To: alt.divination,alt.magick,alt.tarot,alt.pagan,...
From: nagasiva@luckymojo.com (Lorax)
Subject: Ownership and Experience (LONG) (Was Re: Theft and Tarot ...)
Date: 21 Feb 1995 10:51:38 -0800

Kali Yuga 49950221 

ameadows@netcom.com (Anna Meadows):
|...pardon my cynicism over the sincerity of your non-attachment 
|(anyone who wanted/needed your earrings that badly is welcome to them).

Oh, I understand perfectly!  I think it would profit us both if in the
future you could quote me directly.  I didn't say that I was unattached
to any of the things over which I exercise dominion (books in the library,
for example).  My comment was that I would not consider it a 'crime' (and
I think about this much differently than the rest of society does).

|My best friend & I engaged in this same debate all summer....
|He stole what amounts to about $2000 of software for his laptop....

I have known people who steal things in this way.  It leads to self-
destruction if followed long enough.

|...I asked him how he would feel if someone plagiarized his songs, walked 
|into his house and took his computer, etc.  

A beautiful question!  Cudos to your insight.

|He replied that he wouldn't care too much if they did; easy come, easy 
|go; if they wanted or needed it that badly, go for it; maybe they would 
|use it to do something "cool", etc.

Heh, then this incident was an opportunity for him to see into himself
very deeply.  I hope you reminded him of your previous conversation, not
in an accusatory or 'nyah nyah I told you so' way, but pointing out that
we all have difficulties seeing how we 'would be' under theoretical
circumstances.

I am no different here, and this is why I stated that if someone came to
the Haus and began taking things and I noticed I might physically restrain
them, perhaps even alerting the authorities in aid of my recovery.  I tend
to think that poor thieves deserve what they get, whereas the stealthy and
clever do *also*.

[his computer was stolen]
|...He didn't much like my commenting that maybe the person who stole it 
|will put it to better use that he did. 

An excellent example.  I wouldn't have appreciated your comment either,
were I in his shoes and fretting the loss.  Though if I were in yours,
perhaps I would have used his words ("Hey, maybe they'll do something
'cool' with it."). :>

|I recognize that you are a different person, and maybe you really 
|_don't_ care about your few possessions.

HERE is the point.  I don't 'have possessions'.  I don't possess them,
like a spirit entering into their bodies.  You see, this is much more
than some legal debate we are speaking about here.  We are talking about
one's relationship with the world.

I don't 'have things'.  I work with things and we are friends.  I
don't summon demons and make them do my bidding.  I invite them in and
I jam with them.  We have fun.  I treat with as much respect as I am
able to bring forth the various magical tools who have consented to 
aid me in my endeavors.  Some I have abducted.  Some I have found.  Some
were gifts.  Some I have no idea how they appearred in my life.  I care
about different people in different ways and with different intensities.

They are PERSONS.  They are not objects for my ownership.  And in this
measure they have some control (I think) over where they are and who is
using them.  I've had magical tools vanish completely, nowhere to be
found.  I've had them stolen.  I've given them away.  In each case I
figure they are much like lovers who desire to be elsewhere.  If I 
thought them to be lost, I looked diligently.  After a certain period, I
gave up, not 'hoping they will return', but, like within a magical
working I LET THEM GO.  I accept their will in the matter.

|My view on the subject:  the forms with which we surround ourselves 
|become an extension of our selves.  

Then we get pretty big pretty fast, don't we?  I think there 
may be dire consequences of this ballooning up, including a vast increase in 
consumption and an egotism unmatched by substance, not to mention 
increased suffering
when we keep losing pieces of ourselves to entropy and change.  I'm infusing
a kind of Buddhist logic here, but trying to keep it simple and on-topic.


|My tarot deck can become a part of me as surely as my hands, or legs, or 
|sex organs.  

I disagree.  *Emotionally* I'm sure this may be comparable, but there is a
different relationship between you and your hands, for example, and you
and your tarot deck.  Without your hands you would not be *able* to use
the tarot (at least as you have done, and you would have to relearn the
relationship with the tarot).  Cut off your hands, legs and genitalia and
you'll bleed to death, untreated.  At least physically this is not the
case with the tarot deck.  Psychically, well, I'm sure it is possible that
anyone can be so obsessed about a magical tool that it forms the very
core of their life.  This is rather unhealthy, however, and I recommend
strongly against such relationships with one's tools.


|Taking my tarot deck, or plagiarizing my ideas (which are also forms) 
|robs me of my free will 

No it doesn't.  Your free will is demonstrated by your ability to choose.
Taking away specific choices does not affect your ability to choose, only
the options which are available to you.  It affects your RANGE OF DOMINION,
which is my point.


|...the tools I feel I need to live my life in the manner I have best 
|determined.  

It is different to say 'I need these tools to live my life in the manner
I have best determined' and 'I need these tools in order to live'.


|Taking these things from me is ethically no different from pushing me down 
|on the floor and taking sex from me without my consent; i.e., rape.  

A wonderful argument!  Brilliant!  You push right to the heart of the issue!
I love it.  Ok, let us presume that we are the ones who set up our personal
boundaries (i.e. we choose to make the tarot 'part of ourselves').  Let us
then assume that what you are talking about, VIOLATION, is the breaking of
these boundaries.

