My Niece

My niece posted this quote on Facebook by Deborah Ellis:

"Nobody really owns anything. We give back our bodies at the end of our lives. We own our thoughts, but everything else is just borrowed. We use it for a while, then pass it on. Everything. We borrow the sun that shines on us today from the people on the other side of the world while they borrow the moon from us. Then we give it back. We can’t keep the sun, no matter how afraid we are of the dark."
--Deborah Ellis

My Comment:  In a way Deborah Ellis is correct, and we really do not own anything. That really is behind the radical, pure altruism and theological collectivism of Eastern religion. We are nothing, we own nothing, we are mere Maya transitoriness, a gossamer appendage to the divine One that is inscrutable, unknowable, ineffable, individisible, unchanging, eternal and immutable.

But then my Mavellonialist metaphysical objecting kicks in. We are individual. We are real. We are angels, at our best when developed, spitting images of our divine parents. We own things, we own our life mission, we own our consciousness that is good, real, indiviisible and wholesome. We own our divinely mandated journey to make something of the self must as the oak seek grows into the mighty Arisotelian tree. We own this and are enjoined by the Higher Power to take a lasting interest in and resourceful management of what we own and what we are.

My Niece: "I agree, but the idea of things being borrowed and not inheritantly belonging to us is also from the Bible: Job 1:21 ►
He said, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised."

It reappears again and again in the New Testament when Jesus speaks of money in the Parables and even when he speaks to Pontius Pilot (spelling?) when he's about to be sentenced to death.

The Bible also plays with the idea of being Stewards of the earth in Genesis, so I'm not sure that managing our resources that we've been granted (versus "own") is necessarily separate. In fact, if we have more, we are supposed to give those in need--rather than solely accumulate more wealth. That's my understanding of it anyway.

My Response: Your quotes from the Old Testament and the New Testament are honest, reasonable interpretations from those texts. If one loves God and loves pursuit of the truth, and these two loves and practices can never contradict each other, then one has to be very careful not to take Biblical text out of context to support one's own non-Biblical interpretation of sacred text to strengthen the argument that one is promoting. Regarding your Job quote, it can be used to promote altruist ethics and metaphysics, which you favor, much more than egoist ethics and metaphysics, which I favor. One could remain an egoist and not disagree with Job by remarking that entering and leaving the world naked and shorn of property are the reality, but really do not prove whether the soul, the ghost in the machine, is but a connected soul to the collective crowd after death, or if it is a sturdy, discreet spiritual angel, alive, singular and apart, an immaterial individual in harmony with a vast host of other such souls in that kingdom of heaven. My theology is that the Mother and the Father are the ultimate, near-Perfect individuated Individualists. Yahweh, Allah, Buddha and Jesus are earlier divine manifestations, bound by historical circumstances, cultural, linguistic and human limitations, of Higher Power or Higher Powers reach out to needy humanity as collectivists deities, with all the accompanying religious text, altruist ethics, anti-materialistic and anti-secular excesses, and the altruist metaphysics. These earlier, limiting values and principles are not now to be regarded as inferior or primitive or wrong, but are to be supplemented by more modern, advanced superior egoist theology and egoist ethics that overlay and provide context not refutation of what went before. The Bible, like any great source of divine knowledge and inspiration, has such holistic greatness inherent in it, that every side of an argument can find text to support their personal agenda. All are somewhat right and all are somewhat wrong, and moderate truth is uncovering roughly where the balance lies, and that demarcation is only approximate and ever shifting. It is easy to be deceived and misled even when one is honest and out to deceive none, including oneself.