An ugly face for an ugly post:
Dear diary,
I think the reason I’m such a bad United Statesian is that I’ve never been able to suspend my disbelief in ownership. This place, the U.S., was founded on the concept of owning stuff. Nothing that exists cannot be owned: that is our motto. I think the reason we stuck our flag in the moon is to claim that we own it.
But what is ownership, exactly? What does it really mean to OWN a blank? Like I said, I’ve never really taken to this concept, so I’ll probably do a poor job of explaining it; but it’s just as fun to fail as it is to succeed, so I’ll give it a shot.
Owning is like a game of make-believe. Someone holds up a rock and sez: “All of this thing belongs to me!!!” and then all the other players weep and say:
“Why did I not think of yelling that! For I pass that rock every day, on my way to work, and I’ve even picked it up before and admired it, but I’ve always replaced it where I found it: I never thot to proclaim that I AM ITS OWNER.”
Then the rock’s owner addresses one of these weeping opponents:
“You say that you walk to work every day? What type of work is it that you do?”
And the weeping man sez: “I’m self-employed. I run my own business into the ground.”
And the rock owner sez: “Well then if you own a business, surely you have enough money to buy this rock from me. I am the rock’s legal possessor, so I have the right to sell it.”
Now the weeping man answers: “But my business is bankrupt. I’m just about ready to close up shop.”
So the rock owner sez: “Not a problem; I can give you a loan. How much do you need to keep your little business afloat?”
And the weeping man answers: “A thousand caesars.”
So the rock owner orders his lawyers to draw up a contract, which he hands to the weeping man while explaining as follows:
“Here, by accepting this paper from me, you agree to repay my firm IN FULL this gift that it has given you. I have approved you for a loan of one thousand plus twenty-two point four extra caesars. The bonus amount is so that you can have a little spare cash to purchase my rock. But let me warn you: you will need to figure out a better way to run your business: you will need to make it profitable, because I will charge you interest on this loan, as well as many fines and fees, so that you can have skin in the game.”
The weeping man accepts this paper with tears of gratitude & sez:
“O, thank you so much! I hope someday I’ll be able to pay you back for your generosity. — Now, how do I get my hands on this extra money so that I can purchase your rock?”
And the rock’s owner sez: “I already transferred the funds while you were thanking me just now. Here, take the monstrosity — go place it proudly on a pedestal somewhere — you are now the proud owner of this here rock.”
*
Also I should explain that there is something called the “stock market”, which is part of the same game of ownership. That is, it’s sorta like owning an item, only not outright and altogether.
Take a dog, for instance — instead of owning the whole dog, you just buy a share of the creature, so you’d only own, say, his paw, or his tail. And the person who owns the majority of shares in this dog gets to kennel the entirety of that being’s body in his (the item’s owner’s) personal jail or “dog pound” — thus he (the creature’s majority-stockholder) gets to make decisions that affect his shares (those dog-parts that the beast’s chief shareholder possesses) along with your (a minority-shareholder’s) shares (the sum of which should amount to the undivided dog), since all these fragments belong to the selfsame entity.
That’s why the stock market is so popular, cuz you can use a computer to figure out when’s the best time to buy & to sell the various body parts of all these organic species (including, but not limited to, their internal organs!) — & the computer never sleeps, so it can watch the prices all night: It automatically drops the stocks like a hot potato, IF the price is right, while auto-purchasing shares when they’re inexpensive.
*
Yet what about the small-business owner above, who was weeping before he got blessed with a loan from Rock Man? For we were told that if he didn’t clean up his act, stop being a lazy hippie, and get his shop to turn a profit, he’d never be able to faithfully pay back all of his debt. So what happened to him, after he purchased that rock that he so coveted?
Well, first he placed the rock back down on the ground, by the side of the road. Then he walked to work for the day. He drew up new plans, thinking that they would improve his business’s performance. But after another year of zero sales, he was in a deeper hole than even God could dig. And the interest on Rock Man’s loan was exponentially compounding. (Compound interest is the addition of interest to the principal sum of a loan or deposit; in other words, interest on interest.) So this is bad news for Weeping Man.
Now one day Rock Man enters Weeping Man’s establishment. He looks around and sez: “Nice place you got here.”
