The Beginning

I have decided to begin my adventure into blogging with something that I wrote in a state of consternation about the capacity of own abilities as an author and a creative.  This blog will be a series of essays, book reviews, commentaries, critiques, short stories, and perhaps partial installments of a fiction novel that I had been working on several years ago.  With all of that preface aside, I begin thusly:

    I became mired in my own thoughts as usual while fumbling around the apartment, and I found myself needing to produce some form of written work.  Perhaps I feel it is obligatory to have some documentation of my thoughts, or that someway, somehow, that a person or persons might take an interest them.  I would endeavor to believe that my greatest works of the mind would allow a reader to enjoy themselves, learn something, or consider a new possibility arc in which to operate on this road called life. 

I was just considering the nature of ownership and how does one lay claim to something.  I was in a state of self-pity that I reside in an apartment in a relatively cozy portion of tier 1 suburbs in Albany, New York.  It seems appropriate that I should aspire to become a homeowner and live on land that I could have some kind of proprietary claim on.  I do not have a lovely manorial vista, and thus, I consider this a failure. 

Let us assume that some wealthy industrialist had given me an ample sum of money to build the life of my dreams, and I could afford to contact a realtor and purchase a fine home and land to accompany it.  How would it become affirmed that I truly owned this land?  Does that agreement between myself and the realtor establish a total ownership (that, in a court of law, would be upheld)?  This assumes that I would be able to pay my taxes and remain in good standing with the state.  This essentially means that government sanctioned transactions are the law of the land when it comes to ownership in a practical sense. 

What if there was political upheaval and the military (or paramilitary faction) took possession of whatever land it wanted?  Would it not be fair to say my claim to ownership is therefore void?  Does sovereignty establish ownership or the ability to claim ownership, if nothing else?  Does avoiding the notice of another sovereign (whomever that might be), suddenly grant a claim based on luck?  What if I were able to defend my home with an elaborate series of booby traps and assault weapons, would it make “might makes right,” a valid form of jurisprudence?  All those factors could contribute to the assumption that I, indeed, owned the house in question. 

What about this option:  What if I snuck onto protected wilderness territory and built a shanty out materials that I found.  While, I would have no legal claim to ownership of the shanty, would it, prima facie, have more of sentiment of ownership, even if I had no means of protecting it?  Perhaps, by building something rather than simply buying it by a transaction of money or trade, I have a higher capacity to claim dominion.  It would an interesting process of determining who owns what, if you had to consider the time and effort, they put into shaping something to their will.  This creates two distinct forces at work: proprietary ownership and manufacture related ownership. 

I found myself feeling branded by clothing labels and that I was somehow a victim of fashionable control over my life.  I was unable to call a garment my own because I never designed it, I never cultivated the recourses (such as cotton) to manufacture said garment.  The fact remains in my mind, that people are accustomed to calling something their own because they paid for it, and not because they made it.  Shouldn’t manufacture and ownership be directly connected?  Don’t I simply wear pants and shirts because that is what society expects and that is what is available at the local department store?  Some people working in a textile mill might say that it was my blouse because I made it.  Some people shopping at the department store might counter argue that it is my blouse because I paid for it. 

Now we are at the heart of the matter, and it is called money most commonly.  One can ask how our services or skills are being rewarded in the context of money by a quantifiable ratio.  The supposed capitalist asserts that there is a proportional ratio of work accomplished to money earned.  Someone with a more pragmatic opinion might counter that argument by pointing out the sheer number of hard working, yet destitute persons in the United States alone.  A man constantly rummaging through the garbage collecting bottles for recycling is making a pittance and yet is doing a highly beneficial service for the environment.  Regardless of viewpoints of one’s service, we are still confused about what seems to be an equitable means of distributing wealth. 

This is where the more classically educated among us might interject that it is training and education developed over a proper period that creates a distinction between who might be able to buy gator skin shoes and who might be buying wooden loafers.   Those with a more traditional liberal value system find that education is the means for everyone to afford to buy those gator skins.  Unfortunately, there just not enough gators to go around, land to live on, or almond butter to eat.  We are forced to prioritize to those who have led lives following the proper narrative of a prescriptive system that cherishes its own academic livelihood. 

Where does this put me?  I have gone through rigorous academic training.  I completed twelve years of primary school education which included a myriad of subjects and things to learn.  I received an associate's degree from the local community college and furthered my education in the hopes that I would have some kind of boost in terms of my marketability of my job skills.  I then continued my education into a state university that allowed me the opportunity to really improve my mental faculties and demonstrate my professional value.  Therein, I was invited to study in an honors program, join an academic fraternity, and even share my research topics at educational conferences.  To top it all off, I managed to complete the master’s comprehensive examination and get a Master of Arts degree from said state university.  Yet, I live well below the poverty line in this country. 

