Slashdot Mirror
Surviving In The Corporate Republic
For those of us unhappy about the fact that we dwell in a Corporate Republic, where conglomerates increasingly dominate culture, politics and society, the issue isn't primarily economic. It's intensely personal: Can we live individualistic lives, express our own beliefs freely, develop our own value systems?
We have good reason to worry. Individualism and individuals are being continuously subsumed and marginalized in this evolving new nation. But as many people e-mailed in response to Part One: What are we supposed to do about it?
In the 60's people loved to talk about making a revolution. That seems out of place now. Corporatists aren't trying to kill us, they are quite happy to manipulate us; get us to spend, conform, behave and shut up; and punish and isolate us when we don't. Besides, corporatism makes a lot of people a lot of money and the beneficiaries, like the decadent and happy citizens of ancient Rome, are nearly anesthetized by what we are constantly being assured are good times. Who ever heard of a revolution occurring amidst the lowest unemployment in more than a generation?
To react at all, you have to buy the idea that something disturbing is happening. In our increasingly unconscious civilization, many people don't: "Big deal. This has been going on forever," e-mailed Jason. "Who cares?"
In the era of the techno-boom, denouncing corporatism means spreading bad news a lot of people -- even those most adversely affected -- don't want to hear. And unless you want to live like the Unabomber, it's nearly impossible to live, work or do business apart from corporatists. Sooner or later, like it or not, you'll be on one side or the other.
Any social or political movement has to have an ideology. Corporatism's is simple: profitability is society's dominant goal and everything -- creativity, privacy, freedom of expression, individualistic behavior, the political process, education, entertainment and culture -- can and should be subordinated to it.
But individualism, which has increasingly retreated to and thrived on the Internet, doesn't really have a coherent ideology, almost by definition.
That means that the first step towards any kind of survival is to transcend the suffocating boundaries of Left and Right in order to create an ideology of individualism. The second may be to wait for a political figure to emerge from the Net generation and define corporatism as the major problem its become.
This isn't imminent. As Senator John McCain has been trying to point out for several years now, corporatism has completely infected the political system; it serves as its primary underwriter, as it does for many colleges, universities, and cultural institutions. So don't look for the people who run the federal government to assert themselves against corporatism any time soon. These days, it's considered radical when the government proposes breaking a company like Microsoft into two gazillion-dollar behemoths rather than one.
Boycotting individual corporations isn't feasible in the 21st century, either. Boycotts are complicated, especially when most Americans are understandably confused about who owns what. Some of these companies -- Disney,AOL/Time-Warner -- are now so vast it would take a massive uprising to even dent their earnings. Boycotts are also somewhat repugnant to the free-market philosophy many individualists hold.
But a shared set of principles that individuals -- though they may differ sharply on many political, cultural and social issues -- might agree on, that's something people we can try:
To begin with, individualism ought to be recognized as a movement and a political philosophy. Individualism advances humanism, freedom, a free market that rewards individuals and small entities as well as conglomerates, embraces technology both as a means of expression and as a defense against corporatization.
Potential members beware. Individualism can involve some unpleasant choices. Corporatism viscerally punishes and isolates individuals. By their nature, individualists are discontented: persistent, obnoxious and unpopular, from the scoolkid who challenges a teacher in school, to the employee who irritates the senior veep. Individualism demands that its followers become critics.They raise questions many people don't want to hear, confront the growing conformity in our cultural and educational institutions, and put themselves at risk of losing positions and promotions and opportunities.
Their only reward is to join a proud community of other dissatisfied people, a community of social discontents. They are free to speak and think their minds. They are independent in an increasingly dependent world. They are affirming a long and glorious human struggle, from the Enlightenment to the American Revolution, to achieve autonomy and individual liberty. They are seeking a moral way to live in the world beyond simply fattening their portfolios. They can sometimes rise, and help other people to rise above the great levelling that corporatism imposes. People willing to undertake these risk might consider these ideas:
l. People need to wake up. We need a conscious civilization that acknowledges individualism as a basic human right. We ought to be able to express our own views, run our own businesses, pursue our own culture, develop our own software and hardware. We need family farming, local pharamicists, cranky local newspaper editors and website operators, and other small business ownership. We need diversity of opinion and thought in a homogenized cultural environment, the ability to develop innovative technology apart from monopolistic conglomerates. We need a new generation of political leaders who are not dependent on corporations for their survival.
