Context: Can anyone own the moon ?
Can anyone “own” anything ? It is an interesting consequence of any extensive rational analysis that not only is “self” primarily (only) a useful (if persistent) fiction, concepts of ownership are also at base similarly _useful_ confabulations. Curiously, the development of concepts of money, wealth, property and ownership have occurred and evolved _pari passu_ (i.e. along with) concepts or notions of personal subjectivity and individuated self.
We “own” to the same extent that we “possess” interior subjective depth. This is precisely why an authentically Buddhist psychological remediation of the modern condition and human economic and environmental catastrophe, although of potent utility, will find itself inadmissible under a contemporary cultural (and technological) aesthetic of ownership and construction of personal identity.
