Imagined Property - thoughts from out there

Getting ready

Ok now I am going to write about property.  I have written a lot about property over the last ten years.  And writing about property seems important.

Why do I want is to write about property?  Well, my hope is to some day have a book published - a book written by me on the subject of property. In my dreams my book on property will be an important book that many people will read or at least claim to have read.  But it is not the book or even the ideas which matter.   The point about all this is 'me'.

In Cantebury's Tales Chaucer told the stories of pilgrims heading from London to Cantebury.  The story telling was a contest - the prize for the best story was the costs of the journey.   The idea of a religious pilgrimage is foreign to Westerners living in this 21st century.  Still the idea of life as a spiritual journey has meaning, if only as a metaphor.  Most people at some point in their lives wonder, if only for a few moments, about 'why'.  Why is it that we are alive, what is it that we are supposed to do and so on.    The question is, if not a pilgrimage, then what?  For me and, I suspect for many other people of my age culture and class, it is about being published.  

But what, you may ask does this have to do with property?

Well, in my concept of property the "self" takes centre stage.  Property begins and ends with me, myself and mine.  In the middle there are many other bits and pieces, details about ownership. But that is where is start next time.  With "ownership". 

Springing forward - falling back

The time difference between Vancouver and Auckland was five hours the week before last.  Today it is four hours and soon it will be three hours.  It happens with daylight savings.   New Zealand springs forward with daylight savings and Canada falls back with its end.

The idea of daylight savings is to have longer days...  at least I think that is the idea.  But the hour on the clock is only a measure and beyond that it is meaningless.  When I was in Tahiti for reasons no one thought important enough to explain, the day began at 5 or earlierwhen the sun rose.  The clock said 4:30 but when I got to the bakery there was already a line to buy bread.  The sun was high in the sky but the clock said 10:30: the sun was gone and dinner was served but the clock said 6:00.  And then it was "9:00" when most people retreated to bed.

The clock  helps to coordinate one's activities - but to think that the numbers have meaning beyond that is what some might call 'reification'.  

And this leads me to the current "financial crisis" as everyone calls it.  The numbers, 1.5 trillion dollars here, 700 billion euros there, and so on are in themselves only numbers.  Even the amounts they represent are not real.  The numbers may represent money - but money as a way of keeping score which needs to be seen as different from money as a means of exchange and money as a way to store value.  And this in my simple view is why a "bail out" is unlikely to work - the amounts are simply partial scores, like 3 to ? in a soccer game.  The government can offer another amount but what is needed is for the game to continue and this requires money to change hands - this requires money as a means of exchange.  But who wants to participate in a game where the guys keeping score, as in the Bank for a Monopoly Game, have cheated.  And who can participate when the only value money has is found in the game. 

So the numbers by themselves are meaningless but it is still daylight at 7 and I can phone my mother at 6.