Corporations Are Not Humans : Not Even Close --- Episode 50

                             THE ECOLOGICAL REVOLUTION 

    We are now coming to see that economic globalization has come at a heavy price. In the name of modernity we are creating dysfunctional societies that are breeding pathological behavior --- violence, extreme competitiveness, suicide, drug abuse, greed, and environmental degradation --- at every hand. Such behavior is an inevitable consequence when a society fails to meet the needs of its members for social bonding, trust, affection, and a shared sacred meaning. The threefold crisis of deepening poverty, environmental destruction, and social disintegration manifests this dysfunction. 
   The collective madness of pursuing policies that deepen the dysfunction is not inevitable. The idea that we are caught up in the grip of irresistible historical forces and inherent, irreversible human imperfections to which we must adapt is pure fabrication. Corporate globalization is being advanced by the conscious choices of those who see the world through the lens of the corporate interest. Human alternatives do exist, and those who view through the lens of the human interest have both the right and the power to choose them. 
   Healthy societies depend on healthy, empowered local communities that build caring relationships among people and help connect us to a particular piece of the living earth with which our lives are intertwined. Such societies must be built through local-level action, household by household and community by community. Instead we have created an institutional and cultural context that disempowers the local and makes such action difficult, if not impossible. 
   To correct the dysfunction, we must shed the illusions of our collective cultural trance, reclaim the power we have yielded to failing institutions, take back responsibility for our lives, and reweave the basic fabric of caring families and communities to create places for people and other living things. These actions are within our means but will require transforming the dominant belief systems, values, and institutions of our societies ---an ECOLOGICAL REVOLUTION comparable to the Copernican Revolution that ushered in the scientific industrial era. The parallels are instructive. 

                      COMPETING VISIONS OF REALITY 

    The Copernican Revolution was grounded in a basic change in the prevailing perception of the nature of reality. The issues involved bear examination, because they go to the root of our present crisis and help define the challenge of the Ecological Revolution. 
   Transcendental monism (the view that consciousness or spirit gives rise to matter) has formed the philosophical foundation of many Eastern cultures, at least until the recent onslaught of Western science, industrialization, global competition, and consumerism. Adherents of this tradition believe that consciousness is the primary reality and that matter is a creation of consciousness or spiritual energy. Based on the belief that all consciousness, as well as the material manifestation of consciousness, originates from the same underlying unity, transcendental monism considers inner wisdom, accessed through our spiritual connection with the infinite, to be the primary source of valid knowing. This tradition had commonly been associated with a denial of things material, a fatalistic acceptance of one's material condition, a strong sense of community, and a deep reverence for nature.
   In the West, the Judeo-Christian tradition took quite a different course, personifying God as a being who lives in a distant and separate realm and whose attention is centered on earth and its human inhabitants. In this tradition, God's will and wisdom were revealed through prophets, such as Moses, or through his incarnation as Jesus. The earth was believed to be the center of the universe, with the sun, stars, and planets revolving around it. These beliefs remained the foundation of scientific thought and moral and political authority in Europe until as recently as 500 hundred years ago. 
   Then in 1543, Nicholas Copernicus published Revolution of the Celestial Spheres, setting forth the thesis that the earth is only one among the planets that revolve around the sun, itself one of countless such stars of the cosmos. This led to a historic confrontation between science and the church as to whether scientific observation or divine revelation is the more valid source of human knowledge. Materialistic monism (the view that matter gives rise to consciousness or spirit) became the imge of reality embraced by science and unleashed what historians refer to as the Copernican Revolution. Adherents to this tradition believe that matter is the primary reality, physical measurement is the one valid source of knowledge, and the experience of consciousness is only a manifestation of the material complexity of the physical brain. For this tradition it is inconceivable that any form of consciousness exists independently of a physical presence. Materialistic monism has been the foundation of Western scientific training and culture throughout most of the scientific-industrial era. It has commonly been associated with a denial of the spiritual and an emphasis on materialism, individualism, and the exploitation of nature. 
   According to historian Edward McNall Burns, the significance of the Copernican Revolution is found in the fact that "No longer ned the philosopher pay homage to revelation as a source of truth ; reason was now held to be the solitary front of knowledge, while the whole idea of spiritual meaning in the universe was cast aside like a worn-out garment. The intellectual and moral authority of the church was greatly weakened. 
   The idea that only those things that can be measured are suitable subjects for scientific study and acceptable as causal explanations has helped science distinguish "scientific explanations from such prescientific interpretations as the whims of of the gods or the intervention of divine grace." However, it also meant that consciousness, values, aesthetics, and other aspects of human experience were excluded from consideration in scientific inquiry. By rejecting free will and moral choice as acceptable explanations for behavior, science effectively exempted itself from moral responsibility for the application of scientific knowledge.

    Seventeenth-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes took materialistic monism to its ultimate extreme. He maintained that absolutely nothing exists except matter. If there is a God, he must have a physical body. In Hobbes's view, good is merely that which gives us pleasure, evil that which brings pain, and the only meaningful purpose in life is to pursue pleasure --- a value system that now serves as the implicit moral premise of corporate globalization. 
   The institutions of religion and science --- each with its own view of reality --- henceforth competed for the soul of Western societies. Dualism (the view that matter and spirit are two distinct and independent aspects of reality) provided the basis for an uneasy accommodation between religion and scientific world views. While the church ministered to a constricted spiritual life, secular society came to embrace the material world as the primary reality, materialism as the dominant value, and ultimately economic growth as the primary human purpose.