let possessions exist

 let possessions exist



"Everything in the world belongs to God. But to be a philosopher (the wise one) is to be a friend of God. But don't friends share things with each other. So, the philosopher has everything." - Diogenes


To be wise is to associate with all things, and to associate with the God of all things. As much as I associate with all things, that much is mine and my world. Therefore, the phrase 'all things are mine' does not refer to extreme possession, but to the necessity or impossibility of possessing. This is because money and law cannot command friendship with all things (gods).


If Diogenes' words 'owning all things' are about 'establishing a relationship', the core of modern private ownership is 'disposal of relations'.


To own something means to have the right to dispose of it freely. If I cannot dispose of it, my possessions represent, at best, the limits of my enjoyment.


If we look at things from the point of view of modern private ownership, in which we can dispose of anything we have at any time, we will become rich and yet suffer another poverty.


​


One of the reasons Marx was against private property was that it made us so insensitive and one-sided.


With only one sense of 'have' left, 'seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, thinking, contemplating, perceiving, wishing, working, and loving, that is, physical and mental senses can all be alienated. If that happens, our very essence, our existence, is stricken in extreme poverty. This is because we make ourselves through communion with things, that is, through the activity of sensing and transforming things.


"Possessor exists?"


Erich Fromm's question, inspired by Marx, is important to us in that it points to poverty that cannot be solved by owning more, or even worse in the process of owning more.


That is our 'poverty of being'.


The cars that have been sitting in the drawer for a long time are my possessions, but as if they don't exist to me...


Just as the clothes that my eyes and touch stopped in the closet belong to me but do not exist to me...


As if the books that were bound by me on the bookshelf belong to me, but they do not exist to me.


Just as music does not exist for the ears who cannot hear music, when I can be free from any poverty even if my wealth does not increase, when I can communicate and share my physical and mental senses, my possessions become existence.

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