“Thanks,” sez Weeping Man, who is standing behind the cash register. Then he wipes away a tear and adds:
“May I help you make a decision about purchasing anything? For if my shop can chalk up even one single sale, there’s a chance that it might be able to climb out of the red.”
“Hmm,” sez Rock Man, “let me take a look around. — Hey, you sell tires here? How much for these?”
“Those are snow tires, for driving on the slippery roads of Minnesota in wintertime,” sez Weeping Man. “The price is an even 200 caesars for all four.”
“Seriously? that comes to 50 caesars apiece,” sez Rock Man; “what a steal! I’ll take them all.”
“Thanks,” sniffles Weeping Man. Then he presses the button on the register which makes a cha-ching noise. “Anything else?”
“Let’s see,” sez Rock Man. “How much for this package of plaid flannel camisoles?”
“The six pack? Doesn’t the sign right there say ‘60 caesars’?”
Rock Man double-takes: “For the entire pack? That works out to roughly ten caesars per garment! And these are high quality items; I can tell by the sewing around the front pockets. I’ll buy the whole lot.”
“Wow,” sez Weeping Man; “this is more sales than we’ve had since the day that we opened.”
“Is that so?” sez Rock Man. “How long have you been in business?”
“We debuted in January of 2000.”
“Sheesh,” sez Rock Man, “and it’s 2020 now. That’s two full decades, and you’ve only made two lousy sales!? That averages out to about a sale per decade. Not good! No wonder this place is drowning in debt. — But hey, how much for this cute stuffed donkey?”
“It’s actually a camel; that’s 700 caesars.”
“Sold!” sez Rock Man. “Now, I think that’s all I planned on buying today. Here, let me check my list, just to make sure… let’s see, I think I stored the list inside my sword-holster, since I always carry my weapon aloft when I shop… ah, yes, here’s the list, rolled up like a scroll; I’ll read it aloud: SHOPPING LIST: Item Number One: new tires for the van (check; I bought those); Item Two: an outfit for the upcoming rave party (check times six! cuz I got multiples to choose from now); and, lastly, Item Three: one decorative gift — yep, with this donkey here, I got all that I need . . . O! but wait! I now remember that I also intended to purchase a mini spy-microphone — that is, unless this plush donkey comes pre-equipped with such a thing already, which was installed inside its stuffing at the factory. Do you know if it does? I can’t find any info about this on the tag. If it doesn’t have one already, then I need to purchase a spy-mic. Cuz I’d like to give this donkey as a gift to my worst enemy, so that I can listen in on his private conversations.”
“Eavesdropping technology is included with the toy camel, yes,” Mr. Weep explains. “You’ll find the details on the flip-side of its collar tag.”
Rock Man turns the tag over & sez: “Ah, I see now! thanks — alright, then I guess I’m all set... Tell me how much I owe ya.”
“I’m looking at the screen of the register right now: it gives a total of 960 caesars,” sez Mr. Weep; “but also we need to add six point five percent for sales tax, so your total comes to one thousand twenty-two caesars and forty double-hapennies.”
“Do you take seashells as payment?” whispers Rock Man.
“Cash is preferable,” sez Weeping Man, drying his eyes.
Rock Man counts out the exact amount in small shells and well-bitten coins, & then slides the pile forth on the countertop over to Weeping Man.
“Well, now that we’re all squared up about this purchase of goods, you & I have one further piece of business to take care of,” sez Rock Man. “It’s about this little matter of your loan...”
“Yes, I was just going to mention that,” sez Weeping Man.
“You were?” sez Rock Man. “Alright, then go ahead. Speak. I’ll let you go first. Say whatever you were going to say; because what I wanna say can wait. All I was gonna say is that you haven’t even made one single payment yet. And including all the interest, fines, and fees added to the original amount that you borrowed from me, you now owe more than half a mill!”
Weeping Man begins to weep again: “Here, I just came into some cash, so I can finally make a payment. I got it for you, right now. You can take everything I got — it’s all right here,” and he scoots the pile of shells and coins back toward his creditor.
