Non-Ownership in the Physical, Digital and Mental Realms
Non-Ownership in the Physical, Digital and Mental Realms
In this article, I share details on my attempt to come into a state of complete non-ownership. I dissect three realms: the physical, the digital and the mental.
The physical realm is the most clear cut and simple.
The mental realm follows.
The digital realm is the most challenging for me and contains numerous gray areas.
I invite you on this exploration of ownership and non-ownership with me, Dear Friends.
I have shared with deep transparency here, not judging what is right or wrong, but simply what is.
The Physical Realm
The physical realm is the most clear-cut and simple of all realms to come into complete non-ownership. I simply no longer own a single physical possession. I have nothing with me and I have nothing stored anywhere that is mine. I have given every single item away, down to my computer and clothes.
To get to this point of complete non-ownership has been a decade long journey of simplifying and downsizing. I invite you to explore this further here: The Beginner’s Guide to Downsize Your Life. At the bottom of this article, you’ll find the resource section which shares a substantial outline of my journey of simplification, that has prepared me for my experiment of non-ownership. Note that this writing is all from prior to 2022 and does not document my coming into complete non-ownership.
The Mental Realm
I have heard of very few people speak of non-ownership of the mind, but this is what I am experimenting with.
Before arriving in Los Angeles I have shared every single secret that I had. I have shared anything I was guarding or protecting, anything I was ashamed or embarrassed of. I have gone into the depths of my mind and released it all.
My mind is now Creative Commons. There is nothing in here that is not accessible to the public.
To continue this experiment, I am making a 4-year commitment to 100% transparency and truth.
To the fullest extent that I know possible at this time, I do not own my mind.
It is fully open. I believe that deep self-observation is at the heart of liberating our minds. I believe that to liberate our humanity, it is imperative that we liberate our own mind and become masters of our own minds. Full truth and transparency for me is a tool and a practice on this journey.
Our possessions often end up owning us and dictating our lives, rather than improving our quality of life. They often take over not only our physical realm, but our mental realm. For every physical attachment, there are mental attachments. The fact that I am even able to be at this point where I can embark on this radical experiment of complete non-ownership gives a window into my inner mind. This experiment is an opportunity for me to exist in the most absolute basic of states, having stripped away all the extraneous, and to go deep within my own mind. Although I have come to a place of barely owning my own thoughts through deep transparency, I believe I am still in the early stages of my journey of downsizing and decluttering my mind. I am hopeful for the progress I will make in the months to come.
The Digital Realm
It has been a long journey of breaking free in the digital realm of my life. Today we can be “minimalists” with our physical possessions, yet possess enough items on our computers and cellphones that if printed would fill rooms in our houses. For example, we can own thousands of photos that just 20 years ago would have been stored in dozens of physical photo books.
The digital realm has been even more challenging for me to enter into non-ownership than the physical realm, and in this area I would say that I have not achieved complete non-ownership.
It is also worth noting that when we store content online in a cloud (in storage accounts on our social media, on websites, etc.) this is not actually in anything like a “cloud.” In fact, it is just stored on servers, which is another way of saying another computer. And at every second, these computers are burning electricity to run. Our digital realms are far more resource intensive and ultimately destructive than most of us have come to learn or would like to believe.
Since 2011, I have put in countless hours of effort to not only simplify my physical possessions, but also my digital possessions.
Electronic Devices
In 2015, I got rid of my cellphone, which was the last bill that I had to my name and I have not had a cellphone for the last decade. I have consistently had a 2013 MacBook Air since then and, at times, I have had a 2016 iPod Touch to use for filming and some apps. These have been my sole devices that have been connected to the digital realm.
Finances
I have no bank account, credit card, financial accounts, retirement accounts or life savings, bills or health insurance. What this means is I have no finances in digital accounts. For the recent years, I have had cash only.
I do manage a nonprofit which has a few bills and this nonprofit manages the website.
The nonprofit has complete financial transparency, which can be found on the website.
Creative Commons
I have dedicated my work to the public domain. My creations are copyright free and free to copy, redistribute, and adapt under a Creative Commons 1.0 Universal License. What this means is that I do not own any of the content that I have online; photos, videos or writing; on my website, social media, YouTube Channel or elsewhere.
Documents on my computer
I deleted every document, spreadsheet and PDF on my computer before getting rid of the computer. In recent years, I had thousands of these possessions. I did major purges numerous times in the last decade, and in summer of 2022, I deleted 90% of the content on my computer and I deleted my online storage accounts.
To come into complete non-ownership with digital possessions, I published the last of the content I had on my website, or simply deleted it.
At this point, I do not have a word of writing that is not publicly available.
The nonprofit I work with has a Google documents account and we have entered into a deep state of transparency by making all documents publicly viewable, except five documents that have personal contact information that is not ours to share, passwords and financial account numbers.
Photos and videos on my computer
I have deleted 100% of my personal photos and videos. There is a folder of a small selection of photos that are stored online for media usage and are available under Creative Commons.
Social media
My social media accounts I do not technically own. They are owned by the companies and could be taken away at any minute. That said, the relationship is more or less one of ownership. 100% of my content on social media is public domain.
I effectively deleted my personal Facebook account in 2024. The account still exists in order to manage the public Facebook page, but 100% of the “friends” messages, photos, communications, etc. were deleted.
On all accounts I deleted the majority of all content, dwindling it down to the content that was most relevant and useful. On all but YouTube, I deleted 100% of my photos and writing prior to 2020, leaving just the most useful videos from before 2020.
I deleted my Twitter account in 2024, which was a big step in detachment from social media.
Messages
I deleted 100% of my emails, messages on social media and text messages. I do not have any personal messages in existence in any online accounts.
We deleted all of the nonprofit’s messages all the way up to just the last couple of weeks.
Online accounts
I have deleted the vast majority of my online accounts. I have almost no personal online accounts.
I will not be logging into or viewing any accounts during the three-month experiment of non-ownership.
For the immersion in this experiment, a teammate of the nonprofit has changed the passwords to all of our accounts. Thus, I have no access to any accounts (and no passwords to guard).
To the best of my ability I have shared
To the best of my ability I have shared to show the gray areas of ownership and non-ownership in the digital realm. This is a complex concept that has only just been created within my lifetime. I have seen very few people explore this concept in depth and in public, so it has taken much thought and self-observation. I have done my best to summarize this concept and not expand into too lengthy of an article. If I have missed exploring any important aspects of this realm, I would like to know, to make this exploration more complete.
A note on the nonprofit.
I started Regeneration, Equity and Justice in 2020 and have been the primary director of our work. Although I do not own any of the assets of the organization, there is a relationship of indirect ownership. This is very much a gray area in this attempt at non-ownership. I run the nonprofit as a tool to be of service and am always seeking the right balance in my involvement to live out my ethos of simple living. The nonprofit is the owner of my website and covers the finances, yet the relationship is more or less a relationship of ownership as I have full control of the site. I do not have access to the financial accounts, yet I do have the ability to direct the funds. I have made substantial progress in decentralizing myself from running this organization and would like to make further steps.
In alignment with my experiment in non-ownership, we also downsized the physical assets of the nonprofit to almost nothing. We have just a few boxes of books and some shipping materials.