arguments
	the way i see it, the idea of possessions is a threat to personal happiness. it has a marked tendency to foster possessiveness, or the fear of losing possessions. why are people afraid of losing possessions? for one, to 'own' a thing generally means to have control over it. when a person says that they own something, they mean that they claim it as an extension of themselves. But still, what does it mean to own something? it means that the purpose of the object is subsidary and secondary to the purpose of the owner. in other words, if the object is used for a purpose not within the purpose of the owner, such an act is an offense against the owner, because it challenges the owner's purpose and consequentially his pride. for pride is simply the feeling or impression that an action or a thing (which the person perceives as his/her possession) is in accordance with an objective standard. humility is when a person percieves an action or thing as being 'correct', but avoids any claim of ownership. I'd like to clarify my definition of pride. freedom is the feeling or impression that the subject (the thing that is free) chooses to act in a certain way without coercion or manipulation from an outside party. responsibility (which assumes freedom) is the impression that, in case a response to the actions of the subject is initiated (such as reward or punishment), the response should be taken as indicative of the actor's accordance with an objective standard. (in other words, by claiming to be responsible for a thing, himself included, a man claims to be the cause of all actions derived from that thing.) pride is a corollary of freedom in that a person who percieves himself to be free experiences a feeling of pride when he believes that the actions of an object which he controls (and for which he is responsible) are in accordance with an objective standard. owning a sentient thing is only considered to be reasonable when the owner believes that the sentient thing cannot be considered free because its actions were caused indirectly by the owner, usually through guidance, training, or manipulation. in these cases the owner claims all responsibility (and freedom) for the owned being. to return to my original question, which i could have answered long ago, the fear of losing possessions is caused by the fear of loss of control, which can be called the fear of loss of power, and is most simply reduced to the fear of impotence. to sum everything up, the idea of ownership is a threat to personal fulfillment because it comes with the fear of impotence, and unless all fears are ignored, avoided, or overcome, happiness is absent. it seems to be most strongly present when the fears have been overcome and not ignored or avoided; otherwise, the fear of fear (which is really just the fear of the unknown) will still exist.
	2. Nothing is the beginning, Nothing is the end. Everything fills the gap between. How can this be, in the world of numbers? Only if Infinity is the name of Everything. Then we can borrow mathematics. If you have a continuous line that starts and ends at the same point, it either consists of that one point, or it encloses a 2-dimensional space. It is a variation on a Circle. This whole that we call our Universe which begins and ends in Nothing and carries Everything in between, it can only exist if time is a circle. If you ask a physicist, he will confirm the view of Science, that all the matter of the universe certainly seems to approach a single point that is infinitesimally small as we look backwards in time, and that it is quite probably that it will, in the end, again reduce to this same infinitesimally small point. A quick query directed at a mathematician (on whose philosophy modern physics is based) will confirm that the vague phrase ‘infinitesimally small’ (1/infinity) is mathematically equivalent to nothing (0). Nothing is the beginning, Nothing is the end. Everything fills the gap between.