The phrase “my life, my rules” has been very popular. People just randomly throw this phrase around these days. Let’s dissect this today. When somebody says “my life, my rules”, they usually mean, “I own myself, I can do whatever I want with myself”. This reaction is usually triggered when they are stopped from doing something, their freedom is hampered. For example, if an orthodox father tells his daughter to come back home early and not wear short clothes, this is the reaction the daughter will have. We can all see where this reaction comes from. The daughter feels that her father is restricting her and that she has the freedom to wear whatever she wants and go out with anyone she wants, she owns herself.

Let’s focus more on “I own myself”. Do I? Do I really own myself? Now we can go down a deep rabbit hole here by saying, who really am I? Am I my body? Does my body own my body? Am I my mind? Am I matter or consciousness? and so on. But let’s not go there. For our purposes here, let’s consider just the question “Do I own myself?” where owner is the mind (whatever that is) and the property is the body (including the brain, things get controversial when you separate out the brain and the mind but you get the point, we are not going there). There have been a lot of geniuses in history who have thought a lot about questions like these. That’s how the laws were made in the society we live in today. I plan to read many of these people’s works in future, but in this blog, I just want to express my opinion on the topic.

I feel that we (the property) are very similar to a large public corporation. All the people we meet throughout our lives, be it the closest family members or mere acquaintances, are stakeholders in some way or the other. The people with whom our relationship is transactional, this includes (to some extent) work colleagues, distant relatives, etc. are analogous to debt holders in our corporation. The debt holder does not have any stakes in the growth of the company, they are free once they receive there money back. The people who are closer to us, are similar to equity holders in our corporation, they want our growth, because if we grow, they grow. These equity holders have invested something, it could be time, money or anything else, to get ownership in the corporation. Equity holders are owners of a corporation, even if a shareholder holds just one share, they still have some small ownership in the corporation. Like any corporation, our corporation has competitors, assets, liabilities, suppliers (people from whom we buy things we require to live our life normally), customers (the people whom we provide value). Like any corporation, our corporation has support from the environment (the house, society, environment we live in).

Now by this analogy, what are we? In my opinion, we are the largest shareholder of our corporation, albeit not by much margin. We are not the majority shareholder, we are just the largest shareholder. So two other big shareholders can outvote us if they want. We are also the CEO of the corporation. We take all the big and small decisions for the corporation. We have a lot of power. But so do our spouse, our children, our parents, our siblings and our closest friends. These ownership percentages keep on varying as the corporation grows, forms a joint venture (marriage) with another corporation, forms alliances and unions (friend groups) with other corporations.

Now obviously there are gaps in this analogy. For example a public corporation is a limited liability corporation generally. But in our lives, we have unlimited liability. Another example is that a public corporation does not have control over who their investors will be, but we do (at least to some extent). But the crux of the matter is ownership of ourselves. So do we own ourselves? In my opinion, yes we do, but not to the extent many people think they do. They do not own themselves 100%. Like a corporation, we have duties towards our shareholders. Shareholders have powers to influence our decisions. So next time when you think that somebody is trying to put undue pressure on you and trying to restrict your freedom, do think about how much ownership they have in you. Try to do it objectively if you can. Next time when you think that your life should have just your rules, think twice.

Some people might think that this discussion is pointless. But I think a lot of laws in modern society that we take for granted are based on these fundamental and seemingly pointless questions. For example, if we completely own ourselves, should killing ourselves be legal? I personally don’t think it should be legal, since killing the corporation would be a step against all the shareholders. Questions like these have been considered by philosophers from centuries and our society is shaped by these questions.

So that is my opinion. I am eager to know your view on this. Hope you liked the blog. See you next time.