“Hmm, let’s see,” sez Rock Man, “I’ll need to count it, to find out exactly how much is here.” Then he proceeds to count out every shell & coin slowly & carefully. This process takes several hours, but not a single audience member who is watching this scene grows bored or leaves the theater, because the way that Rock Man tallies his loot is hypnotic.
*
“I’ve noticed that you seem to have finally stopped your counting,” sniffles Weeping Man. “How much did I give you?”
“Your first and only payment,” announces Rock Man, “comes to a grand total of one thousand twenty-two caesars and forty double-hapennies.”
Weeping Man’s eyes grow wide, “O wow, so much!”
“That’s nothing,” snaps Rock Man. “I could get more cash than this, even by robbing a blind old poet.”
Weeping Man is crestfallen: “Ah, I see.”
“And your initial payment, which was due a whole year ago, is more than ten times the amount of this bribe that you’ve just offered me,” sez Rock Man. “Moreover, I only accept caesars in digital format; not physical shells and stinking chewed-up coins.”
Weeping Man begins to weep harder: “Well then the truth is that I just can’t pay you — for I’m sure that I’ll never be able earn that much money, even if I worked for fourteen lifetimes. I feel terrible now… but I’m helpless: I can’t think of any way to right this wrong… What should I do!? — All I can say is that I’m sorry that I sinned. — So, what happens now?”
“Well, one thing’s certain: we cannot simply stop playing this game of ownership,” sez Rock Man. “For we’re both Christians, I trust; therefore we hold the concept of debt as sacred: it MUST be paid, thus some equivalent sacrifice needs to be offered, to atone for your iniquitous behavior. So, since you accepted all this money from me that I lent to you, yet you were only able to pay back the principal sum; you still owe me all the additional debt from the late fees, penalties, and the usury; so it looks like our only option is for me to take possession of everything you own. Does that make sense? Good. Now I’m the new owner of all your stuff. Not only is your house, furniture, belongings, and pets all mine, but I also own your children and your spouse. And since your debt is so large, I’m compelled as well to take possession of you — henceforward you yourself are my legal property.”
“I accept your terms and conditions,” sobs Weeping Man. “So are we even now?”
“Far from it,” grins Rock Man.
*
So this shows how the notion of slavery saved our universe. We started out with a free existence; then humans decided to play a game called Ownership. Then when people desired to possess aspects of the world that they did not have enough tokens to purchase, they borrowed from others who managed to clutch more stuff because they’re quicker on the draw. And when the borrowers couldn’t pay back their righteous creditors, these creditors then legally seized the borrowers’ goods — house, livestock, family, even their person — as eternal possessions.
Sometimes players get smart and skip the whole debt routine, opting instead to simply ambush people and take them away from their home country, using raw force. And just like one might point to a field & shout “That field is MINE!” so also, human-claimers simply shackle the folk that they nab & declare “These souls are MINE!” & then they sell their slaves for astronomical sums to wealthy land-owners who cannot say no to cheap labor. (It’s always cheaper to buy than to rent.)
Some people who play the game of land-claiming and other property ownership haven’t yet realized that this human-claiming activity is a totally viable option — they still think you gotta have a good reason to enslave a fellow being. Fools! The rules of the game are clear: Whatever you have the force to do is permissible. No reason, however clever, trumps raw force.
So, to review: Force can be used to gain possessions as well as to keep them. For violent force in the realm of physicality is just like lying in an argument: it always wins.
*
Now let us return to our above example about the rock. When the original owner sold the rock to the weeping fellow, you might have been asking yourself:
“But why doesn’t this weeping ninny just pull out his sword and threaten the man who claims to be the rock’s owner, instead of paying good money for the object?”
You have a good instinct here, but your idea wouldn’t have worked. The reason is threefold:
- First, the rock’s owner already was standing with his own sword outheld (why have a weapon if you’re not gonna use it!); so he would have cut down the weeping attacker before the latter could have even unsheathed his blade.
- Secondly, as I implied, the weeping fool possessed inferior implements, so the owner’s sword would have sliced right thru any attempted act of aggression.
