
Yes, I think you’re right about questioning the underlying structures. I think this is why I’m so fixated on ownership as a subject, because the very idea of it is central to every way that society is structured. Land ownership is one that people can get their heads around more than some others because it has defined borders — unlike water — and a lot of rich discussion in property law. Plus people feel safe abstracting it. Dig into it enough and who knows where it could lead!
Some friends who I thought insane for listening to podcasts at 2x speed cajoled me into giving it a try. At first it was stressful, but over time, but pushing a little faster for a few minutes and then dialing back, my mind adjusted to the speed. I listen at 2x to 2.3x most of the time, now. Not if there is good sound design, or if I'm not comprehending due to accents or poor audio, or if I can't hear well due to ambient noise. It's great for long interviews that I never felt like I could get through, but I really only wanted the one or two tidbits out if the whole thing.
Pocketcast has great features to modify listening.
I’ve accidentally tapped on the speed before, and have heard people say they listen at 2x habitually now. Two things hold me back: Mainly that I frequently have to backtrack because my mind wandered, especially if I’m listening while cooking or something. I can see that happening more, and me missing more, at higher speed. The second is I don’t want to speed up anything in my life! If I don’t have time, my instinct these days is to slow down even more.
However, for some of those longer interviews I might find myself there. But how would I then get to appreciate Hal Herring’s accent?!
Haha, the BHA Podcast and Blast is a great example. I usually have a handful of bullet points I expect from the interview, and the rest is just sitting in while friends chat.
I'll say this: it took me a long time to get here. 1.5x was my max speed for a years. As long as I can understand the words, the speed of speech is much much slower than the speed of thought. In the right conditions, it works out to speed it up, pause and write notes, or skip back if I missed something. It has its utility, like skimming does versus attentive reading. I don't want to skim everything, just like I don't want to read everything attentively. Each has a place to find signal in the noise. :)
I went through about 5 hours of that one recently while driving. Got really frustrated with the episode that was supposedly about public water access worldwide. It was all about fishing and technique and poles! It was kind of hilarious in the end, or my eye-rolling was. That’s one I could have sped through. I like fishing, and eating fish, but am not *into* it in that way. They just kept. Talking. Fishing.
Yay to walking without listening to something besides what’s around you! Walking as an act of presence in the world. Yes yes. Learning and unlearning and forgetting and remembering. Yes.
And being reminded to be attentive by, ahem, someone else’s amazing bird photography!
That quote, I hates it. Exactly my feeling--is there a word that could be more bereft of beauty, nuance, or substance?? Ugh. Fascinating about how the legacies of witchcraft keep popping up in our world, how many things are still tied to these legacies of misogyny, racism, property. That private property is a thing we've come to expect feels like the root of everything that allows exploitation--whether its the world, animals, women, people--if one thing can be seen as belonging to another individual, the whole entire structure of care and well-being for all fails. Cannot believe we are still citing papal bulls and explicit, colonizing imperial documents as part of a legal framework that is supposed to have precedent and therefore is in any way sound. Truly maddening.
That podcast was really eye-opening on how the papal bulls still dictate Native American law in the U.S. It’s crazymaking to see it in action.
I’ve got a chapter in my book planned on women as property but had never put together the witchcraft and property angle. I think you’d like that podcast episode. She said something at the beginning about how the church knew that you needed to control two things to have power over people: control over reproduction (women), and control over daily reproduction (food, water, other daily needs). She didn’t say “land” but once you control land and access to it, you control food 😕
Working my way through “mapping the doctrine of discovery“ slowly. Finally got to episode four. A certain quote about indigenous women’s real connection to spirituality really hit me, so I paused my workout to write it down. Searched the “quotes“ folder in my Notes app for “doctrine of discovery“ and found a screenshot from this post! You shared the exact same quote I was going to write down! I was also considering writing down the following quote, about the wealth of witches bankrolling the invasion of the Americas! So, uh, thanks for saving me the effort of transcribing 🙃
That is so funny! I mean, you're welcome, but really it just shows what kinds of wavelengths we're on. :) STILL funny, though!
That’s a good thing to be reminded of! What was that line I heard once -- remember you’re a human being, not a human doing?