To be honest, I was pretty off-base in what my original assumption of what you were saying. I was imagining “personal but not private” meant that you could put your name on something, and there be a social agreement that it is “yours”, but only as long as that arrangement serves the group (which is to say, it isn’t really yours). My wife’s grandmother is currently visiting us and has no end of stories of this effect w.r.t her life in a former Soviet state. Yes, you “had” an apartment… But not really. Everything you had was yours until it wasn’t.
Maybe it’s just because of recent conversations that I was primed to that understanding… But even then I wouldn’t take it for granted when you talk to people that they’ll immediately understand.
Anyways: I think you have some interesting ideas, and I appreciate you taking the time to delineate the notions of private vs personal property.
I think that what you are describing (basically just dismantling capitalism) doesn’t intrinsically solve the problem of the human nature to scope policy decisions such that their negative consequences arrive after their lifetime. Maybe I’m missing something, but I just don’t see how those dots are being connected.
And beyond that, as a constructive feedback, I challenge you to re-examine the “all or nothing” mentality you have around systemic change. What small, attainable steps could you take to trend the world towards such a vision without having to say things like “nothing short of the destruction of capitalism could work”, because that is a paralyzing mindset.
Some capitalist European democracies make some pretty big forward-thinking plays. I think if you could push the needle in that direction, then it would make incremental steps to your final utopian system more attainable if that was your starting position.
Even just simply taking the patient time to engage in good faith in constructive dialogue, establishing a common vocabulary, ENABLES further conversation. This is SO much better for driving ideas forward than just calling something fascist. I appreciate the time.
It might not be as common as you think it is.
To be honest, I was pretty off-base in what my original assumption of what you were saying. I was imagining “personal but not private” meant that you could put your name on something, and there be a social agreement that it is “yours”, but only as long as that arrangement serves the group (which is to say, it isn’t really yours). My wife’s grandmother is currently visiting us and has no end of stories of this effect w.r.t her life in a former Soviet state. Yes, you “had” an apartment… But not really. Everything you had was yours until it wasn’t.
Maybe it’s just because of recent conversations that I was primed to that understanding… But even then I wouldn’t take it for granted when you talk to people that they’ll immediately understand.
Anyways: I think you have some interesting ideas, and I appreciate you taking the time to delineate the notions of private vs personal property.
I think that what you are describing (basically just dismantling capitalism) doesn’t intrinsically solve the problem of the human nature to scope policy decisions such that their negative consequences arrive after their lifetime. Maybe I’m missing something, but I just don’t see how those dots are being connected.
And beyond that, as a constructive feedback, I challenge you to re-examine the “all or nothing” mentality you have around systemic change. What small, attainable steps could you take to trend the world towards such a vision without having to say things like “nothing short of the destruction of capitalism could work”, because that is a paralyzing mindset.
Some capitalist European democracies make some pretty big forward-thinking plays. I think if you could push the needle in that direction, then it would make incremental steps to your final utopian system more attainable if that was your starting position.
Even just simply taking the patient time to engage in good faith in constructive dialogue, establishing a common vocabulary, ENABLES further conversation. This is SO much better for driving ideas forward than just calling something fascist. I appreciate the time.