You Own Nothing, Ecologically Speaking

For many people, especially those living in cultures whose social and economic structures have been heavily influenced by Western standards of rationality, domination of nature and modernity, the fact of 'owning' something is a primary facet of economic existence. To own a house, a plot of land, or some other commodity, is a signal to others in society that the individual has acquired a particular status, and has enough wealth to enable them to purchase the asset. However, the idea of 'owning' a natural resource that is essentially eternal and inexhaustible, or which exists on a time frame much more expansive than human lives and economies can account for, is one which is inherently flawed. 

A screenwriter's adaptation of the famous speech given by the Duqamish Chief Seattle in 1854, while ceding his tribe's land to the white American settlers, has the Native American leader ask, "How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them from us?" While this was an adaptation to drive home the point of the earlier speech, the fact remains that Chief Seattle voiced the essential belief of many communities around the world that ownership of natural resources is a logical impossibility. Nature is so vast and immense that it cannot be translated into monetary terms, purchased, or owned; more than that, it is essentially a community resource that cannot fall into the hands of one entity.

Margaret Atwood's poem The Moment presents the idea of ownership of a place as a fundamental delusion, a lie that humans tell themselves. The main character in the poem thinks, in line with many myths associated with Western capitalism, that the ownership of land is the result of "many years of hard work and a long voyage," a reflection on their own merit and work rather than on the historical and social circumstances that enabled them to dominate and claim ownership of the natural world. In the titular moment, they dare to claim "your room, half-acre, square mile, island, country," and to say, "I own this."

However, the character is not the only sentient being in the poem, looking out at a vast expressionless landscape with no other being's dignity or autonomy to consider. On the contrary, the other living beings in the ecosystem, who had given humans the support, language and the elements they needed to stay alive, withdraw this assistance as soon as the main character tries to lay claim on them. In a whisper, unlike the boldness with which humans claim to own them, they beg to differ:

"...You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round."

Nature is, thus, not merely one more object for humans to own and commodify; instead, in Atwood's poem, it rebels against the idea that humans are entitled to do this. Thus, the poem becomes a powerful statement of environmental ethics, re-emphasising the transient and ultimately futile nature of any human claims over land and natural resources.

Moreover, Atwood's poem is not just a simple reiteration of the need for individuals to care for the environment. Like Chief Seattle, she too makes a powerful statement for environmental justice and the need for colonized land to be returned to those people who rightfully have a stake in it. The conquest of land is as much of a fallacy as the ownership of nature - when the main character dares to claim a country, nature quickly retaliates to say that they had just been a visitor there. Thus, a third character in the poem may be the 'other' human whose relationship to the land and nature was severed by the main character's claim to that same land.

The poem The Moment is thus a powerful statement in favor of many ideas that are being floated today to protect nature and the rights of those people who depend on it. The idea of dominance and conquest of nature is rejected as a vanity with which humans fool themselves, and is replaced by an understanding that the earth and natural phenomena are not to be dominated or owned, but are rather collective resources and benefits.

What has been lost in most major ideologies and religions, and in law is the concept of the Commons, in which everything is owned by everybody else and the benefits are shared. The exaggerated sense of ownership, as critiqued by Atwood, in fact signals the death of the Commons and of stable human existence in an ecosystem, a topic which I shall touch on in a later blog post. 

Image credit: By Annie Spratt anniespratt - https://unsplash.com/photos/z2u4tUrNvmYarchive copy, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61793039