Today you are reading pretty much the opposite of yesterday – as described yesterday, this is part of the Zeitgeist that manifests itself in the sum of subjective views when they are published. So this article is also about trust and confidence, ownership and possession. It’s a contrarian view, so if you liked the version you read yesterday, you should consider to stop reading here to avoid bad feelings. However, the article might also raise the question of why this feels bad and you might get to know new ideas. So let’s start with that right away.
Yesterday’s article concluded that a world in which trust is rejected and confidence prevails, in which ownership is discarded as a concept and possession takes its place, would be a better world.
When it come to trust and confidence lets take a look at the definitions. Trust is a firm belief in a deep truth. Confidence is the belief that people or processes will produce a certain
result. The definition reveals why broken trust hurts so bad, someone who beliefs
in a deep truth in something or somebody will, when it turns against him, easily question his belief system or why the disappointment might have happened to him.
Why trust is better than confidence?
Because trust goes deeper. Trust rather has to be earned than granted. Its a long and often hurtful process as described above.
The only exception may be faith in God. Trusting God is the basis of life
for countless people. Why do so many people trust in god although they cannot see him or did not have special occurrences? Because they see him do good elsewhere and trust that he will be there when needed. No miracle would ever have happened without this trust that thereby was proven countless times.
A world of trust is a world of miracles and wonders. A world of confidence is a positive world, no doubt, but would you rather enter a plane saying you are quite confident that this pilot can fly the plane or that you really trust him or her?
Confidence is the little sister of trust, at best, its the word to use when you want to avoid disappointment and don’t want to put up big hurdles. For real progress though, you need trust.
Its quite similar with possession and ownership.
Let’s take a look at the definitions as well. Possession is the de facto control over a thing, whereas ownership is the legal control over the thing. Conversely, this means that you can take possession, but you can only acquire ownership.
Even receiving something as a gift is not enough.
A German proverb reads “What you inherit from your fathers, acquire it in order to possess it.”
This refers to legal possession, i.e. ownership. The proverb means that simply taking or accepting something is not enough to morally justify why you have it. Ownership, i.e. rightful possession, presupposes a service rendered to who gives up or relinquishes ownership.
There seem to be places in the world that belong to no one or to everyone. Can one simply take possession of them?
Here, too, there is an obligation, if not a legal one, then a moral one, as to how one deals with these things that have not been acquired through one’s own actions.
Ownership always entails responsibility. An possessor is more of a user.
The possessor of a pub can move after water damage, the owner (of the house) has to renovate it or is left with the depreciation.
Those who simply take possession of something often have a temporary attitude towards it, be it a space that can be used for this or that project, then move on.
If there is no ownership, only possession, who actually provides the infrastructure? Without responsible owners, most owners probably have no impulse to do much about what they don’t own. Ownership may sometimes bring wealth, but it always brings responsibility.
As an owner, I must also protect others from harm caused by my property. As the possessor, I can always say that it doesn’t belong to me. And move on.
That may sound tempting, but it doesn’t work, as Kant explained early on with the Categorical Imperative, Basically, he says, do not do to others what you would not want have done
to yourself. Kant phrases it Act in such a way that the maxim of your actions can become
the maxim of all.
The legal right of possession, i.e. ownership, is the foundation of a protective society.
Where the law counts for nothing and pure possession prevails, the law of the strongest prevails. Admittedly, this is often the case even in today’s society, which is generally considered to be based on the rule of law. Disappointed owners also blow this horn and say, for example, that their property does not belong to them even after full payment, as they would be
expropriated if they did not pay their taxes. However, it is part of the social contract that the state, as the representative of all citizens, has a monopoly on the use of force, ideally protects the weak members of this group of people and needs an infrastructure to do so. The owner has also agreed to this approach, if not individually, then through the normative power of the factual. There are high hurdles to expropriation and even an unwanted visit to your home only has to be endured in the event of imminent danger or by court order.
So a protected life for the wast majority of people needs rules that have to be obeyed. Does not sound appealing to people who do not like rules, I know. A plausible explanation for why so many people think that the world would be a better place when rules fade, is the desire for individual freedom, which stems from the desire of the individual to be seen and
perceived as something special. He, the individual, is entitled to this, from birth and without further action.
