My wife and children are both people and my property

My wife and children are both people and my property.

Do you find that statement shocking? Most people have a poor definition of property and ownership based solely on direct control. This definition of property is consumerist and exploitative.

A better definition of property is demonstrated interest, that is, we own what we are willing to invest in, care for, and defend. Good parents do all three for their children. We thus have an ownership stake in our children and their future.

As our children grow into maturity, our investment in them bears fruit from which both we and they benefit. This should drive parents to help their children mature into competent adults capable of producing children of their own and surpassing them rather than holding them back in a childlike state.

By this metric of ownership, my wife is also my property, and I am hers. We both invest in each other, care for each other, and defend each other. That is the purpose of our wedding vows—to publicly stake our claims to each other.

Historically, for our ancestors, everyone was someone’s property, and this was a tie that bound us together. We belonged to our people (family and extended family), and they belonged to us. This position of being owned did not make us slaves; instead, it made us freer to take risks and pursue our personal and group interests because we had people who would invest in and defend us. It also made us more conscious of how our behavior affected others in our tribe.

When people met, they would ask, “Who do you belong to?” and people would answer that they belonged to “this or that community” or to “this or that nobles house” or retinue.

In a Männerbund, the men swore oaths so that they belonged to each other and to Odin, the god of the Männerbunds.

Christian monks and nuns also took an oath and belonged to each other (calling each other brother and sister), the church, and to God.

Even ancient European kings belonged to the land and the people, just as the land and people belonged to the king in a cycle of ownership that encouraged reciprocity.

Today, we are weak as a society because we belong to no one, and no one belongs with us. Instead, we exist as splinted, rootless, cosmopolitan, corporate wage cucks, and tax slaves owned by a faceless government run by an assortment of evil criminal syndicates that hate us and like to see us suffer.

So many people are asking “where do I belong?” when they should be asking “to whom do I belong?”

How much better it would be to return to belonging to each other once again. To be a family, a tribe, a nation, united under law and in mutual ownership of each other as stewards of our lineage, heritage, culture, and commons.

We could be strong links in the eternal chain of our people as it reaches out into the stars.

“For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.”