On 22/09/2011 00:52, Fons Adriaensen wrote: ..
The only point I wanted to make is that the very concept of 'property', of 'owning' things makes sense only if it is recognised by others - it is a social agreement and not a law of nature.
Well, lets look at that a bit more closely. Many people likely own things (or information) that nobody else knows about (secrets, in other words, or just extremely personal and private stuff). This does not make the ownership any the less. It does not fully fit reality to regard everything in the world as somehow "managed" or "recognised" by "society". That arises much later in the evolution of a group. It is of course how many (who identify their individual self with that society) want to see it. The fact that "society" generally ~wants~ to know as much as possible about everything and everyone is evident, but not always acknowledged. It is simplest by far to declare that an individual had no a priori right of secrecy, ownership or privacy to begin with. Many a dictatorship has been built on that very principle.
The problem is that what starts out as a seemingly objective sociological analysis, which it is assumed nobody would think to question, all too easily gets transformed into a moral imperative. This is any assertion of the basic form "I want it therefore it is right", or, equally, "I don't want it therefore it is wrong". The fundamental aspect of it is that it is ~personal~, even if, for example, "God" is substituted for "I". At best, it is an ongoing public negotiation between personal privacy and public interest, moderated by a (nominally) independent and disinterested legislature. At worst, all it takes is a little reinterpretation. Darwin's famous "survival of the fittest" got changed very rapidly from the proper scientific meaning of "best adapted to their environment" to "the strongest", and this instantly justified "scientifically" all manner of individual, group, and national aggression. Misuse (or, charitably, misunderstanding) of that phrase still pervades thinking today, and so it continues to be extremely dangerous. It led, among other things, to the journalistic hacking of mobile phones, an extreme example where the supposed supremacy of information outweighed all other imperatives.
"Information wants to be free" (who said it first is irrelevant; who uses it as a rallying cry is very relevant) is of course much less extreme, but it is a moral imperative nevertheless - a justification for a desire. Many an oppression has been founded on the verbal rhetoric of an aphorism, as of course Orwell famously demonstrated, including the inspired "... but some are more equal than others".
There are many variations of this basic pattern of moral imperative, of which perhaps the most pervasive these days is "I want it, therefore it is my right". An increasingly common one is "I deserve it therefore it is right". Both are expressions of a peculiarly 20th-Century post-war and growing narcissism**. It seems to be a fundamental aspect of an individual in a society (perhaps even a definition) that we are ashamed of our desires despite the necessity of expressing them (or the near impossibility of not expressing them), and will go to any lengths to represent them in some more acceptable form. Modern western culture is absolutely saturated in such moral imperatives, wherever possible taking the form of something quasi-scientific, ~non~-personal, so that they become immune to any sort of challenge, or, best of all, become effectively invisible, hidden so to speak in plain sight. It is not always a conspiracy, as much of the time it is done unconsciously, instinctually (so in that sense property is indeed a law of nature), but it is the mother of all "memes". Without it most public media, particualrly the tabloids, would have absolutely nothing to print, and the speeches of politicians would become numbingly dull. The price, as usual, is eternal vigilance.
Perhaps this is the time to resume normal service? Richard Dobson ** see for example "The Narcissism Epidemic", http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1416575995 _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
