3.14. Noospheric Property and the Ethology of Territory

To understand the causes and consequences of Lockean property customs, it will help us to look at them from yet another angle; that of animal ethology, specifically the ethology of territory.

Property is an abstraction of animal territoriality, which evolved as a way of reducing intraspecies violence. By marking his bounds, and respecting the bounds of others, a wolf diminishes his chances of being in a fight that could weaken or kill him and make him less reproductively successful. Similarly, the function of property in human societies is to prevent inter-human conflict by setting bounds that clearly separate peaceful behavior from aggression.