Somatic and Cephallic Possession.

Today, I saw some fraternity guy with a shirt that read, “We own this Earth.”

1) There is currently only one observable Earth.

2) It presented some interesting uneven edges to think about regarding what ownership really means.

On a fundamental level, ownership may be thought of as containment.

For example, if a pen is located inside a box, it may be said that the box owns the pen.

With this notion of Ownership, what then, can a human being actually Own? Internal organs and food, for one.

But even that basic ownership requires the premise that the body of an individual is somehow their property.

I’m quite certain that most people, at this point, would say, “No duh, of course a person’s body is their property.”

But that requires a premise. A premise that I’ve never heard a discourse about. Namely, What Makes Your Body Your Property?!

Despite the fact that this sounds like a recalcitrant echo of an Abortion debate, we must immediately resolve to assume that there is some metaphysical or societal reason to believe why a body is someone’s possession. The reason that is most glaring to me is that of simplicity. It’s just simple to think about one entity as it’s own natural unit. Distinct. Autonomous. (Lol @ using “entity”, which has its own premise of singularity :P)

I really want a legitimate, logical reason for this premise. The premise, to me, is truly illogical. Ownership may be completely vacuous, untenable, and ultimately as broken a concept as “God”.

If we take things to the atomic level of matter, the atom, where are we? These tiny particles take up only a tiny amount of space. Certainly an atom’s electrons are its own? Even though I just used an apostrophe to imply possession, pretend I didn’t. The electrons are their own distinct entities. How then are they considered to be possessed by the atom, which does not geographically surround the electrons? In this case, we have a nice explanation- Electromagnetic forces generally prevent the electrons from fleeing the confines of the atom’s orbit. But even if we accept that- Are the electromagnetic forces owned by the nucleus of the atom, and thus hierarchically, the electrons are owned by the nucleus as well?

It’s an interesting concept, Ownership :)