Humans Don’t Own the Earth
Humans have long acted as though at some unknown point in history they whipped out a checkbook and wrote a check to The Cosmos for purchasing the Earth and were handed over a Deed of Ownership. I assure you, no such transaction occurred. In fact, so certain are they of this ownership they have proceeded to divvy it up into claimasellable parcels such that nearly every inch of land on Earth and much of the Seas are claimed to be owned by such and such person or group of people. They put up fences, instituted border controls and claim absolute dominion and providence over the lands so cordoned off.
The great irony of this is that humans don’t even own their own bodies, nor even a single atom, nor electron, inside that body but somehow have delusionally extended a magical power of ownership from their unowned selves to the land which is thusly made of such atoms and electrons, etc. Let’s say you did manage to purchase an atom of gold at the going price (~$1.75 sextillionths). What did you get for your money? According to science you bought 99.9999999% empty space and some atomic forces binding the various subatomic particles into a gold configuration. So did you purchase the space, or the forces, or the particles or the configuration? By extension, the Earth itself is at least 99.9999999% empty space. So we own a whole bunch of nothing.
Now this “ownership” can’t all be attributed to the Bible and the “Dominion Grant” of Genesis because many cultures, not based on Biblical teachings share this pattern of thinking. Indeed, numerous cultures don’t even subscribe to this concept at all. However, most animals and humans do subscribe to a more primal territorialism. Wolves and tigers and such have territories they roam and hunt in though it can’t exactly be called ownership since many welcome “trespassers” also share the same territory. Many tribal cultures have claimed certain areas as ancestral homes and some nomadic tribes migrate within a given territorial limit based on seasons and resources, similar to many animals. Even if the Dominion Grant in the Bible were taken as Gospel Truth it says nothing about ownership, only a “superior” relationship to the other creatures—which I interpret to be stewardship, which indicates a type of responsibility.
Yet here we are in 2020, nations have their borders, states have their borders, counties and towns theirs and individuals and businesses their own subdivisions within each and you may trespass any of these borders physically but can be shot dead for doing so in many cases, arrested in others and generally not welcome in others. Besides this we have taken possession of the Earth’s “resources” as we call them, denuding forests, extracting minerals, stealing fish from whales and other unfortunate creatures. We also like to dump a lot of crap on our “property,” sort of like those rednecks that have washing machines on their porch and 5 rusted out old cars on the lot, except a lot worse. We took what was a Pristine Cosmic creation and completely messed it up, not as though we live here, but as though we live “out of town” and just use it as our convenient landfill. Except we live IN the landfill. We’re the proverbial dog crapping in their own bed (even though they actually know better and don’t do that).
In our concept of sole ownership we also deny ownership to other creatures such as elephants and dolphins and sort of take it all for ourselves like some sort of greedy Gollum. Whatever scraps are left over, we might let them have a little of but we also may claim ownership of their teeth if we like them such as we do with elephant tusks. We have no concept of sharing the Earth but we certainly do share the Sun and the Moon so far (we are forced to). I can see a time when our greed will extend first to the Moon as a resource to be developed and then perhaps Mars and other places but it will be awhile before we can “develop” the Sun.
We were meant to be better than this. All we had to do was recognize our role as stewards of a common Home to each other and the other inhabitants. We needed this baked into our DNA and our cultural fiber but we turn out to be a sort of heartless creature only interested in what we can “own” today for ourselves or take from other creatures using our technology and knowhow—like a Cosmic Bully. We’ve even resorted at times to stealing other people from their homes and enslaving them so we could boost our ownership potential so our greed knows no bounds.
BUT, the Earth does know bounds as it circles the Sun for the umpteen billionth time! The Earth has her limits and we are pushing them. The Earth imposes her limits in absolute Cosmic fashion, even more dispassionately than we impose ourselves upon the creatures (and ourselves). She will shrug off eons of evolution, centuries of civilization, like so much dandruff on her shoulders. She will send hurricanes, floods, fires, plagues and tornadoes without batting an eye. She will pull in comets or asteroids, as needed, to aid her, possibly employing the services of her bigger siblings like Jupiter and Saturn. Make no mistake, the Earth owns us and the Sun owns the Earth and the Galaxy owns the Sun! The Earth with receive the Sun’s light and warmth and will do with it what she wants such as holding it longer and making herself warmer. No big deal. Not hot enough for you? Just wait a few years. She’ll get your attention if she doesn’t have it already!
We may be clever and have tools and cool cars and rockets and satellites, but that doesn’t make us Good. It doesn’t make us Wise. It doesn’t help us really own anything in a way we can prove to anyone but ourselves. We are currently using our cleverness against our own long-term interests, which actually makes us quite dumb and pathetic in a Darwinian sense. All of this because we think we own the Earth, or any part of it. Such arrogance!
