Why is it Okay and Morally Justified to Own other people?

Listen… when you say something or somebody is “yours” or “mine” …these words mean Ownership.

You can deny it all you want. And this thread is proof of the denial. It doesn’t change the fact, or common sense.

“Yours”, “Mine”, My Child, all signify Ownership, Property, Possession. You can claim that “humans are subjects and cannot be owned”, but it doesn’t change the human relationship.

Karpel, when somebody kidnaps your child, then you are distraught and maddened, because it is “your child”. Because you own your own child. That’s why. That’s the reason. That’s the cause.

No amount of linguistic jump-roping and hula-hooping is going to get you out of it (Ecmandu), Mr. English-Language-Is-Not-Good-Enough. Yes, it is. It describes and directly signifies, the exact relationship.

If anything, human beings, and animals too, are most possessive of their progeny, and “own body”, than anything else. It is most paramount, not least, as you all have tried in vain to counter-argue.

I own my parents.

So what is the alternative, in case of children - their parents do not have responsibility for them, no right to compel them to say, stay in the house at night…

the idea is that a parent has responsibility for and some command over a child as long as the child is not capable of taking care of itself.

Its a rule based on pragmatism rather than deep moral contemplation. But I don’t think any law says that children are literally property of their parents.

I agree in partial approbation of responsibility as the child grows older, they a say.e more responsibility for their actions, as expected from them, except in cases where their growth does not align with their development.

Then, the causes for this need to be looked at, from increasingly deeper levels. And this.procedure of analysis can come to a block, bolted by a dead lock, which primarily can appear as impenetrable iron clad.

Same

They did my bidding… not vice versa.

You’re talking about a symbiotic relationship here, but most aren’t like that… most don’t give a fuck, and so I think I, and some, are past caring.

I’m not in denial, I just prefer the term ‘belonging’ to ‘owning’. We own what we buy… we didn’t buy our partner or our child… we attracted the former and then made the latter.

…that of belonging? ; )

I’m most possessive of my mind/my brain… it Lords itself over me, and so I take control, of It.

Ok, we’re talking about family so far.

What about, “my friend”?

Do you own “your” friend? Are they “your” property?

I suppose one needs to be able to own up to life to own oneself - owning oneself means being independent. Resourcefulness is required, fullness of resource. Spartans tried to give children quick self-ownership by literally throwing them to the wolves. One either owns oneself or doesn’t exist.

Perhaps also, the drive to own other people.
Can one own oneself if one owns part of another?

If not, most would perhaps rather relinquish self-ownership.

People generally are neither self-critical nor self-aware. People have an intrinsic, innate, “natural”, sense-of-self and autonomy. This is why it makes sense to say such things as “my food”, “my teddy bear”, “my friend”, “my house”, etc. Possession is a very powerful and profound concept. It signifies Authority, most of which goes unspoken. People have a sixth-sense when it comes to Authority, Ownership, Responsibility, and Assets. People try to be ‘respectful’ to each-other, but, freedom and liberty are trampled all the time, everyday. Everybody steps on everybody’s toes. Everybody breathes each-other’s air. There’s not enough for everybody, not enough to go around. This produces conflict, competition, and fighting. A shared claim: “this is mine – No! it’s mine!” results in conflict. When a child is kidnapped, it is because the child is possessed/owned/guarded, whatever you want to call it, by the parents, and especially the mother. A child is a bodily-extension of the mother.

The fact that most of you can sit here, deny it, pretend it doesn’t exist, or discount it, speaks to the truth of the matter. It runs deeper than most care to admit.

In response to Fixed Cross, Self-Ownership comes first. You cannot “own another”, or anything, without first owning some small aspect of ‘Self’. This is the root of Ego, “I”, “You”, identity, itself.

Do you own your own memories??? Let that sink in. How philosophical do you want to get? How philosophical can you get?

The term “throw em to the wolves” literally comes from Sparta and Greece, yes indeed.

You need to “own-yourself” before you can ever hope to own anything else. Maybe, most people don’t? Most people do not own-themselves, but are instead, owned by others? Consider that option. The State? God? The Heavenly Father? Call it what you will.

There are various meanings to the term ‘own’.

1. belonging to oneself or itself —usually used following a possessive case or possessive adjective.

2. used to express immediate or direct kinship

3. to have or hold as property : POSSESS

4. to acknowledge to be true, valid, or as claimed : ADMIT
   merriam-webster.com/dictionary/own

Thus ‘the child is owned by his parents’ denote 2. immediate or direct kinship.
Meaning 3 i.e. hold as property is not applicable to parents and their children.

Inductively justified, it is intrinsic within human nature that human parents has the moral obligation to exercise parental care over their children till they are mature to go on their own. This is also very evident with all the ‘higher’ animals.

You cannot equivocate the two different meaning of the term ‘own’ in this case.
What is morally wrong with ‘ownership’ of another human is related to meaning 3, i.e. to own another human as a chattel that can be traded financially or otherwise,
or own to serves as a means to one’s end.
All humans has the right to basic human dignity, thus are only ends to themselves and not as mean to the end of others.
The Golden Rule & other universal moral rules within all normal humans applies here.

You cannot conflate meaning 2 with meaning 3 as in the above.

Once the child is matured to go on his own, the parent do not have the moral obligation to be responsible for the child’s survival. However the parents can use their discretion of there is need to take care of the child, subject to their state of empathy and compassion.