Life and its many vicissitudes had proven to imperil my goals of becoming a beloved author with a major scholarly contribution to the world.  For personal reasons, failed relationships, and frankly, poor decisions, my life became a quagmire of despondency and chagrin.  The only thing I feel like I have any true ownership of is my suffering.  This may be the case with all people, and the rest of life is a series of objects floating in and out of our view.  Regardless of how I view my burdens, I am plagued by a need to find a relationship between them and that which I covet.  Was I even educated in the most valuable of lessons? 

Perhaps if people (me included) were properly trained to have the means to construct their own homes, grow their own food, and fashion their own garments, they would be free of the artificial construct know as money.  However, this does not grant us immunity from dilemmas related to the natural economic state.  Furthermore, it generates a world that is less bureaucratic, academic, and specialized.  If such a holistic approach was the most efficient, it would probably have been the road we have already chosen.  Perhaps in such a world people would simply eat raw food and live in thatched huts.  This would remain a truly tepid experience and lack the flavor of our modern society. 

So let us return to the premise that performing a service or some kind of labor that benefits society in some manner would provide incentive in the form of monetary emoluments.  If this is the case, then how can I turn the labor I am performing, by dedicating my efforts to entertaining and enlightening the public into wealth?  In short, how can this written word get me paid?  The fact of the matter is that there is no small answer to that question.  Perhaps it would take a well-known publisher to disseminate my labors, or a well-respected academic to recommend this essay to a scholarly publication.  Whatever the case may be, there must be some crossed wires. 

There is one possibility I can muster.  That is this: there are over 350 million Americans currently.  How many of them are trying to advertise their written work as more prolific and worthwhile than mine?  How many people are willing to read anything that isn’t required for their essential day-to-day necessity?  Unfortunately, competition is a malefic factor that absconds from some less skilled and less lucky authors from being able to feed themselves from their preferred skill.  This is why a capacious and worthy author might be working at a grocery store.   Said author might even have academic credentials that reveal a highly overqualified worker. 

Much of this essay has been compromised of an amalgamation of questions with not much perfunctory success in reveling some austere solution to the quandary of how to provide fair pay for fair work.  We must be willing to examine our ability to become freed from the yoke of assumption about our qualitative judgements about one others’ ability.  We must feast on the possibility that humans could work collaboratively to build a more feasible path to the American Dream.  It is surely something that I would like to achieve. 

I think there is a common assumption that the United States is a meritocracy and that a lifetime of good deeds will result in a higher quality of life.  I want to believe that myself because it sounds just and it sounds like the kind of world that I would find most palatable.  How many artists, designers, authors, and countless other professionals were not regarded in their time and lived sad and tired lives?  I live with the constant dread that I could be one of those cases, but that might even be a bit of a parochial assessment.  Moreover, I might not even attract any attention or wealth after my passing and my legacy dies with me.  Let us even consider the worst, and that the world, for its descension indulgences simply falls apart.  Would there be any art left for some advanced alien race to come upon when humanity is long dead? 

Let us put all this dyspeptic preponderance aside and focus back on a solution for economic woes.  I assert that this topic is both that of creativity and that of raw economic forces that deal with how labor is applied to society, and how we draw wealth and value from that labor.  Beyond the academic institutions, what means is there to draw evaluative judgement for what people try to provide?  For example: What grade or payment would this essay get for its explanatory power, and what governing forces determine such a thing?  It would be beneficial if there were an aspect of bureaucracy that determined what things were worth with assuredly, reliably, and with the expectation that accuracy was achieved. 

Imagine if there were some forms of agency or corporation that determines what professional worth that things have.  It could be an active census that rates or categorizes the work or services that people try to perform.  I am advocating for a ubiquitous organization of goods and services.  This estimation of labor and qualitative characteristics could be applied by many active individuals sharing intelligence cooperatively and making a flowing and harmonious collective with the proper self-corrective mechanisms to make our current society more equitable. 

With a fair estimate of what goods and services are worth to all persons, they would then extract (with the proper oversight) a means to establish a valid system of proprietary distribution.  The goal of this essay was written to figure out what it means to own something.  If it can be agreed upon what dictates ownership and what agreements people can affirm to such claims of ownership, it is possible to then find a solution to the greatest problem of all time. 

The greatest problem of all time is finding the means for survival and prosperity.  The greatest problem is that people think they might have an entitlement to something in this world, when it is poisoning them.  The future may be determined but it is not certain to us. When we find out what we can do that adds worth to our collective economy and how to have our needs met, then we can begin to find the perfect solution to that problem.