The greatest hope I see to conquer our insanity is the fact that there was a man like Jesus, and he didn’t own anything, so maybe you are right. — Fire Ologist

And look what we did to his legacy!

We'll never catch up. — TiredThinker

Catch up to whom? Everybody's in debt, except Switzerland. The whole world economy runs on compound interest; Switzerland runs on keeping it safe.

Try it out: insert any governing body you can think of. — Frog

Elders, who have earned the tribe's respect through honesty and wisdom, and who listen to every voice with considered attention.

If there is a power vacuum, — Frog

If. Why should there be a power vacuum? Why should there be power to hoover up in the first place? What kind of power? How attained? How retained?

Getting rid of owning things to make the world better is like getting rid of things to make the world better. — Fire Ologist

I haven't proposed any such action. I predict that, as has happened many times before, it will happen again, only on a much, much larger scale: people lose what they own, their homes, their land, their livelihood, their social structure, their whole way of life. Then they have to adapt to whatever they find, or die.
You may be right: our genetic predisposition to insanity may prove stringer than our reasoning and need to belong, in which case we will destroy ourselves utterly. But I'm not convinced that it's inevitable.

By “wealth” I meant goods and resources, like food. If there is nothing to distribute, then there is nothing to share. — NOS4A2

How do you distribute what you haven't found yet? In order to ensure co-operation, they have to agree on a plan for sharing the effort - food and fuel gathering, shelter building, child-care, guard duty, first aid, tool-making, scouting - and the rewards of those efforts, then trust one another to keep to that plan, or discuss any proposed changes and get consensus. Otherwise, none of them is safe.

I think it is enough for land. What is more intimate than the ground you’re standing on? — NOS4A2

There is nothing intimate about the ground; it's just something you walk on, trying to avoid obstacles. They won't stand in one place: if they want to keep living, they'll have to keep moving. It's going to be a very long time, 50 or more generations, before they can settle down to permanent architecture and agriculture (as opposed to seasonal or short-term cultivation) If the weather stabilizes by then. That may be long enough to become accustomed to a communal culture and train the young accordingly.

For instance your passive voice leaves to our imagination what group of people or institution is to redistribute the wealth. — NOS4A2

In the quoted scenario, there is no wealth to redistribute or even distribute. These people narrowly escaped from a burning city, clutching their children. They're in a barren landscape, with scarce food and shelter. Alone, each of them would perish. Their options are very limited.

We often treat objects like tools or vehicles as extensions of the body, and I believe something of this process inheres in our instincts towards things we own. This, in combination with a sense of justice and desert, is enough to fill out a theory of ownership. — NOS4A2

Yes, it's enough for the ownership of intimate objects - not of land, water and other people.

I think the kind of stability you're looking for only exists in the grave. — frank

What kind of stability do you think I'm 'looking for'? North American native nations were pretty stable for several thousand years before Europeans arrived. By stable, I don't mean they had no conflict among nations, but even those were brief and less destructive than the 'civilized' peoples' conflicts. Within their own societies, they managed things very much better.

Marx believed that capitalism was inherently flawed and unsustainable, and that it created contradictions that would eventually lead to its downfall. — frank

A-yup! Revolution or civil war, it falls down. If climate change and its human detritus gets there first, Marx was off on the time-line. I said he was right about a lot a lot of things, not everything. He underestimated the gullibility of the masses - no question about that!

Maybe after we reestablish stability? A few thousand years maybe? — frank

re-establish? I don't see much stability now, nor any time in recorded history. It looks as if there was stability before, and there may be after. That's if environmental conditions favour social stability. Obviously, our descendants won't have all the resources we burned up.

According to Trotsky, Communism wasn't the kind of thing anyone tries. It was supposed to be the inevitable unfolding of events according to the internal integrity of the universe. That didn't happen. Marx was wrong. — frank

It hasn't happened. Nor could it have happened in those circumstances, in that environment, with that beginning. The ends do not justify the means; the ends result from the means. Marx wasn't Trotsky - he was considerably smarter and less hyperbolic (integrity of the universe, my sweet Fanny!) and he was right about a great many things. Try to put in historical perspective what he was writing about.

