James Needham wrote:
> >>William Bennett, former drug czar, articulated it succinctly when he
> >>recently said "unbridled capitalism is a problem to human beings. We are
> >>constantly pushing our children and adults to buy things that they do not
> >>need. We are making desires into needs and we are, as a result, not living
> >>at the center. We are misreading the essential human condition".
> >>
> >>Others are joining Bennett and Sam Nunn in their "The National Commission
> >>on Civic Renewal". A sister organization, "Civil Society Movement",
> >>promotes the message that "The amoral, profit-at-any-cost, brand of
> >>capitalism, has an effect on American culture that can be described as
> >>corrupting and corrosive . . . Hollywood, Madison Avenue and Wall Street
> >>too often put money before morality.
Sherri Malouf responded:
> This is a different issue in that -- I believe -- American Corporations
> are driven by profit at any cost. But those who can directly influence
> direction represent a very small percentage of the American population.
> In fact, and I have written this before, companies are making record
> profits while Jane and Joe middle manager tough it out with less resources
> and more work! Why? Because the profits keep rolling in for those that
> benefit the most. Is that representative of the American population -- I
> think not.
Sherri,
I agree that American Corporations are driven by profit at any cost
however, there are a couple of new twists. In the past the "Golden Era"
myth, that Ronald Reagan (and William Bennett) applied to the free market
(a version of the Rousseau "Noble Savage" version of the 15th century
Italian myth about the Greek "Golden Age"), was not an ideal in American
society. This free market application was not a part of the cycle of
business in the late 19th and pre-depression 20th century.
My co-author, economist historian Mike Hollinshead, turned me on to George
Orwells "Down and Out in London and Paris" when Orwell faked being down
and out to find out what it was truly like. First of all the free market
wasn't free here or any place else. Second, the poor houses where the
former factory workers and individual craftsmen found themselves were no
more "Houses of Instruction" than Blakes horses. They were places where
people went to die. Warehouses for society's human "sacrifices." (Note
that Bennett was one of the complainers about the new history standards
due to the inclusion of the Aztecs who practiced human sacrifice) They
also served as "instruction" for the masses, "see what will happen to you
if you slack off!"..That RR "Golden era of Laissez faire" is just bad
history.
We might ascribe that story found in more than one basic economics' text
as being myth in the "teaching story" sense rather than actual history.
And we must also remember that these exaggerations are often found in baby
religions lest we lose our "empirical objectivity."
RR & WB's "Golden Era" was found only in tinseltown. Hollywood benefited
mightily from both the depression (when people buried their misery in
cheap entertainment..entertainment historian Russell Lynes called it the
"so called depression") and World War II when Hollywood fortunes were made
with fake soldiers flying fake missions to defeat the "yellow peril"
(which returned to the "dirty redskins" once the war was over).
It mattered not that the propaganda was so thorough that all Japanese
Americans were robbed of their property and thrown in prison. Recently
they received an apology. Can you imagine what would happen if someone
suggested the same solution to America as is being suggested to the Swiss
for the return of Jewish property confiscated by Germany and stored in
Swiss banks? My point is that this was the only "Golden Era" that
slightly resembles what RR, WB and the other "free market" idealists
described and it was more "guilt" than gold even if it was necessary as a
propaganda machine(and I believe that it was, but that is another post).
The ideal of irresponsible corporate profit and the sacrifice of "ten
workers every morning at sunrise" to guarantee the continuation of that
Profit is founded in that myth of the Laissez faire Golden Era( the same
people who used to sing "let it be" in the 1960s?). But although the
paradise never happened there was a great deal of public building and
charitable giving while the Robber Barons media was preaching total
annihilation of the American Indian. How is it that the NYPhilharmonic
and the Boston Symphony were totally funded by a small group of individual
philanthropists during this less than noble era(In the Boston case it was
a single individual)? As an answer I would propose a different story
founded on the idea of cycles which was another thing that RR (I don't
know WB's opinion on business cycles) didn't believe in. The normal
business cycle has four phases. Just as there are four parts to the day,
four seasons, four quadrants of the compass etc. This is a primal formula
found all over the world almost as commonly as standing upright which also
has four on the horizontal, front, back, left and right.
