About possession

Post photo: trees | © Joe on Pixabay 

Let's imagine we are walking through a mighty oak forest with centuries-old oaks and other mighty trees and the owner of this forest proudly tells us about his property. Now one could ask oneself how a human being would even want to own such wonderful creatures, which were already there before they existed and will still be there when, apart from the trees, perhaps no one remembers them at all.

The fact that something like this can happen at all is solely due to our own world, which only exists because the living beings in it consume each other. Whether this is a good world or not is something a few philosophers keep debating. Ultimately, though, the good thing is that even our own universe doesn't give a damn whether our solar system even exists or not. And so one could conclude that even humanity in its entirety is just a completely insignificant bird shit in the space-time continuum, except for ourselves of course!

While walking with a friend through a fish market in Naples, I drew his attention to the many small squids that were all trying to escape their fate. He agreed with me that most squid were smarter than some fellow citizens. When I asked him how one could even eat such creatures, he answered quite rightly, "simply because I'm the stronger".

And so one can already regard it as a great success of humanity that it has come to the conviction that one cannot at least own one's fellow human beings, let alone eat them. With the other residents of our planet, we are far from that far, because we still own them by law. However, we can only make this property our own if we use up these creatures, and so the proud forest owner does not own any trees, but only solid cubic meters of wood.

Another achievement of mankind is that, at least in the more civilized parts of our world, they have come to believe that property is an obligation. Because this means that the owner of other living beings is also subject to obligations with his property, namely that he is only the rightful owner if he also takes care of his property.

And this naturally and logically also applies to dead property, be it money, tools, merchandise or other property. And if you take a closer look at this fact, ownership is not only limited by one's lifetime, but also by the ability to take care of one's property.

And so it's actually quite good if you only use money and other consumer goods for your own consumption and thus always return them to the cycle. It's a bit different with tools and those things that you use and also need continuously and that, because you take care of them, don't wear out or "consume" as quickly. Even then, owning it only really makes sense if you actually need those things. And so one could really ask oneself the question whether one z. For example, if you are not employed in the trades, you actually have to own the workbench in the basement.

Many fellow citizens see this type of possession, which is often defined as property, as part of wealth accumulation and thus accumulate things that they do not actually need themselves, but prevent other people from using them. Unless these things are made available to other people as "capital" in return for rent, fees or other benefits. Either way, it ends up creating more possessions than is actually necessary, which in turn increases overall consumption.

And this is the case in all of our social and economic systems, even those that have formally renounced capital, property, or property. Interestingly, their attempts all result only in a shortage of all goods — even the intangible ones — which suggests that we either don't quite and fully understand ownership, or just that we as human societies don't to organize ourselves for the benefit of all - the trees seem to have a lot ahead of us in this regard.