Note: Arul sent this (untitled) piece to some friends some time ago. Arul and I
have had extended discussions on the nature of ownership and if we, in fact,
own anything at all. I hadn’t seen this piece, and am very grateful to Hannah
Priya for sharing it. No changes made, except to add a title and make some
minor clean-ups. ~ baruk
"Go to the village
ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by
her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, tell him
that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away." Mathew 21 vs
2 and 3 NIV
I personally love the KJV
that says, “The LORD hath need of them”
I have marveled at the
audacity of Christ to defy the culture of ownership, but who am I to teach the
creator of the universe civics and etiquette. It seems immoral to me to even
send somebody out with the instructions to go and untie another person’s ass,
and not just to me it seems to break the God given Judeo Christian code of
ethics (as some of us would like to insist).
Why, this instruction to
intrude ownership even defies the teachings of Christ if we were to protract
the admonition to not commit adultery by thinking it up. Why, it even feels
quite immoral to me to impregnate a virgin but I guess the God of creation is
an exception, and even in the virgin’s dealings with the God of creation there
is the golden consent “Be it done unto me”.
When we (by faith and by
grace, I guess) get past the paradox of God acting in foreknowledge and yet
being mindful of the person’s choice to NOT render him or her a puppet. We will
be less assumptive in our callous infringement of other people’s ownerships. I
stand amazed (and slightly bemused) by how we (Christians) take other people’s
intellectual property, for granted.
We wouldn’t drive off
another person’s car in the course of our morning walk, just because it was
possible to do so and then insist that the car was really in the public domain.
Why we could even argue that the raw materials that the car is made up of are
in one way or the other extracted from the earth and say “Who my dear
brother’s is the owner of the earth”. But if the (so-called) owner of an idea,
deemed his or her idea worth a price, we dare not infringe that person’s right
to choose his or her price.
"And what will you do
with the big, big, money? Have you not everything you need? If you need a
motor-car, you pluck it from the trees. If you need pretty polly, you take
it." said Alexander de Large, the jovial hoodlum rapist, thug and humble
protagonist of Stanley Kubrick’s movie A Clockwork Orange. Now Alex was on the
side of totally disregarding other people’s ownership - but the film also shows
how when he returns from prison, he is hurt and saddened when his own room and
personal belongings and snake were given away, confiscated by the police
as compensation for Alex’s victims and not the way he had left them.
Who owns a woman’s body?
Does a government have a right to tell her when she can or not have an abortion? Who owns the fetus? Who owns people? Who owns the languages we learn to
speak? Who owns land? Who owns emotions especially in this era of emotionally
loaded coercive devices of mass persuasion feeding us with the “glass nipple”
of TV or the internet or any way to get into human synapse and choices. I take
it that all ownership is either borrowed or stolen, like we do not own land but
we are actually borrowed from the land for a few heartbeats and breaths of a
very very short lifetime.
I am not a theologian - I am
an artist, and a poet. I write rock n roll lyrics. This is not my field of
expertise - I love the scriptures and obsess with how the word might become
flesh in my life, but beyond that there is nothing else that brings me here to
share at the table of academicians. There is always an academic and theological
tension in my songs, and while I have my healthy respect for theological academia,
I also disregard it quite vehemently.
“Poor God eating lonely pie
in the sky, Poor God if it walks the plank in my eye” go the lyrics of my song
Sympathy for God. I was interestingly accused (I am guessing that the
accusation was in jest) by my rock n rolling peers, of plagiarizing The Rolling
Stones song Sympathy for the Devil. Which I insist was not the case.
