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humankind.
For most of human existence, this was not the case.
The Lenni Lenape, Iroquois, Lakota, Cheyenne, Crow, Cree, Dineh, Apache, etc. peoples of this continent were certainly not paying any rent for their hogan, mandan, or tipi spots at the State Park, trailer park, or gated community.
The "Other species pay with their lives which seems a greater price to pay than a few bucks"concept expressed earlier in this thread totally cracks me up. No offense intended.
Are the mule deer, the carp, and the ravens paying with their lives, instead of paying rent? LOL!
Has grandmother box turtle, recently encountered in Pennsylvania with a human's initials carved into her shell, carved there by a foolish child several decades ago, been paying the price of her life for her existence?
No. Of course not. She has lived a free life, and paid no land payments or rent, as any sensible upstanding turtle would.
Turtle With Boy’s Initials Turns Up Alive 47 Years Later
http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2012/05/04/turtle-with-boys-initials-turns-up-47-years-later-alive/
The wise person who is the originator of some of the white man's religions, understood this very well:
"Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?"
Well, in reality, we're probably not worth any more than our avian sisters and brothers, but we are at least equal to them, I suppose.
All my relations.
During the French revolution, representatives of the third estate declared that they were the nation. That was a preindustrial society before mass communication, so they were being figurative. In our case it is close to literally true. The representatives of the third estate sitting as a committee simply became the national legislature. This is why distinctions between public and private resources or the idea of observing local property regulations is rather silly. OWS is no more trespassing on public land than Washington’s army was trespassing at Valley Forge. If we no longer recognize the authority of the Mayor or government of New York City, for example, then we do not recognize its ability to regular where, when, or how we assemble. It is absurd for us to decry the immorality of laws that allow banks to commit highway robbery while still fretting over camping regulations. It is not so much that the Constitution grants or protects the right to protest. Rather, OWS as the embodiment of the nation need not look to any authority above or outside itself. The fact that OWS is present on Wall Street or some other meeting place is its own justification.
If it seems like people who would ordinarily support the Democrats are skeptical or are unenthusiastic, it is because we know that the political contest is a sideshow. The reason it is “Occupy Wall Street” and not “Occupy the Capitol” is because we know that Washington is a puppet theater and that gambling on change by playing party politics is a sucker’s game. Again, the idea is not simply to replace leaders or to enact specific reforms. OWS seeks to replace the entire political, social, and economic culture with a wider sense of human community. It already conducts itself in that manner. Rather than leaders with the prerogative to make decisions for the group, OWS operates on consensus. It is clear from the past ten or twelve years that there is no political, institutional solution for what ails us. Fortunately, we do not need one.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002579714 [
I thought you were coming from a different mindset, but now see we are totally on the same team here.
I absolutely agree with you, and I am a raging environmentalist.
Again, my apologies.
They lived on it freely, and yes, sometimes were displaced by another group. Sometimes they were not. No different from modern societies in that respect.
But they didn't pay for it. And, from what I understand from what I've been told, and from what I've studied, they never wanted to pay for it, preferring to live free, rather than have to pay lawyers and cops to maintain their liberty and way of life.
" The white man has plenty of land," said Smohalla. " I knew an Indian who went to Washington, and he passed for days through good uncultivated land east of the Rockies. And I am told that beyond the great sea some men have big tracts fenced in just to keep a few deer and grouse. Nobody interferes with these men. Yet white men come from these very countries, and say the Indian must not keep his land because he hunts over it instead of plowing it. I know a man on the lower Columbia, who for years has had a big piece of bottom land that is neither plowed up or grazed over, but no one disturbs him, because he is a white man. I will not plow my land, but if I did, it would not protect me. Joseph's people had good fields and gardens, but they were driven away. I have no pity for them. They had no business to plant fields like white men. Many Indians are trying to live like white men, but it will do them no good. They cut off their hair and wear white men's clothes, and some of them learn to sing out of a book.
"But Smohalla," said I, "the country is all filling up with white people and their herds. The game is nearly all gone. Would it not be better for your young Indians to learn the white man's work ?"
"My young men shall never work," said he with a wave of the hand, including numerous imaginary Indians, as well as the two seated near by. " Men who work cannot dream, and wisdom comes to us in dreams."
"We simply take the gifts that are freely offered. We no more harm the earth than would an infant's fingers harm its mother's breast. But the white man tears up large tracts of land, runs deep ditches, cuts down forests, and changes the whole face of the earth. You know very well this is not right. Every honest man,'" said he, looking at me searchingly, "knows in his heart that this is all wrong. But the white men are so greedy they do not consider these things."
http://www.nevadaobserver.com/Reading%20Room%20Documents/smohalla_1891.htm
There are many other examples of this type of thought that have been expressed by American Indians over time. It does not appear that they considered paying lawyers and cops superior to their traditional way of life, during which they had to pay no one for their existence, according to their own words.
It seems that it is often very difficult for folks who were born and raised in Judeo-Christian European based cultures to comprehend tribal cultures, and vice versa. History books are written by the winners, and most written histories of the pre-Columbian tribal peoples of the America's have been written from the highly subjective perspective of academics from Judeo-Christian Euro cultures who had no significant basis to actually be able to understand the tribal cultures they wrote about.
I usually prefer to believe the actual words and thoughts of the tribal folks rather than rely on the interpretations and judgments of these ideas made by academics from a completely different culture.
Again, to this day, it is still very difficult for many American Indians to fully understand Judeo-Christian Euro culture, and I think it is even more difficult for folks from J-C Euro cultures to understand the mind of the American Indian.
Anyway, if the 1% wants your land and property, there's nothing at all that you can you do to stop them from taking it. The people of Iraq and Afghanistan know this very well from recent experience. Calling lawyers and cops in order to help them retain their property doesn't work, because lawyers and cops are the ones that are killing them for their land and resources.
"No property rights is nice if you're strong. Pretty awful if you're weak."
In the overall scheme of things, almost everyone, except for the 1% is "weak" under the very limited boundaries forcibly instilled into the general collective consciousness of artificially created consumer cultures that exist under the dictates and domination of the 1%..
when i read this at first, too.
...where people live the common good and there is no money.
Someone, go invent a replicator. 