Nobody Washes a Rental Car

If you don't own something, you don't care for it. Same goes for your life.

Photo by Prateek Katyal on Unsplash

No one washes a rental car. Why would they? We rent cars when we need to get from one place to another when we can’t or don’t want to bring our car, or if our car is in the shop and we need a rental for a week or two. We assume (correctly) that the rental car company will wash the car and vacuum if it needs cleaning. It isn’t our property, so we don’t feel that it is our responsibility.

For much the same reason, most people don’t do more than the bare minimum of maintenance on the apartments or houses they rent. That is the responsibility of the owner. If the refrigerator, air-conditioning or washing machine needs fixing, the owner or the super is there to take care of it. People generally try to keep their apartment or house they rent clean, but they don’t invest in them, because it is someone else’s asset. Why put in time and money to improve something that you won’t benefit from? Only a sucker would do that.

If you don’t see the analogy yet, you must be new here.

Why is it that we treat our planet and our communities as if we are renting them?

It may be because we expect someone else to take care of any problems. We expect the rental car company to wash the car, we expect the super to fix the clunky radiator in our rented apartment. It’s not our responsibility, so we don’t have to worry about doing those things or even knowing how to do those things.

From the time we wake up in the morning to the time our heads hit the pillow at night we depend on hundreds if not thousands of people to provide our clothing, food, hot water, plumbing, electricity, heat, cooling, transportation, clean air, safe streets, comfortable workplace, easy to navigate streets, the pillow we place our heads on at the end of the day, and all of these things for our children and loved ones as well. These people come from all over the world. On the average day, we all likely depend on products or services from every continent on Earth, even Antarctica, as some of the science there on climate, geology, biology, and other Earth science likely impacts some of the products you use every day.

We are insanely dependent on others who we don’t know, and don’t care to know for our relatively comfortable lives. We accept this state of the world as normal. We are renters of our own lives, expecting someone else to take care of any problem, because for the most part, they always have. There is little reason to believe that they won’t take care of those things in the near future. We will have to pay them of course, but ultimately, we don’t have to worry about knowing how to do it - we can pay someone for that.

Ownership breeds resilience.

Now imagine that we owned ourselves, and knew that we owned ourselves, and had to provide for ourselves all the things that we enjoy and take for granted on a given in our daily lives.

If you say, “of course I own myself!”, good for you. I would define owning oneself as having control of one’s body and life. We all owe some duties to others or even the state, but are we mainly sovereign in our decisions, associations and identity? I would say, no most of us don’t own ourselves - including myself, but that is an essay for another day (next Monday to be precise). Let’s move forward with the assumption that most of us don’t “own ourselves” because we are not as free as we would like to be in what we do, when we do it, and who we do it with. Owning oneself is different than being dependent on others. But I would argue choosing who to depend on is part of owning oneself. If you have no choice in these matters, I will argue it is harder to claim you own yourself. (Man, am I digging some kind of semantic hole for myself for next Monday, or what)? Let’s move on.

Do the mental exercise of cataloging everything you use in a day and stop every time you get to something you can’t provide for yourself. You are likely stopping every second, beginning with the bed you wake up in, the toothpaste you use (I’m assuming you are a morning brusher), the toothbrush you use, the coffee that wakes you up, any cream or sugar in that coffee, the mug you drink it from, the coffee maker, the electricity you use to make that coffee and the house you enjoy that coffee in, and all the systems (air, heating, shelter, etc.) that keep that house running. You are now maybe 5 minutes into your day. Now continue that same exercise for the rest of your day. You likely won’t get to the end. (I’ve stopped too). This computer, tablet or phone you are reading this on won’t be around either.

Now, just think of the things that you can provide for yourself, or your community can provide for you. This list likely isn’t very long, but there are some things on it, like local eggs, or fruits and vegetables, maybe some clothes or furniture that were provided locally.

As climate change and overshoot further break down our world, they will break down many of the systems we depend on for that clothing, food, hot water, plumbing, electricity, heat, cooling, transportation, clean air, safe streets, comfortable workplace, easy to navigate streets and the pillow we place our heads on at the end of the day. How many of those things that make up your day can you do without? Because you will have to start doing without some of them, then more of them.

If we treat our place in the world like we are renting it we won’t take care of it, and we won’t be prepared when the shit hits the fan, which it is starting to do.

So, own the place where you are, and help your community own it as well. Take responsibility for caring for it, and others who see you doing so might just start doing the same. If you own something you won’t let other people destroy it, would you?

Your life liberty and pursuit of happiness are slowly being destroyed. Do you own those things, or are you just renting them? Are you going to protect them, or are you going to hope that someone does that for you?