As-if children turn 18-years-old and the parent doesn’t love or feel possession of them anymore???

What. The. Fuck???

This is a strange forum. How can you and others imply such things???

Perhaps in claiming ‘ownership’ of our children and kin and kind, the concept can open up and allow for (and often is… as we know) kin to take advantage of their kin and kind… as seen in the selling off of one’s children, kin, and own un-related kind, into servitude, prostitution, and slavery etc… and let’s not forget physical, mental, and sexual abuse, of the above aforementioned groups.

A birth certificate is proof of Parent/s, and as a legal document does not contain the word ‘own’ …it does however acknowledge that that child belongs to those Parent(s), and also prohibits the likelihood of anyone claiming your child(ren) as theirs’.

I’m not against you, @Urwrong, in using the word ‘own’, but I think the World is wary of its connotations and therefore it’s implementations and legitimacy for crime and criminal activities.

I think the author of the thread should define the word “own”.

However, since I believe such a thing will never happen, considering the difficulty of the task, I suggest rephrasing the question posed in the original post.

The question posed in the original post is:

One can restate in the following manner:

There you go. The word “own” has vanished.

Indeed, as Shakespeare says in what might be the most powerful four lines in all of poetry:

“So between them love did shine
That the Turtle saw his right
Flaming in the Phoenix’ sight:
Either was the other’s mine.”

But it’s a mutual possession… And I’ll go further and say unless you feel so “possessed,” so positively enslaved you can never be free. This type of “slavery” needs to be distinguished from the negative type of slavery… like as in owning actual slaves… The feeling of possession for slaves will never be as profound as the feeling of “possession” between two people in love… Additionally, the slave can be discarded and replaced. It’s an economic unit that helps bring you profit (like modern wage slaves do to giant corporations)…You can’t discard the person you’re in love with …it would be like trying to untie the knot of fate (the harder you try, the tighter its hold on you gets)…Nor can you assign him or her a specific value, his/her value is limitless/infinite…Does this mean that true valuing starts with valuing someone whose value is limitless, but I digress…

Now this brings up an interesting question… Could the slave owner ever love his slave to the point that he elevates him up to a place of honor and dignity like real lovers do?

Mutual love to that regard is a zero sum game. 2 winners, 8 billion losers. It’s uneightened people that throw out apologetics for mutual ownership, on every level. Just two psychopaths who don’t give a shit about life on earth … but have waited their whole lives for the excuse of mutual ownership and to make it sound like the best thing in all of earth.

I love people. People love me. I have no illusions that this is something to celebrate or dignify. I mourn it everyday. But then again, I’m not a sociopath. I’m not always as skilled as I’d like to be, but let’s be realistic, the level of skill required to talk to billions of sociopaths has to be extremely damn high. They’re always sociopathing on you, ceaselessly, relentlessly.

Navigating that is extremely difficult.

You make a good point, but ultimately fail.

Yes, love/ownership is Exclusivity. It is the bond between Two, to the detriment and exclusion of Several Billion. Thus it is dangerous to ‘Own’ others, to form intimate bonds, or further, to bear the progeny of such bonds, which is the relationship between Mother and Child. The fact that, on this forum, common sense is denied, and “you don’t own your own body”, is very telling as to the casual, average psyche, this representing a microcosm to the macrocosm. Do average people, also, not own themselves, and not own their own children? Maybe not. In that case, maybe you have a point, Ecmandu. However, I personally believe that people lie, often. People say one thing, but think a second, and act a third. So you say you have “love for humanity”, but I doubt it.

Ownership is primal and primary. Animals have it. It is instinct. Just as you ‘Own’ the food you eat and swallow, so too do you ‘Own’ your body, so too do you ‘Own’ your progeny, which is direct, biological, genetic extension of self.

Continue with your Denials. This has been a very, very informative thread thus far. Let’s keep it going.

I misspoke about love. I meant to say that there are mutual loved ones in my life.

The Bible and bagivad Gita make it very clear that we don’t own ourselves (only god owns).

I’d like to think we own ourselves.

Custodianship may be a fancy legal term for a possession, however, implicit in custodianship is the concept also of individual rights for the person under custody.

That’s a strange use of the words “own” and “property”. I should hope that’s not how we would describe a healthy family, where parents raise and nurture their children to be healthy, independent people. This is quite unlike a person’s relationship to, say, a book that they own. Is the difference in relationship not apparent?

How can a country be yours if you don’t own it?
How can a street be yours if you don’t own it?
How can a favorite color be yours if you don’t own it?
How can my valentine “be mine” if I don’t own people?
If you don’t take ownership of your problems, how can they still be yours?

Perhaps the key to all these questions, is that there are senses of “having” something, or such strong identification with it, that we call it “ours” (it is related to us) in a sense quite unlike physical property. Perhaps we shouldn’t reduce all sense of “my/own/ours” etc. to property ownership.

This is the thread that keeps on giving and giving.

No, you’re right Fuse. If somebody kidnaps your child, then it’s okay, and it’s not really “kidnapping”, because you never owned them in the first place.

You got me…?

Also I learned, in this thread, that you don’t “own” something, or somebody, unless you can sell it.

That means you own one of your kidneys, which you can sell, on the black market, but not the other?

Very enlightening thread.

I didn’t realize that so few humans in this world, actually own-themselves. You are not your own property? Whaaaaaaaaat???

Equivocation is critical thinking 101. There many senses in which feeling that something is yours, has nothing to do with property ownership.