In a chapter of Two Treatises of Government, “Of Property,” John Locke justifies the human right of property by citing two sources that were credible during the 17th century. He cites the biblical Genesis and reflects theories developed in Early Greece to propel a compelling argument—that humans, because of their God-given intelligence and their natural inheritance of the World as their garden, have the right to own as much property as can be used. He is known in 2009 to have put common sense principles into vogue. His explanation of, and defense of, human property rights is an example of a theory that seems undeniably common sense.
Locke explains that humans exert a force when they labor. This human force has a singular effect on nature—it adds worth to any previously unaltered substance. Does this mean that anything any other organism touches, man touches better? Modern farmers might agree that decomposition and the additions that microorganisms provide a soil are ecological services that indeed have value. Recent studies into the quantifiable value of ecosystem services suggest that such services (pollination, water purification, and soil development over thousands of years) generated for human use for free each year by nature far exceed the annual global gross domestic product (human production). Does this mean Locke’s theory is driven by anthropocentric madness rather than an ability to judge reality? 
Locke writes, “Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with it, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property” (Locke 2003-2006:1). If the assumption that human labor inherently improves natural substances and is therefore more valuable than a naturally functioning ecosystem has been proven illogical, what can be made of the assumed theory of private property that was built from it? Meaning, when the notion that whatever man touches turns into his property is torn from with the belief that man’s labor is more valuable than nature’s labor, what is left to justify the human theory of private property? If Locke was a contemporary thinker and he upheld his views of private property (rather than turning it into another sheepish justification for human dominance over nature) how much “property” should the naturally existing, service rich ecosystems own?
I wonder what our world would look like if the human economy was based on scientific evidence rather than the 17th century philosophy of Locke. To him, “the extent of ground is of so little value without labour that I have heard it affirmed that in Spain itself a man may be permitted to plough, sow, and reap, without being disturbed, upon land he has no other title to, but only his making use of it” (Locke 2003-2006:4). 
This is a reflection and continuation of Aristotle’s writing, which stresses nature’s potential to be understood and changed into a substance of value. This is built on Aristotle’s simple thought that, “The life of the lower animals is defined by the capacity of sensation, of man as the capacity for sensation plus thought” (Marshall 1994:75). So because humans have a conceptual framework (given by God or evolution or whatever) for their intentions and their labor, their actions inherently add value to the unreasoning forces of nature. I am caught up on this point, because Locke’s belief is very dependent on the human perception that the World was given to men and the human belief that nature is economically worthless if left undeveloped.
I wonder what this planet would be like today if animism, not biblical thought, had impacted Locke’s notion of property. I am sure the one of the main reasons biblical thought was so dominant in the 17th century was because it gives people power over their environment and the righteousness to overcome people who live more in unity with it. The real world example is the power that farmers had over non-agriculturist societies. Simply put, agricultural societies that occupied one place (their property) generated more food, which led to a conglomeration of people in one place, which led to advances in technology that allowed these societies to dominate other nomadic, property-less societies.
This is oversimplifying things a bit. There were nomadic followers of the Western monotheistic religions that dominated their surroundings (or added value to them). And animists had impacts on their environments. But the image of a bible-equipped European culture coming across the Atlantic and eventually dominating a nature-equipped Native American culture provides meaningful evidence that Christianity has influenced our antagonism towards the Earth and other civilizations. People who were native to this continent would never have viewed any segment of the Earth as property of an individual. Their reverence for the Earth has been described to me as something of a human respect for our mothers. We cannot own our mothers, how could we own the Earth? It was the Aristotle-led theories and their expansion over time by biblical thinkers and warriors that allowed Locke to construct the “common sense” notion of the Earth as ownable, acquirable and seizable. Contrary to the pervasiveness of Locke's theory, nature is not stagnant or unproductive. And until we employ this knowledge directly in the context of our own lives, I do not believe our species has a long-term answer to revitalizing the human economy.
Locke, John. “Of Property” from The Two Treatises of Government. Lonang Institute, 2003-2006.
Marshall, Peter H. Nature's web rethinking our place on earth. New York: Paragon House, 1994.
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I wonder what our world would look like if the human economy was based on scientific evidence rather than the 17th century philosophy of Locke.
I wonder what this planet would be like today if animism, not biblical thought, had impacted Locke’s notion of property.
I think the answer to that question is that we would be living like the native Americans or like any of a number of other primative societies found around the world. You may like that idea but I much prefer what we have now. Are you another example of a so-called progressive who is actually a paleo-conservative yearning for a return to earlier times? We could and we may eventually get back to that point but it will involve massive starvation and deprivation on an untold scale.