The song I wrote was
releasing a life-long burden of a tense co-existing of theism and atheism. I
got the idea to the words “Sympathy for God” when I read a book called Killing
Bono by Neil McCormick, a schoolmate of Rock star Bono of U2. Neil was an
atheist and Bono was Christian, and the dialog and tensions that transpired
between them turned into a song called “I found God”, that when Neil was
recording the studio staff referred to as “Sympathy for God”. Yes the studio
staff were probably referring to The Rolling Stone’s Sympathy for the Devil,
and yes in that way there is the influence of the Rolling Stones, but have I
stolen from them- I think not. Recently when I was working on getting it
recorded, the back of my mind was working towards a voodoo drumbeat that was probably
influenced by The Rolling Stones too. Is there a debt owed to the Rolling
Stones, yes and most obviously so, am I plagiarizing the Rolling Stones-
no.
God forbid that there should
be a patent on the pentatonic blues scale. It would render even Hendrix a
plagiarist. And every one who played the electric Guitar post Hendrix anyway
had one debt that he or she owed the most influential guitar God of all time.
“Plagiarize, let no one’s
work evade your eyes
Remember why the good LORD
made your eyes
So don’t shade your eyes but
plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize
Only remember to call it
research” sang singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, and mathematician Tom
Lehrer
“No man is original since
Adam”- wait a minute I did not say that, I think it was Emerson. I did not read
Emerson, it just popped out of my mind from memory that I had read A W Tozer
mention this in the preface of his book The Divine Conquest, and that was
something I read 16 years ago.
Who really owns ideas? Who
owns the idea that an idea can be owned? Who owns the idea of ownership? Isn’t
ownership just an idea, in the first place? Aren’t ownership deeds simply a
proxy validation of the idea that something can be owned? Is the line that
separates what is yours from what is mine even a real line or is it an
imaginary idea of a line? Is ownership not an idea? I would like to ask- “If
ownership is not an idea, who’s idea is it not?”, and I cannot say that is not
my idea because I typed it and I do not consciously remember anybody else
asking this particular question in this particular way.
My friend Baruk who hails
from the north-east tribes of India, tells a story of how locals had no concept
of owning land, the land was free to hunt pluck fruits and do whatever they
wanted- until people from outside offered them liquor in exchange for land.
They thought that the liquor was practically free, until one day they were all
evicted.
In India, when you buy land
you only own the surface, anything this is below the land or above the land is
for all legal purposes belonging to the government. I do not know how it is
elsewhere, but I personally find all ideas of ownership, reasonably silly at
one level or another. I am a songwriter. The only thing I call my own, are my
songs and even they are not really my own. My gift and craft has behind it
scores of others who have walked these roads with nothing to give back but a
few words and tunes, rearranged in their minds and within the boundaries of
their genre, ability and the culture of their times.
An old uncle who encouraged
me down this road has written over 300 songs in Tamil. He has released over 20
albums to date. Many of his songs are popular Christian classics, his name is
Ezekiel George for the benefit of those who might be curious. He has always
written his songs and sung them freely. He has lived as an artist in penury
with 2 mentally unwell children to care for. While the people who market his
album built three houses, one each for their three daughters.
People hear his songs on CDs
all over Indian Christendom and yet he has never received a royalties cheque,
and he has never asked for one. Is his ownership of his songs limited by the
fact that he did not ask, insist or bargain the price of the inner torment that
birthed the songs. There is a church, less than a kilometer away from his house
outside which you will see recordings of his songs, some sung by him and others
sung by others all being sold in compilation albums. He has never even asked
them for his fair share. In India, a person’s wife’s jewelry is loaded with
cultural symbols. Most of his recordings were made possible because his wife
voluntarily sold her jewelry to support her husband’s calling.
As a young Turk in this turf
- I wrote the following song titled Pirate This.
