When Europeans came to America they bought the island of Manhattan from the Native Americans for tradestuff.
Supposedly the Natives (who did not actually control the territory) thought this idea, that one could 'own' land, was ridiculous.
The land does not belong to us, We belong to the land. Now Manhattan
is home to some of the highest valued real-estate in the Western world, and still it is such a ridiculous notion:
Ownership, valuations, land; We own nothing except for our minds (if even them).
Eventually Earth repossesses life. This is the way it was, has been and will be for all of time.
Gradually the ground reclaims itself. Ashes to ashes, Dust to dust.
Possession is always (con)temporary, Just as subject and object are of the same stuff so too must own- ership open us up to the equivalence underlying a Hegelian dialectic.
The captain was right: control is an illusion. There is only ever direction, and mind is that process, which the human body offers up.
We fall prey to subject-object dichotomies that breed from our own feeble illusions.