2. We should acknowledge that economics matters (a lot), but it can't be society's only common goal. Nothing could be more morally bankrupt than a culture devoted only to making money, and to diverting work, technology and other institutions to that primary purpose. Free and prosperous markets are important, but corporate entities should also embrace moral and ideological values -- of their own choosing --apart from pleasing stockholders.
3. Individualism values a humane workplace. Workers are entitled to safe, creative and secure work environments, to freedom from continuous downsizings, re-structurings, layoffs and "re-engineerings." Though these practices unquestionably benefit the economy, they're rough on humanity.
4. Individualists celebrate, cherish and support non-conformity. Students, workers, citizens -- all have the right to their individualistic tastes in politics, lifestyles and aesthetic and cultural values.
5. Culture requires diversity; individualism starves without it. So culture needs to be liberated from corporatism. Conglomerates should be prohibited from corrupting and overwhelming institutions of technology, education, entertainment or information.
Just as Microsoft should never have been permitted to dominate the software market, neither should Disney, News America, Nike, Wal-Mart, Sony or AOL/Time Warner be allowed to dominate commerce and culture. This is a form of repression and self-censorship. 6. Individualism is increasingly dependent on universal access to technology. In our time, technology -- especially the Net and the Web -- has emerged as the greatest bulwark against rampant corporatism. Individualism still thrives online; in fact, individualism has been the dominant social and cultural characteristic of the most interesting parts of the Internet for nearly a generation. People with access to computers and the Net and Web have a certain intrinsic freedom of expression and access to information; that protects them from mass-marketed media that stifle diversity of thought. The more technology, the better chance individuals have to find space in a corporatist world.
The rise of the Net -- theoretically at least -- threatens the grip of that increasingly oppressive ideology. Online, we have the machinery to speak freely and loudly, at least until AOL/Time-Warner gets the Death Star fully operational. We can, if we choose, embrace the obligation of the individual to criticize, to use technology to become the pests of society, to challenge authority and conformity, to create public and private spaces dominated by individuals, not corporate entities. For this to happen, we all have to become critics. It's the first leg on the trip.
It's lousy work for which there are few conventional rewards. It rarely leads to success or victory, or brings anything but grief, but hell, somebody's got to do it.
So think of this as merely a starting point in developing an ideology of individualism.
(Next, Part Three: Shadowrunners and the Corporatist Wars)
>>We need a conscious civilization that acknowledges individualism as a basic human right.
I'm not quite sure I understand the idea of "conscious civilization." Is this some kind of uber-mind, or statement that someone, society - civilization - is more than a collection of individuals, and can have a consciousness unto itself?
>>2. We should acknowledge that economics matters (a lot), but it can't be society's only common goal. Nothing could be more morally bankrupt than
Does the idea of a bunch of societal "common goals" seem to be totally contradictory to any form of individualism? Doesn't, rather individualism mean that each person is an end in and of themself, rather than just a cog in some "common goal"?
>>markets are important, but corporate entities should also embrace moral and ideological values -- of their own choosing --apart from pleasing stockholders
Come now, you've already taken it upon yourself to dictate moral and ideologica values. Don't back down now. Or, is what you're trying to say is that corporate entities should embrace "moral and idological values - of their own choosing", at least, so long as it fits into your own preset notions?
>>3. Individualism values a humane workplace.
Individualism is an entity, now? This is as contradictory to any real form of individualism as referring to the State as an entity. I'd jsut love to see Mr. Katz's response if the goverment were to say, "The State values a humane workplace for it's little pawns."
>>Workers are entitled to safe, creative and secure work environments, to freedom from continuous downsizings, re-structurings, layoffs and "re-engineerings."
Entitled to... at cost to whom? Is this still an "entitlement," even if it involves sacrificing other individuals - the company owners - to supply these "entitlments"?
>>Though these practices unquestionably benefit the economy, they're rough on humanity.
No rougher on humanity than a weak economy...
>>4. Individualists celebrate, cherish and support non-conformity.
