Fun facts: the UK has crazy laws protecting trees and hedgerows. There’s a national tree registry for old boys.
and everyone just went with it.
Technically, how all law really works at its core.
Imagine denying other living and breathing lifeforms agency to thrive amd change lol lol lol
Submitted 7 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/f1bcec2f-0ce9-4e3a-bcbf-142254949c96.jpeg
Comments
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 7 months ago
wizzor@sopuli.xyz 7 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.
reverendsteveii@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Technically, how all law really works at its core.
Well, that and the threat of overwhelming unilateral violence
Sylvartas@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Which usually does cause one to just go with it
ArmokGoB@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
People could fight back if they cared enough.
Crikeste@lemm.ee 7 months ago
The trees owned the lands until the humans took it from them.
AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Xavienth@lemmygrad.ml 7 months ago
Lebanon enters chat
einlander@lemmy.world 7 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 7 months ago
Dude’s lived how ever many hundred years and never even heard of mineral rights, smh.
rikudou@lemmings.world 7 months ago
Well, at least in my country, only what’s above the ground.
fossilesque@mander.xyz 7 months ago
Nah, more like rented their place until they could give back to the earth with the ultimate sacrifice.
reverendsteveii@lemm.ee 7 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 7 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.”
frezik@midwest.social 7 months ago
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.
reverendsteveii@lemm.ee 7 months ago
trees having human rights would shake up this whole system, 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.
Akasazh@feddit.nl 7 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 7 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 7 months ago
I’m in the Dawkins definition of meme camp. Memes are a funny thing, pun intended. :)
Akasazh@feddit.nl 7 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.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 7 months ago
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.
JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 7 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??
lugal@sopuli.xyz 7 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 7 months ago
Well, fuck.
Grellan@lemm.ee 7 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 7 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 7 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.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
i see. So basically i just gotta convince the local government that my land is now community land dedicated to third space activities, and owned by itself. I can troll generations for generations to come. Wonderful.
empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
Trees now have more rights than women in the State of Texas
ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
Actually this tree is in Georgia, so it can’t get abortions either.
Ioughttamow@kbin.run 7 months ago
What if the tree falls on them? Might they become governor?
NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I don’t think it’s crazy at all to protect trees. We need them. What baffles me is hiw much we rely on them and still cut while swaths of them down anyway without a thought.
Deebster@programming.dev 7 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 months ago
It boggles my mine we feel the need to box ecology and not consider any of the other parts that make life itself possible.
NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I get a lot of flack for my belief in other animals deserving agency. Your 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.
spankinspinach@sh.itjust.works 7 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 7 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.
OsaErisXero@kbin.run 7 months ago
Tree law continues to be the wildest
nifty@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Emotionally sensitive people make life worth living
Emmie@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Is this outrage bait from other outrage bait forming an outrageception or am I too long online today?
fossilesque@mander.xyz 7 months ago
We all need grass time, sometimes. :)
Phegan@lemmy.world 7 months ago
You love to see it.
Land shouldn’t be owned by humans. Period.
TheDoctor@hexbear.net 7 months ago
Legalism in shambles
hex_work@hexbear.net 7 months ago
Doubt that asshole paid taxes.
DAMunzy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
Based Georgia!
PlexSheep@infosec.pub 7 months ago
How dose inheritance work for trees that are people?
Telodzrum@lemmy.world 7 months ago
It generally doesn’t. You can create a trust for non-persons, but there are a bunch rules about hours it can be estudiante, how long it can exist, etc.
shimdidly@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Imagine denying other living and breathing lifeforms agency to thrive and change lol lol lol
Like abortion? Thank goodness we repealed Roe Vs Wade
Vanix@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Please learn empathy.
force@lemmy.world 7 months ago
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).
ulterno@lemmy.kde.social 7 months ago
Trees are undeniably far more independent and living than a human.
DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
Go back to Reddit
idiomaddict@feddit.de 7 months ago
The definitions of living, breathing, and life form would probably help
copgutz@hexbear.net 7 months ago
Incredible self-owns of history.
PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 7 months ago
I’m pretty sure there’s a quirk in marriage and inheritance law that leads to a concept called a pregnant fetus
napoleonsdumbcousin@feddit.de 7 months ago
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 7 months ago
Nothing is protected by law, everything protected is by the will of the people
Daft_ish@lemmy.world 7 months ago
What if the deed was the friends we made along the way?
ImmortanStalin@lemmygrad.ml 7 months ago
Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
fossilesque@mander.xyz 7 months ago
We should really have representatives for non humans in government.
Natanael@slrpnk.net 7 months ago
It’s called environmental protection groups, animal rights groups, etc. Plenty don’t want to listen, though
Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 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 7 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.
JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 7 months ago
Can I just get Danny DeVito?