Little dusty old thought that popped up a while back, but first, I'd like to give credit where credit is due. At some point on Bungie.blind, there was a discussion somewhere about something, and Meta Cognition brought up a very interesting point, which surfaced again in the last few days in my thoughts.

Let's say you own a truck, or a car that you're fond of. You want to keep it. You enjoy it, and take care of it, and keep it all through a major portion of your life. But, eventually, like everything, your vehicle will break, and you'll need to replace it.

So here's what I ask. What makes your vehicle, yours? At first glance it might be the vehicle as a whole in it's entirety. But something happens when you fix your vehicle up or tune it. You remove parts of it. So suddenly, as a whole, your vehicle grows a little smaller. While it is replaced with new parts that are largely identical, those parts are undeniably different from the originals.

And now we can take things a step further. What about your body? Every year or so, every last atom that makes up your body is lost, and then replaced. The only part of you that remains intact are your thoughts. Everything else phases out, and phases back in again.

So with this in mind, I ask, what does it mean to really own something? From a traditional standpoint, owning something means that it is yours, and yours alone, to do with as you please. You can fix it, break it, modify it, put love into it, whatever. But this particular thing alone is yours.

But if we look at what I said above, technically you never own anything. You don't even have control over it. Because the original no longer exists, and the present form of what you hold always changes. And if we bring entropy into things, and the fact nothing is ever truly a carbon copy of itself down at the atomic level, then what you "own" will eventually degrade until even the physical form it once held no longer exists. But, at the same time, the individual atoms that made up your special something are never lost, and repurposed into new things.

So either we own nothing, because of the fact that the original copy of what we own is always lost and dispersed forever, or we own everything, because everything has a piece of something else in it that you, at some point in your life interacted with.

From a physical standpoint, we measure what we own based off of physical things. The fact that we crafted it, or used money to buy it, or we defend it, or even take it, or a piece of paper says that something is yours. When in reality we have no true say in things other than the perspective view we exist on.

But I'm curious. If you read through all that, then keep it in your head, and try to answer this. To you, with that knowledge in hand of what I just put up above, what does it really mean to own something?

Humans put larger meaning into things.

Quite the opposite really. We can't seem to look at the bigger picture. In fact we put so much meaning into things that are otherwise trivial and pointless, useless as a whole, that when you stand back and look at things there's a lot of stupid shit out there.

For example, let's look at a grudge. One person hates another. But they never do anything about it. They let it sit and fester, and work themselves up internally as the person they hate so very much isn't even touched by it. They might not even have any inclination whatsoever that you hate them.

That grudge, that hate, is a meaning to the one who holds it. But in reality, it is largely useless.

I'd love to kill you right now, but unfortunately I'm a Mongol and I can't get through that Great Wall of China you put up.

Did you try walking around the wall?

The slip of paper from the state saying that a 1978 Chevy Impala is titled in my name.

Yes, but that piece of paper only covers that particular vehicle in it's present form. If the engine on it died, and you ripped the engine out and replaced it, that engine would not be the original copy, and therefore it wouldn't be yours. You'd own the vehicle, but not the engine, since it's not the same engine that was part of the vehicle when that piece of paper was given to you.

Just like blood transfusions, or organ transplants. These parts may become a part of you, but they are not from you originally.

But the frame is what's titled!

So really, you don't own the vehicle then. Just the frame. Because in order to own the vehicle itself, every last part of it must be listed. So that means, technically, you're driving around in a vehicle that is largely up for grabs to anybody who wants a part from it, AND, even more so, you're getting ripped off by insurance because you're paying for the vehicle as a whole rather than the frame itself.

Maybe it's the individual parts brought together that complete the whole. That's what you have feelings for.

Hilarious

I'll be here all week.

How about 2?

Most likely.

Most likely.

"Das at the Apollo, Aug 26-Sep 9"