A short rant about the concept of ownership

I think at the end of the day the only thing you can really own is yourself, though this isn’t guaranteed. If you wanna own yourself you”ll have to sacrifice everything in your “possession”. A majority of people are owned by other people or things even if they don’t realize it. Most who realize it do nothing about it, simply accepting it with hidden disdain. If owning something is having control over it then very few live truly free. The most you can really do is rent. You’re owned so intrinsically to the point you have to pay a subscription fee to the country you live in just for breathing its air, and there are tons of hidden fees included. If you don’t they’ll start taking the few things they pretend you own. Your house, your car, your time… If you really want to own yourself you have to reach a point where your power is greater than the greatest powers. because those powers feed off control.

The prompt references the idea of owning skills or knowledge. I suppose that’s true, the only path to owning yourself is to own skills and knowledge. Sometimes it feels like the only knowledge unrestricted is the knowledge that plunges us further into ownership and servitude. We all know deep down that the structured world around us is formulated to formulate us into the mindless complacent property every owner desires. The chains of the past are replaced with shiny distractions. At some point, someone realized chains were unnecessary if the owned have no idea they’re owned.

In conclusion, there is no such thing as owning physical things, only borrowing or renting. You can own yourself but to do so you can’t rent or borrow, and everything down to the air and water requires renting or borrowing, an idea fundamentally opposing the human identity. And we wonder why the world around us feels so strange, so uneasy. Sometimes I look at the situation around me, I’ll stare up at the bright artificial lighting above me, I’ll look around at the plain walls around me, and my fellow workers in training happily training away and casually chatting about frivolous nonsense distractions, somehow believing its all for their benefit but to some, it just feels unnatural. Even typing an essay in this manner makes m e feel nervous like I’m not even allowed to think this way. A challenging idea to type out, but restraining myself would be accepting my ownership further.

“house” by emeryc is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.