- Thirdly, even if the armed weeper had been able to get ahold of the rock — say that some miracle happened, and a divine intervention caused the rock to fall into our Mr. Weep’s praying hands — even in this case, the moment that this blubbering dolt would have stepped inside his apartment & displayed the rock on a pedestal as his own hard-earned property, he would have heard a knocking at his front door; then, while he is approaching the entryway, the door would have burst open to reveal a team of police, who have used their battering ram to knock the slab off its hinges: for they are here to retrieve the stolen rock & return this property to its rightful owner.
MORAL: Police are the force that upholds the laws of ownership. (They’re somewhat like the referees of this game.)
*
And the same thing happens with human slaves. If our Mr. Weep goes out into the field to admire the sky, and a female angel flies forth & tries to seduce him, some entrepreneurs in a slave ship might be cruising the Euphrates River nearby, and they would drop anchor and leap out upon the land and grab the Weeping Man and shackle him. Then they would bring him to the New World and sell him for market value.
The same angel from the field-scene above, who was vainly tugging at the ex-freeman’s mantle when he was in his pre-kidnapped form, now comes to the Slave Mart, slams her credit card down on the altar, and legally acquires all rights to this soul.
Then when the slave escapes from the angel’s bedroom in Northern Paradise, the same police that came to retrieve Rock Man’s stolen property from Mr. Weep’s apartment now use their force to repossess the slave himself, for he is the property of the angel who signed the purchase agreement. For, every law-enforcement officer is bound by duty to enforce the law — they take a sacred oath to do so — and the law is christened Ownership. Note that that’s also the name of the game. “One Law for the Lion & Ox is Oppression” (as it is written in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell).
True: if we want to play a totally different game, then the officers will be duty-bound to enforce a totally different set of laws. But who would ever want to stop playing this game of Private Property & Ownership!? It’s addictive! — It’s been a great game for thousands of years now; and what is old is trustworthy.
*
Pretty soon, too, we’ll unlock many new secrets that were pre-programmed into the game, just like that microphone that was factory-installed within the figurine that Rock Man bought from Mr. Weep’s shop. And tho no man knows what these now-hidden secrets shall be — not even the angels in heaven know what the game shall reveal (only the ones that fell can explain it) — one can nonetheless take a guess. Therefore I say:
We’ll eventually discover how to use our force to claim ownership of the seas — bodies of water big or small: that means the Great Lakes and all the Earth’s oceans and rivers.
Plus we’ll soon learn how to trade shares of the planet’s atmosphere. Or maybe someone will be smart enough to just own the air outright. Think how efficient the breathing of creatures would become then, if the air could be privatized (as opposed to just wasting away in the commons as a public good, which even the beasts like squirrels and crows have access to); and you could receive a bill for how many times you breathed in & out each day: and we could set you up with a payment plan. This would bring about a reduction in stress, as people would be incentivized to breathe slower & less frequently. Of course they’d end up having to fork out extra cash for advanced classes in yoga or meditation, which would teach them certain techniques in respiration to help reduce their hourly bills; but that would be money well spent.
*
And then maybe one smart Owner could rise to the top of the whole pyramid scheme and gain so much force that he ends up legally possessing EVERYTHING. Then he’d be not only an absolute Land-lord, but a Prince of the Air as well, and an Admiral of the Sea.
[At the time of this writing, the world was presumed to consist exclusively of land, air, and sea — it was not discovered yet that the underworld of death and all the other dimensions are purchasable as well.]
This sole proprietor would be the owner of all energy — both matter and antimatter; dark matter and light — one KING OF KINGS, who could proclaim under oath, without perjuring himself: “I kill, and I make alive; I create and destroy; and there is no power beyond me.” He would achieve a monopoly on theism and become the One True & Living GOD. Thus no one could worship anyone or anything else; least of all some onyx carving of Demogorgon — and all the other gods who exist would be downgraded to either angels or devils, and there would be no longer any poetic verve or weirdness among the paranormal masses; no more fairies, sprites, or nymphs: they would all be homogenized into either sector of the ultimate dichotomy:
Those who are willing to obey the LORD will relinquish their brains to Columbia, wife of the Admiral, for baptism (washing & reprogramming — I hasten to mention that the goddess Columbia is simply a holographic projection of our lone Ruler in feminine garb; for Master would never actually tolerate an autonomous consort); while those who choose to remain freethinkers will have their life made hell.
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