Why do humans have to be owned?
Posted by j_IR1776wg 9 years, 5 months ago to Philosophy
A recurring post here in the Gulch for the past several years asks whether the government owns you of if you own you.
Why do humans have to be owned at all?
My whole life I've been told that:
1) god own me.
2) my parents own me.
3) government owns me.
4) I own me.
But I've never read any proof or justification of why exactly is ownership of humans necessary?
In logic, the offering of a limited number of choices as if they were the only choices is a fallacy known as bifurcation. Is this what we are being offered?
Is ownership of humans necessary?
Why do humans have to be owned at all?
My whole life I've been told that:
1) god own me.
2) my parents own me.
3) government owns me.
4) I own me.
But I've never read any proof or justification of why exactly is ownership of humans necessary?
In logic, the offering of a limited number of choices as if they were the only choices is a fallacy known as bifurcation. Is this what we are being offered?
Is ownership of humans necessary?
Can you define Man? (Metaphysics). How does Man learn and deal with information? (epistemology). How does he deal with other humans? (ethics) How does he organize his relationship with other humans? (politics). How does he express beauty? (art). Answer those and you'll not only answer your "ownership" question, but it will put your big toe into the vast pool of what it is to be a human.
Ones body is the vessel to carry one through life. Clearly slavery is wrong, so another person should not own a person. I would expand this to include the government. It could be argued that parents own a child until maturity, but clearly not into adulthood, or even further, after the parents' death. God owns me leads to what god and is there a god. What if you (like me) don't believe in one at all?
This comes down to who makes decisions about a person, and that is the person. Therefore, a person owns themselves, because they make all the decisions regarding there self, and "yes" ownership is required because they must also maintain themselves and feed themselves, or they can waste themselves and die. No other entity can do this ethically without cause.
I don't even see a foothold for another proper view.
If we expanded upon that premise...I would suggest that any man who works and supports himself, owns himself. However, we have many, in our society, who are supported by the government and will not work. These people might be considered as being owned by the government, or am I missing something?
There are many in society who are supported by the government and don't work, but would, if they could. The government could, also, own these people, but for the fact that they will do any kind of job, no matter how inconsequential, to maintain their freedom.
I suppose it all comes down to how we each comprehend "ownership".
And therein Randy lies the essential reason for all of Mankind's problems; viz. the failure to derive a universally acceptable answer to the question of Who owns what and why? This failure is the very reason that we humans have lurched from one form of dictatorship to another over the centuries. Does the Individual have an absolute right to the productive output of his mind and the distribution of the wealth so created? Or is this right relative to the needs of his fellow humans? The sad truth is that history's greatest group of advocates of Individual Rights, the founding fathers of America, saw property rights as relative to public need (5th Amendment U.S. Constitution). This is the crack in the foundation which has allowed the termites to gnaw away at the supports of our Republic whose collapse becomes more apparent every day.
The coming global dictatorship will produce horrors on a level not even envisioned by Ayn Rand in her Atlas Shrugged.
That is precisely how Marx, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Obama, Chavez, et alia looked at people i.e. as animals to be controlled and destroyed as it pleased them to do so.
It seems to me these people arguing that it is not possible to own oneself are sophists attempting to reap a living from nonsensical, inflammatory or bizarre assertions.
It is amazing to me that it keeps coming up.
i.e., contract (legal) slavery?
Just askin'
These days people who make statements like that are looked upon as deluded fools as if the statement was ""We The People" own the government." The "supposed" left out.
I can just see the Great And Powerful O looking down his nose at me with that huge toothy grin of his.
Fine, when do I get audited?
b. No
c. Maybe
d. Opinions vary
e. I plead the Fifth
f. All of the above
Also the Great And Powerful O on top of his bloated Candy Mountain.
Emperors are always the rulers on top of even kings Such was Imperial Germany before The Great War (To--giggle--End All Wars).
The Kaiser also had a phone to go with his pen, even back then.
To say "I own myself" means it is my responsibility to provide for myself, to maintain good health, to not harm others, to keep the product of my efforts, etc.
We use "owner" as a shorthand for that whole concept, not really meaning a possession.
After all how would logic analysis handle the statement "I own myself, and I am myself"
To use the word ownership regarding oneself is meaningless. The self-reflexity goes round in circles. It is another example of putting words into a sentence with proper grammar that means nothing.
See Bertrand Russell- whether the class of all classes contains itself.