I think you understated the understanding that even primative societies had of property. Most of them at least had strong notion of collective tribal ownership of hunting grounds and they were often prepared to fight to protect them Many of them also had notions of other types of property ownership like personal possessions, shelters, tools, women and slaves. It seems almost unreasonable to think that this notion of personal ownership would not be an idea that got extended to land as soon as it became advantageous to the survival of the society as they progressed..
It is interesting that you focused on the Western tradition of private property because similar arrangements have arisin elsewhere in the world like China, Japan and elsewhere in Asia and I'm pretty sure Africa. Private property is fundamental to the evolution of society much beyond the hunter/gather stage and/or the most primative agriculture.
It turns out that people won't work very hard or invest in land that they don't own. It also turns out that people will fight to keep their private property. The only way both Stalin and Mao were able to impose communist collectivism on the more conservative landed rural peasantry was to artificially create massive famines that killed tens of millions of people. And once the remaining people were forced onto the collective farms they were pretty much universally unproductive failures.
As you muse on this subject, you should ponder the notion of "stewardship". People take better care of something that they own. We see it in the Western United States where a large portion of the land is owned by the public. The forests and the parks are fairly well loved but the rangelands and the badlands are not as well cared for as the similar private land. We have a Wyoming State Section of land near my town that is routinely trashed by the public. We've seen the same phenomena on an international scale. The former communist Soviet Union where people did not own land is an environmental nightmare. And we saw the same, on a less destructive scale in more primative societies. Primative farmers who did not understand property rights practiced slash and burn and used their land until it was used up and incapable of sustaining agriculture and then moved on. Farmers who owned their land and who were tied to it learned such things as how to allow it to lay fallow, crop rotation, and how to apply fertilzer and how to preserve top soil. And Native Americans were not the huge environmentalists that they are often portrayed. There were not that many of them and they had very low levels of technology so they did not have a huge impact on the environment, but they also did not give environmental stewardship much thought. For example Crazy Horse set the entire Big Horn Mountain Range on fire to celebrate his victory after the Custer Massacre.
I find it amusing that so many green/environmentalist types seem to classify human activity as something that happens outside of nature and the eco-system. We are animals just like ants or beavers. And just like ants or beavers we are both builders and destroyers and shapers and changers of the environment. It is in our animalistic NATURE to be this way and we are very good at it. We are part of the eco-system and just like ants or beavers we shape it to meet our needs.
I am not a philosopher or even a particularly able critical thinker, but it occurs to me that there are a lot of things that Locke conveniently ignores or is unaware of in his take on the world. Chief among them are the huge inequalities in education, technology, military might, etc. [One of the reasons Native Americans never sought out to conquer Europe (in addition to the notion being most likely absurd to them) is they didn't even know it was there. They lacked the ability to build and navigate ships on a transatlantic voyage of invasion and conquest. The same can be said for the peoples of Africa, India, and most of Asia and the Indian subcontinent)]. The political philosophies which were the foundation of Locke's private property arguments gave rise to the technology that permitted the rich and powerful to get richer and more powerful, both directly and through colonization by their fellows. If one is the beneficiary of this inequality, it makes sense to come down on the side of the values that got you there.
It is also true that Locke and others of his time and earlier had no concept of being able to irreparably damage the ecology of the planet. There was just so much of it that was new to them. And except for burning coal and some water projects, up until the 16th or 17th century, there was very little man did that Nature couldn't easily undue in a generation or so. The Western mindset was conquer, consume and move on. The stark differences between the Native American view of the world Green Underbelly lays out, and that of European invaders couldn't be more illustrative. Native Americans were usually viewed as savages by Europeans, while what Europeans had( forged weapons, fire arms, horses, iron cookware, buttons and beads) seemed like magic. The Native Americans who had established a workable relationship with Nature were the ones who really got the first clue that the ecology was going to be assaulted by the new guys on the block.
Taylorbad
"The person who defines Reality wins."
"The political philosophies which were the foundation of Locke's private property arguments gave rise to the technology that permitted the rich and powerful to get richer and more powerful, both directly and through colonization by their fellows. If one is the beneficiary of this inequality, it makes sense to come down on the side of the values that got you there."
That is exactly where I'm coming from. Part of the reason philosophers had a leg up on their fellows on other continents was their view of their role in nature... they reasoned that if they understand the rest of nature's potential (its laws and interworkings), they could control it and act apart from it. Marx and Locke each believed this. This philosophy worked for them, they were able to justify it with the accumulation of wealth. It's not difficult to see how this dominant belief was used to justify civilizing "savages."
