It seems that a lot of folks today have this strange notion about ownership of land. We hear a lot of people complaining about land stolen from indigenous peoples and the like. Does this really make sense? Do the people who lived on a piece of land first own said land forever? Let’s look into this a bit…

If the whole world were to return all land to its earliest inhabitants, the whole of humanity would likely have to be displaced. All non-native people would have to leave the Americas, the Japanese islands would be returned to the Ainu people, Turkey would go back to the Greeks, etc. Furthermore, recorded history only goes back so far, so how do we know who was really the first in a particular place? Because of the enormity of displacement that would be required, the argument for restoring native land at this late date is untenable.

The entire premise of the argument is based upon some idea of fairness that exists within the human mind and nowhere else. One of the fundamental rules of life that many people have forgotten is that life is not fair. It never has been and we weren’t promised that it would be.

Prior to fairly modern times, there was no governing body protecting the rights of nations to hold whatever land they lived on. In fact, you only owned what you could keep and then usually by force. If a strong nation conquered a weaker nation, the victor took the spoils and that was that. No UN or League of Nations existed to step in and sanction the conqueror.

In like manner, beasts live under the same rules. For example, imagine a young bear leaving his parents’ care and finding a nice cave with a large territory for him to mark and live upon. This bear lives on his territory for several years until another bear comes along and chases the first bear off. The second bear’s descendants then live on said land for twenty generations. Who then owns the land? Does it still belong to the first bear or his descendants simply because he was there first? No it doesn’t because he couldn’t keep it. That is the natural way of things and has nothing to do with the human idea of fairness.

Some might then ask if they can take whatever they want from other weaker people. No, of course not because we made governments and laws to protect our persons and property. We don’t have to live under natural law when we have a government to enforce man’s law. However, if in some future event the governments of the world collapsed, we would go right back to living under this natural law, much like in a zombie apocalypse movie. And no amount of complaining about what’s fair and what’s not would change that reality.

So please, let’s stop complaining about the past that doesn’t fit our model of justice and instead try to make our time more livable for those in need, more joyous for those who suffer, and more reasonable for the sake of our species.