Essentials

Corporations produce most of the useful products and services that almost all of us use on a daily basis. Highly organized products and services require highly organized bodies to create and dispense them. However, the corporation is a legal entity that, over its history, has gained progressively more rights and has managed to shed progressively more responsibility until now it threatens to completely subjugate our governments and assimilate all previous social structures, including religion. As an often highly organized social organism, the corporation can be extremely rich and powerful, enabling it to slowly craft its own definition under US law to its own specifications.

Nil responsibility and broad rights have now rendered the corporation a virtual Frankenstein monster--an amoral body, whose only serious legal responsibility is to its stockholders in terms of the quarterly bottom line. In terms of responsibility, for instance, not being a real person, a corporation cannot be charged with a criminal offense. This is why they say that legally "A corporation doesn't have a soul to save or an ass to kick." By definition, it is amoral and short-sighted. That is its nature. This is not to suggest that employees, management, or even CEOs are necessarily amoral. Legally, they must act as part of the corporation toward the corporation's goals. Over time, however, it does seem that the amoral climate of corporate life tends to degrade all national and even religious notions of right and wrong among its constituent employees. Since the 1980s, most clearly represented in the iconic film Wall Street, greed has gained acceptance as a social good.

Of course, greed has always been with us, and always will, just like prostitution, but it has until now been moderated by religion and other alturistic ideology. When not vigorously fought, at least one would hear anti-greed rhetoric. Only recently have hardworking, nicely dressed, ostensibly Christian people begun to sing its praises almost as a saving grace of humanity. The Corporate world, through direct influence on its employees and advertizing have managed to infect the teachings of some of the major currents of Christianity, redefining the Christian message. No longer is Christ the prince of peace, the promoter of brotherhood, charity, and fairness. Now he is the bringer of material wealth and the supporter of war. Many supposedly Christian people today would not recognize the Christian message if they heard it. Consider this passage from Matthew 25:

40 "The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

41 "Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,

43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'

44"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'

45"He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'

Christian teaching today tends to lean more toward using relative poverty or prosperity as proof of relative righteousness. If someone is poor, it must be because they are ungodly. Most recently, however, some shame seems to have set in, and they use phrases like, "It is better to give a hand-up than a handout." Toward this end, Christianity has attempted to break down the wall between Church and State in order to control tax dollars. Tax-exempt status is no longer good enough. No longer, they say, should pastors have to give up the money from the collection box to spend it on the poor. Powerful congregation have simply applied the corporate strategy of externalizing their costs to society through political pressure, rendering Christian charity niether Christian nor charitable.

But the corrupting of religious ideology and practice is only one negative associated with the corporations of today. Now, advertizing has allowed them to shape reality for large blocks of the population to the point that they are willing to vote for things that run directly opposite to their own interests, and in some cases, for things that will kill or maim them. For instance, notice the recent commercials depicting the coughing bald eagle, almost overcome by industrial pollution. Then a woman's voice explains that thanks to clean coal technology, industry has reduced the emmissions since the 1970s drastically. Then she mentions that at some date far in the future, with the help of clean coal technology, things will be even better. The name of the organization is Americans for Balanced Energy Choices.

However, the context of this message is left out. First, it makes it sound like the coal burning industries did not have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the table and be forced by activists and the government to reduce emmissions by the Clean Air Act. Second, coal energy is responsible for most of the mercury released into the environment. Mercury now contaminates 2/3 of American fisheries, and even conservative regulatory agencies have said pregnant women should not eat more than ten ounces of fish per week--not fish from a certain lake or stream, just fish in general. It is poison, and consumption produces neurologically impaired children. Yet, there are no warnings, such as on cigarettes, visible at any fish markets or upon cans of tuna. Third, Bush has just signed legislation that will push back the cleanup of mercury-producing coal industry for many years.

The corporate controlled media, however, has spent long years and who knows how much money upon shaping a view of environmentalists as wackos. They have changed the reality: Instead of environmentalist activists being responsible for the cleanup of coal-burning industry in the 1970s, now it is the corporations themselves who spearheaded the cleanup. Instead of Bush stalling the cleanup of mercury, which neurologically impairs untold numbers of fetuses, he is the champion of the unborn. Most of all, instead of fighting those who actually poison them, vast numbers of the public actually vote against and verbally attack those who at their own expense try to protect the health of our unborn against the desires of rich, amoral, powerful corporations to avoid the expense of retooling their powerplants. The book shown here is a good narrative on how this dirty p.r. campaigning works. Also, get hold of a copy of the documentary called The Corporation for more information that can save us as a country. The corporation, like the church, is not inherrantly evil. It just tends to get that way over time, and we need reform quickly. Demand it.