Non-conformity as a value in and of itself is one of the largest farces ever foisted upon the world. Who's the biggest individualist, Mr. Katz: the person who listens to the "corporatist" music I've seen you condem, or the person who is controlled by what the majority of people like, and force to do something "non-conforming"?
Someone moderate this back up. It's a serious point, succinctly put.
You can't seriously attack anglo-american free-market capitalism with all its downsizing/etc. without fundamentally attacking individualism itself. Laissez-faire is probably the most individualistic friendly economic system around and, yes, you are going to have downsizings, re-structurings, layoffs, even the occasional "re-engineerings." But the only way to prevent this is to employ the violence of the state to make them illegal. Corporatism is evil because it is halfway to the constant, soul destroying totalitarian violence of communism/fascism. By his point 3 Katz seems to be advocating taking us one step beyond the evil of corporatism.
That's the trouble with some of these fake individualists. They are statists who are just dissatisfied with who is on top.
DB
Yes.
Look, just because every 14-year-old in America wants to buy a copy of "Oops, I Did It Again" by the Disney-backed bubblegum queen of the hour, there is no reason to think that my life is somehow affected by this. I can still download my copy of "Long Tall Weekend" by They Might Be Giants off their MP3 distribution site.
It seems to me like you are the one trying to control people, not the corporations. If somebody wants to wear a Nike hat to look like like Tiger Woods, that's his own business. I'm sure he knows, when he's buying the hat, that Woods was paid to wear it. You can choose not to buy one yourself, but you should mind your own damn business if somebody thinks having one is cool.
I can't help but detect a little insecurity. Were you the only kid in your class that didn't have a checkered pair of "Vans"? Did you feel like an outcast for not having a Dukes of Hazzard lunchbox? I think you should deal with these feelings, instead of whining about how everybody on your block but you is driving a Lexus. "They need to wake up because they are not being Individuals," you cry. "Everybody is the same except me. It's not fair!"
If anything, we live in a time with more individuality, not less. In the 60's, society was pretty much divided between those who thought "Easy Rider" presented the ideal lifestyle and those who thought it had a happy ending.
Walk into First Avenue in Minneapolis on any given night these days, and you will see punk rockers drinking right next to guys in suits right next to club kids in baggy jeans & gold chains.
If all you do with your time is follow Media Trends (i.e., watch TV commercials, tune in to broadcast news, and read Wired), I can see where you might get the impression that we live in a world shaped by corporate images... but the real America looks absolutely nothing like what you see on a typical episode of "Friends".
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
This quote used to be my sig:
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
-- Sydney J. Harris
Even "Individuals" band together with those like them, and that's probably the only thing we have going for us.
I hate using words like 'us' and 'we' because I never presume to speak for everyone, but truth be told, there is a growing 'us'. The anti-corporate sentiment is growing. You might not think it, but Labor, environmentalists, netheads, are all moving in the same direction: against corporate domination.
It's clear that the economy is the worlds focus now. The cold war is over, but the mentality hasn't changed: we're still fighting an enemy, still using the same tactics as we did in the cold war, but now instead of fighting against communism, we're fighting for free-market captialism and the World Economy. Yet, we're going about it in all the wrong ways.
Just like during the cold war, it was democracy, civil liberties, and human rights be damned! We're fighting a good cause. Wasn't that supposed to change? It hasn't; the cause has changed, the tactics have not. Are YOU willing to give up your rights as a human because you want a better economy? If not, how can you sit idly by and let oppressive governments around the world do it to their people, with the full support of the US Government and the WTO?
Pandering to corporations by the world governments, in the name of the economy, has got to stop. With labor, it affects both workers in other countries and workers at home. Obviously, companies will move their operations elsewhere, where it's cheaper, where they can exploit people all they want. With environmentalists, it's mostly the same thing: less controls or non-existant controls on companies environmental policies means cheaper operations; that's where the companies will go. With myself, and many others like me, its government sponsored corporate attacks on our rights as citizens, as human beings. I'm neither a strict environmentalist nor a union member, but we share something, a common goal, a common desire, and so they have my full support, just as, I'm sure, I would have theirs.
