Love & Ownership

[Cognisant]

I think these are strongly related.

"My friends", "My family", "My children", "My parents", "My pets", "My team", "My country", "My people", "My home", "My culture", "My beliefs", "My philosophy".

The foundational concept of any perceived relationship is an association between self and other, that this other exists within a context relevant to your self, otherwise the concept would be irrelevant and forgotten because your ego is the centre of your internal universe, there's no escaping the ego take a nihilist's word for that.

Now when I say love and ownership are kind of the same I bet a lot of you are having little righteous knee-jerk reactions because it sounds so morally wrong, well that just means you're decent people, as for the rest of you... (I'm kidding)

But it is true and in of itself that's not a bad thing because ownership is the bridging concept between love and commitment, it's all to do with developmental cognitive theories and how children relate to their toys which in a child's particularly open mind are analogous to people. If you break a toy a child isn't playing with and doesn't own the child won't care but if the child does own the toy they'll make a huge fuss, however interestingly if the child is mature enough to accept communal ownership (growing up in some cultures makes is easier as the concept of ownership is underdeveloped in the first place) they won't get upset if you break the toy (by a staged accident) even while they're playing with it.

What this demonstrates is that attachment has more to do with ownership then simply how much someone enjoys something or for that matter someone else's company, and of course it does, why wouldn't ownership be a huge factor in determining people's priorities? It's only natural that people wish to first secure and protect that which they have some manner of legitimate claim to because things/people they don't tend to come and go based on factors beyond their control.

This also explains why people who cheat on their partners are universally looked down upon because it's not all that different from being a thief, a cheater breaks the social contract of romantic ownership just as a thief breaks the social contract of ownership in the more general sense. The social contract of general ownership is that I agree people can own stuff therefore I can claim ownership of my stuff too, likewise society says that if you're in a relationship with someone they own a degree of exclusivity so everyone else can expect exclusivity in their relationships too, more on that in a sec.

Where ownership really shines is commitment, if someone says they love you but dances around saying that you're their partner you're in trouble because what they're actually saying is that they really like spending time with you but are not really committed to the relationship, because accepting you as their partner is also accepting that they are yours and the mutual exclusivity that ownership and being owned entails.

Now modern western society has a real problem with that, we all want to own but we hate being owned because we've acquired this notion that ownership in a relationship is outmoded immoral and just plain wrong. I dunno maybe it is, but if we are accepting that as truth then we also need to accept the implications, specifically that the ideal of a committed relationship doesn't work anymore, that love has changed.

So new love or traditional love, you decide

 

[Red myst]

My "knee jerk reaction" was that it is not "ownership" but a sense of "belonging to" or "responsible for" but I guess sometimes you do have to "own up" to your responsibility, mistakes, ect.... But this is not "love" they are not mutually inclusive or exclusive. It depends on the context of the relationship or environment, etc.....

 

[Cognisant]

Ownership is not love and you can love someone in whatever sense of the word is appropriate without having any ownership of them but for example if you're in a relationship and you're at a level where you can touch each other sexually without asking (within common sense) then you have given each other ownership of that permission.

As an Australian I don't own Australia but I own the right to call myself an Australian and all the social, political and legal implications of being an Australian.

Ownership is connection and connections go both ways, even the stuff we own also owns us in the sense that it has value to us so we protect/maintain/organise it; no connection is ever truly one way.

 

[paradoxparadigm7]

Yes, many people operate under the 'ownership' concept of love. You see it all the time in sensational headlines like Lorena Bobbitt who 'owns' her husbands genitals and cuts it off cause it's hers. This of course happens (in different ways) in unpublicized couples. But I think you're missing the whole picture...and this is my beef about reduction in general. It tends to paint a picture of humanity in it's most basest and simplified form and calls it 'explained'.

You can actually reduce your concept of ownership even further in the context of child development. Prior to ownership is the child's experience with 'me' and 'not me'. This is the beginnings of a concept of self in relation to things and people. My point is that it's a building block that sets the stage for higher level development. How far an individual develops is variable but lets not reduce people to the base level. A more holistic views takes into account a process of development that allows for a greater capacity to love as you ascend higher.

