Ultimately You Own Nothing!

The feeling of owning anything in this physical universe is but a mirage. At birth one is a sojourner in an unknown existential terrain. However, one’s interaction with others, society, and culture in time convinces them that they belong to this place. Family, community, social groups, religious groups, ethnic groups, race, and nations offer one a home and gives them a sense of belonging here or there. Outside of all this, an individual human will feel homeless, abandoned to empty space and time with no direction as to where they are, whom they are, and what they are doing here.

Furthermore, society and culture – through systems of distribution of earthly goods – gives one a sense of being an owner. For instance, land ownership systems (such as ownership by inheritance or purchase) gives us a false feeling of being a landlord over an earthly space that predates and will outdate our physical existence. Without society embracing these ownership systems we will never know how it feels to “own” something.

Historians and anthropologists have gathered enough evidence that shows that the earliest humans who occupied the earth lived without individuals owning property. Karl Marx viewed all this evidence and christened that era “primitive communalism” – when no one owned anything; people freely plucked fruits from trees without claiming ownership, hunted animals for food without owning livestock or poultry farms etc. Eventually, ownership came with time, when our society’s more complex organization and culture began to make possessive appropriation of earthly goods both possible and perhaps necessary.

Born into this culture of owning, we – despite coming into the world empty-handed – started feeling like landlords. But if we had been born in those earlier times, we would have felt like the tenants we are instead of the landlords we are not.

The bottom line is this: ownership of earthly goods is a cultural creation and not a natural reality. It is a product of human economic, legal, and institutional creativity. Nature made all animals and placed them in their habitats; other animals simply LIVED in their habitats, but humans decided to POSSESS their habitat. But then this effort at possession is ultimately in vain because a tenant’s stay is temporary and so can never translate to ownership.

Now imagine this: the fact that we all came here absolutely through no effort of ours and must depart here whether we like it or not is evidence that our sojourn here is even beyond our control. We do not own it; we do not own the life we live. If we do not own the life we live, how then can we own any other thing?

So, life is a sojourn that is beyond the sojourner. It is a paradox that we have not understood and may never understand. It calls for humility, for moderation in pursuit of earthly goods, for love for others, and unending willingness to share all with others. Every other attitude to life is foolishness; a delusional approach to living where one reasons, speaks, and acts based on things that are ultimately unreal.

This is my meditation this midweek.

Henry Chigozie Duru, PhD, teaches journalism and mass communication at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria.