What It Means to Own
Starting from a Patek Philippe slogan and ending in intellectual property law, an argument that ownership is really the ability to control something — including the intangible.
As an only child in a small family, much of my worldview, interests, and way of thinking are molded by my father. Unlike stock, wine, and guns, when introducing me to watches, he didn’t tell me what to look for, because Patek Philippe is “the only first-tier brand in the world.” Their slogan, “you don’t own a Patek Philippe — you merely look after it for the next generation,” commonly served as not solely a late-night conversation starter, but also a catalyst for contemplation. Assuming a limited time on Earth, what does it mean to “own” something, when a time in which we are no longer in possession of the object is all but guaranteed? If proof of purchase is synonymous with ownership, does that mean the employer, by definition, “owns” the employee on the clock? Or do they own the salaryman’s labor and the wage-worker’s time? Upon introspection, it is my belief that to own is to have complete control of something over an indefinite period of time. By this definition, the intangible — skills we’ve mastered or knowledge we possess — also falls within the concept of ownership.
It is obvious why Plato believed ownership is corrosive to one’s character — it fosters greed and attachment to material possessions. But it isn’t that without owning food we’d forfeit the desire to eat, or without clothes the wish to stay warm. To live in a world without basic ownership, but with no way to eliminate the need for resources, is to live like animals — treating one another as competition to secure limited resources. The more modern proposal in which the government owns all materials so that no individual has ownership is a methodology attempted by communist parties such as China and the Soviet Union. Both countries faced similar issues regarding redistribution, with the average citizen receiving far too few resources to meet government goals and compensate for those without labor power. As a Chinese-American, a commonly arising topic (when not discussing watches) is the disastrous effects of then-China, where rural relatives resorted to consuming dirt and the remains of those who died from hunger. Thus, as with most things, it isn’t ownership itself that is corrosive — one could easily argue that the lack thereof is far more harmful — but the excessive desire for more ownership that is detrimental to one’s character. However, when following Sartre’s definition, tangible objects no longer serve as the blockade to higher pursuits, but its counterpart, with both representing the control one has.
Science certainly seems to favor the Sartrean view. New, promising research suggests that information may be the fifth state of matter (with plasma being the fourth). While the theory that the physical manifestation of encoding — how electrons spin within the atom — is still unproven, the idea that the intangible is interchangeable with physical objects leads to interesting conclusions. When one owns a book, an intangible, admittedly imperfect copy of the book exists in one’s mind upon reading. Thus, the reader has not merely control over the printed copy, but is able to control the memory of the book, whether consciously or unconsciously, by altering, deleting, and interpreting the memory — and thereby the contents of the book — in various ways. It is commonly thought that one’s memory is one’s identity — without it, one would have no recollection of one’s hobbies, interests, opinions, knowledge, and interactions. If this is accepted, then to lose one’s memory is to lose oneself. Conversely, to have recollection is to “own,” or to be able to control, oneself. In other words: ownership of one’s experiences is the identity of self, and it develops as one owns — controls, alters, interprets — more experience.
The concept of intellectual property echoes a similar message, but in reverse. Unlike science’s potential discovery that the intangible is actually physical, intellectual property allows one to legally own the intangible and profit from it, thereby exchanging thought and ideas for physical objects — money. This idea, in nature, agrees with Sartre, as it literally gives one ownership of the intangible. It also disagrees with Plato in a meaningful way by prioritizing higher pursuits like knowledge and innovation, treating tangible wealth as only a byproduct of those pursuits.
In essence, “ownership” itself is a poorly understood word — as guardians of assets for the next generation, perhaps the only things we truly own, and take with us, are the intangible thoughts, emotions, and memories of the journey along the way.