Chorus
You’re welcome to pirate
this song
Make copies and give it out
generously
You’re welcome to pirate
this song
Go ahead treat her like she
was yours
You’re welcome to pirate
this song
You’re welcome to pirate
this song
Rainbows are free and the
skies are sunny
I’m sure you think I don’t
need no money
Thank you coz you think I am
a star
Galaxies apart from where
you are
You’ve got to pay for your
rental bills
Scrimp and save for occasional
frills
You have needs that probably
elude me
If you need my music so you
can keep it for free
Chorus
You’re welcome to pirate
this song
Make copies and give it out
generously
You’re welcome to pirate
this song
Go on take her home like she
was yours
You’re welcome to pirate
this song
You’re welcome to pirate
this song
Lend me your ears this ain’t
no sermonette
What you hear is what you
get
Paying for music is a
harlot’s cause
My breakfast a bowl of
applause
You get to eat out once in a
while
Get some friends to party in
style
My family and pets live on
love and fresh air
Everyone’s wife should have
nothing to wear
Chorus
You’re welcome to pirate
this song
Make copies and give it out
generously
You’re welcome to pirate
this song
Go ahead rip her like she
was yours
You’re welcome to pirate
this song
You’re welcome to pirate
this song
Got no conscience - don’t
you no fret
You are sure to pirate even
that I bet
You’ve no money but you have
morality
You wouldn’t rob a bank,
you'd only steal IP
Go on pinch the artist’s
screw
God who gave the songs will
pay the due
You deserve a Grammy for
tasteful piracy
A fan like you is an honor
to me
Chorus
You’re welcome to pirate
this song
Make copies and give it out
generously
You’re welcome to pirate
this song
Go ahead treat her like she
was yours
You’re welcome to pirate
this song
You’re welcome to pirate
this song
Back when I wrote this I was
a young executive working for Microsoft in the prime of my career, and I wrote
the lyrics to the above song. I wrote it in the a time when my career was built
on an industry that was all about Intellectual Property. I knew nothing, back
then about creative commons. The time I wrote it I actually had a dream in
which my band and I were taking people to court for doing as the song said and
pirating it, needless to say it was a deep seated conviction about my
song expressed in Rock N Roll bravado.
Today as an artist in penury
that song opens up a world of different and newer meanings to me, specially the
words.
“Go on pinch the artist’s
screw
God who gave the songs will
pay the due”
I am still uncomfortable
about calling this my song- every line of it comes from someplace else.
Bob Dylan once said “What, good is an applause- you can’t eat it for
breakfast” and I stole that line to make it “My breakfast a bowl of applause”.
Even this admission is rooted in Tom Lehrer’s satire Lobachevski “I am never
forget the day my first book is published. Every chapter I stole from somewhere
else. Index I copy from old Vladivostok telephone directory.”
Where would we be if the
sermon on the mount was held as intellectual property? Let us be reasonable
with our fellow men on both sides of this deal. Let us give credit (no pun
intended) where it is due, and let us be fair, it is not like we need to be
evangelical Christians to have a fairness-ethic. Let us who claim to follow Christ,
speak up for the “owner” of the least in our midst, ruthlessly where justice is
perverted.
Who are we to judge if
Christ’s disciples really had the legal right to use a coin found in the belly
of a fish to pay their taxes? Oh yes the coin and the fish and the sea belong
to God (read synonymous with Christ), but let us not forget that the coin did
not technically or legally belong to the disciples, just as treasure found
under the soil on a plot of land a person may own in India belongs to the
government. It cannot be used to pay taxes. We see Christ in scripture, leading
his penniless disciples in what was possibly flouting the legal ownership of
the coin, because as the Creator Christ obviously knew whose coin it was and
should have in all fairness credited it back to the rightful owner.
Is this a license for us to
go and do likewise, in all things that we do not ’technically’ own? I doubt if
it is, I commend us to our intelligence and our consciences, to therefore not
condemn every borderline violation of ownership when the owner’s expressed
permission or choice to give permission is unknown. Saying one thing and doing
another to conceal facts of ownership are a grievous offense scripturally, it
is theft and hypocrisy. Can we question the Holy Spirit for striking Ananias
and Sapphira dead? After all it was their land, and what right did God have to
expect it all? Even the Old Testament law required only a tenth of the
gains.
I do not know what it meant
back then in the New Testament when it says of the early church that they
had all things common." -- Acts Chapter 4, v. 32, and I am trying to find
out by questioning everything that I deem “my own”. I am after all NOT my own,
I was bought for a price, and I try to live my life (yes I know it sounds
ironical, that I call it mine even in this context) in the shadow and the
blessing of that “price”.
