Fun facts: the UK has crazy laws protecting trees and hedgerows. There’s a national tree registry for old boys.
The story of the Tree That Owns Itself is widely known and is almost always presented as fact. Only one person—the anonymous author of “Deeded to Itself”—has ever claimed to have seen Jackson’s deed to the tree. Most writers acknowledge that the deed is lost or no longer exists—if in fact it ever did exist. Such a deed would have no legal effect. Under common law, the recipient of a piece of property must have the legal capacity to receive it, and the property must be delivered to—and accepted by—the recipient.[6] Both are impossible for a tree to do, as it isn’t a legal person.
[…]
“However defective this title may be in law, the public recognized it.”[11] In that spirit, it is the stated position of the Athens-Clarke County Unified Government that the tree, in spite of the law, does indeed own itself.[12] It is the policy of the city of Athens to maintain it as a public street tree.[13]
[…]
Although the story of the Tree That Owns Itself is more legend than history, the tree has become, along with the University Arch and the Double-Barreled Cannon, one of the most recognized and well-loved symbols of Athens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_That_Owns_Itself
In reality, the tree is not protected by law, but by the will of the people. Kind of symbolic if you ask me.
We should really have representatives for non humans in government that are meant to function at an economic loss/investment as a way of giving back. Too often these departments get pushed to deliver ecosystem services. We need to learn to give back without it being transactional. Make gift culture great again. Elect a Lorax.
It’s called environmental protection groups, animal rights groups, etc. Plenty don’t want to listen, though
I mean literally representatives like senators not interest groups.
Can I just get Danny DeVito?
and everyone just went with it.
Technically, how all law really works at its core.
Someone thought me the concept of a legal fiction and I still think about it.
Land ownership, companies, nation states, citizenship: all exist because we agree that it does.
And money.
This crooked little vein of logic is what gave us sovereign citizens though, so be careful. Time may be an illusion and all, but schedules still exist.
I mean they aren’t technically wrong some of the time, we shouldn’t have to pay to exist it’s fucking crazy.
I honestly agree with them about how dumb a lot of our legal system is. Their response is to try and make it dumber, though
Technically, how all law really works at its core.
Well, that and the threat of overwhelming unilateral violence
Which usually does cause one to just go with it
The trees owned the lands until the humans took it from them.
Humans:
The ownership of land is an odd thing when you come to think of it. How deep, after all, can it go? If a person owns a piece of land, does he own it all the way down, in ever narrowing dimensions, till it meets all other pieces at the center of the earth? Or does ownership consist only of a thin crust under which the friendly worms have never heard of trespassing?
-Tuck Everlasting
Nah, more like rented their place until they could give back to the earth with the ultimate sacrifice.
Isn’t that what we all do though?
Humans are bizarrely fond of stuffing their dead with preservatives, hermetically sealing them in a box, and/or incinerating them. Like, it’s our last chance to give a little bit back to nature, but nope.
That just delays things ultimately
With all the crap we put in ourselves it’s a good thing we slow down that process, like the casing of a slow action pill
How’s incinerating bad? Unless you’re keeping the leftovers I guess
I do like the info, I’m failing to see the science aspect, and even the meme aspect of this post. But I’m in the ‘microblog doesn’t equal meme’ camp.
I’m in the Dawkins definition of meme camp. Memes are a funny thing, pun intended. :)
The ‘not science’ part is what irked me and I tagged that on for laughs and irrelevant discussion (as is the following I’m not mad, but like to dabble in pedantry today):
But on that part, in the old days the dawkinsian meme was misappropriated to denote a specific image format. Of course it is a Dawkinsian one, too as it is a vector of ideas.
Then it got misappropriated again as ‘any funny image on the internet’, including microblogs, like you seen to defend. You then use the argument that it’s a meme in the Dawkinsian manner (and you’d be technically correct).
But using that logic anything in any medium is a meme. I could upload a Gilbert Gottfried narration of Atlas Shrugged, a clay tablet or the transcripts of all of money pythons movies and sketches. That would all be Dawkinsian memes, and debatebly funny, however not the kind the people here are interested in seeing.