If only they knew. I wouldn't say we're a quiet bunch (we, as in, those like me), but we're so different that the more traditional groups can't see our interests are anything of the same. The progressives (which is what they are) need to know we stand with them, they need to know we're in the same boat, and god dammit if we could get away from our computers for a little while and out into the real world maybe something would get done. Sorry, I'll stop preaching now :)
I don't care who doesn't agree with what I'm saying. Go ahead and tell me if you want, I'm not listening. I just want to get the point across that we, those like me, aren't alone here. We've got a lot of people on our side in the traditional world, who just don't know they're on our side yet. Why don't we let them know?
72656B636148206C72655020726568746F6E41207473754A
I had that thought the other day.. that ultimately, shareholders are responsible for what a company does. The problem is.. they aren't. They vote, once a year, for the board of directors, and that ends their responsibilities. The way the market is structured, shareholders cannot actively and democratically run a company. That's not how it's designed.
The real problem is money. If you take a publicly traded company, the board of directors MUST maximize shareholder value. That's their purpose for existing. That's the reason the company exists in the first place. People don't invest in order to create jobs, or change the world.. they invest to turn money in to more money.
The problem, folks, is that we have no way to properly measure economic prosperity. A booming ecomony is one *potential* sign of a healthy country.. it is one aspect of human civilization. A booming economy should not be the desired result when running a country; it is simply an indicator of other things.
The problem is that the acquisition of wealth has become an end unto itself.
Corporations do essential, absolutely necessary things. They collect taxes, enforce standards, make the enforcement of decent labour standards possible, and most importantly integrate complex chains of production in a relatively economically efficient way.
Every industrialised economy, even the command economies of the former eastern bloc, had some kind of institution that functioned like a modern firm. They have had a variety of names, and a variety of legal definitions and statuses, but the basic machinery of management, division of labour, and intertwined responsibility have always been there.
The persistent failure of alternative formulations suggests that the modern firm is an institution unlikely to go away, and that it is undesireable to replace it.
The real problems revolve around who owns the firms, who operates them, and who regulates them, and in the end, what purposes they are designed and allowed to serve.
I agree that the corporation's ideology is "profitability is society's dominant goal," and that that is a poor ideology, recognised as such by nearly everyone. As B. F. Skinner pointed out, we do good because good is rewarded, and we do bad because bad is rewarded. I'm not so sure this is true in such a simple way for individuals, but Skinner's dictum recapitulates the essense of natural selection. If long life and growth are the rewards of profits, organisations will be structured to seek profits at the expense of all else. They have to, because if they don't other organisations will displace them in the ecology of human affairs.
Individualism at all costs isn't the answer. Without organising structures, every man and woman must depend on themselves for all their needs. It may be a sort of freedom, but it is the freedom of the caveman: the freedom to die alone when the machinery of society grins to a halt.
There are alternatives. Rethinking the nature of ownership and the rights of labour has been the project of various liberal philosophies for two centuries or more. And much progress has been made. It is no longer possible to own another human in most places. Societies generally recognise that the structure of firms creates uneven dependencies and pass laws to ensure greater balance. Until recently, social insurance was a value of such great importance that even the demand for economic efficiency was considered secondary to it. These programmes were, and are, successful. The level of public wealth available in the industrialised world would never have materialised without it.
An objection to the commodification of public culture is the single strongest thread of dissent in recent years. In days past, it was the commodification of labour that provoked rebellion, but today it's mostly culture. Both are undoubtedly bad things, but both can be amended.
Karl Marx prescribed the only solution to the commodification of labour by demanding that the means of production belong to the workers. Although his specific programme is quite dated and less applicable to the modern world, the basic tenet remains strong.
Take a look at Silicon Valley. One of the major factors in the success of the high-tech employment model is the liberal distribution of stock to employees and the relatively flat managerial hierarchies that insure local decision-making. Workers control those firms to an extent rarely seen in the "old" economy. Notions like total quality management and job rotation also serve to bring the workers more and more into the management, and indirectly into the ownership of companies. Surveys suggest that partially and wholly worker-owned companies out-perform fully private competitors on the average.
This suggests that the basic Marxist prescription remains the most effective way to undermine these old injustices. When a corporation must be held responsible to the immediate interests of a crosssection of the public, it acts quite differently. The evil done by self-perpetualting boardroom oligarchies becomes less and less likely when many of its own owners stand to be damaged.