I hate to not mention social
injustice, and now I think it is time to talk about a soft drink that we are
all familiar with. This international soft drink super power has a powerful
brand image and an enviable band presence, that sells even in the remotest of
villages as long as there is electricity to plug a company sponsored
refrigerator. It is not even a healthy drink, it serves empty calories but
people prefer it over the contents of a tender coconut, even in places where
the tender coconut is grown. This company runs its bottling plant in
Plachimada, Kerala. The company uses reportedly extracts 132000 liters of water
each day, leaving the villagers with little or no water in their wells and
polluting the remaining water with sludge that they said was a fertilizer that
would benefit the farmers. Now many years have gone by since it has been proven
that the sludge is dangerous pollution rich in lead.
But now in a letter dated
September 29, 2009, the soft drink mogul had questioned the authority of the
State government to constitute the high-power committee, which is to suggest
compensation to the affected people. The Kerala State Pollution Control Board
(KSPCB) has said that the solid waste generated from the bottling plant in
Palakkad district in Kerala would not come under the purview of hazardous
waste. You are free to believe whichever side of the story you want.
The Government’s side
The Company’s side
Or the thirsty people’s
side
What has all this got to do
with ownership or the Post-Colonial? Well, post-colonial baggage wrapped in
capitalism, is still ruling India with an iron hand, the downtrodden have no
voice to ask why their water levels are going down and why their fields are
being polluted, because it is after all not “theirs”. Alexander de Large, from
Stanley Kubrick’s movie A Clockwork Orange, fought his brothers for proposing a
new way of owning a lot of “big big money and a mansize crast” but it seems to
me that what he really wanted was a horrorshow control over the brothers.
Colonialism went after the colonized with tolchocks much like Alexander de
Large did, to his victims, just as it is happening to the people of Plachimada,
all because a locally accepted messiah figure decreed that the ass (in this
case, water) be untied (in this case polluted and drained).
There are many Christian
bands that record and mix their music for the glory of God with pirated
software. Why, I can bet that many Christians from India are reading this post
on computers installed with pirated software. They are quick to say “I don’t
know if it is pirated, I paid for the machine and this is what I got”. It gets
funnier when they say “I installed it from the original CD owned by my uncle”.
If ignorance was a harmless enough excuse, then I wonder why Jesus prayed on
the cross for forgiveness “for they know not what they do”.
Once I pointed out that in
order to install a software legally or illegally there is an “I Agree” button
that user has to click on, and I read out the EULA - the end user licensing
agreement, which portended quite clearly that the installation in question was
not licensed and therefore illegal. The virgin mom of Christ consented to be
the mother of God. The owner of the ass consented to let the creator have the
ass. If the said owner of a piece of intellectual property has not authorized
the specific use of his or her work. it is a violation of the biblical
teachings, to intrude the person‘s property no matter how right it feels or how
guided or lead you think you are. The bible says that we will be held
accountable for “our” words and choices - as debatable as the ownership (of
these words and choices) are, in these days of just going mindlessly with the
flow.
I say this knowing that
Ownership itself is quite a flimsy claim, and if we claim to believe that God
is the owner and that we are God’s servants; it would be helpful that we start
reflecting God’s character in our stewardship of this garden of life in the
21st century that we have been called to tend. I conclude with no conclusion,
leaving you to make “your” choices and “your” ideas in the context of Ownership
in a manner that you will see fit, to one day if necessary stand before the
creator who loaned you the opportunity to “own” your thoughts and choices - to
see what you made of it.
Is your god (yes, “your” God
is the god you reflect) the land-grabbing God of the old testament that
supposedly (per scripture) gave the Israeli army both the command to ethnic
cleansing and also the victory in the process, or is your God a more holistic
reflection of biblical exegesis set in the context of challenging and yet
making sense in a 21st century context?
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