The Russians did socialism. — frank

The Russians did a half-assed imitation of socialism, like the Vatican did a half-assed imitation of Christianity. Better that the Czars had done, but still fatally flawed.

They just did it while simultaneously placing the USA, recently morphed into Godzilla, on their shit lists. — frank

And cordially vice versa. They were sort-of-allies in WWII, big shots in the UN.... and implacable rivals for world domination, each terrified of the other.

You're doing the Socialism fallacy: because Socialism didn't work in China, — frank

No, that's the communist fallacy, which I'm on extensive record of not having made. Communism could not have worked in China, because it was never attempted in China. A new emperor simply took over under a different flag. As also happened in Russia.
A capitalist-socialism hybrid of some type has worked quite well in Europe.

except you're saying that because the Church ended up being greedy, it never stood for selflessness. — frank

The Church, as an institution never did: it did stand, quite firmly and consistently, for the poor staying poor and accepting their lot, though it also encouraged the rich to drop a few crumbs here and there, if they wanted to keep their heads. The poor listened better.
Christians have been unselfish, altruistic, communal, and some still are. But organized religions, especially state religions, have always historically supported and been supported by the ruling class. The churches aren't greedy; greedy and power-loving men dominate the churches.

It did, and I think in general, religions are about social well-being as when the people gather to repeat the phrasing of the voodoo priest. It's about us, ideally anyway. — frank

Organic religions, ones that arise from a people and their experience, do unite the community through ritual, chanting, fire (there is always fire involved; burning a bush or some wax is as close to our gods as we ever seem to get) and often mind-bending substances or self-hypnosis. Something of the kind is almost certain to arise in the post-apocalyptic age. But I don't think institutional religions, which are a completely different thing, will make a comeback.

Historically, religion doesn't get along well with money grubbing, so the idea of ownership might wane, — frank

I wouldn't be so sure about that. We've come a long way from "lilies of the field!" - though these guys "sow not, neither do they reap."

When people say, “more money than God,” what might be a real number for that amount of money on Earth that God has? ....If you’re looking at the Catholic Church alone, “God” has at least — and we’re putting a huge emphasis on “at least” — $73 billion in assets.

With assets of more than £22 billion the Church of England would seem richer than many of us would have believed.

While most seminarians don’t pursue a career in preaching expecting to get rich—some spiritual leaders have built lucrative empires comparable to the dynasties previously only enjoyed by star athletes, A-list actors, and corporate elites.

And if you look at the evolution of religious organizations, the tendency is to adapt to the prevailing economy and play it successfully.
No, that's not our best hope. Tribalism is far more likely to become the norm. The collapse of this civilization will leave an awful lot of wreckage, and very slim pickings for the survivors. They will have lost pretty much everything they owned. They'll have no option but to co-operate and trust one another if they have any chance of making another go at human society. They might be cannibals, but they won't be capitalists.

One factor is probably that people can't afford to retire, or they go back to work part time, so the entire work force is growing older, while the young are unable to find jobs. (And that's a circular problem too: older workers having to hang on, because their kids are still at home, unable to find steady work.)
Probably, most of the older workers didn't go to university, or have any higher education; some developed a specialized skill; many learned on the job, while the young executives, managers and supervisors have MBA's.

The global situation is already falling apart, as complex societies fragment into hostile factions, tribes demand self-determination and populations are displaced by weather, war and famine. Debt/profit -driven economies collapse when the debt can no longer support the profit; international trade collapses when countries default on contractual obligations; commerce collapses when a large enough percent of unemployed due to automation can't buy the products and services. Killing off wide swatches of productive people and destroying infrastructure isn't particularly helpful, either; no more is spending mega-resources on weaponry and waste. And here comes another summer of wildfires, drying-up rivers and deaths by heat-stroke.

I don't hear much from other parts of the about the galaxy; it could be different there.

You don’t think anyone can learn of unselfishness in any society? — Fire Ologist

Any one, given the right temperament, an optimal home environment and excellent guidance can be unselfish relative to his peers, but he can't influence the society.

The UN partitioned two states, — schopenhauer1

taking the bigger and more productive half from a large Arab population and giving it to a smaller population of European immigrants. No, the Arabs didn't accept this plan and Ben Gurion only accepted it as an interim plan, always intending to expand his territory.

