Doug Rushkoff had set out, as he told me in an interview on the WELL, to write one kind of book—“about money as a medium, and the way centralized currency and corporate capitalism were accepted as given circumstances of business, rather than inventions of particular people at a particular time.”
Rushkoff, who’s made a living as a writer, thinker and speaker who tries to step outside culture and see more clearly the patterns and processes at work, was ready to question fundamental assumptions about money and economies, and look for solutions to problems we all sense but barely understand—cycles of boom and bust, polarization of economic and political thinking (which are inherently linked), and how commitment to abstract concepts can make humans less human. Also how people can unthinkingly (or other-thinkingly) accept and follow cultural notions that actually undermine sustainable futures.
Then, while Rushkoff was in the process of pulling the book together, a man with a gun robbed him on Christmas Eve, in front of his own apartment. Somewhat shaken by the experience, he posted a note about it on a neighborhood email list, and got a surprising response: some neighbors, concerned about how the news of the mugging might have an impact on their property values, were angry that he had posted where the crime occurred.
“I realized that my neighbors had internalized these sensibilities [associated with corporate capitalism] so deeply that they were behaving like corporations, themselves,” he told me.
So he wrote a slightly different book—about “how the world became a corporation,” how authenticity, community, and human intimacy have been compromised by pervasive corporatization and nonstop marketing. The book, Life Inc. includes well and thoroughly researched history of the corporation, which began as a way for monarchs to participate in innovative business models developed by an emerging merchant class, and evolved as a way to organize power around economic engines.
I’ve been reading Rushkoff’s book carefully and thinking a lot about it. He’s very articulate and his arguments are compelling. There’s no doubt that corporate form really has been foundational in organizing our perception of the world, more deeply generation after generation, and it’s not surprising that global citizens of developed and developing nations organize their thinking around those patterns. When we talk about “developed” and “developing,” we’re talking about corporatization—the extent to which the corporate model has taken hold, or you might say has colonized a particular locale.
Corporations bring compelling efficiencies along with them—an abundance of products for consumption at relatively low cost. Food, clothing, shelter, etc. Sophisticated water systems and plumbing systems. Systems and vehicles for transportation. Money and jobs. Better medical systems. This is all what we call progress, and it feels like success, especially for those at the top or the corporate heap. However, Rushkoff points out, we haven’t had many opportunities to consider alternatives, since corporations have controlled media, government and schools. Aren’t we completely conditioned to accept corporate assumptions as what’s real, inherent and incontrovertible? And, given this power over reality, aren’t corporations vulnerable to corruption?
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