 

[Red myst]

Doesent everyon "own" the right to call you an Australian?

 

[Cognisant]

You see it all the time in sensational headlines like Lorena Bobbitt who 'owns' her husbands genitals and cuts it off cause it's hers.

But they're not which is why it's a crime, why we find her actions shocking, she's trying to explain and justify her violent actions which are simply that, the violent actions of an angry woman. As a society we condemn her actions because she did not own the right to cut off her husband's genitals even if we may agree with her that he did the wrong thing by not reciprocating the sexual exclusivity that he owned with her.

Owned in the sense that she had given that exclusivity to him.

 

[Cognisant]

Doesent everyon "own" the right to call you an Australian?

Of course, though you neither own me nor Australia.

I guess there's some sort of social contract governing the ownership of concepts such as your right to call me an Australian because it is the truth despite my identity or the nation of Australia being in any way yours directly.

If you said Australia was a horrible place to live I could refute you on the basis that as someone who dose't live here you don't own the right to claim that, unless there was some manner of evidence that you could reference in which case you own the right to refer to that evidence which is a right I cannot deny, unless I had evidence that your evidence was invalid to which to refer.

 

[Red myst]

Of course, though you neither own me nor Australia.

I guess there's some sort of social contract governing the ownership of concepts such as your right to call me an Australian because it is the truth despite my identity or the nation of Australia being in any way yours directly.

If you said Australia was a horrible place to live I could refute you on the basis that as someone who dose't live here you don't own the right to claim that.

Is being an Australian your "identity" or your circumstance? I merely ask because I identify being an "American" by circumstance not an identity, but I guess you could say that I do have to identify myself as american when asked about nationality. But perhaps I am only identifying my circumstance. Ok, going waaaay off topic..... I'll comeback if I have something to contribut

 

[paradoxparadigm7]

But they're not which is why it's a crime, why we find her actions shocking, she's trying to explain and justify her violent actions which are simply that, the violent actions of an angry woman. As a society we condemn her actions because she did not own the right to cut off her husband's genitals even if we may agree with her that he did the wrong thing by not reciprocating the sexual exclusivity that he owned with her.

Owned in the sense that she had given that exclusivity to him.

Yes, most of society thankfully don't operate under the ownership understanding of love. Lorena, and others like her (including probably her husband) operate at a base level understanding of love. She was angry and violent BECAUSE his genitals belonged to her. That's why the ownership concept of love can and will go terribly wrong.

As your OP states, one way to view love is through ownership. I'm simply saying it's a base level of development to operate in that fashion and doesn't take into account the holistic process.

 

[Cognisant]

She was angry and violent BECAUSE his genitals belonged to her. That's why the ownership concept of love can and will go terribly wrong.

I doubt she literally thought that but then I don't really know.

The point I'm making is that ignoring the ownership dynamic and pretending it doesn't exist can be just as much a problem, people need to be willing to accept ownership both as being someone who owns rights/permissions and gives them to others. I feel many relationships fail these days because of differing expectations and the often occurring struggle for dominance is clearly symptomatic of participants desiring a committed relationship but expecting all the commitment from the other because they don't understand the give/take dynamic.

Even friendships are fraught with difficulty when you have trouble telling whether or not your friends are actually "friends" because nobody ever says "I am your friend" or asks "Will you be my friend?" which is a shame, when there's trouble or someone needs help it's good to know who your friends are, y'know you can't drop in unannounced on an acquaintance because your worried about them.

It'd be awkward.

 

[Deleted member 1424]

Now modern western society has a real problem with that, we all want to own but we hate being owned because we've acquired this notion that ownership in a relationship is outmoded immoral and just plain wrong. I dunno maybe it is, but if we are accepting that as truth then we also need to accept the implications, specifically that the ideal of a committed relationship doesn't work anymore, that love has changed.

Plenty of people don't wish to own or be owned.

Given several poignant technological and medical advancements; 'love' doesn't need to be rigid or controlling anymore. These outdated, un-necessary paradigms are perpetuated solely by inertia.

Love can and should change.