Better to say that the individual is Sovereign.
https://libertarianalliance.wordpress...
http://www.lawsociety.bc.ca/page.cfm?...
http://www.openureyes.org.nz/blog/?q=...
However, I don't endorse "Free Man On The Land" tactics. I've seen a lot of people end up in horrible deep trouble from it.
In a sense, just every cell in your body is solely responsible for it's own survival, that community of cells plus an individual identity of mind is in fact 'Self Interest'...rationally speaking.
http://www.conservapedia.com/Dagny_Ta...
Was she being immoral for not wanting to be a slave driver?
Someone who stole from someone and was proven would have to repay the debt and also serve as slave for a number of years as a form of punishment.
Jews has slavery of all sorts, and every 7 years the "Jubilee" year all slaves were summarily set free, although some sold themselves right back into slavery for another 7 years.
Slavery in ancient times could be both good and bad depending on the circumstances.
Also the slaves were not to be treated badly...
I suspect that some people like having a "stable" job. I have heard people say they want to be told where to go to work, to have a somewhat-stable paycheck, and not to have to worry about anything beyond one job function. Someone told me, "I like being a cog." I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Some business (hopefully) makes a profit from the "cog" and the "cog" gets to go home to his family and not worry about running the business.
It sounds like she didn't go out and live her life as she believed, and she didn't want to see you live as you believe because misery loves company.
If that is true, maybe that might help you not be angry at her for telling you not to live your dreams. She didn't do it herself, so she's not singling you out for mistreatment.
Divorce=> reasonable solution. Enjoy your 'own' new life, Jolene.
Of course you can do that to yourself. People worldwide do that every day to themselves. Stupidly so IMO, and many because they aren't taught by their parents or shown by society that they do own themselves.
Here in the US, the poor and disadvantaged own you, the NSA owns you, your community owns you, society owns you, the state owns you, etc. They all place demands upon you that you must satisfy or go to jail or die. If you think not, try not paying your taxes, let your grass grow too tall, park your car on the street-sit up on the hood and drink a beer, try to burn the oil from your last oil change, try to carry $5,000 of your own money in your pocket, on and on.
I was responsible for my children...therefore, I own(ed) them. Now that they are independent, I no longer "own" them.
I am responsible for doing a good job at my place of employment...therefore, I "own" that particular job. Ask yourself...if you are responsible for your work tools and you lose them, wouldn't your employer require you to purchase new ones? Couldn't that be considered "owning" those tools (for awhile)?
Our government is not responsible for us, but they are responsible for our well being...therefore, they "own" that part of the job.
The way I see it...if I'm responsible for another human being, I own that person. Otherwise, why would I accept responsibility for them?
In the scenario you describe, I believe the teacher would own that part of their job...not actually my children, themselves.
I choose the former.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committ...
I was responsible for my children...therefore, I own(ed) them. Now that they are independent, I no longer "own" them.
I am responsible for doing a good job at my place of employment...therefore, I "own" that particular job. Ask yourself...if you are responsible for your work tools and you lose them, wouldn't your employer require you to purchase new ones? Couldn't that be considered "owning" those tools (for awhile)?
Our government is not responsible for us, but they are responsible for our well being...therefore, they "own" that part of the job.
The way I see it...if I'm responsible for another human being, I own that person. Otherwise, why would I accept responsibility for them?
From there it will be much easier to the straight up historical books.
Many of the professor written books are victims of a. the publish or perish crowd whose views are tainted with some other agenda such as selling required text books.
Insofar as movies are concerned the choices are far more limited. We Were Young And Soldiers and Forrest Gump (really I'm serious) were the only two about Vietnam with any reality or accuracy. One example of a book with accurate quotes from biased and self serving sources is Lam Son 719 about the Laotian incursion in 1971. The author didn't dig near deep enough.
Any of these statements evidences a type of person I could get along with, though the lastmentioned is pretty far from my personal stance.
I guess what I am saying is that how someone phrases lack of ownership is less important than that they behave as if they are not owned.
Jan
Am I getting warm? Or do you intend to enslave me as well?
Or is a more likely scenario that they are delusional?
Is that not a judgment of other people?
Was this an innocent question or do you really not know/understand the history there? What were the chances of any intelligent slave, in any slave society, of escaping?
What I was referring to was the tendency of students, as they rise higher in the ranks of the educated, to lean ever further to the left, fueled by "smarter, better than you" delusions. I personally witnessed this recently while speaking at length to peers of my son, who just earned a science PhD at age 25.
* https://facebook.com/piphd/videos/vb....
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