Wednesday, August 11, 2010

ownership of self, the commodification of being

The foundation of self value, value of others, value of life, evaluation of being, and jealously all lies in what seems to be a fact that people are always in a state of desiring to own themselves (and working to convince themselves that they do). Though really, that is impossible because we don't actually OWN ourselves -- we are ourselves. (We are in actuality not objects, one would argue.) The body and mind are both in the prior case objectified as a package, sometimes separated, but both objectified. As we struggle to grasp the reality that it is impossible to literally own ourselves, and yet at the same time we do try, and we desire to do so; we gain different senses of satisfaction when we learn that what we think we own is validated as being a good purchase and something worthy to own as deemed by the desire of other potential owners (other people). In other words, through the perception of the desire to own the bodies and minds of other people as objects that can be re-appropriated into potential selves for our self through ownership, one simultaneously recognizes that oneself as a body and mind can be objectified by others, entering into the same wager. Through this we desire to evaluate our own objectified being through the evaluations of potential owners, thus giving it value. It seems none other than supply and demand economics. When the product is rare -- as we are all rare, unless we objectify large quantities of people (such as slaves, races, through epithets, abuse, etc.) -- and the demand is high, the value goes up. When product is non-rare the value goes down. The same can be said for the products of people, the objects associated with those objectified. And thus goes the cycle of objectification of self and others -- a commodification of being.