What is "ownership?"

It's easy to miss where we are..

- John Locke (1632-1789) published his Second Treatise on Government (1639) at the height of reflection in Britain on the origin & nature of what had just begun to be called “civilization.”

-Thinking about the nature & meaning of “land,” as well as “state,” “country,” “nation,” had been triggered over recent generations by European discovery of the continent of North America: the “new world”

- North America was “new” only to Europeans, of course; it had been populated for millenia by mostly nomadic humans

- Over those same millenia, the humans who had evolved in what is now “Europe” had passed through many phases of “development:” agriculture, large concentrations of people, and construction [cities, meaning “civilization”]

- So “Europeans” were inclined to picture the “new world” as in a prior “state of nature,” as distinct from their “civilization”

- It was the contrast between their “civilized” form of life and the temporary lives of nomads that made deciding what constituted “civilization”—what, actually, made it superior to the “unsettled” life of hunting-gathering—a newly important theme for thought

- It was Locke’s opinion that what made the difference between these forms of human life was “work;” this is how he expressed what he meant by work: When a man adds his labor to a piece of land, it becomes “property” [Marx would later call this the “labor theory of value; & he correctly realized it was central to capitalism]

- An example of this view of one’s world occurs in the Journals of Lewis & Clark [1806]: when the explorers from St Louis ask the natives aiding them in their attempt to cross the Rocky Mountains the “name” of the mountain before them; the natives are mystified: the mountain has simply “always been there” & they are able to find their way by means of it

- So, for the explorers, the “world” does not exist until it is named; their certainty is demonstrated by the fact that they devoted enormous energy to mapping the world around them, diligently naming (usually after friends & family) locations along their way

- Naming, as Locke proposes, is a way of adding work to the world

- It’s essential, therefore, to claiming ownership: until I arrive to designate a space—not only by naming but by fencing it off from the surroundings—it is without value

- The “earth” has no worth until I make it mine…

- We are still—however well-intentioned or sensitive—in the grip of this picture; when people sincerely speak of “caring for” or “saving” the earth, they are in fact only speaking of the tiny surface of the planet essential to our own survival

- In fact, however, the “earth” is always doing fine; it cannot by “harmed” or diminished by human action; all the “harm” we do affects only the small area of the surface & it’s atmosphere upon which our lives depend

- But how could our lives depend upon something that does not exist unless it is “owned by us?”

- You see the problem: the way we begin to understand is the reason for our misunderstanding the world and our own existence within it

- Even speaking of “the environment” is misleading, for the term already means “what we live in”

- If all this is understood to be true, then what we call “ownership” cannot exist: if it could, we would be able to control the environment; but we cannot

- Carbon dioxide—CO₂—levels in earth’s atmosphere are now close to 400ppm; they were last at these levels during the Pliocene [5.3MYA - 2.6MYA]—for earth’s surface during the Pliocene was largely volcanic—and life as we know it could not exist (& note that “exist” means for beings like ourselves)

- The conclusion is that we cannot control the world over which we want to claim “ownership;” we do not own the world, even when we’ve fenced some of it off & built upon it

- The “world”—as it has chanced to come about—is the source of our environment; we must live within it, but we cannot own it