I’ve been saying that social relations and mindsets are shaped by issues of ownership and that leads to too much exclusivity in the way humans deal with each other. Ownership stripped down needs to be little more than protection against violation. In other words, the things that a person is identified with have to be kept safe from infringement by anyone seeking to undermine them whether applying to personal belongings or kinship. Any civilised society short of anarchy would have to uphold such a principle and provide procedures for implementing that commitment.

What I want to draw attention to is the danger of over-identifying with that principle to the point where the basic right to protection becomes distorted. This is when ownership starts to be understood as essential to the way things are rather than just a process. Relations are then dominated by acquisitiveness and the attendant glut of exclusivity that ensues. No longer is it just the violators that are being kept out. So is everyone else, rather like a security system so tight that freedom of movement is restricted.

When relationships are infested with too much exclusivity the prospect of good values is diminished. When the legal system adds further leverage by codifying all of this followed up with enforcement if required then the effect is the entrenchment of a values system particularly suited to certain personality types. It appeals particularly to the mean spirited, the covetous, the acquisitive, the greedy, the ungenerous, the self-serving and the materialistic. These traits are encouraged at the expense of the more elevated aspirations contained in empathy, connection, freedom, spirituality and emancipation from need.

If we want a better world we need a better system of values. Exclusivity lurks in the corners of every life situation and undermines the possibilities for such improvement. Until the frontiers of ownership obsession are rolled back then the task will continue to be made all the harder.