Rethinking Communication, Ownership, and What It Means to Be a Guest on Earth

Communication doesn’t matter if we are lost in confusion, don’t understand each other, and it doesn’t make a difference.

That may sound stark — even disheartening — but it points to a deeper truth. In a world where words are exchanged endlessly, where conversation flows across screens and stages, something essential often goes missing: the consciousness behind the words.

We speak without seeing the systems that shape what we say. We repeat inherited patterns, unaware they limit our understanding, our actions, and our capacity to truly change. It’s as if we are held captive in a prison of thought — one we didn’t build ourselves, yet keep reinforcing day after day.

The Limits of Our Inherited Thinking

When I reflect on Nonviolent Communication (NVC), I don’t see it merely as a model for conflict resolution or effective dialogue. For Marshall Rosenberg, its founder, it was never meant to be a self-help tool. It was a tool for social change.

But here’s the catch: social change begins with changing ourselves — and that means questioning not just what we say, but how we think. Because the most dangerous systems are not outside us. They live within our assumptions.

As Vanessa Machado de Oliveira writes in Hospicing Modernity, we are so deeply embedded in the current system that escaping it may require a return to zero. A stripping away of layers: cultural, economic, psychological, and moral. Only then can we co-create something new.

That’s not easy work. But it is essential work.

Ownership, Scarcity, and the Illusion of Separation

Take something as foundational as ownership. We’re taught from birth to see the world through its lens: this is mine, that is yours. Right and wrong are defined by property rights. Entire legal, economic, and social systems rest on the idea that to live is to acquire, protect, and control.

But pause for a moment.

You were born with nothing — no deed, no title, no property. Everything you create in your lifetime is shaped from materials, knowledge, and relationships you did not originate. So what does it really mean to say: “This is mine”?

At best, ownership is a temporary claim. At worst, it’s an illusion that enables injustice and entitlement.

For every piece we take, someone else loses access. That’s how scarcity is manufactured. Not by a lack of resources — but by a mindset that hoards, competes, and fears. And in that mindset, gratitude fades. Generosity dries up. And communication? It becomes just another tool for asserting control.

Stewardship: Another Mask of Control?

Even ideas that sound positive — like stewardship — can be part of the same mental trap. Defined as “the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one’s care,” stewardship still centers us as managers, decision-makers, and moral authorities.

But who entrusted us? On what grounds do we assume such a role? Is stewardship not just another expression of hierarchy, wrapped in the language of responsibility?

It reflects the logic of modernity: that humans are separate from, and above, the natural world. That Earth is ours to protect — or to plunder. Either way, we remain the central figure.

This is not humility. It’s domination wearing a softer mask.

A Shift to Guesthood

There is another way to think about our place in the world — not as owners, not even as stewards, but as guests.

A guest doesn’t take for granted.
A guest doesn’t assume control.
A guest arrives with humility.
A guest honors the host, the home, and the temporary nature of their stay.

When we see ourselves as guests on Earth, everything changes. It reframes our choices, our relationships, and our responsibilities. We become more attuned to balance. We begin to share rather than accumulate. We listen more than we speak. And we live not in scarcity — but in deep, abiding gratitude.

Rewriting the Conversation

We are at a crossroads. One path continues in the logic of limitation: possess, protect, defend. The other invites a different kind of presence: one rooted in belonging, not ownership; in interdependence, not isolation.

If communication is to matter — if NVC is to be what it was meant to be — it must start with this transformation of thinking.

We must ask:

• What systems do our words reinforce?
• What mindsets do our choices sustain?
• What kind of future do our conversations prepare us for?

Because talking, on its own, isn’t enough. If our communication doesn’t shift our being, it won’t shift the world. And the world is calling for something deeper.

Final Reflection: Guests with a Choice

You and I didn’t choose the world we were born into — but we can choose how we relate to it.

We can stop speaking from within the walls of inherited systems and start speaking from a place of freedom, awareness, and responsibility.

Not responsibility to manage the world.

Responsibility to honor it — as guests who leave it better than we found it.

So the question is not just: What do you want to say?

The question is: What kind of world do you want your words to make possible?

Govert van Ginkel

This article is written by Govert van Ginkel. Govert specializes in Nonviolent and Effective Communication and is active in this field as a trainer, speaker, coach, and mediator. More information about Govert can be found here. The current training offer can be found here