Clearly, you not only don’t believe in two states, you wish Israel was never formed. Tough shit news for you, it was. — schopenhauer1

It's caused an awful lot of international strife and cost an awful lot of money. And it's not finished doing either by a long chalk. Still don't see how that justifies war crimes. But by all means, jerk elsewhere!

I don’t see it as a bit-pick. It’s a massive game changer. If there is any ownership (which I can’t see avoiding) then there is no need or possibility of imagining a world where there is no concept of ownership (which the OP asks). — Fire Ologist

OK. They should have avoided the word 'concept' and been more specific.

Further if we admit some ownership, we have to address all that would follow, such as ownership disputes, selfishness, accounting for those who share more than others, etc, etc. — Fire Ologist

People managed to work all of that out among themselves for at least 50,000 years.

It becomes the same world we have today just maybe with disputes over socks and whose trash is piling up over there, instead of percentage of owner profits and whose war has to be cleaned up. — Fire Ologist

That kind of social dysfunction is not due having our own homes and clothes; that's due to very bad social organization.

But any ownership (which I see as unavoidable) refutes the possibility of true communism as an economic and political structure. — Fire Ologist

"True communism" is one of those loaded phrases. People can and do live in communal arrangements of sharing with and caring for one another. If that's false communism, fine.

And I do think that if people were more charitable, sacrificed their personal wants more for the good of others, were more compassionate and less selfish, greedy and proud, the society would look more communal and communist. — Fire Ologist

There's some tail-chasing! How, in a monetized, competitive, profit-driven society, where, if you don't hustle, you end up living in the street and having police clear out your encampment on a regular basis, because the sight of have-nots upsets the haves, are children supposed to learn unselfishness?

The utopian vision is a good one. I just don’t see it happening as a political or economic structure - instead it would have to be a daily, voluntary effort involving daily sacrifice for the good of others - otherwise if a communistic lifestyle had to be imposed from above, it would only be oppression and additional suffering and less equality and less access to all of the things that are supposed to be shared. — Fire Ologist

No imposed political or economic is sustainable. The capitalist lifestyle has survived as long as it has because the people in it - including those who get the least share - were convinced that it's the correct way to live. There is no need for daily sacrifice if the resources are not owned and controlled by a privileged few while the undervalued many do all the work.

Ownership will never go away. — Fire Ologist

Maybe not, but sure will change after the present civilization collapses.

Have you known anyone who could describe a coherent picture of a society of people where there is no ownership? — Fire Ologist

There was a Hungarian writer back in the 1930's. The book is called Kazohinia.
But that doesn't matter.

Does everyone have a share of everything, or no one have a share in anything? — Fire Ologist

Everyone has a share in the resources and the territory. Everyone contributes labour to the common welfare and takes care of the young, the old and the frail. Everyone respects one another's personal space - if you want to imagine 'owning' air, go ahead - and privacy, and nobody snatches food out of anyone's mouth. Nobody pulls the blanket off anyone else when they're sleeping, but if they have a spare blanket and another person is cold, they give him the extra.
It's not that hard a concept.

Who is in trouble when someone forgets to take the trash out? Anyone given ownership of failed trash duty? — Fire Ologist

What's that got to do with ownership of the trash? Anyway, there wouldn't be a lot of waste in a property-free society.

As I said before, that 'absolutely' is a nitpick you can cling to if you're determined to avoid the idea of a communist society.

There's a nice little documentary about what people really need https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1613092/

My point was about the homeland. — schopenhauer1

I know. And 'homeland' was misapplied in this situation. One people's homeland was given to another people, who then systematically persecuted the natives. And are still doing so.

If you only apply that bonded statement to what I was saying here: — schopenhauer1

i would, if that's what the allies had been doing.

The question is should there be a Jewish state. My answer was yes. — schopenhauer1

You're not alone.

I didn’t say anything about taking over farms. — schopenhauer1

I did.