People like myself (environmentalists or whatever label fits us) defend the reunity of mind and body into one...we're beginning to see the role of our brain in understanding nature for the benefit of changing our ways to be more aligned with the rest of this planet's organisms. We see the path Aristotle chose does not provide us with a good map for our potential as a species. We see that undeveloped nature has human and nonhuman value (by quantifying their ecological services we are able to justify the importance of wilderness). Now we're beginning to see a different role for science...understanding the rest of nature so that we can mimic the beauty of millions of years of evolution.
my documentary...
"some folks say that a hippie won't steal,
but I caught three in my corn field"
--John Hartford
Obviously, his argument was one to justify domination, as Green Underbelly points out. There is absolutely, from a biological point of view, need for humans on earth, and we certainly don't do a better job "managing" land, then the land does itself.
I find your statement Jack, very strange "It turns out that people won't work very hard or invest in land that they don't own."
Why do we need to invest in land? Uninvented, unspoiled forest works best left alone..sure if someone turns that bit of forest into their own personal dump, then they are investing that to that land...but if we truly leave functioning ecosystems alone, doesn't that work best for that functioning ecosystem? This idea that we must do something with every single patch of earth on earth, otherwise it is wasted is absurd...whatever you call it; whether that be "stewardship" or "forest management" or "resource management" it is still part of that domination model of doing things.
My life is no more or less important then the life of the bacteria colonies who live in my gut; I provide an ecosystem for them, they help me break down food. I wish we could somehow extend this view to the entirety of the world.
Love ya,
Carrot
The ability to think leads to the CONCEPT of property. Which is why the organism that thinks takes ownership while none of the others do. Ownership is not entirely a man made legal fabrication: birds have their nests, foxes have their dens, Beavers build dams...
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"the image of a bible-equipped European culture coming across the Atlantic and eventually dominating a nature-equipped Native American culture provides meaningful evidence that Christianity has influenced our antagonism towards the Earth and other civilizations."
Actually the same domination by farmers over nomads had already played out many times around the world before Christ, Moses, or even Abraham walked the earth. The technological gap in the case of the Americas may have been larger than ever, but farming allowed fewer food producers to support artisans(creating technology), and more importantly professional soldiers. Influenza killed most of the native Americans before they even saw Europeans. Religion was the least important factor when it came to domination.
Do you think Christ or his followers invented war?
"Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace."
--Oscar Wilde
I don't know if Christ and his followers "invented" much of anything. Invention and justification are two entirely different things. Instead of telling a different story about human nature, Genesis justifies hierarchies and emphasizes dominion of the Earth.
"Actually the same domination by farmers over nomads had already played out many times around the world before Christ, Moses, or even Abraham walked the earth."
Absolutely. If you've read "Ishmael," by Daniel Quinn or "Guns, Germs, Steel" by Jared Diamond, you'll note that the story of Cain and Abel was slowly playing itself out 10,000 years ago at the inception of agriculture.
I'm just saying that as our scientific and technological prowess expanded, our moral codes didn't (and for many people they still haven't) exactly expanded to a more realistic vision of our place on this Earth.
my documentary...
"some folks say that a hippie won't steal,
but I caught three in my corn field"
--John Hartford
Ask anyone, I usually pick some indefensible snippet to comment on.
I have read "Guns, Germs, Steel" by Jared Diamond. Not as good a read as it was a piece of thought and research.
Prior to the industrial revolution people really STRUGGLED to survive. 16 hour work days were common, as were droughts famines and plagues. This dire reality lead to 'social Darwinism' between cultures. Wars often resulted from sheer desperation for food. It was actually progress once humans began to fight more of their wars for political-religious reasons instead.
The strongest morals, ideas and people usually survived, note 'strongest' as opposed to 'best'.
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"I'm just saying that as our scientific and technological prowess expanded, our moral codes didn't (and for many people they still haven't) exactly expanded to a more realistic vision of our place on this Earth."
I'm mostly with you on intent.
Bad mouthing big chunks of humanity is not exactly a step toward advancement in 'moral codes'. Calling the religion or morality of the native Americans 'Heathen' or some other disparaging term would be the equivalent and also not helpful toward progressing.
"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."
- George Bernard Shaw
I will get back and comment more in depth, then :]
looks so interesting!
“You cannot wean away an addict from the drug. It is not possible for me to walk away from Ranjha. If it is our destiny to be together then who, other than God, can change it?”
she's a spaceman, no walker, dreamer...maybe