That is a nice idea, but it ends with the question of who produced or paid for the one thing that would like to be taken possession of. In a world of people who collectively take possession of everything they want without paying for it properly, no one will want to produce anything.
Money is often seen as something diabolical, base and evil, but there is no better medium of exchange. The German TV entertainer Harald Schmidt, who is known for his rather cynical sense of humor, answered the question from Sarah Wagenknecht, a German communist politician, as to what he thought was good about capitalism, by saying that his way of life was good. And he didn’t mean it as humorously as usual.
It is to admit that we are now experiencing the final phase of an exuberant, rampant turbo-capitalism in the western world that is no longer based on any (f)actual performance and are therefore facing an unprecedented devaluation of money,
This statement aligns well with G Edward Griffins famous book The Creature from Jekyll Island. The Federal Reserve Bank, through its capacity to create money from nothing, Griffin argues, is not only incapable of achieving its stated objectives, but instead creates economic instability,
encourages war, and ultimately acts as an instrument of totalitarianism. To say the least that might be the real reason of the instabilities that we witness worldwide now.
Nevertheless, Money and capitalism, even if in a bad state right now, are still the most successful systems to date when it comes to combating poverty, disease and other challenges facing humanity.
Anyone who doesn’t even want that and advocates genuine freedom from domination is by definition an anarchist. Anarchy is not the chaos of some punk (incidentally, the punk is the most blatantly individualized single phenomenon that nevertheless looks the same everywhere in the world), anarchy is the absence of domination. In most cases, however, it also means
the absence of security; at the very least, the law of the jungle, meaning, the strongest wins, quickly comes into play here too.
I came across an essay entitled The chasm by G. Edward Griffin. Griffin, the mentioned author of the world-famous book The Creature from Jekyll Island,describes in the Essay The Chasm how two social systems are at war: collectivism and individualism.
Collectivism plays a crucial role here. State leaders, political actors, NGOs, and other influential groups claim that the stated goals serve a higher, greater purpose that is very beneficial to the common good. However, with the consent, or the illusion of consent, of a large part of
an organizational group, it is easier to exploit them or rob them of their assets than to argue with individuals who vehemently defend their property or possessions—in this case, the distinction is not so important.
G. Edward Griffin’s essay called The Chasm is free to download here for everyone, and Griffin explains why groups of people and systems of government can be divided into two groups: individualists and collectivists. Griffin’s view is somewhat one-sided on the right-wing conservative side, but the basic observation is correct. In recent decades, we have witnessed both an individualization of the individual, especially in the Western world, and at the same time a collectivization of state and organizational action in the same regions.
Meanwhile, the group setting or dictating the topics doesn’t even seem to be the largest group in society. This is now irritating not only die-hard individualists and lateral thinkers, but also the middle class, which feels at the mercy of the situation but nevertheless doesn’t want to rebel
against the apparent majority.
Collectivism plays a decisive role in this. State leaders, political actors, NGOs and other influential groups claim that the stated goals serve a higher, greater purpose that is of great benefit to the general public. But with the consent or the illusion of consent of a large part of an
organizational group, it is easier to exploit or rob them of their assets than to argue with individuals who vehemently defend their property or possessions, in which case the subordination is not so important.
Similar to communist countries, a kind of five-year plan is issued, guidelines for the actions and thoughts that the defined group expects of the individual from now on.
Dissenting opinions are increasingly perceived as disturbing rather than enriching or worthy of consideration, and are often waved away, not listened to and often censored. Struggles to reverse this movement appear to be underway in America, but there have always been only two political currents there, which essentially cements the division in society. Many
areas, such as alternative medicine or alternative lifestyles, are censored and blocked even in free America.
The way out is through personal responsibility, which in the best sense always means taking responsibility not only for one’s own well-being, but also for one’s actions, which means that I have an interest in not harming others so that I don’t have to take responsibility for this harm.
Earned Trust and responsible ownership are part of the process.
Perhaps humanity is already ready to live in peaceful anarchy, to live independently and thus with consideration for others. Maybe it just seems as if we need all the rules and infrastructure, the future will tell.
(Welcome) guest author Andreas wrote this article. If you would also like to publish a guest post—perhaps as a response to an article here—please contact the editorial team.