At 4:35 AM -0500 12/6/98, Michael Spencer wrote:
> <<snip>>
>
>The head of -- I forget -- the company responsible for the Bhopal
>disaster announced that he would devote the rest of his life to making
>it right insofar as it was possible. A year or so later he and the
>company were back to business as usual and stonewalling support or
>compensation. Was his penitence authentic but evanescent, regretably
>evaporating in the putative rationality of the executive suite? Or
>was it pure public opinion manipulation, calculated crisis management,
>epistemological engineering? I dunno, but common sense says there's a
>limit to how much cognitive dissonance one can support before one's
>beliefs and personality absorb the values implicit in one's daily
>actions.
It was Union Carbide. Paul Hawken refers to this incident in The
Ecology of Commerce. It is my belief that the initial reaction was the
correct, human one, and that it was changed (very quickly-- much less
than a year) because the person was spokjen to by the corporation's
lawyers. That is one incident I had inb ind when I said that
corporations (or thos who run them) were forced by the legal system to
act as though they had na "Antisocial Personality Disorder" even if
they would rather not. Another thin I had in mind was that Arne Naess
said in an interview I saw on TV that many corporate types told him
privately that they undrstood what he was saying and largely agreed
with him, but that if they tried to act in accordance with his
principles (of real sustainability) they would quickly be replaced by
people who did not share their values. They basically asked him if he
would rather corporations were run by people who knew better but acted
like sociopaths or by real sociopaths. I don't see as it makes much
difference.
I also believe that this is a recent phenomenon, or at least a recently
overt one. I thingk it is part of the culture of globalization. So long
as companies were small enough to have a real presence in the area
where their headquarters were, they acted to some degree as if they had
a real responsibility to long-time employees and a stake in the
community. It is certainly possibele to question the sincerity of these
positions, but they received more than lip service, and I believe that
they were part of the emotional make up of many executives. Today, all
pretence is gone and they act quite openly like hit men, and are
applauded by "investors"-- i.e. bankers and money managers whose own
performance is rated also excluisively with respect to return on
investment. It is a very sick and profoudly "unsustainable" situation.
I see several countercurrents at work: I hear that the ambitious young
are little interested in jobs (having seen so many of their elders
thrown to the wolves), preferring to make their own businesses. A lot
are doing techy things. The rise of MLM and direct marketing also makes
personal businesses possible for many who would not otherwise have the
necessary knowledge, as well as frustrating the many who fail at them.
There is also the always halting (why?) cooperative movement, credit
unions etc.
As corporations continue to downsize they have a smaller and smaller
direct constituency, and as people have less discretionary income they
are feeding the corporate maw less richly, which is part of the cause
of the global product glut and deflation. I still believe that we are
in the early stages of a worldwide depression which will change the
world as profoundly as the '30's depression did. We are also, as Jay
keeps pointing out, not far from noticing that there is a finite supply
of hydrocarbons on the planet. Then there are global warming, looming
water shortages (e.g. in the American midwest where the water table is
drying up as a result of agricultural waste) etc.
It will not be business as usual for long, and the more wasteful and
sociopathic we are the shorter it will be. Yet even I, looking out the
window at trees shrubs and even a few flowers have trouble grokking
what my mind tells me...
Caspar Davis
Victoria, B.C., Canada
A wall of infinite dimension stands before the course of human evolution.
It is the finitude of the earth and its resources.
--Steve Morningthunder
