The Earth Belongs to No One
On ownership, money, and the illusion of house hunting
My partner & I are house hunting in the Hudson Valley and the market is hot. We’ve seen about 30 properties in the span of mere weeks, and the process is dizzying, weighing endless considerations and fielding non-stop communication with our agents. This week, we put in our first offer for a property with a pond, nestled in a dense forest lush with mustard-yellow lichen. There are multiple offers in, and I’m unattached to the outcome—but this wild & illusory process has been bending my conception of reality.
What does it mean to buy or sell property on stolen land? How can one ever “own” water, trees, or soil? Can a “landowner” still be a part of the revolution1, or do they then become a colonizer of the Earth?
I know that economics is “real,” and real estate is “real,” but everything about this process screams illusion.
Something is valuable because we assign it value. The next day, we can decide it is no longer valuable—and like a magic wand—it will no longer hold value.
I had a home in Denver that I sold in 2022. Luckily for me, I had a high return on my investment because I sold when the market was hot. Hot markets are unnecessarily wild. I showed my home on a Friday & Saturday, accepted an offer that Sunday, signed contracts the following week, and moved out within a month. The new owners attempted to sell that house just last year, but had to take it off the market because they were unable to. The market had cooled off, and the same homes were suddenly less desirable.
Hot markets feel like groups of people with hysteria. The hysteria creates a mini-world with new rules, and becomes a seemingly-sound reality for everyone involved.
Money is the biggest illusion of all. Indulge me for a moment—we all agreed that money has value, and now the entire world is enslaved by it. People’s souls are corrupted by it, unimaginable violence happens because of it, and the Earth is being destroyed by it.
What if we woke up one day and collectively decided that money no longer has value? It would then, suddenly, lose it’s value.
This will not happen in this timeline because we are all literally bought in, but there is a timeline where it exists. We can bring that alternate timeline into our reality by valuing truly valuable things like love, humanity, care, and a reverence for all living beings, including the Earth.
I posted a version of these thoughts on my Instagram story and it got a lot of engagement. Lots of likes, affirming comments in my DMs—and also lots of unfollows, which I thought was very interesting. I used to feel a little sting when people unfollowed me after I posted something, but now I know it’s because people feel triggered by things that aren’t mine, and it’s a reflection of them rather than of me (or oftentimes, a reflection of the dominant systems of power we live under and its effects on others). This is especially true if I’m posting something that is a direct download from the divine, or if I’m sharing something out of a soulful, heart-led space.
Money is controversial & fraught in this timeline, so I get it. Money in our crumbling society directly determines people’s quality of life (and too often, the reality of lives & deaths). I used to have a shame-filled relationship with money, particularly when I was in a toxic romantic relationship where money was used as a form of control. Now, I see money as neutral.
I’ve had seasons where I’ve made a lot of money, and seasons where I’ve made below poverty-line income. Money comes and goes and says nothing about a person’s worth or value. I know how to make money—I just have no desire to do the type of work our society currently awards a lot of money to. I’m determined to make money by building a new economy that assigns value to new-paradigm things.
The episode of Communion where Pedro plants the seed for creating a new economy.
I want to be rich so I can shower people with love and care. I want to own land so I can build an artist’s residency and house artists, queer people, and people in need of a safe & loving space to land. I want to have money so I can give it away.
I want to have resources to build new systems, new ways of living, and new ways of being. I want all of this, and also, I want none of this. I want a world where ownership and property lines and borders do not exist. I want a world that knows: the Earth belongs to no one.
If money is an illusion and this is all a game, let me play it. Let me game the system and create an alternate reality that is not supposed to exist.
Come join me?
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This question was posed by my dear friend Mercedez Davis.