As corporations gain in autonomous institutional power and be-come more detached from people and place, the human interest and the corporate interest increasingly diverge. It is almost as though we were being invaded by alien beings intent on colonizing our planet, reducing us to serfs, and then excluding as many of us as possible.
Interpretation
The quote discusses the growing disconnect between corporations and the human experience, suggesting a threatening invasion of corporate influence.
David Korten's quote highlights a critical observation of modern corporations as they gain power and detach themselves from the very people and communities they serve. This detachment creates a stark divide between the interests of these corporations and those of individuals, leading to a sense of alienation, akin to being invaded by foreign entities that prioritize profit over human welfare, reducing individuals to subservient roles in the socio-economic structure.
In practice
In a business ethics class discussing the impact of corporate power on society.
When the institutions of money rule the world, it is perhaps inevitable that the interests of money will take precedence over the interests of people. What we are experiencing might best be described as a case of money colonizing life. To accept this absurd distortion of human institutions and purpose should be considered nothing less than an act of collective, suicidal insanity.
We can have democracy and a prosperous, just, and sustainable human future. Or we can have corporate rule. We cannot have both.
In a world of increasing inequality, the legitimacy of institutions that give precedence to the property rights of 'the Haves' over the human rights of 'the Have Nots' is inevitably called into serious question.
Capitalism and the market are presented as synonymous, but they are not. Capitalism is both the enemy of the market and democracy.
Living capital, which has the special capacity to continuously regenerate itself, is ultimately the source of all real wealth. To destroy it for money, a simple number with no intrinsic value, is an act of collective insanity - which makes capitalism a mental, as well as physical pathology.
The proper goal of an economic democracy agenda is to replace the global suicide economy ruled by rapacious and unaccountable global corporations with a planetary system of local living economies comprised of human-scale enterprise rooted in the communities they serve and locally owned by the people whose wellbeing depends on them.
All lies are told with a straight face. It is truth that's said with a dismissive giggle.
All other ways of mortification are vain, all helps leave us helpless; it must be done by the Spirit.
When pain is unbearable it destroys us; when it does not it is bearable.
Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.
Working at the Food Bank with my kids is an eye-opener. The face of hunger isn't the bum on the street drinking Sterno; it's the working poor. They don't look any different, they don't behave any differently, they're not really any less educated. They are incredibly less privileged, and that's it.
No thought is born in me that does not bear the image of death.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.