The Possession Paradigm

Once upon a time, we walked the earth in nomadic tribes, taking what we needed for the day and thanking Mother Earth for her bounty as we did. If, our bellies full after a successful hunt, we saw another red deer within our arrow's range, we let it go its way...why take what we don't need? Historically, as gatherer-hunters we stored very little food from one week to the next, trusting nature to provide what we needed as we needed it.  Earth was our benevolent provider, our children were blessings of the tribe, and our lovers were playmates we enjoyed when mutually desired. Each of us may have possessed a handful of things--the clothes on our back and a few tools--but for the first 190,000 years the concept of possession played a very finite role in our minds.

Sometime after women invented the cultivation of plants, after we became to rely on agriculture and our control of nature, after the accompanying population boom, and after the scarcity that accompanied these changes, some created and propagated a myth that land could rightfully be owned, first by a group, and then by an individual. "I work this land, this land is mine, and any bounty this land provides is mine alone." Now serial monogamy and the tribal raising of children became inconvenient, so women and children became possessions of the landowning male. Hierarchy, servitude and slavery followed.  Next, warriors were needed to protect one individual's possessions from others (for instance, if one family had enough food plus a surplus, and another family was starving because their agricultural attempt had failed)  and violent conflict between humans became suddenly more common. In short, adoption of the possession paradigm set a lot of awful things in motion.

Today, while most of us will say the attempt to own another human is morally repugnant, the possession paradigm is still reigning supreme. We (well, maybe not you or I) will pepper-spray fellow shoppers for the chance at possessing undeniably unnecessary items, and can undertake complicated debate over whether putting something in one's own shopping cart constitutes ownership, or if only the swiping of a piece of plastic through a small machine can grant that. God forbid a mother at the playground advises a child not born from her womb on appropriate behavior--"how dare she! That is MY child!" And not only might a man or woman feel anger or fear at the thought of his or her spouse kissing or flirting with another that same day, many will even experience distress thinking of the sexual experiences one's spouse had prior to the married couple meeting. That's how possessive we feel.


At this time of year when many of us become preoccupied with the procurement of (more) possessions, we could all stand to learn from those who came before us: humans can be quite happy with only a few possessions, we need a lot less than we think we do, and the urge to possess causes more unhappiness than joy.