The idea of property is deeply rooted in our language, to the extent that we even have a special case to express it with: the possessive case. In the book "The Dispossessed", Ursula K. Le Guin proposed an alternative to this. This has come to become known as 'the dispossessive case', or just the Dispossessive, and those who speak it as the Dispossessed.

Expressing Ownership

Possession, or the lack of it, is expressed in many ways:

• The words 'of' and 'have'.
• Possesive pronouns: 'my', 'mine', 'your', 'yours', 'their', 'theirs', 'our', 'ours', 'his, 'her', 'hers' 'its'.
• The possessive case, typically signified by an apostrophe.
• Specialist words, including 'ownership', 'loan, 'borrow', 'lend', 'slave', 'theft', 'property', 'lease', 'overdraft', 'copyright', 'patent', 'debt', 'rent', 'secret', 'privacy', 'borders', 'trespass', 'subject', 'vassal', 'buy', 'sell', 'territory', 'public domain', and many many more.

Is it any surprise that capitalism has such a sway on our society, when our very words betray its grip?

Problems with Property

Most people brought up in the modern world, with the pervasive influence of capitalism, the free market, and international corporations, probably think that the concept of property as a benign influence on the world, and some have even praised it as the foundation of civilisation.

However, some people have objected to the concept, for a variety of reasons. It is not this entry's place to discuss the many philosophical, political, social, and economic arguments that have been made both for and against the idea, but surely no entry on the subject would be complete without the phrase 'property is theft'¹, or the hippy cry that 'you can't, like, own the countryside, man'².

Newspeak Renewed

The idea of the Dispossessive is simple: no use of the possessive case, possessive pronouns, or the words 'of'³ or 'have'⁴. The specialist vocabulary that has sprung up around property is acceptable, but should not be routinely used. Examples will be given later.

As in Orwellian newspeak, changing the language in this way is meant to make people less attached to the idea of property, or make them more content in a world without property. Alternatively, changing the socio-economic framework away from capitalism might produce such change by itself. No experiments have been done on this, so it is pure speculation, but intriguing speculation nonetheless.

Examples

Without the priviledge of expressing ownership directly, a little more effort must be made to express the same thoughts. For example, rather than saying 'Welcome to my house', I must instead say 'Welcome to the house I live in'; rather than 'My jeans are red', 'The jeans I wear are red'; rather than 'This is my entry', This is the entry I wrote'.

This can seem a little clumsy, but this is largely down to the direct nature of the translation being used: any linguist can tell you how inelegant word for word translations can be. A little thought reveals 'I'm wearing red jeans' as a better substitute for 'My jeans are red', and 'I wrote this entry' as a better substitute for 'This is my entry'. Instead of greeting visitors with 'Welcome to my house', you could use 'welcome to the house'. Presumably which house is being referred to is obvious from context, and the ownership of the house is irrelevant, at least to a Dispossessed.

Even relationships are typically expressed in the language of property, which is a paradox, because you can't, like, own your mother, man. A Dispossessed would prefer to talk about 'the mother who gave birth to me', or 'the mother who cares for me', or even 'the mother I love'. The dispossessive typically makes the family seem less important, some members more than others. For example, an absent biological father feels a lot more distant as 'the man who had sex with a woman nine months before she gave birth to me'. The emphasis is much more on the present day, rather than faulty condoms from a few decades ago.

With the Dispossessive, names should be given greater use. Rather than telling an entire story about 'the girl I love who loves me back', it would be much more natural to mention the name of the girlfriend at the start, and refer to her by name from then on.I find it handy to use titles, for example referring to parents simply as 'Mother' and 'Father' in the same way that I call the English monarch 'The Queen' than 'My Queen'.

Literature

Such a dramatic change in language has its effect on famous folk sayings and quotes of course. One of my favourite examples is to the traditional welcome: 'my home is your home'. Such a statement is inevitably bound up with ideas of property, and it is perhaps untranslatable. The closest equivalent is a purely factual statement on the lines of 'the home I live in is the home you visit', or perhaps the offer 'you may share in the house I live in'. Web chat is effected too: 'IMHO' for 'in my humble opinion' is a useful phrase, but the declared ownership of the opinion is distasteful. It would be better to use a phrase like 'or so it seems to me'.

However, the full flavour of the language can only be got across by reading larger chunks of it - isolated phrases can only hint at the possibilities. Equally, the language can seem very alien if only the differences are explained, and the huge areas that untouched are left unnoticed. Therefore, I'll shamelessly present a story written by me: read... and hopefully enjoy.

Mike was always a child focussed on the past, not the future. I realise that now, of course, yet for a long time I thought the son I cared for was as normal as any other. Heed the story I experienced, and watch those you care about, lest the same fate befall them. If the words I speack can save just one child that another father cares for, then some good may yet come. They do say that every cloud is attached to a silver lining.

Mike was born a healthy boy, with the comical streaks of hair and gurgling laughter displayed by any newborn child. In defiance of the advice given by experts, we raised him ourselves, rather than allow the nurseries to provide the childhood he grew in. Contrary to the expectations people shared with us, Mike grew up without inicident, though to be sure he was always reserved in the presence of nursery-raised kids. The actions we took seemed to be not incorrect, and the mother, Mike, and I parted company soon after he reached 14. No inkling came to us of the degeneration to follow, or you can be sure we'd have been there. Jenny, a friend Mike saw often, came to visit me later, as I suffered from the lungs I was struggling to breath through. I remember the day clearly, as I sat over a mug with something warm and alcoholic, and she almost whispered the words: 'There's been an accident with Mike'.

Jenny explained how Mike had shared in the position of local historian, and quickly was surrounded by a reputation for bringing to life the evil that lay in the past that society remembers. That's how she first met him: standing on a broken pillar near the colloseum, explaining the practice of slavery to bewildered tourists, and sharing in the food of the audience that applauded him. Jenny tossed the hair she grew as she related this, laughing at the confusion others had felt. She too interested herself in history - perhaps that is what brought them together... or perhaps I am an old romantic. In any case, they started dating, but the interest Mike felt in the past quickly turned a sinister shade. He became obsessed by the ideas espoused by the Age of Injustice, and reading through old website archives, one most potent idea corrupted the ideals previously instilled in him.

Money.

Of course, money has been long since abolished in favour of more sensible alternatives, but the ideas drove him ever onwards. Jenny showed me the diary he wrote in every day: "Little pieces of green paper, of no intrinsic usefulness, but the positions occupied by this paper determined the life, or lack of it, for billions." Mike despaired of ever finding a modern equivalent to these scraps of paper, until he happened across a research paper in the torn down remains of a Copyright Library: "Bullion as a universal ". Something snapped in the brain Mike used to absorb this ancient knowledge, and the mad glint of gold-fever gripped the eyes he saw with.

Jenny couldn't bring herself to finish the story, but instead proffered me a newspaper sheet bearing yesterday's date. I read on with fear: "Mike Sigal, the famous Roman librarian, died today. During the last three weeks of his life he searched continuously for gold, even asking strangers in the street if he could share in the jewelry they wore, and carried it on him everywhere. By last Thursday, the gold he carried weighed so much he could no longer move, and he died on Saturday night of dehydration and exposure. Mr. Sigal would be 37 tomorrow."

I shared in the tissues that Jenny carried, and bade her farewell. There was a picture with the story, but I couldn't look at it too closely. There was something about the expression on Mike's face, as he still clutched the gold to his chest, that unnerved me. I was afraid, I guess, that the emotions that dominated the last century had reached through time - and having slain the son I left behind, they might turn on me next.