 

[Pyropyro]

My "knee jerk reaction" was that it is not "ownership" but a sense of "belonging to" or "responsible for" but I guess sometimes you do have to "own up" to your responsibility, mistakes, ect.... But this is not "love" they are not mutually inclusive or exclusive. It depends on the context of the relationship or environment, etc.....

My interpretation of ownership is somewhat like this.

@OP I don't think you own the person per se but you're rather the co-owner of the social contract between the two of you.

It's like how online games are sold these days, you only get the license to play the game but not the game itself.

 

[Duxwing]

@Cognisant - Your analogy to toys, whereupon your argument rests, is invalid because people are unlike toys: children will wail whether one breaks someone they know or someone they do not. Consequently, the rest of your argument falls.

Furthermore, even if it were true, any owned thing is an object, which by definition cannot own other objects because a sink therefore could absurdly own a shoe.

Moreover, people obviously are not things and therefore cannot be owned. Therefore, whatever model of love presupposes owning people is absurd at best, immoral at worst, and therefore unfit for prescriptive argument wherever it lies on that spectrum.

Finally, your argument is inconsistent because were child-toy relationships analogous to adult-adult romances, polygamous relationships would never exhibit struggle for partners because people would be communal resources. Your counterargument that this struggle simply is a breach of social norms is a No True Scotsman because it contradicts your analogy's implication that no polygamous relationships would exhibit struggle for partners.

-Duxwing

 

[Puffy]

I think these are strongly related.

"My friends", "My family", "My children", "My parents", "My pets", "My team", "My country", "My people", "My home", "My culture", "My beliefs", "My philosophy".

The foundational concept of any perceived relationship is an association between self and other, that this other exists within a context relevant to your self, otherwise the concept would be irrelevant and forgotten because your ego is the centre of your internal universe, there's no escaping the ego take a nihilist's word for that.

Just musing. You, the I, stands as the nexus through which things relate to you - I agree it's difficult to get out of that.

But for the relation to be an ownership or a relation of power - 'my partner', 'my pet', 'my toy' - that implies to me that the other is reduced to the identification of the I without disturbing that I, its alterity as other is reduced in bondage to the same of the I and is a freely manipulable category of it (i.e., the other doesn't define/ express itself to the I but is defined by the I). One has dominion over something in reducing it to one's own conception of totality, or at its worst breaks down the other's own identity in favour of adopting its totality.

Love as a mutual ownership seems nonsensical to me in that respect, for in entering most relationships I affect but also open myself to being affected and vulnerable to the other; there is a reciprocity, two things within a relation, intermezzo, where power attempts to separate itself, be outside the other, so that it can affect and be beyond being affected. Power, to me, is the impossibility of love.

 

[Cognisant]

Plenty of people don't wish to own or be owned.

Given several poignant technological and medical advancements; 'love' doesn't need to be rigid or controlling anymore. These outdated, un-necessary paradigms are perpetuated solely by inertia.

Love can and should change.

To what?

To love somone as a friend dosen't require any commitment to them but that's its own thing and its limited by its own nature, love of a committed nature is more special because of its exclusivity and I'm not just saying it because I was raised to think that way I'm saying it because the very definition of something being special is that it is set apart from the usual and is specific to that something in its nature.

Technological and medical advancements are irrelevant, why can't a relationship be special for the sake of it being special? We may well one day live in a genderless posthuman future in which we all love the entirety of our species, share our thoughts/feelings/memories telepathically and fuck like bonobos because we've got nothing better to do, I totally get that. But is that as good as intimate private personal specific romantic love?

If all human interaction is essential a form of connection then clearly what we value most about our connections are the things that make them special, what sets them apart, whether it be something innate like genetics or acquired like the memories of shared experiences so to say love shouldn't be special is effectively saying love shouldn't be love, or more literally that love shouldn't exist.

Even I'm not that cynical.

Granted love can be problematic, connectedness goes both ways and if someone has a problem and you share a connection with them it invariably becomes your problem too, just as your problems will become problems for them. But that doesn't mean we should all limit ourselves to superficial connections to avoid becoming entangled in each other's lives, isolation rarely makes things better and in many cases a lack of the objectivity that comes from communication can make things much worse.

