Wonderful post, Antonia! My grandmother used to say that we should do everything we can for ourselves, but we also had responsibilities to contribute to the health of our community. We seem to have lost the part about working together for the common good.
Thank you so much for this, Mark. Reading it countered a depressing beginning to my day (I had to pop into LinkedIn to respond to a colleague, and accidentally saw a really awful "the left are all monsters who are ruining the country and we need to bring back the death penalty" conversation and it achieved that wonderful thing that social media excels at, which is destroying faith in our fellow humans) -- sometimes our grandmothers have the best wisdom!
As a landowner and mask-wearing communist I say, "Well put." With land ownership and the right to move about in public spaces come much responsibility.
As the daughter of a farmer, descended from generations of farmers, I periodically go down a spiral about land ownership and water rights and mineral rights and all the ways in which we've stripped and destroyed our world. I love the comment from Mike about "stewardship."
It's interesting how attacked people can feel when talking about these specific subjects. People farmed for thousands of years before outright private property ran rampant. In fact, privatization drove a lot of people off the land :(
Get me started some time on "the customer is always right." I ran a winery tasting room for several years. I had a LOT of practical philosophical interaction (much of it argument) with this concept.
I had a transformative experience in...I think 2008, at a coffee shop in a small town on the Olympic Peninsula. I was on vacation from working at the winery.
I went into this small shop in the early morning. They were crowded with locals, and I had to wait a good ten minutes for my drink. It did not feel crazy. I did not feel stressed about the wait, or the crowding. I later understood the key to that was how casually the staff treated me.
They were cordial, but they didn't have time to chat or lead me through the menu, and they made that politely, casually clear. I didn't feel put off, I felt fine...but something about it felt so different that at first I couldn't figure out what was wrong, and then I realized it was actually right: they put their time, and their other customers' time, on a level with mine. They didn't try to (falsely, as it usually feels) make me feel special. They just politely served me a good cappuccino, and let me find my own way otherwise.
I've been grateful ever since for this anti-customer-service experience, and several others. It's been formative to my thinking, in the ways I both embraced and pushed against it as someone managing a bar. (In this case, a "high end" bar with a lot of wealthy customers and wealthy owners, and the expectations arising from those circumstances that you might expect...)
Tara, that sounds absolutely amazing. The difference between subservience/servitude and "hi there, other human being who is in no way better or worse than all the other human beings" is vast and I know which end I'd prefer to lurk in.
Good thoughts. I've been pondering similarly (partly triggered by "The Book Of Tresspass" as well)...
It's striking how, since abou 2016, the word "freedom" has become such a hot topic and a rallying cry for all sorts of...nope, I'm going to say it, *idiocy*. Brexit was about "freedom from Europe", for example, and now my country is starting to see what that actually means. And with the anti-vax, anti-science pushbacks, it's about "infringing our freedoms". It strike me that "freedom" is really another way of saying "mine". As in, You're Trying To Take My Stuff Which I Have A [something]-Given Right To Own.
It's like...I don't know, a hyper-individualistic denial of the idea of the society equivalent of common land? And it's so important we all find a new way to think about this, because when something "belongs" to someone else, we stop treating it as our concern or problem - with terrible implications for environmentalism.
I like the idea of changing "ownership" to "stewardship" - where it's not ours, we're just looking after it. Maybe as a concept to help bridge Freedom with Responsibility, which could then be expanded until the stewardship is of the welfare of our surroundings, and the people within it...
Not rambling at all! My mind is obviously stuck on all these things, too, and I don't know how you found the experience of reading The Book of Trespass, but it's kind of cathartic in a clean-anger "these things you sense are unjust are in fact unjust and here is why and how they came to be and by the way just because it's been a few hundred years doesn't make them more just and here is how the injustices continue to structure society and power" way for me. Though I'm having to take it slow. Clarifying anger is still anger.
I think you're right in that perspective of freedom. When I listen to Stan Rushworth's interviews (he's a Cherokee elder and Vietnam War veteran), he often brings up this obsession society has with our rights, while refusing to accept that those rights might be bounded by responsibilities. Maybe it's just the content I search out, but I feel like more people are starting to question that assumption -- that absolute individual freedoms should be a society's utmost goal, rather than being tempered by our responsibilities toward one another.
I like Hayes's weaving in of "spell-words" that create the fiction of property. It's an interesting way to look at it, that we can "otherize" almost anything (soil, land, water, people) by speaking a spell of property law.
"Stewardship" is a good one. Robin Wall Kimmerer talks about "kinship." I think of husbandry, and also of belonging. Instead of land or "resources" belonging to us, maybe we try to think of ourselves as belonging to land or a watershed. Suddenly that does its own spell-casting -- if I belong to the watershed I rely on, then I have to care for it.
It's a huge topic. I'm glad for this book. It's far more than what I expected.
Yeah, I don't know what to say anymore. Keep moving, I guess, except when you need to stop and rest.
So much the same to you 💗
Wonderful post, Antonia! My grandmother used to say that we should do everything we can for ourselves, but we also had responsibilities to contribute to the health of our community. We seem to have lost the part about working together for the common good.