The more contentious issue is the commodification of culture. No unified theory exists to deal with this problem, however, I note that it's scope diminishes when diverse and independent media are actively supported. The biggest music successes often start with underground recording, distributed independently, like the early Metallica, or grunge music. In some countries, publicly owned television stations with little or no advertising are able to set standards for content and culture that others must strive to equal in order to make a profit. Outside the US, most media markets support more than one newspaper.
Developing networks that insure the funding and representation of independent media, limitations on advertising and perhaps even moving away from advertising as a model of financing for media might serve that purpose.
But attacking corporations for doing exactly the things we reward them for is senseless. We need the corporations in order to support industrialised society and we can't change that. We can change what we reward them for doing.
So be like us, since we are the Individuals!
I was on the verge of deciding not to be an individualist, but now this article has convinced me that individualism is "cool" and that everyone else is doing it!
Make me an individualist, too! Where do I sign up?
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
Isnt an "individualist movement" somewhat of an oxymoron? 'Banding together to act for ourselves' doesnt make much sense to me...
I think you are overestimating the ability of the average american to "wake up" as you put it to corporate intrests and puppeteering. The "average" American after all, has an IQ of 100 and would score 1000 on the SAT, biased means of measuring intelligence, true, but useful nonetheless. In other words, by definition, half of all americans are below these measures of knowledge and intelligence. Posting here gives you the advantage of preaching to the choir (sp?) since I would argue that you would need to be of significantly above average intelligence to read and undestand /. I would contend however, that the average american is nearly oblivious to the corporate manipulations that he or she undergo on a daily basis. After all, a recent survey at ABC news put the number of americans who are against the breaking up of Microsoft at near 70%. So not only are most americans not cognizent of the manipulation they are undergoing, a large portion of them are incapable of waking up to that fact, even when faced with hard evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the Megacorporation. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, but in general this holds
What is a corperation?
A group of collected individuals with a common goal.
Fight fire with fire I say.
The only problem I see here is that of the right of a company to exist. Corperations may not have the right of existance, but they do have the right to exist.
It would be extreemly hiprocritical (spelling?) of us to deny them that right. A corperation has as much right to be here as we do. However they do not have the right to screw us over. It's our business that keeps their bussiness in business.
"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."
-- Ernest Hemingway
"Jon's reliance on the individual smacks too much of Ayn Rand. And just as Rand's political philosophy attributes charaterisitics that an average person cannot possess so does Jon's essay"
...
No doubt, a smacking is in order for his presentation. Yes, it smacks of manifesto, and his presentation smacks of a progenitor imparting his moral and political imperative on potential followers.
The difference between Ayn Rand is this: this forum is open to debate, therefore this is not a doctrinal belief system like objectivism, although it does use buzzwords like individualism, that the Rand hordes use endlessly (when in fact, it's really "come here, let us give you information so you can be *more* individual", when in fact, the translation is: "come believe our doctrinal belief system, and you will become incredibly intelligent and individual, and you will be saved from the threat of all those commie bastards").
"No, if you want change I urge people to turn off their TV, put down their papers and meet together to discuss their concerns"
Doesn't work when you're ignorant. Many american people feel there is something wrong, but are unable to express this beyond unarticulate expression of anger.
My advice:
Watch c-span;
delve into political science, economics;
obtain information from a variety of sources (various newspapers, the internet, books, whatever);
Then when person x actually has a clear picture, problems, and possible solutions - then a political movement would make sense - given others who share the same ideas.
Otherwise you get something like the WTO protests -- Lots of stupid morons making legitimate causes look like irrational, insane garbage that should be relegated to ignominy.
Which brings us back to problems in education and media
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
...they just don't understand that morality is useful to them. Unfortunately the decision makers in those corporations proabably still associate morality with that self-destructive BS that gets passed off as morality by religious types (and secular-humanists).
The essence of sane legal morality is that you protect rights, because any system that allows their rights to be broken, allows yours to too, if the political wind changes. Interpersonal morality adds over that: that you don't want to damage yourself by faking reality (which commits you to living a lie).
Once you've grasped those two things, it becomes obvious that it's the selfish thing to do to be moral.