A good scolding from a female friend might have put Elliot Rodger's life on a different course but he was isolated and in his isolation his subjective worldview was warped by pain and neurosis into the beliefs he is now posthumously infamous for.

"The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration." - Pearl S. Buck

Love is a particularly problematic connection and you might think that's because we set it apart and make it special by its exclusivity but I challenge you to come up with an example or even a hypothetical scenario in which the problem begins with it being made special rather than it not being special enough. For example in the Lorena Bobbitt case was the malfunction of the relationship merely inherent to it being a committed exclusive relationship or was the root of the problem Mr Bobbitt not respecting that he was in a committed exclusive relationship, the specialness of love with Lorena Bobbitt to put it sentimentally.

You could argue he wouldn't have lost his balls had he not married Lorena Bobbitt however at the time of their marriage they were assumedly quite happy so clearly it wasn't their marriage that was the determining factor in the events that followed, a contributing one sure but that's different, if marriage was the determining factor in losing one's balls castration would be a multimillion dollar industry by now.

Literal castration I mean, the proverbial castration of married men actually is a multimillion dollar industry

Now the reason I'm so confident in making the afore mentioned challenge is that there needs to be a special connection before a problem with that special connection can occur and if there was a problem before special connection occurred then it just wouldn't happen, or in plain-speak committed relationships aren't a problem just because problems with committed relationships occur. This brings us back to the point I've been making and indeed the entire point of this entire thread existing in the first place, that an unwillingness to accept the co-ownership of relationships is a major cause for the instability of relationships post feminist revolution.

Not that I'm saying the feminist revolution was wrong or shouldn't have occurred or any ridiculous strawman bullshit like that.

 

[Cognisant]

@OP I don't think you own the person per se but you're rather the co-owner of the social contract between the two of you.

Yes!

It's like how online games are sold these days, you only get the license to play the game but not the game itself.

No! (for reasons unrelated to this thread)

@Cognisant - Your analogy to toys, whereupon your argument rests, is invalid because people are unlike toys: children will wail whether one breaks someone they know or someone they do not. Consequently, the rest of your argument falls.

Gross oversimplification, children will also cheer at the sight of cowboys massacring indians.

Furthermore, even if it were true, any owned thing is an object, which by definition cannot own other objects because a sink therefore could absurdly own a shoe.

It's a metaphor, you're arguing semantics which seems valid in that I am using the ownership concept in a non-standard way however you know I'm using it in a non-standard way so you're intentionally misunderstanding me to make a bullshit semantic argument.

Moreover, people obviously are not things and therefore cannot be owned. Therefore, whatever model of love presupposes owning people is absurd at best, immoral at worst, and therefore unfit for prescriptive argument wherever it lies on that spectrum.

More of the same nonsense.

Finally, your argument is inconsistent because were child-toy relationships analogous to adult-adult romances, polygamous relationships would never exhibit struggle for partners because people would be communal resources. Your counterargument that this struggle simply is a breach of social norms is a No True Scotsman because it contradicts your analogy's implication that no polygamous relationships would exhibit struggle for partners.

You're stretching my analogy further than it was intended which is a strawman argument (or something like because I think there's a specific term for this) and I don't think polyamory works the way you think it does if you think it's analogous to the communal ownership of toys.

Spoiler

 

[Cognisant]

But for the relation to be an ownership or a relation of power - 'my partner', 'my pet', 'my toy' - that implies to me that the other is reduced to the identification of the I without disturbing that I, its alterity as other is reduced in bondage to the same of the I and is a freely manipulable category of it (i.e., the other doesn't define/ express itself to the I but is defined by the I). One has dominion over something in reducing it to one's own conception of totality, or at its worst breaks down the other's own identity in favour of adopting its totality.

Love as a mutual ownership seems nonsensical to me in that respect, for in entering most relationships I affect but also open myself to being affected and vulnerable to the other; there is a reciprocity, two things within a relation, intermezzo, where power attempts to separate itself, be outside the other, so that it can affect and be beyond being affected. Power, to me, is the impossibility of love.