Thank you so much for this, Mark. Reading it countered a depressing beginning to my day (I had to pop into LinkedIn to respond to a colleague, and accidentally saw a really awful "the left are all monsters who are ruining the country and we need to bring back the death penalty" conversation and it achieved that wonderful thing that social media excels at, which is destroying faith in our fellow humans) -- sometimes our grandmothers have the best wisdom!
I would love for Zach D. Carter to be right, but "proven false" is a far cry from extinct, unfortunately.
Oof, yes, exactly.
As a landowner and mask-wearing communist I say, "Well put." With land ownership and the right to move about in public spaces come much responsibility.
Well said, Bob!
As the daughter of a farmer, descended from generations of farmers, I periodically go down a spiral about land ownership and water rights and mineral rights and all the ways in which we've stripped and destroyed our world. I love the comment from Mike about "stewardship."
Me too 💕
It's interesting how attacked people can feel when talking about these specific subjects. People farmed for thousands of years before outright private property ran rampant. In fact, privatization drove a lot of people off the land :(
Get me started some time on "the customer is always right." I ran a winery tasting room for several years. I had a LOT of practical philosophical interaction (much of it argument) with this concept.
It's the worst! It's a fine idea to give customers good service, but when did we give them license to treat people like crap?
I had a transformative experience in...I think 2008, at a coffee shop in a small town on the Olympic Peninsula. I was on vacation from working at the winery.
I went into this small shop in the early morning. They were crowded with locals, and I had to wait a good ten minutes for my drink. It did not feel crazy. I did not feel stressed about the wait, or the crowding. I later understood the key to that was how casually the staff treated me.
They were cordial, but they didn't have time to chat or lead me through the menu, and they made that politely, casually clear. I didn't feel put off, I felt fine...but something about it felt so different that at first I couldn't figure out what was wrong, and then I realized it was actually right: they put their time, and their other customers' time, on a level with mine. They didn't try to (falsely, as it usually feels) make me feel special. They just politely served me a good cappuccino, and let me find my own way otherwise.
I've been grateful ever since for this anti-customer-service experience, and several others. It's been formative to my thinking, in the ways I both embraced and pushed against it as someone managing a bar. (In this case, a "high end" bar with a lot of wealthy customers and wealthy owners, and the expectations arising from those circumstances that you might expect...)
That’s very interesting, and thanks for sharing! I intend to remember this when I get in similar situations. Very enlightening!
Tara, that sounds absolutely amazing. The difference between subservience/servitude and "hi there, other human being who is in no way better or worse than all the other human beings" is vast and I know which end I'd prefer to lurk in.
Good thoughts. I've been pondering similarly (partly triggered by "The Book Of Tresspass" as well)...
It's striking how, since abou 2016, the word "freedom" has become such a hot topic and a rallying cry for all sorts of...nope, I'm going to say it, *idiocy*. Brexit was about "freedom from Europe", for example, and now my country is starting to see what that actually means. And with the anti-vax, anti-science pushbacks, it's about "infringing our freedoms". It strike me that "freedom" is really another way of saying "mine". As in, You're Trying To Take My Stuff Which I Have A [something]-Given Right To Own.
It's like...I don't know, a hyper-individualistic denial of the idea of the society equivalent of common land? And it's so important we all find a new way to think about this, because when something "belongs" to someone else, we stop treating it as our concern or problem - with terrible implications for environmentalism.
I like the idea of changing "ownership" to "stewardship" - where it's not ours, we're just looking after it. Maybe as a concept to help bridge Freedom with Responsibility, which could then be expanded until the stewardship is of the welfare of our surroundings, and the people within it...
Hm. Fascinating topic. I may be rambling, sorry.
Not rambling at all! My mind is obviously stuck on all these things, too, and I don't know how you found the experience of reading The Book of Trespass, but it's kind of cathartic in a clean-anger "these things you sense are unjust are in fact unjust and here is why and how they came to be and by the way just because it's been a few hundred years doesn't make them more just and here is how the injustices continue to structure society and power" way for me. Though I'm having to take it slow. Clarifying anger is still anger.
I think you're right in that perspective of freedom. When I listen to Stan Rushworth's interviews (he's a Cherokee elder and Vietnam War veteran), he often brings up this obsession society has with our rights, while refusing to accept that those rights might be bounded by responsibilities. Maybe it's just the content I search out, but I feel like more people are starting to question that assumption -- that absolute individual freedoms should be a society's utmost goal, rather than being tempered by our responsibilities toward one another.
I like Hayes's weaving in of "spell-words" that create the fiction of property. It's an interesting way to look at it, that we can "otherize" almost anything (soil, land, water, people) by speaking a spell of property law.
"Stewardship" is a good one. Robin Wall Kimmerer talks about "kinship." I think of husbandry, and also of belonging. Instead of land or "resources" belonging to us, maybe we try to think of ourselves as belonging to land or a watershed. Suddenly that does its own spell-casting -- if I belong to the watershed I rely on, then I have to care for it.
It's a huge topic. I'm glad for this book. It's far more than what I expected.