Redefining the Definition of Property

To Include People as Inclusive Within Property

In the bygone days, once upon a time, before the gods who created the earth were created by man to give dominion to some to rule over other men and whatever resources he might obtain in the process, the earth itself brought forth those resources in the turbulence of becoming the planet it became.  As the earth developed the resources in this initial era of turbulence in initially formulating itself, one of those resources that was used to create what was to become this planet was a molecular structure we know as RNA that became the building block for what we know as life on earth.

It’s rather a mutant bit of miscomprehension to discuss whether those molecular structures were “brought” here from interactions with extraterrestrial collisions, because much of all of the building blocks of the initial elements of the entire solar system was after the collapse of the greater mass of lighter collapsing into the sun and acquiring more mass and greater gravity, ,the rest thereafter shaping themselves into the planets and the larger planets because of the basic need of elements to form together which then can form into some types of things.  That was the very first cataclysmic environmental disturbance that occurred—the formation of what was to become the earth and the environment that  became encased into the solidification of those elements into a sphere strong enough to have its own gravitational pull.  

Once the earth became some thing, an entity in this solar system that was the third (out of four) rocks from the sun—the next four planets did not necessarily become rocks—the second cataclysmic environment disturbance upon the earth, the shaping of the elements that had coalesced into what was to become the initial environment of the earth.  And it is now becoming those molecules formulated into the elements of “life” way back in the days of that formation.  There is beginning to a discussion created on whether or not this was life or not, because whatever initially these RNA building blocks formed into was not carbon based and probably didn’t require water for subsistence but nevertheless became an existing element in the creation of these early environmental clashes.  

And while it is almost indisputable that what we term life came from this formation, and almost certainly within water, that development itself reshaped the environment. And that’s how it all works—lifeforms are created from the environment that then transform the environment that transforms the lifeforms on a continuing basis.  And evolution is really nothing more than this, it is not a survival of the fittest , but a part of a continuing process of development.

Of course long before man developed from this process, the process itself created the properties necessary for the survival of the species within the property it survived within.  So life that evolved within water created a need for the species of life that developed to have a need for water.  The species that developed within the water defined the properties of the water (ocean) that defined the properties of the species.  There was  never an arrow, or arc of one-way time; evolution is a development of the continuous interrelationships between its life forms and their ability to survive is not just a static relationship to the environment but reshapes the environment that shapes the lifeforms.

As the species of humanity was taking shape, and one of the things we have discussed, there was a need to not over-shape its own environment.  Many species can survive primarily with a certain environmental sitting.  Cats, for instance, developed certain characteristics that they have in common, but unique characteristics to survive in different environments.  A snow leopard could not survive in the environment where jungle tigers survive in central India.  Like we now know about humanity, there was probably more than a single evolution of great cats that evolved in differing environments.  The environment the species evolves within becomes the property of the species in which the species evolves.  As we know even from domestic cats, that if the people remove the cat (unlike a dog) from one locale to another, the cat’s instinctual nature is to return to its prior home.  The cat identifies its locale as its property and has a need to readjust itself to a new property.

The dog however, identifies itself as part of the tribe (family) it resides in and the dog’s property is the members within its tribe.  Early on our human ancestors (at least as far back as homo erectus, but perhaps much sooner) identified, like canines, with the tribe, and not with a particular locale.  In this sense, humankind developed absent a sense of property of land and only a sense of an identification with the tribe.  

Now, even before neolithism allowed for more permanency and identifying land as a possession of the tribe, what we term to be called the hunter-gatherer age, began to coalesce at least into more of a semi-nomadic existence than they have previously been recognized to have done.  So in this sense, the arrival of the neolithic age into a primacy of community upon a specific location on a more or less permanent basis was not a radically new development.  But it did create a conflict situation which I’ve written much about previously.

And while this certainly gave rise to the opportunity of kings, it did not (I don’t believe) necessitate them.  I will not accept as any type of rational logic, the idea that people went to the tribal leader and said, “hey, we’ll become your slaves because we see a benefit in being slaves.”  I believe first initially, and then later in reaction to, that kings incorporated their leadership by conquering an environment and enslaving the people.  The property of a king included not only the environment which he claimed for himself, but the people who were the spoils of conquest and became the slaves.  And while kings themselves assumed ownership of all of their domains, the larger the domain, the more fiefdoms of support he needed to control the domain.  This was in some ways the first evolutionary step into “private” property, but not in the sense that these sub-fiefdoms were independent of the king’s property.  The king still owned the property of the sub-fiefdoms who in return retained a grant of the property contingent upon loyalty to the king.  And this in return created conflict.