So in in the camp ‘a meme means an image with caption’ and not micro blogs, otherwise anything goes.
Thanks for entertaining my diatribe.
Dawkin’s definition had nothing to do with humor. His definition was an idea that is spread through society. Its the intellectual equivalent to genes.
when the people who make the rules say “Sorry, the rules are the rules, there’s nothing we can do” remember that they literally gave a tree human rights just because they felt like it.
You’re not totally wrong, but an important distinction is that some rules aren’t there just to be arbitrary. They’re linked into a larger system, and you can’t change one without affecting thirty other things. It usually needs more than ten seconds of thought prior to posting on the Internet.
trees having human rights would shake up this whole system, what with us having entire economic sectors based on slaughtering them wholesale. so either you can just do things as a one-off without generalizing them or you can just shake up the whole system. obviously, this case was the former, which means that other cases can be too. way to end it by being a dick, though.
Sorry, I see how that last sentence can be read as being directed at you. I was thinking more of people in general who say “we should just change the rule"l because it doesn’t work in this one instances” without thinking of impacts beyond the immediate problem. Making the environment part of our economic and social systems is a good idea.
Are they sure the original Tree that Owned Itself was the mother of the Son of the Tree that owned itself? Or did some whore squirrel just deposit the acorn near the stump?
Have they done a DNA test to confirm that the son has a legal stake in the property?
Now the son is young, dumb, and full of pollen. He’s gotta be spreading it as far as the wind will take it. What will happen when he inevitably dies and his estate has to be settled??
A tree owning itself and it’s a white oak tree, who would have guessed. You can be victim of specicism and still a white supremacist. Think about it.
Well, fuck.
Much worse. This tree was given freedom in the Southern US. Slavery was still ongoing. The University of Georgia leased out it’s slaves.
So this tree was more important than actual people.
I don’t think it’s crazy at all to protect trees. We need them. What baffles me is how much we rely on them and still cut whole swaths of them down anyway without a thought.
It boggles my mind we feel the need to box ecology and not consider agency for any of the other parts that make life itself possible.
I get a lot of flack for my belief in other animals deserving agency. You’re the first person that’s ever agreed with me on that. Usually people get aggressive and call me names, and tell me I’m crazy, or a wack job, or any other number of names.
People like that fundamentally do not understand nature. It’s like an engine, a procees, not a thing.
Emotionally sensitive people make life worth living
Imagine denying other living and breathing lifeforms agency to thrive and change lol lol lol
Like abortion? Thank goodness we repealed Roe Vs Wade
Fetuses aren’t living and don’t breathe. They can’t live on their own and all their chemicals come from another human being (via the umbilical cord). This is opposed to the tree, which isn’t reliant on a certain being and instead gets its nutrients by itself through its roots and get oxygen for respiration & carbon dioxide for photosynthesis by itself, not an umbilical cord.
Trees are undeniably far more independent and living than a fetus. You’re kind of a weirdo for thinking some random small clump of cells is actually equivalent to a human child. I bet I could find basically the same thing in my back yard if I looked hard enough.
Trees are undeniably far more independent and living than a human.
I mean I can cut down all the trees I want so I’m not sure that’s true
You could also cut down ppl, if they weren’t interdependent and interacting with each other enough to realise fast enough and start retaliating.
One of the big factors making humans (and animals in general) have power over the trees is, that we are faster, both at action and adaptation, thanks to our superior mechanisms of Central Nervous System and Muscular systems.But at the same time, any single human would be much more dependent upon trees in general, as compared to how much a single tree would be, upon us, or other animals. Since the seed stage of the plant is sturdy enough to let it choose its starting point, all it really needs is for the place it chose to remain within a reasonable range of the germination conditions (soil, water, air, insolation quality etc.) and it will be just fine.
Please learn empathy.
The definitions of living, breathing, and life form would probably help
Is this outrage bait from other outrage bait forming an outrageception or ragechain or am I too long online today?
Besides where are the scientists
We all need grass time, sometimes. :)
I’m pretty sure there’s a quirk in marriage and inheritance law that leads to a concept called a pregnant fetus
You love to see it.
Land shouldn’t be owned by humans. Period.
