Interesting. Recently, I've been thinking a lot about this "local" movement. I didn't realize how much our local communities have been destroyed by the corporatization of the world until I had a child. I suspect, from this interview, that the same happened to Rushkoff. Until you have a child, you don't really need your local community. You don't even need to know who lives next door to you. It was only after I had a child that I made a concerted effort to get to know my neighbors. First it was motivated by my concern for the safety of my child, but more importantly, parents need to know the neighborhood people so that their children can make friends and learn to socialize. Suddenly privacy and individualism aren't such sacred ideals.
This is a difficult topic to discuss. Depending on how you frame your argument, you can come across sounding like you too are just interested in serving your own interests. When I was still living in Japan, the farmers there had powerful political influence. They managed to convince the government to heavily tax imported agricultural goods, so that they can stay competitive. In some cases, they even managed to ban importing of certain goods (like oranges). This angered the US especially during the years when the US auto industry was losing the market to the Japanese automakers. At the time, I simply saw the Japanese farmers to be lobbying for their own self-interest, and I felt annoyed by them. I figured, if they couldn't compete with the imported goods, they should perish. About 10 years ago, I read Jane Jacob's "The Death and Life of Great American Cities", which caused a fundamental shift in the way I viewed "communities" in general. I then had a child 4 years ago, which changed my view of the very community I live in. What finally convinced me of the value of "sustainability" of local economies was this interview by Judy Wicks in The Sun Magazine. I highly recommend reading it: http://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/392/table_for_six_billion Unlike Rushkoff, she manages to explain it all without giving into anger. I feel inspired and motivated by her because she proves by her own examples that a life of sustainability is a fulfilling and rewarding way to live. I want to do it, not because it's the morally right thing to do, not because we need to fight the evil corporations, but because it is a great way to live. A few years ago, for my own business (graphic design), I started shifting my focus to small businesses, especially to the local businesses in my neighborhood. I have to say, it has been a lot more rewarding than working for corporate clients. Although Rushkoff did not discuss this in his interview (I haven't read his book), I believe the main reason why we "internalize corporate values" is because they are indeed seductive and even addictive. Any time we form a group, the identity of each member is exalted. This exaltation is highly addictive. Designing a promotional flier for a local business can be as difficult as designing a graphic sequence for a television commercial for a major corporation, yet the amount of recognition and respect you receive from the latter is much greater. When you work for an international organization like Red Cross, you could secure a meeting with the president of the US relatively easily, even though it would be impossible if you try to arrange the meeting under your own name alone. When you are a writer for New York Times, you can get access to all sorts of powerful people. That type of association is so powerful that some degree of it still comes with you even when you become "a former New York Times writer". Many successful people wisely navigate their careers and climb up the ladder by making the right associations with powerful corporations and institutions. Many successful men go through a period of depression after they retire from powerful corporations because their associations are severed and they feel naked without them. They don't even know how to define themselves without corporate or institutional associations. Even fine artists do the same with their associations with galleries and museums. We are all guilty of this. Rushkoff makes it sound as though the reason why corporate values are so dominant is because some powerful people are controlling us behind the scenes (which is also the way he talked about the business of advertising). I disagree. We are all suckers for the power that corporations and institutions can give us. This, I believe, is the main reason why corporate values are so dominant in our culture. The real cause is our own egotistical vanity, which is what destroyed the local communities. While we all focused on changing the world through the power of mega-corporations and mega-institutions, our local communities were being destroyed. Now, our local communities are so broken that we cannot even let our children go out on to the street to play by themselves. At least in New York, the streets have become much safer than they used to be several decades ago. When my wife grew up here, it was a very dangerous place with drug dealers and criminals everywhere, but she was still allowed to go out to a store on her own when she was around 8 years old. This can never happen now even though it is much safer. Why? Mainly because our local community is broken. Not many people on the street would even recognize my daughter. My neighbors don't work for local stores, they work for various corporations that have nothing to do with our community. We don't have any reason to get to know them. Even if they explained to me what they do for their corporations, I probably wouldn't understand. They might be powerful at work, able to deal with millions of dollars, reach out to millions of people, yet they have no contribution to our local community. When you look at it this way, you realize how surreal it is. -D - Dyske Suematsu 419 Lafayette Street, 2nd Floor New York, NY 10003 Phone: 646.723.3943 http://dyske.com http://twitter.com/dyskes On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 4:40 AM, marc garrett <[email protected]>wrote: > Corporate Dominance of Every Aspects of Our Lives Is Suffocating us. > > By Helaine Olen, AlterNet. > > Author Doug Rushkoff warns of the dominance of profit and consumerism in > our mindsets, and offers a way out of the corporate culture. > > Are we all corporate shills? That's the thesis of Doug Rushkoff's > provocative new book Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and > How to Take it Back. > > Rushkoff, the new media theorist who came up with the term "viral media" > in the early 1990s to describe how advertising concepts replicate in the > virtual world like fast moving viruses, is now arguing that the > corporate values of business, profit, and consumerism have so infected > our lives that we are no longer cognizant life can be lived any other > way. We are victims of a dysfunctional societal relationship -- one that > has come to seem so normal we are almost incapable of processing of how > screwed up it really is. > > more... > ww.alternet.org/media/141828/are_we_all_corporate_shills/ > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour >
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