Who owns Nature?

When I was growing up in an unincorporated area of Des Plaines, Illinois, I used to walk to my high school (Maine Township High School North) before it closed and was subsequently used for filming the Breakfast Club movie.  As the crow flies, it was a short distance (less than one mile), and I was able to walk through a neighbor's yard on the edge of our "dead end" and unique neighborhood, through some open fields and through the track field on to school. 

Today, that area is all fenced off and largely developed with apartments and townhomes blocking my formerly traveled path.  What would take me 10 minutes to get to school now would require more like 1/2 hour.  And so it goes with much of my old extended suburban neighborhood.  You can't even take a walk and enjoy God's wonderful natural forested beauty without people wondering why you are in "their" neighborhood.  After all, why walk when you can get something to help you like an electric bike, motorized scooter/skateboard, automobile, taxi, etc. Sidewalks (if you are lucky to have them) are narrow and filled with disconnected slabs and (in Las Vegas) other walking impediments such as telephone poles, electrical utility boxes placed in the middle of the sidewalk.  In the Chicago area, many intersections aren't complete without those "friendly" red light cameras continuously watching us like a Big Brother discouraging the natural urge to wander and explore the world around us without the need to reach any destination in particular and without paranoid surveillance.   

As I have grown older, all I see around me is walls - boundaries, fences, plots, subdivisions, etc. - and cameras watching the walls to establish and maintain "ownership" of our natural world.  And "ownership" has extended to beachfront property, forests, lakes, and even islands.

To further explain this notion of "ownership, when I used to live in Las Vegas, NM, I would frequently bicycle uphill toward a beautiful place called "Mineral Hill" about 20 miles away. On the way, I would pass an enormous forested area that went on for miles that was surrounded by an electrified fence and was owned by Ted Turner from CNN fame.  As I would bicycle by this massive tract of natural wilderness, I felt sorry for any larger wild animals that happened to be stuck in these thousands of acres as I couldn't immediately see that they had any way of getting out from the electrified, tall, and camera-guarded fence.  I would often reflect on how dumb it was that one human being could own such a large piece of the natural world and, many years later, it should be obvious that Ted Turner is not alone in his quest to "own" and acquire more and more "wealth."  As Nature thrives on connectedness, how one could dare try to disconnect a piece of Nature for themselves? It was deeply troubling to me.

Though it might seem completely ridiculous, today you can own a lake or other critical water source on which other humans and animals depend (e.g. via water "rights").  You can even divert water from a large lake (e.g. in Owens Valley, California) and send it all to Los Angeles.  You can even own islands!  There is of course no logic in this.  Owning a home where you can put your head down to sleep, cook your meals, take a shower, and write an op-ed, etc is one thing.  But why should one human being control the destiny of so many others (including flora and fauna) who depend on some critical natural resource (land, water, etc.)? 

To top it off, companies such as Monsanto have patented new life forms based on simply inserting genes (which they did not invent but came from various organisms that evolved on their own) and creating novel "Frankenstein" life forms based on inter-species genetic mixing which has been likely occurring over the course many millions of years (i.e. without human intervention) and may be one strong evolutionary factor to create novel organisms.  And yet, these corporate entities somehow think they "own" the life-based technology.  So, presumably, they will create super humans by mixing the DNA of normal people with selected traits of other creatures.  Will they will end up "owning" these superhumans similar to what occurred in the film Blade Runner?

The Native Americans generally viewed themselves as caretakers, not owners of the land that sustained them.  Europeans settlers, disrupted and displaced this thinking by introducing the concept of ownership of territories which they brought with them from the feudal estates on which many of their ancestors lived.  The lazy landlords of these huge tracts of land parasitically benefitted from the hard labor of their indentured tenants who worked the land and who comprised the vast majority of humanity.  Nevertheless, even among the Europeans, the Spanish who settled New Mexico had the concept of "communal property" where citizens shared resources such as water (e.g. from lakes and rivers) and land for grazing.  Yet today, this notion is being rapidly vanquished in favor of private ownership of literally everything on this planet.

Today, we are witnessing an effort to return the world to feudalism where a vast majority of the wealth (including the natural resources) of this world is concentrated (and thus wasted) in the hands of a few.  For the uber wealthy, how many homes does it take to be happy?  Ten?  100? 1000?  With more than 365 homes, you can't even spend one day in each home every year?  Thus you can't even enjoy all of your homes so that "ownership" is meaningless except that more than 365 homeless families (and then some) could have lived in your empty mansions! 

• How much land would it take to make you happy? 
• Half of a state or a whole state?
• How many yachts does one need to own? 
• How many islands? 
• How many investments? 
• How many material possessions will make one happy regardless of the fact that they will end up losing everything when they pass from this world? 

The world is clearly not enough for those fortunate to own "everything" but they will never be satiated. They could spend $1000/minute and still never be happy and still never exhaust their billions of dollars in largely ill-gotten gains.  Wealth is definitely not a linear function.  Having twice the money does not make you twice as happy but may give you twice the headaches trying to keep that money.  This is why the overly wealthy lose their soul - their connection to God and the natural world He made.  They just don't know how to share and by proxy, how to love.

Perhaps the more relevant question to ask these "elite" tycoons is how many people do they have to make miserable by stealing their water, their arable land, companies that hired them, and other means of sustenance for them to be happy?  These are important questions because any therapist asking them would immediately realize that for these "elites", it's not about happiness.  It's not even about outdoing one another as they often work together like Big Tech and the corporate-controlled media did to shamefully censor and brainwash the American people during this election.  It's all about control. 

• Control of resources. 
• Control of income. 
• Control of your thoughts. 
• Control of your health. 
• Control of your voting.
• Control what you read and write (censorship, "cancel" culture), etc.  

This is a dangerous psychosis whose end game is total fascist control that will ultimately destroy the world.  The particular political system used to control the plebeians (socialism or hyper capitalism/globalism) does not matter as long as the "elites" (and their progeny) remain on top indefinitely.

God did not create the world for us to "own" it let alone destroy it.  He created it to sustain our momentary existence in this universe and to literally enjoy the fruits of His labor which He shares with all of us - not just a select few.  From a Western perspective, God owns everything (if you want to look at it that way) including His children. He and He alone decides what we will ultimately receive as an inheritance - not Bill Gates, not George Soros, not Ted Turner, not Mark Zuckerberg and not the host of other ridiculously wealthy "elites."  Monsanto did not create the miracle of life.  It only tinkered with it like Dr. Frankenstein tinkered with dead body parts to "make" something "new."  God created life.  He created the universe that produced life as an eigenstate.  We are His "intellectual" "property" if you will.

All of us have a God-given right to live on and sustain ourselves from this planet - not just the wealthy elites who are trying to steal our life-sustaining resources and control all life on Earth.  As the world becomes ever more "interesting" (to repeat the oft-quoted Chinese curse), we should never forget our God-given inheritance as we struggle to live despite those who think they "own" and thus control Nature.  This cannot be allowed to continue.  The greatest threat to humanity lies in this unprecedented and unequal distribution of resources - the inability of the selfish few to share what they have stolen from all of us through globalism. The future of life on this planet hangs in the balance.