The original UN map was not agreed ti by Arab states and thus, here we are in a 75 year old battle of two peoples. — schopenhauer1

Indeed. The British authorities got Arab help in their war effort with promises of aid to their national aspirations. And the Rothchilds on board with a promise to aid Jewish aspirations. https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/why-did-britain-promise-palestine-to-arabs-and-zionists

My point with nation states and North American countries precisely highlights why strictly using property lost in a war or other means in a war might be just perpetuating a badlyheld notion of justice that just festers as perpetual revenge fantasies and vengeance rather than settling the perceived injustice. — schopenhauer1

The injustice was real in every case. The Romans displaced the Jews from a land from which the Jews had previously displaced some other people. The British and Americans were complicit (after a couple of terror attacks) in the displacing Arabs to re-emplace the Jews. How the festering resentment is resolved depends on what people do to restore balance. In this instance, it wasn't a festering revenge fantasy, it was an act of penitence by the big countries that had rejected Jewish refugees and turned a blind eye to the holocaust, plus a calculated attempt to place an ally in the middle of a strategic, oil-rich region.

Look, there should be no Canada, Netherlands, Ireland, or France according to this notion. I’m ok if you’re equal across the board with historical violence and territories. — schopenhauer1

This notion? Colonialism was what it was, it did the harm it did. We have to deal with the consequences. Point here being, both Palestine and Israel have the exact same claim, according to imperialist Britain, but only one of them has the backing of imperial powers.

They too have a historical ancestral claim. — schopenhauer1

With the difference that they actually built the houses and worked the farms.

Hence the dilemma. — schopenhauer1

The dilemma wasn't over who had a valid reason to live there; it was over which promise to keep and which to break.

The Jews had a very specific geographic location they can point to — schopenhauer1

Which very conveniently happens to coincide with Christian notions of the Holy Land. It doesn't seem to signify that, according to the same book, the Hebrews originally occupied that land by means of a sneak attack on people who had done them no harm.

There is no real analogy to Native Americans, who were here before the Europeans arrived and pushed them out or exterminated them. The question of which Natives lived exactly where is a red herring. Nor is there a real likeness to Africans who were captured and kidnapped and thereby apparently forfeited their right to claim any part of Africa, because they don't each know where their ancestors were from.

In this case, not 'homeland' but 'ancestral homeland'. The difference being: Most of us have been living in many other places, but our long-ago ancestors used to live here, so the people who have been living here better get the hell out.

If you go by history, culture and genetics, why are the Palestinians' claim less valid than the European Jews'?

I'm curious because Benkei was making claims to the contrary. — schopenhauer1

He and I may agree on a lot of things, but we don't share a brain!
I'm not a fan of DNA tracing for any purpose except forensics and anthropological research. (This means, not even genealogy).

No one is being "racist" by saying Jews have a specific ethnic history, and understanding that, any more than how the Dutch people are different than (or similar to!) French, Belgian, or (other) German peoples. — schopenhauer1

Some Jews? Most Jews? Everyone who identifies as Jewish? Fine.
But I don't see it as a contribution to excusing war crimes.

Rereading Timothy Findley's The Telling of Lies after ten years or more. Still intricate, unexpected and enthralling, as his novels tend to be. I reread Pilgrim recently, but have not the courage to face Headhunter again.

Yes, just as Christian and Muslims determine their own definitions. — BitconnectCarlos

Christian and Muslim are not definitions of nationhood. They are religious affiliations, professed by citizens of many different countries.

I'm sympathetic to native american claims to get back some parts of the land to which they are indigenous to. It's been extremely destructive to those communities to try to erase that heritage. — BitconnectCarlos

No kidding! But would you be willing to give up your house and farm if they had a claim on it on genetic, religious, traditional, or 'some of us have been here all along' grounds?

Tradition! Tradition! (Ours, of course. Nobody else's counts.)

And also apparently you have no regard for native american claims either. — BitconnectCarlos

Oddly enough, the Lenape are not getting Manhattan back and then spreading out over all of New York State with Chinese tanks and missiles. Yet....

do you believe in biological essentialism — schopenhauer1

I don't even know what it is. I'm guessing bloodlines, DNA sort of thing. In which case, no. (Wouldn't look very good on a Canadian.)

or do you think a longstanding tie to a biological, ethnic, or cultural identity, along with a historical connection to a particular region, could be used as such to define a people who have identified with it for generations? — schopenhauer1

That's what it means to the nation. Of course the notion doesn't play well with colonial subdivision of territory or post- WWI and II redrawing of maps by world powers. Then, too, 'identified' may have quite an elastic interpretation.