Damn I thought I was on to such a good metaphor too but you're right it implies the reduction of the other to an "it" and the denial of reciprocity, neither of which are right, but as I've already clarified I intended to mean the ownership of rights rather than ownership of the person but rather than re-clarifying my position every time that confusion occurs I guess I just have to give up on that metaphor.

Which is a shame because in the early stages of development the concepts of things and people are derived from a common foundational concept and I thought by explaining that I could explain why exclusivity is requisite for a stronger than normal interpersonal connection.

To clarify on that by "exclusivity" I don't simply mean sexual exclusivity but rather the more general sense of exclusivity which includes such things as emotional exclusivity (sharing private feelings), informational exclusivity (telling someone your secrets) even things like locational exclusivity (occupying the adjacent space on a park bench).

 

[Deleted member 1424]

I have neither time nor motivation to refute the counterarguments to the litany of arguments I didn't actually make. There is no greater sisyphean trap than attempting to defend misrepresentation.

 

[Duxwing]

Yes!

Social contracts are not owned but entered: the lovers would be parties thereto. They contract to mutual aid and enjoyment, and breach of contract results in arbitration.

Gross oversimplification, children will also cheer at the sight of cowboys massacring indians.

On television: pulling a Custer before kids today (no dehumanization of other races) would traumatize them.

It's a metaphor, you're arguing semantics which seems valid in that I am using the ownership concept in a non-standard way however you know I'm using it in a non-standard way so you're intentionally misunderstanding me to make a bullshit semantic argument.

When did you say your ownership argument was metaphorical? I will be sorry to find I have been arguing against a strawman.

More of the same nonsense.

Show me a shoe-owning sink, and I will agree.

You're stretching my analogy further than it was intended which is a strawman argument (or something like because I think there's a specific term for this) and I don't think polyamory works the way you think it does if you think it's analogous to the communal ownership of toys.

I stretched your argument unto the absurd, demonstrating that ownership of toys is not analogous to romantic relationships.

-Duxwing

 

[Cognisant]

[Social contracts are not owned but entered: the lovers would be parties thereto. They contract to mutual aid and enjoyment, and breach of contract results in arbitration.

Written before reading my reply to Puffy I assume.

On television: pulling a Custer before kids today (no dehumanization of other races) would traumatize them.

Yes but my point remains, children aren't necessarily humane.

When did you say your ownership argument was metaphorical? I will be sorry to find I have been arguing against a strawman.

I fucked up okay?

Show me a shoe-owning sink, and I will agree.

Just out of curiosity if I showed you a picture of a shoe on a sink how would you refute me?

I stretched your argument unto the absurd, demonstrating that ownership of toys is not analogous to romantic relationships.

Because we develop past that, did I not state that?
*re-reads*
Oh well I must have assumed it was obvious, well ass-u-me as they say.

 

[Duxwing]

Written before reading my reply to Puffy I assume.

D'oooooh! >_<

Yes but my point remains, children aren't necessarily humane.

A coincidental and interesting trivium: every adult dog can feel more emotions than can a baby.

I fucked up okay?

Ok. *hugs*

Just out of curiosity if I showed you a picture of a shoe on a sink how would you refute me?

I would ask the sink for its receipt or how it made the shoe.

Because we develop past that, did I not state that?
*re-reads*
Oh well I must have assumed it was obvious, well ass-u-me as they say.

I thought you used children because they were mostly free of cultural artifacts and therefore representative of fundamental human psychology. >_<

-Duxwing

 

[Cognisant]

I would ask the sink for its receipt or how it made the shoe.

Actually I imagined the shoe owned the sink.

I thought you used children because they were mostly free of cultural artifacts and therefore representative of fundamental human psychology. >_<

Don't be ridiculous I couldn't possibly use children to represent fundamental human psychology, they're psychotic.

 

[Duxwing]

Actually I imagined the shoe owned the sink.

Don't be ridiculous I couldn't possibly use children to represent fundamental human psychology, they're psychotic.

Compositing AngelOne and my arguments, we all are psychotic!

-Duxwing

 

[Cognisant]

"Fucking hipsters" - psychopaths everywhere