Some time ago someone on SlashDot pointed out the some time in the 1800's (early 1900's?) Corporations were given rights similar to induhviduals. I think its long overdue time to take that right away from Corporations. As a rule they haven't proved themselves responsible with property ownership rights - both land and intellectual property. How 'bout only induhviduals being allowed to own intellectual property and land? No doubt something would be lost and something gained (didn't Mark Twain say that for something lost there is always something gained or vice versa?).
What would happen?
90% of the wealth is in 2% of the pockets. Bummer to be in the majority.
More than a tad.
Personally, I think there is no 'answer', but I know that individualism isn't the answer. You simply can't have it. Jon, for all your ranting and raving about how bad corporate America is, about how bad Microsoft is, what would you have the alternative be? Oh, rather than everybody living under the tyranny of Microsoft, let's all live under the GPL instead. The GPL is better than Microsoft's licenses, so we should live under that instead. Well, what if I don't want to live under the GPL? What if I want to make up my own license? What if I want to make up my own program that will be enormously successful, but use my own individual protocols, and to make sure they stay individual, I don't want you using them (so I'll just close them off to anything but my programs)? I'm an individual.
I say, "Forget corporate America!" but I also say, "Forget all the hippy free software people!" too. Forget them all. Or don't.
Do what you freakin' want. If you want to use Microsoft, use Microsoft. You're not a sinner because of it. If you want to be a politician and get your money from the NRA, go right ahead. It's your choice. Your live by your decisions. If you want to eschew all wealth and be a hermit out in the West Virginian mountains, then by all means do it. What I really hate, though, more than anything else, is some guy telling me that would should be more like something. That's just as bad to me as the Gap telling me that I should wear khakis to be cool or Microsoft telling me I should use Windows if I want to work with everyone else. It's the same damn thing.
I'll do what I want, cause I don't want to listen to you telling me what to do.
ps. This all reminds me of the scene in Election where the Tracey stands up to give her speech and says, "So vote for me. Or don't!"
Hey Garund,
I took a look at your other post and you also made references to the pillar stuff. Sounds pretty cool... Can you email me a copy of that essay? My address is above.
"Individualists of the world, unite!"
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Leading social critics have long pointed out the vast lack of relevant information provided to the American public by the Corporate media. Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent goes into this subject in great depth, pointing out the high concentration of ownership of the corporate media by Americas corporate elite.
Today, six conglomerates own 95% of the American news media. This concentration of ownership is generally realized in totalitarian states like Columbia, Argentina, etc. It is telling to note that virtually no Americans recognize this situation for what it really is: a corporate propaganda system. This corporate propaganda system is design solely to limit debate and confine the limits of debate to a pre-defined spectrum set by Americas corporate elite.
This is a very dangerous situation, and this point cannot be stressed enough. The danger to our Bill of Rights could not be more pronounced.
Finally, it should be understood why Americas corporate elite monopolize our communications media: they intend to inculcate the American public with the values, belief system and illusions necessary to contain the bounds of debate to predefined limits. Those limits - of course - are defined by corporate america, to the great detriment of all Americans.
Make no mistake: corporate americas elite do not monopolize the media in order to present the un-varnished truth, but rather to manipulate and deceive the public.
Jon Katz is one of the few Americans making this point and he should be complimented for doing so.
The establishment is run on rules and regulations, and it is almost impossible to win against them. They are immovable pillars of strength, so you have to be like water. The pillars don't care if you don't directly oppose them, so don't. Just go around them. There's always a way, so stay cool.
Actually, it occurs to me now that the fact this essay was even made available is an example of its own conclusion, since it wasn't part of the strict curriculum; it was brought in and distributed by a man who also happened to be my favorite English teacher. Those who understood, 'Got it.' Those who didn't. . . Well it didn't really matter.
The paper was not discussed or mentioned ever again, but those who were awake benefitted and learned. I've been following the advice in that paper ever since, and my life is pretty darn good. I have lots of friends, society at large respects me. (I've received multiple lines of credit from banking institutions who have told me point blank, (though very quietly), that they were going against all policy and were bending several rules in order to help me.)