I agree with this so far.  However, my argument here has to do with the
notion of setting boundaries beyond one's physical body (perhaps even
questioning the notion of 'ownership of one's body' as I challenge the
very notion of ownership and identification).

Where shall it stop?  "If you enter into my mental space, then you must
do as I wish else I shall consider it a violation, i.e. rape."?  The law
of the land in which *I* live does not consider petty theft and rape the
same thing, regardless of how near and dear to you that thing may have
been.  No, the culture in which I live looks at the *market value* of
the thing 'stolen' before it assesses damages.

But you are talking about the subjective experience of being violated,
aren't you?  You imply 'it is violation whether you regard it as violation
or not'.  I think that in this you go too far.  Ok, let's withdraw from
the extreme...

The notion of 'ownership' proceeds from the notion of dominion (thus the
quip about 'possession being 9/10s of the law').  What we 'own' we are
enjoined by social authority not *only* to control but to treat
responsibly when it begins to impact that which we do not control (i.e.
I cannot leave my '48 junker on a neighbor's lawn or even in the public
street).  

It is as if there was a magical power we have called 'ownership', a specified
and clearly defined relationship wrt things around us.  We can go to most
things within a city and begin point to each of them, asking 'who owns
this?'  and 'who owns *this*?', pointing to a building and then a fire
hydrant and then an automobile and then the ground, and then the sky....

Wait a second.

Here I'll explain to you why I reject this notion of 'ownership' and why
even though you might consider it 'rape' to 'take something from you' I
might just do that.

Here's the way I see things right now: EVERYTHING (birds, trees, rocks,
clouds, hydrogen bombs, humans, skyscrapers) is natural.  As a totality,
to me, it is what I call 'Nature'.  I don't divide between the 'man-made'
and the 'created of itself' or 'god-derived'.

EVERYTHING (same list) is, to me, alive.  It has its own personality, its
own destiny, its own wants and desires, just like me, though perhaps
translated toward its particular energy-pattern.  Each bit is a distinct
and perfect entity which determines, *through animation or no*, where it
shall be and how it shall interact with the rest of Nature.

Being 'in charge of', EMPLOYING, is not equivalent to OWNERSHIP.  As with
the place in which you are employed (if you are), your relationship with
your employers is not that you are *owned by them*.  I think that this is
because we have realized that it is disrespectful to own human beings.

Now apply this in *my* life (and I'm not saying that everyone has to be
like me, only that you may understand why I argue what I do given my
weird perspective here).  EVERYTHING is a person.  I don't wish to 'own'
the dog that lives with me.  She becomes an object which I can control,
destroy and do with as I wish.  I will have lost my respect for her.

I'm tickling this computer keyboard.  As I'm able I see her keys as a
complex body whose me/assage yields communication with others like me.
She *allows* me to tickle her thus.  I am *privileged* to know her,
and if she should go away (by calling someone to take her, or refusing
to cooperate with me, forcing me to find another who will help, for 
example), then I would not stand in her way, for I do not OWN her.  

You see what I'm getting at?

'Objects' are not 'objects' to me.  That tarot deck which you say is
'part of you' is not an 'object' to me.  If he called to me and asked
me to take him home, I would consider my relationship with you, perhaps
ask the deck why he desires this, and perhaps even mention it to you,
out of respect for you (unless you were abusing the deck and I thought
that he was asking to be rescued, in which case I might save him).

If you ask me to enjoy sex with you, then it is not rape.  You see?  So
it may well be the case that *you* would consider it a violation, but
I ask you to try to fit this notion of yours into my life and then,
finally, try to imagine living before all this wonderful technology
and art became available to humans.

Who owns the birds?  Who owns the sky?  Why should we wish to put a
price and an ownership-name upon all of nature?  Who owns the land?
Does considering these 'objects to be owned' change the way in which 
we relate to our world and therefore influence our experience?

I think that you know how I would answer these questions, and I hope
that you can see what I mean and why I have gone on so long and so 
very far into this thread.  I do not say you are wrong.  I only ask
that you come to understand my way.


|And if you want to debate whether it's okay to rape in _this_ group, then 
|you're braver than I am.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Nothing is 'ok' for those who do not ask permission from authorities.  I
do not like violation.  However, the line of violation is sometimes a very
hazy one.  Where you leave off and the rest of the world begins is indeed
defined by you to a great extent.  At some point, however, I will oppose
this expansiveness on your part.  At some point I will oppose your 
ownership in order to push for a different relationship with all.  

Barbed wire fences divide our world and separate us into the pain of tv city.
By crossing them do I truly 'violate another'?  Was it not already a
'violation' of the land to place the fences there?  Is it not a 'violation',
perhaps not of a sexual (joining) kind, to take that deck into yourself,
to 'own' it?  These are tricky issues.  I do not claim to know anything.
I do have my preferences, however, and these do not typically involve the
notion of 'ownership' as compared to 'control' or 'dominion' or 'privilege'.

Thanks for the discussion.  You're inspiring me to see why I argue so.

Lorax
tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com