1239

Imagine denying other living and breathing lifeforms agency to thrive and change lol lol lol (mander.xyz)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

84 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Fun facts: the UK has crazy laws protecting trees and hedgerows. There's a national tree registry for old boys.

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[-] napoleonsdumbcousin@feddit.de 122 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] match@pawb.social 104 points 2 months ago

Nothing is protected by law, everything protected is by the will of the people

[-] Daft_ish@lemmy.world 20 points 2 months ago

What if the deed was the friends we made along the way?

[-] dynamicperson@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago

A friend in need is a friend in deed...

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] fossilesque@mander.xyz 34 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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.

[-] Natanael@slrpnk.net 8 points 2 months ago

It's called environmental protection groups, animal rights groups, etc. Plenty don't want to listen, though

[-] fossilesque@mander.xyz 4 points 2 months ago

I mean literally representatives like senators not interest groups.

[-] azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 months ago

Who is going to keep them accountable? Trees have a record high abstention rate, and if these representatives are elected by humans that's just proportional voting with veneer on top.

Democracy is about balancing levers, and that's why there is more than one branch of government. Special interest groups do have power, and so does the judiciary (who may sue the government for unlawful cutting down of trees) and the executive (who may have power to declare certain government-owned land to be Protected).

The real ecologist move would be to write a duty to protect the environment into the constitution, so that the judiciary can strike down any law that does anything to the contrary.

load more comments (2 replies)

[-] Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 2 months ago

I would argue most things in government should be ran in the black or red. There's just a certain type of person who wants to turn everything Into a for profit.

[-] flora_explora@beehaw.org 4 points 2 months ago

You may like Bruno Latour and his rather philosophical book Politics of Nature. I read it in a philosophy seminar and it seemed fascinating how the author tries to completely overthrow the view we have on "nature" and give it agency.

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 87 points 2 months ago

and everyone just went with it.

Technically, how all law really works at its core.

[-] wizzor@sopuli.xyz 33 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] Jinx2756@lemmy.world 23 points 2 months ago

And money.

[-] Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] Madison420@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

I mean they aren't technically wrong some of the time, we shouldn't have to pay to exist it's fucking crazy.

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] reverendsteveii@lemm.ee 12 points 2 months ago

Technically, how all law really works at its core.

Well, that and the threat of overwhelming unilateral violence

[-] Sylvartas@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago

Which usually does cause one to just go with it

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] Crikeste@lemm.ee 47 points 2 months ago

The trees owned the lands until the humans took it from them.

[-] AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world 41 points 2 months ago

Humans:

[-] Xavienth@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 2 months ago

Lebanon enters chat

[-] einlander@lemmy.world 25 points 2 months ago

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

[-] Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 2 months ago

Dude’s lived how ever many hundred years and never even heard of mineral rights, smh.

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] fossilesque@mander.xyz 8 points 2 months ago

Nah, more like rented their place until they could give back to the earth with the ultimate sacrifice.

[-] TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee 9 points 2 months ago

Isn’t that what we all do though?

[-] MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net 9 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee 5 points 2 months ago

That just delays things ultimately

[-] Natanael@slrpnk.net 4 points 2 months ago

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

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] Akasazh@feddit.nl 35 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] doubtingtammy@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 months ago

I think conservation techniques can count as science. If it was a rare species, the science connection would be more obvious

[-] fossilesque@mander.xyz 4 points 2 months ago

I'm in the Dawkins definition of meme camp. Memes are a funny thing, pun intended. :)

[-] Akasazh@feddit.nl 5 points 2 months ago

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.

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 32 points 2 months ago

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??

[-] reverendsteveii@lemm.ee 30 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 14 points 2 months ago

In this case "they" is a fairly small city and its sense of tradition, so you will find "they" is actually "because the people wanted to."

load more comments (3 replies)

[-] lugal@sopuli.xyz 27 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] fossilesque@mander.xyz 13 points 2 months ago

Well, fuck.

[-] Grellan@lemm.ee 13 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 2 months ago

wait so, can i just deed the title of my land to my land upon my death? Is that something i can just fucking do?

[-] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 36 points 2 months ago

As long as enough of town decides to go along with it. If the town decides you were a coot and would rather have a gas station, the tree is fucked.

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 2 months ago

Trees now have more rights than women in the State of Texas

[-] ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Actually this tree is in Georgia, so it can't get abortions after 6 weeks either.

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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.

[-] Deebster@programming.dev 11 points 2 months ago

Study after study has shown that trees in cities offer huge benefits: offering shade and cooling (reducing energy consumption), draining storm/flood water (very useful in our more extreme climate), cleaning the air and emitting oxygen, homing wildlife, improving mental health by reducing anxiety and depression, being nice to look at.

Every city tree should be treasured and protected.

[-] fossilesque@mander.xyz 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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.

load more comments (2 replies)

[-] spankinspinach@sh.itjust.works 12 points 2 months ago

Okay curious question. There's a legal movement arguing that nature should be protected by law/be considered when undertaking things that might affect it (esp. resource development).

Does anybody with any legal knowledge know if this would create some kind of legal precedent? Obviously it's not enshrined in written law, but a tree that owns itself (even by mutual agreement) seems to suggest it's somewhat plausible, and it's not like laws always make sense lol. Or am I just reading too much into this?

[-] emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 10 points 2 months ago

Obviously, it would vary from country to country. But some countries do give legal status either to nature as a whole, or to rivers, mountains, etc. In practice, this means that the state / a citizen can sue anyone who pollutes or otherwise harms the river / mountain / nature, without needing to prove that the pollution is bad for other people.