Land Grabs 4: words from a corner of the Liminal Web: Who own’s what?

Previous “Land Grabs” articles:

Land Grabs 1: https://medium.com/@ben.hennessygarside/land-grabs-words-from-a-corner-of-the-liminal-web-bf15df1d52f4

Land Grabs 2: https://medium.com/@ben.hennessygarside/land-grabs-2-words-from-a-corner-of-the-liminal-web-4d3e6c9989a2

Land Grabs 3: https://medium.com/@ben.hennessygarside/land-grabs-3-words-from-a-corner-of-the-liminal-web-bitches-gotta-eat-17ad4460399f

… let’s take another look at Joseph Camosy’s words from Land Grabs 2:

“Identity: staking out one’s position and territory as a means of locating oneself within a given milieu. This location becomes an identity that must be maintained and defended, otherwise … who am I for the other? Great anxiety would ensue.

Ownership: We think that our thoughts, ideas, and imaginations, because we must labor to grasp and bring them into awareness and manifestation, belong to us. We think that they are ours, and in a Game A environment of competition we think we must defend what is ours or else lose agency, reputation, identity, money, etc…

Unless one is in a state of non-attachment to the above mentioned things (identity, property perceived as a necessary means for survival in the current system), the ego is doing its job.”

We have these themes: stake-outs, territory to be defended, ownership, freedom, identity, ego. Each theme evokes an imaginal response:

Stake-outs: Wooden stakes planted in the ground to keep the neighbours out. Army scouts searching for a good patch of ground to mount a defense or offense from. Police officers “staking out” a known drug dealer’s HQ.

Territory to be defended: A man in military garb survey’s a patch of land, a seriousness in the air, “the barbarians are beyond the next hill and they’ll take my food and my women”, a strategy of defense, thoughts about where to place the men with guns.

Ownership: In an act of relativistic need, a toddler, previously unaware of a particular toy and only after watching them pick it up, demands said toy from another child. A teenager, clutching his phone on the way home from school, is beaten to the ground; when they’ve gone, his phone is not in his possession. A landlord, enraged at the discovery of a local petition to prevent her from building on what she thought was her land.

Freedom: Someone wakes up naturally, having had enough sleep; there’s a beautiful gap where an alarm might otherwise have sounded. Another person take’s a piss when they actually need one, rather than in their alloted break time. A man, isn’t wearing a tie. A gay couple, holding hands. A Christian in ancient Rome, escape’s transport to the arena.

Identity: A humanoid robot, in a dystopian future, with a projector for a face, projects images onto it’s own body. The hands of the ancestors reach up through the ground, tieing ribbons around our legs; we can’t jump as freely, but they are beautiful ribbons.

Ego: An ancient hominid in flow, chipping away at some flint. Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. Gordon Ramsey screaming at a restaurant owner.

Who “owns” the contents of the past six paragraphs? Do I really need to claim it? Does anyone who likes it really need to take me more seriously now I’ve written it? What are we doing when we put people on pedastals and try and climb on to them ourselves? Can we acknowledge value whilst also acknowledging that a giant percentage of most value is built on the hard work of other’s? This should be a given. I shouldn’t have to find an endless lists of citations to back myself up. The originator of an idea wasn’t the originator themselves. There’s nothing to own. We’re all chatting shit anyway.

That this came out in the Meta-Modern age is perhaps not a coincidence: https://youtu.be/nJPERZDfyWc

However correct I might be about this (I’m not) this of course doesn’t solve all the problems. Future features of the species need to be selected for (arbitrary or otherwise). Capitalism and the ever deepening extension of individualist narcissism’s still seem to attach our very right of survival to our ability to build and market a personal brand which no doubt involves highlighting all our good bits and diminishing all the competitors bits.

As such, the LW does still need an answer for this… Otherwise, the Titans from Land Grabs 1 will keep chewing on rubber chickens…

Links to the follow ups:

Land Grabs 5: https://medium.com/@ben.hennessygarside/land-grabs-5-a-bowl-of-emergent-soup-please-ba9e46f8767d

Land Grabs 6: https://medium.com/@ben.hennessygarside/land-grabs-6-some-stuff-with-achievement-at-the-end-486b01124178