As to the genetic makeup of modern peoples - especially those that have been dispersed from a relatively small original stock - why even bother to trace them? There are Americans the colour of ginger ale who consider themselves Black. People don't identify with their DNA; they identify with their community, religion, culture and shared past. And their story - no matter what percent of it is factual.

"It was a shock to John and I."
"potato's $1.95"
"Get off of my lawn."
"Oranges are different to apples."
"Try and learn grammar."

There is no exact external definition of a Jew, any more than there is of a Muslim or a Protestant. They don't all live in the same place or in the same way and they don't all have the same facial features or character.
People who identify with a group that shares a culture or religion or ethnicity or some identifying feature are perceived as belonging to that group. I'm quite sure the people who thus identify themselves do have a clear idea what they each mean by it.

Like I said, it's a slogan, nothing more.

This is why all religious people are dumb; they try to elevate stories to facts. — Benkei

It's not just religious people. Nationalists and ideologues of every stripe have a banner story.
Interestingly, I listened to a radio program the other day, interview with an (unpopular) Israeli historian who said people don't fight to the death for land or resources or their leaders; they fight for their stories.

The ancestors are different from Judaism. — BitconnectCarlos

Ah, so religious identity is distinct from national identity.
Arabs - according to the OT, descendants of the unloved sons of Abraham - were also there, all that time, long before Islam.
And so, "ancestral home" means exactly what?

People wandered around an area and had kids. Then they went someplace else and had more kids. So frickin what? People have wandered over every place and had kids.
Some people invented a religion in a place. So frickin what? People invented religions all over the place.
That doesn't give their descendants any special privileges.

I once had a cat who liked to bully all the other cats that came near our back yard. He wasn't particularly imposing or strong, but his best friend was a Newfoundland dog.

Jewish identity is born in that region -- in Israel. — BitconnectCarlos

According to the biblical story, the ancestors wandered all over those lands from Turkey to Egypt. Does that mean modern Israel has a right to occupy all of what was Mesopotamia? Is the US obliged to arm and finance that expansion?
Every nation started someplace.
In case Mongolia was worried, I'm not about to claim my ancestral rights.

It is the ancestral homeland of the Jews making the Jews indigenous to it. — BitconnectCarlos

Indigenous in what way, according to what source? The OT story has them attacking Jericho without provocation. The real story is lost, though archeologists keep chipping away at it. Somebody was there before who isn't there now. This is a fairly common situation when peoples are nomadic, or flee from invasion or migrate due to inimical weather events or fight among themselves and split off.
Ancestors are any preceding generations from grandparents backward, even if it's only two generations. "Ancestral home" means nothing - it's a slogan. Maybe one day China will be the major world power and restore all the North American indigenous peoples to their ancestral homes - regardless of who lives there now, or whether those people, or their ancestors, had done any harm.

There were Jews who remained in the region and have had a continuous presence since antiquity. — BitconnectCarlos

Presence is not possession and confers no rights.

These Jews were oftens subject to persecution. — BitconnectCarlos

Yes. So are/were most minorities.

So the violence is not just due to the "occupation" but rather occurred well before it. — BitconnectCarlos

Unfortunately, violence has occurred on Earth since the amoeba.

Yet if they do have an ancestral homeland it is in Africa. — BitconnectCarlos

That's a tradition, a history, a memory - not an excuse for carnage.

Yes they were expelled from their ancestral homeland in 135 AD. — BitconnectCarlos

Barred from Jerusalem after the third major revolt. Roman rule was often brutal to occupied peoples, especially those who gave them a hard time. If the OT is anything to go by, the Judeans' treatment of its conquests was no better. That's imperial wars for you. Sometimes, if God is displeased, he does choose somebody else for a change - (sorry, Tevye) - at least, according to the prophets.

Let's say a group of Jews are expelled by the Romans from Judea in 135 AD. The community goes to Alexandria and continues to preserve those traditions and maintains its distinctiveness & maries among itself. In 235 AD is Israel still their ancestral homeland or have they lost it? — BitconnectCarlos

They've lost it. Like a whole lot of other people. You win some wars and you lose some. If you lose a big one, you lose the land you're living on - which is ancestral through some finite number of generations, just as it was ancestral to the people who lived there before.