Ultimately though the spoils of the system were the individuals who were conquered and became, in return, property.  So to trace this development, humankind evolved propertyless, became propertied by the relationship of the community to its environment, and then themselves became part of the property as a kingdom expanded its own property. But nowhere did the concept of “private property”  exist. No matter if a vassal attempted to exert control or break free of control from his king or succeed in separation from the king or conquering the king, all property existed alone with the king or any vassal or overseer of any land, and all of the people who resided within any area were the property of its overseer.  The conquered humanity were enslaved, and the unconquered were its peasants or craftsmen, sometimes its servants, but nevertheless the undeclared slaves, but owned persons of the principals who owned the land and the peoples of the land.  

The Rise if European Colonialism

So if neither conquering other people or other lands brought forth any new ideologies of what property is, or who was property, or even in the entire to the victors go the spoils of land and people, some years after the initial thrust of the Portuguese beyond the confines of Europe proper (not really, because ten centuries North Africa, the middle East, and Europe had been jointly  in conflict for control, and the East often intertwined to a certain degree, and beginning in the 9th century the Muslims made large encroachments everywhere, and into eastern Europe.

Between 535-555 A.D. there was a worldwide environmental disaster.  It is noted in the contemporaneous records and has been notably confirmed  by recent studies in plant ecological studies.  At present though we are not fully certain the cause.  It is not thought it was from a meteor of extraterrestrial origin, and so more than likely caused by a massive volcanic eruptions—and where the eruption occurred, or if it might have been one occurrence, well there are several pet theories, each of which claim they know, but no solid proof to support or refute any particular volcano.  But the catastrophe was massive.  Contemporaneous records from around the globe call it the “year of no sun”.  It was a vast dusting where soils dried out.  But the effects, while felt by land species, were primarily a massive blow to plant species that the darkened skies prevented from getting the sunlight necessary for photosynthesis.  

At any rate, Emperor Justinian who had reconquered  and reincorporated western Europe and northern Africa and subdued Persia into a subsidiary of the last coming of the Roman empire, lost most of his territory.  The Chinese civilization collapsed, and in the Americas the Teotiachuan empire collapsed.Possibly because animal life and human life became more closely intermingled, possibly because rodents moved closer to civilization’s animal enclosures, but as the environment was beginning to heal and the sun began to penetrate through the atmosphere again, a worldwide plague began.  And this seeming internationalism of the bubonic emergence decimated so much of the human population there was no available tax base and the civilizations collapsed and chaos dominated.  New empires emerged to replace others, but for the next 500 years Europe was unable to thrive and the only centralized authority seemed to be the rise of the western church.  Christianity, never totally unified, split into its eastern division and its western division.  Whatever central authority was left was commandeered by the church and civil authorities in the west became vassals of the church itself.  

By the 11th century there began to appear several stronger central authorities again, and the church itself dominated less authoritatively, but nevertheless subjected these new states to a religious authoritarianism. Of course all of this turmoil and backwardness within the former western part of the Roman Empire created a continuous barbarism that for 500  years was fought by a continuous round of territorial conflict and lack of strong national identities as ethnic identities allied behind tribal chiefs  in constant strife to establish supremacy.  The church, which had assumed the only bonding authority of any kind, did not really wish to see strong national identities arise.  Slavery therefore took on a new identity in Europe.  It was no longer about slaves being conquered into slavery , but the people themselves becoming enslaved to the lands, no matter the conqueror of the land.  The concept of serfdom arose so the church and the would-be kings could eat and the peasants had no part in identifying as part of a particular leader.  

Slavery therefore took on a new identity in Europe.  It was no longer about slaves being conquered into slavery; but the people themselves becoming enslaved to the lands, no matter the conqueror of the land.  The property of land and the concept of serfdom arose so the church and the would-be kings could eat and the peasants had no part in identifying as part of a particular leader to support any particular conflict because the estates  themselves were now not worked by captured humans who were enslaved.  Serfdom became the total properization of people that needed  no longer to be conquered but were included into the property itself.

And so Europe transformed (via church organization) the concept of slavery from the spoils of conquest to the permanence of an existence subject to being tied to being parcel of the property belonging to the land and not to the lord.  There were various stages of the development of serfdom but there is no need right now to explain its growth and then demise and then regrowth in eastern Europe (and Russia) for much longer than it survived in the west.  

Now as the great environmental catastrophe in Europe resulted in five centuries of chaos, it gave birth directly in the mid-east to the rise of Islamism, which led to several strong centralized eastern caliphates.  For brevity’s sake I am going to move directly to the Iberian peninsula.  During the fragmentation of authority in western Europe, one of those Islamic caliphates led by Al-wahlid of the Umayyads sent Tariq ibn Ziyad to venture from north Africa into Spain in 711.  After defeating the Visigoth king Roderic the Islamic caliphate began a complete conquest of Iberia that would consequentially create a bellwether of undarkness in Europe that would be responsible for the European empires that would become a global phenomenon.