I'm not angry. I don't hate anybody. I have a smile for all. (I do, I admit, always dress in camoflauge. It's a war out there. That is, I wear an ironed shirt, and maintain a haircut and shaven face. It works. I get friendly service where enraged letter-bombers don't. It's very simple.) But I also work the hours I want, (if any), and NEVER for a corporation, and while I am not rich, I make enough to remain comfortable.
Essentially, I think it's important to remember this:
Corporations are the enemy. Not the people who infest them. You can always appeal to People, so long as you respect and love them, and love life. People are the infection, and they'll almost always be on your side, because when it comes right down to it, even the well paid hate the establishment which makes them get up at 6:30 in the morning to go to 10 hour a day jobs. Even the most right wing politician likes to walk on beaches and have friends. The trick is to be able to see the world from everybody else's point of view.
That's all. Fight to maintain the things you love, but accept that you are never going to bring down the 'Man'. Anger is counter productive.
Good luck out there.
-Garund
We should acknowledge that economics matters (a lot), but it can't be society's only common goal.
Economics do matter, however greed is what is now driving our society and for large part our economic policy as well. Not to be a tree hugging democrate, but it wasn't till recently that I honestly thought about what was important to me in my life. Turn out it wasn't money. Granted we all need it to survive, but for the longest time that was the goal. More and more money.
It's not that way for me anymore. I make a good living and am not about to go and sign up for communism, it's just my kids and family and "quality" of life mean more to me than money. It's nice to have a little serenity.
This leads me back to my original point. There is no such thing as "Society's common goal" society is made up of individuals. The individual who think making more money will make then happier just out number the ones who don't. These individuals are paid to make their comanies money, specifically to make money for the investors. (more greedy people). It's an endless cycle. To bad there is only so much money to go around. This creates they "I'll crush anyone to get ahead" syndrome, (M$) and it'snot healthy for the society, the economy or individually.
Again I enjoyed the article,
Regards,
-ttm
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
To steal a line form Dan Ackroyd: "Jon, you ignorant slut."
Individuals never change anything for the long run. It is only mass movements that affect lasting change. Put Rosa Parks in the front of a bus in the South by herself in the early 60s and she will be beaten. Unite her with a movement of people organized for a cause and stick a camera in front of her and she can be a powerful force.
Likewise, put Galileo in front of the Church and he will be punished and his work 'discredited'. Hell, the Catholic Church didn't let him out of jail until the 1980s. Yet, create a mass movement of people that values the quest for knowledge and ideas that arise and you will have a true change in society.
Jon's reliance on the individual smacks too much of Ayn Rand. And just as Rand's political philosophy attributes charaterisitics that an average person cannot possess so does Jon's essay.
Most 'individuals' today are symbols of a post modernist society rooted in Existentialism. Where meaning is not something objective, but rather subjective, a quest for identity that can be expressed by something as radical as pierced body parts, rock and roll, and profanity erupting form the mouths of babes. Such behavior is neither radical nor new, but rather the results of a commoditized rebellion, a product of the system that Jon somehow thinks individuals will somehow overcome.
I'm sorry to disappoint you Jon but people are just to lazy, ignorant, or powerless to make any changes on their own. They rely on others to overcome their anomie, to be able to work together for a common cause. This is more true to America than anywhere else.
Indeed, it is corporatism that has replaced mass movements, relegating them to little more than TV special interest segments. It's much easier to feel good temporarily by buying some fetishistic item of the minute rather than working on getting those drug dealers out of the neighborhood.
Don't ever expect people to be motivated by the high end of Maslow's pyramid.
No, if you want change I urge people to turn off their TV, put down their papers and meet together to discuss their concerns. Start with something small that a group of well organized people can overcome, something as small and local as getting Channel One out of their schools. Fight against the never ending encroachment of private property over community meeting spaces and segmentation of community into market demographics.
Or did you miss the "Million Mom March" because you saw it not as a mass movement, but a collection of individuals?
Now there is a place for leaders, and while leaders can be replaced or removed (why are leaders of left oriented and mass movements assassinated but not leaders of the right or reactionary movements?), it is the people behind them that make lasting change.
Examples in US history:
women's suffrage
Civil Rights movement (including racial and sexual preference oriented movements)
Unions
Anti-Vietnam movement
etc
Movements that failed because of a reliance on individuals:
AIM
Black Panthers
Reform party
etc