Rational Philosophy

On the philosophy of existence as it relates to the idea of ownership and property.

I spent the day getting rid of junk, garbage and unwanted stuff from our basement. (We’re selling our house, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts.) Clearing trash makes one reflect on things of moment. We relish the new space, the absence of the piles of crap. We feel a lightness, a sense of freedom. And, conversely, we mourn the time that we spent with those piles of crap when they were, if not cherished possessions, then certainly worth holding onto by putting them in the basement. We’re clearing out old times, in a way.

Are possessions things of the mind? Does a sense of possession require consciousness?

I’ve come across the idea that nomadic people, such as native Americans, don’t have the same sense of property, and certainly not land ownership, as agrarian or industrial societies. This makes some sense, but native Americans surely had a sense of property.

Non-conscious creatures can display a sense of territorial ownership or rights. Animals defend territory and food against interlopers.

Understanding the idea of property seems quite straightforward if we reflect on the idea that survival requires that we ensure that we have food and shelter. If we’ve secured food and shelter, why give it up without a fight, without defending it? Giving up things of importance without a reasonable struggle to keep them would be an act of letting go, of non-living.

This explanation however seems incomplete. It seems that there’s another way in which we feel a sense of ownership, one that’s much more immediate and direct. It’s our sense of our physical being. More than we could say of any other thing, we could be said to own our bodies. We experience the world through the immediate impressions of our physical being. The impulses felt through our body define the us-ness of our being.

This, then, is the root of any idea of property. We own our experiences.

Any other sense of property is derivative and non-essential. We can lose everything except our experience and still live. And so, when we’re ridding ourselves of extraneous possessions, we feel a sense of lightness, of paring down. We feel a calmness and sureness that even if we were to get rid of everything we own, we would still retain ownership of ourselves.