The business cycle break up, as you know, is EXPANSION, during which
business activity is successively reaching new high points; LEVELING OUT,
during which business activity reaches a high point and remains at that
level for a short period of time; CONTRACTION, during which business
volume recedes from the peak level for a sustained period until the bottom
is reached; & RECOVERY, during which business activity resumes after the
low point has been reached and continues to rise to the previous high
mark.
May I suggest another version of this cycle, growth -> maturity -> old age
-> renewal or birth. We may make thousands of versions of this "cycle of
time." We Cherokees call this the Four Directions and use it as a mandala
to discover the meaning of our lives and deaths(I call it "getting back to
basics"). Since the East is childhood, commerce begins in the South,
negotiation with wisdom and maturity in the West, and the spirituality of
death and contraction in the North, the circle is renewed in birth in the
East we might even say "recovered."
In all societies that base their reality on Time there is a direction, a
Time, when the successful "give-back" as an ideal. Because there is only
Alzheimers at the end, both honor and humility requires that there be a
"give-back" or their lives which are carried in the society's memory will
be truly "killed", i.e. forgotten. In an unforgettable passage the
Christian apostle Paul said "though I speak with the tongues of men and of
angels and have not charity, I am as a tinkling cymbal and a sounding
brass." My people would say it more simply in English. We would say that
the "two legged" who understands the "give-back" has become a "human
being."
In the economic term of "Positive External Values" we would call this a
"bequest/existence value" meaning the value to future generations would
guarantee the continued existence of, e.g., Andrew Carnegie. So what this
means is that the ideal of the earlier "Robber Barons" was to walk the
circle and to end at philanthropy, thus giving meaning to their walk and
resolving any prior problems with how they had lived their lives. One
might also call it a "salvation value" benefit.
This "salvation value" is something that Maslow spoke of as he got to the
end of his life as well. His hierarchy, less than an "order" in time,
became a schematic for the ideal that existed, as a gestalt in the moment,
if the conscious organism was complete. One might say that he finally
escaped the need for "Positivism" in the North.
Today the new "Robber Barons" are not individuals but corporations which,
if I remember right, are treated as individuals under the law. They are
really mini-governments with loyalty only to their propertied electorate.
To expect that they would follow such an ideal or need salvation is as
silly as believing that the Japanese and Germans owe us anything for the
help we gave them after the war. It was just good business to do so when
the Communists were our chief competitor.
In corporations, as in all governments, the only value is "profit" in the
present. Corporations, unlike countries and more like nomads, don't need
being remembered as great benefactors and (also like nomads) desire
salvation only in terms of their own electorate(not their rented help,
neither hired hand nor overseer). The only thing communities external to
the corporate "camp" can do is make them see that external philanthropy is
in their immediate self-interest. Unfortunately that is getting more and
more difficult as they diversify around the world. Remember that greatest
of all Government/corporations, the British Empire with the help from the
Americans, made one out of every ten Chinese an opium addict in order to
get tea and stimulate trade. (Is it any wonder that the people in Hong
Kong are worried? I would leave in case the Chinese have the same
thoughts that the Italians had about Fascism after the war.) Since
corporations are individual governmental type systems, their actions are
pretty autocratic as well as amoral within the limits of their host
countrys legal system and the economics of production.
We might say that the corporate culture has arrived at the perfect system
for their benefit. Maslow would probably have described it in
psychological terms. Individuals, who carry this system, are called
psychopaths in the literature. i.e. "A person with an antisocial
personality disorder, especially manifested in amoral or (even) criminal
behavior." Am Her. 3rd 1993.
Today it absolves the individual of the judgment of history by absorbing
his/her responsibility for their venality. What was a sin has become, in
the context of this new Messianic corporate function, a blessing. The
priests of this realm call amoral venality "creative greed" and speak the
rhetoric of pedagogy as they describe the benefits of growth and
advancement to the people that they are sacrificing each day. I personally
feel guilty if I am forced to fund I.G. Farbin's Bayer division (with the
four direction symbol on the bottle) because one aspirin a day is good for
my heart. Only politicians and soldiers are eligible for monsterhood.
Companies occupy a blessed place in this Heaven on earth. Can you imagine
anyone firing a corporate CEO for adultery?
In the midst of all of this, let it be noted that I too have the blessed
Inc. at the end of my company name.
Regards,
Ray Evans Harrell, artistic director
The Magic Circle Chamber Opera of New York, Inc.
mcore@idt.net
--Ray Evans Harrell <mcore@IDT.NET>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>