Property

(Date is approximate)

Possessions are such subtle burden after carrying it for so long. Too long now. Could they be perhaps that nameless thing that solemnifies childhood into the so called "adult" life? Could the incessant urge to keep and to hoard, to collect evermore, assumed by most, admitted by less with a slight taboo, the urge to possess, be a constant weight-down in the lives of billions? Let's find out.

Property partitions matter, time, and space, like privacy partitions (a subset of) knowledge. They both allow tight control over the flow of these assets, and the society I'm surrounded by assumes these concepts as essential to the integrity of its inhabitants and to all organizations they build. But although these concetps are ingrained into society, and seem to have been so for a while, it appears possible to me that this arrangement is a suboptimal game-theoretical local optimum analogous to that illustrated in the Prisoner's Dilemma; a "to each his own" strategy makes for the best possible worst-case scenario, though globally suboptimal.

Then again, we see examples of compartmentalization in Nature itself. The cells in my body keep their organs to themselves, perform specialized functions, and hold themselves separate from each other with their minute membranes, though they coexist with each other in the same medium, and they often exchange signals and materials? between each other. Nature is often a model worthy of imitating (in more basal form... everything is a part of Nature)... so what can we learn from this? That compartmentalization is indeed necessary, or at least one valid way, to build coherent, larger structures out of many? That we are on the right path?

Maybe. Evolutionary quandaries aside, though, I feel my possessions weigh me down. They shall be disposed of.
~End of March 2013