I’ve just watched part of Guardians of the Galaxy 2.  The plot line was everything I’ve come to expect from the Marvel writers, in the Men In Black sense.  Still, it got me pondering.  Yet another movie that claims a human can own a planet.  Right up there with Jupiter Ascending.  So, I have to ask, can any human really own a planet?

Now, in ownership relationships, there is usually a binary dependency relationship.  The owner depends on the slave, and the slave depends on the owner.  However, the owner can always get another slave, for slaves are fungible.  Slaves, however, don’t always get to just up and leave their owners, and are therefore in the weaker position.  Now, the Earth depends on Humans, and Humans depend upon the Earth, that is obvious.  However, Humans can’t up and leave their planet for another.  The Earth can do without humans.  It can just get other slaves to dig the soil and move stones around for it.  Maybe the beetles will do it next.

Therefore, The Earth owns humans, not the other way around.  Next, we apply a simple scaling algorithm: As Above, So Below.  Does that mean that humans can not own their land?  Their houses?  Yup.  Does that mean that humans do not even have sovereignty over their own bodies?  Yup.  Human bodies are utterly dependent upon a proper gut microbiome and not the other way around.

Does that mean that therefore mean that humans do not own their own souls?  Oooh, tricky question.  I would have to postulate that the answer must be yes.  In an animist universe, human spirits are not self-governed, because they are dependent upon something more than that something is dependent upon them.  Perhaps this is why I have told the gods and demons that my children are not mine to give.  If I do not own my own soul, then I can not sell it to the devil, nor can it be redeemed by any one deity claiming to be able to set it free.  Perhaps, it is more like a gut microbiome, and the billions of soil microbiota.  All of these things own infinitesimal shares of my soul.  You’d never get them together in a shareholder’s meeting to approve a hostile takeover, and they don’t vote by proxy.