Imagine denying other living and breathing lifeforms agency to thrive and change lol lol lol

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.

Nothing is protected by law, everything protected is by the will of the people
- What if the deed was the friends we made along the way?
- Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
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 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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
- People could fight back if they cared enough.

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

Humans:
- Lebanon enters chat
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
- Dude’s lived how ever many hundred years and never even heard of mineral rights, smh.
- Well, at least in my country, only what's above the ground.
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?

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

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??

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.

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."
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.

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.

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?

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.
- 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.

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

Actually this tree is in Georgia, so it can't get abortions after 6 weeks either.
What if the tree falls on them? Might they become governor?

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.

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.
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.

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?

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.

Tree law continues to be the wildest

Emotionally sensitive people make life worth living

Legalism in shambles

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. :)

How dose inheritance work for trees that are people?

It generally doesn’t. You can create a trust for non-persons, but there are a bunch of rules about how it can be established, how long it can exist, etc.

Based Georgia!

Doubt that asshole paid taxes.

Incredible self-owns of history.

You love to see it.

Land shouldn't be owned by humans. Period.

I'm pretty sure there's a quirk in marriage and inheritance law that leads to a concept called a pregnant fetus

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.
Please learn empathy.
Go back to Reddit
The definitions of living, breathing, and life form would probably help