Are they now indigenous to Alexandria? How about 335 AD? — BitconnectCarlos

You don't become indigenous, but if you're willing, you can assimilate to a country that let your ancestors in.

And what do we say about African Americans? Indigenous to a Georgia plantation? — BitconnectCarlos

We call them African Americans for the reason that their ancestors were transplanted to a different country and successive generations have adapted and assimilated. There is no large contingent of African Americans descending on Ghana to claim it as their ancestral home, and if there were, the US would not finance and arm them.

It does not as Israeli soldiers do not go from house to house murdering Palestinians because they are Palestinians. It does not commit rapes. It does not take Palestinians hostage and bring them to rape dungeons. It does not aim for civilians. If it did there would be no more Palestinians. — BitconnectCarlos

Those are excellent reasons not to fund or facilitate the funding of Hamas. Could be time to consider a change of leadership.

This means, that a man feels good only when he lives better than others. — Linkey

I don't believe that. I think a man feels good when he is valued by his community and his efforts and accomplishments are appreciated. In a greed-based, wealth-controlled society, the only available status is measured in wealth and power and can only be attained through competition.

Therefore, anyone who does attain wealth, power and admiration is in constant fear of being displaced by someone more ambitious and aggressive, someone with a sharper edge. They are also in constant fear of being robbed or cheated out of their possessions. And so they bend their considerable social resources toward the consolidation and protection of their assets.

The very poor and dispossessed are in constant fear of illness, injury, cold and hunger. If they live badly in a wealth-driven environment, poor people can't help being aware that the rich have much more than they need, while they themselves have less than they need. They can hardly help feeling resentful.
So the rich people are afraid of the poor people's anger and the poor people are afraid of repression.

There are many kinds of envy. They come on a long scale of intensity, from "I wish I had hair like hers." through "I want his wife." to the most toxic "If I can't be him and have all his talent and fame, I can at least kill him and be famous by proxy."

In fact, the happiest people in the world live quite modestly, with few possessions.

Free from, free of, or free to?

In case it seemed otherwise, I wasn't intending my last reply to read as adversarial in any way.
On the contrary, I thought we shared a mutual frustration with the subject. — ENOAH

Oh, adversarial wasn't what I thought. Thing is, I don't really have a problem with either the concept or the word. I don't think the compilers at Webster did, either. It's not until the recent commercial, technological and scatological contributions to graphic production and performance that the idea of what art is and what it's supposed to do have become problematic.

When I studied Art, most people were clear on the topic, even if they disagreed on the merit of individual items, though the academics and critics were in turmoil. This was during the 1960's, when the likes of Warhol and Duchamp had already upset the traditional concept of artistic expression. It was fashionable to debate endlessly whether art was the process of creation or the result, whether anything that altered a perspective on any subject, however trivial, should be considered art, and a whole heap of precious, pretentious posing by self-styled geniuses. It was then, too, that people who made stuff, whether it was all-the-same jewellery or big grey and red blobs on canvas, began to refer to their stuff as "The Work".
Since then, an awful lot of crap has been deposited in galleries.

After Warhol, every magazine illustration and movie poster was art; every bastard offspring of the theater and every drum-heavy pop song has been included in a broad, liberal, catch-all use of the word. It's not surprising so many people devalue the word, disparage all criteria and go with their gut reaction instead. That's always been the ultimate personal standard. But publicly funded installations and exhibitions must be controlled by a cooler intellect. The council or committee members who decide which sculpture to put in a park, which painting to buy for a museum, need definitive criteria. They must fall back on established words and concepts for their deliberations.

Well, good luck defining art, Mr. Webster. — ENOAH

Just answering this!

I think it's best to stick to "art cannot be defined." Not in Language, at least. — ENOAH

You can certainly do that, if you choose. Mr. Webster was a little more definite.

I trust you will hate that last definition most, but, no offense intended, that's what I'm settling with. — ENOAH

I don't love it, hate it, or care much about it. It's right up there with "I don't know anything about art, I just I know what I like."
Everyone is free to have their own take on the subject, but nobody gets to deny that definitions exist, so long as they're using words.