Do not make the mistake of thinking that because my conclusion is the same as another person's that my reasoning is the same
I have a lot of things running through my mind these last few days. There's a project I've been participating in that will be coming to fruition soon that will make me look into educational issues more than I would otherwise. In addition, several bloggers have touched on issues that I've had on the back burner.
Anne Zook just wrote about the need to examine just what function corporations are to play in our nation and society.
I doubt, however, the, well, not the intelligence of people who say these things. I doubt the knowledge, which is a very different thing. We can't just band together, rise up, and overthrow the corporations. No one in their right minds should want to do such a thing. They are the lifeblood of our prosperity.
"The big corporate empires would be powerless if they were not in league with crooked politicians." That's just not true.
Corporations are, like any living entity, intent on their own growth and survival and that's as it should be. With each swing of the pendulum between the Left and the Right over the last 80 years, regulations have been put into place, struck down, reinterpreted, and abandoned until those who run the corporations decided, quite understandably, that government was the enemy and began to work around or even in opposition to it. And that's natural.
Maybe it's our fault. WeThePeople, I mean. There's been no widespread, public debate over the role corporations should play in our society. No discussion of what form they should, or should not take. No limits, no shape to any boundaries they should observe.
We need a long-term vision. That's the one thing I'm not hearing
The need for such a conversation is part of the reason for my concern over economics…as I said before, I need to understand enough of it to know whether it's peanut butter or bullshit they're feeding me. And don't let anyone tell you the idea of repurposing corporations as a whole is absurd because that's what deregulation does.
Somehow, to me Anne's post connects with this one from Cobb:
…and from Vision Circle:
…Like the Republicans, I have no tolerance for waste, fraud and abuse. Like the Democrats, I believe that a safety net is crucial for the stability of society. But unlike either party, I understand the politics of emergence - of the creation a larger middle-class and what a reformed government should be doing.
Then there's my own observations, which could be summed up as "the problem of race is real, it's just not what you think it is."
And I'm watching the neocons trying to consciously shape a culture and nation. This effort is probably doomed because cultures are grown, not assembled. At least they have been up until now. I've watched Black folks trying to consciously build a culture from a fusion of what grew from our seed in the manure of slavery and Jim Crow, from the American Dream and the American Way, from hunger for the kind of deep roots that were purposely severed, watching this effort…and fearing it's probably doomed for the same reason the neocon effort is doomed.
And I'm watching China frustrating the hell out of the "West" by taking to capitalism in the context of their existing culture and laws rather that placing their culture and laws into a capitalist context. They watched Russia try it the Western way and fail (though there were additional reasons Russia didn't become the dream investment), and it seems they've learned much. Has Africa watched and learned? They, too, are constructing what has always been grown.
All this stuff is connected to me. I need to understand why and how they are connected.
Posted by P6 at August 28, 2003 10:58 PM | Trackback URL: http://www.prometheus6.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1467I think this attitude is endemic to the distinct American style of thinking. We *really* do have a cultural believe that we carve our future out of the raw stone of the present. It's an active process, rather than the passive nature implied by the term "growing". It's "man separate from nature" "back to the garden of eden" mentality.
There's an incredibly strong streak of "I will it, therefore it must be".
Thus, "we dealt with racism in the 60's", therefore it must be a solved problem. What's the problem?
It's a fallacious viewpoint, but a darn powerful one.
That attitude would be fine if people would just check their expectations against the actual results. Instead they assume "It's like this," and walk away.
Virginia Slims willfully and boldly market their cigarettes to young black women in Africa in hopes of generating a new generation of smokers. Nestl� sells instant baby formula to families not only in Africa, but around the world, and still will not help these people establish and maintain clean water facilities. Babies and children are not getting the nourishment they deserve from these instant formulas, because as you said, corporations say “It’s like this,” and walk away. So, yes, corporations are to blame, and We The People need to hold them in check. The problem is not with people walking away from a solution, but rather too many of us walking away.
Eventually, people take a stand when their rights are infringed upon. So let’s even the odds and take away the privileges of Americans that are taken for granted, and see how long people will allow babies & children to fall sick—oh wait, we’ve already done that in inner cities, and we’re going to the suburbs in droves even now.
A lot of us, here on the web and in everyday life, that know change is necessary. So why are we all telling the emperor his clothes look great?
Missy Elliott and Madonna look great in their new ads for The Gap. I hope the two of them were kind of enough to donate the financial compensations to the sweatshop workers responsible for their new threads.
We’re all slaves.
Corporations by and large do not infringe on the rights of people. Rather, they make people relatively stupid and lazy. Great gobs of human knowledge and energy are bound up in corporations. That's a bad thing for organics. But I think most people who gripe and whine about corporations rarely think twice about what skills they would need to grow and the tasks they would have to undertake without them.
Who among us are willing to start picking our own cotton and cranking our own mills and sewing together our own jeans? If not you, then stop complaining about Gap marketing fer chrissake. Even those who walk around in Kente can't even identify that which is hand-woven from something stitched on modern looms.
I am not suggesting that there is an either-or proposition here. Cigarettes are a foolish luxury. Corporations make them. Catheters are life-saving devices. Corporations make them. So the full out assault on corporations makes no sense. Choose your battles.
But let me get into the specific here, because I think corporations are fundamentally better than those things they overtake, which are partnerships, which in turn have many advantages over the mom & pop type businesses we talk about in ujamaa.
The role they will and should have in our future has more to do with the way they are managed and how they are held accountable to their owners. There is indeed an evolution going on in that which has made corporations more accessible, easier to create and destroy, made them more democratic and less reliable. That is the role of information technology in their management. This is a massive subject but the bottom line goes something like this.
There is a global class called the investor class, and a lot more people are in that class than was in the 1980s when I came out of school. These people will continue to fund new and old corporations, and corporations will continue to exert feudal forces on their employees and customers. This is dangerous only to the extent that employees and customers take their life *meaning* from the marketing done by corporations.
This is where cultural productions and education (call it 'knowledge of self' if you will) must battle. It is a battle for meaning. It is a battle of philosophy. It is not a battle against materialism or against the market or against the organization of corporations themselves, because that is a battle the cultural warriors will unqualifyably lose. They always have and they always will. You cannot and never will get the man out of his Cadillac and convince him to walk. But you can show him where to drive - he won't take such instructions from the corporation.
Anyone who thinks about it for a moment should understand this. Culture which is grown will always triumph in the area of meaning. Ask Phillies, ask Timberland, ask Courvoisier. But those are simplistic examples. People who are not attached to transcendant values will always be slaves. Keep them out of your path.
J:
So, yes, corporations are to blame, and We The People need to hold them in check. The problem is not with people walking away from a solution, but rather too many of us walking away.
Clarification on my part: what I meant was people (the bottom line on corporate decisions is still people) create a "solution" and assume it is correct. When it causes greater, or additional, or just different problems rather than see the root of the new situtation in they past decision they slap on another patch.
Cobb:
I think you've done me a service here.
I tend to operate like the "mystery schools" in that I rarely spell things out absolutely. I find most times a conclusion has the greatest impact when you reach it yourself, so I tend to lay out the data in the necessary patterns and step back.
There are times to be explicit, though.
This is dangerous only to the extent that employees and customers take their life *meaning* from the marketing done by corporations.
This is what connects "corporate repurposing" to "finding your family" on one side and "the end of racial integration's sunshine period" on the other side.
Still more thought is needed, but at least the synthesis isn't somewhere over the horizon anymore.