“We’re all in this together” is quickly becoming the mantra of CEO’s taking their turn to speak to this novel virus running over our planet at an impressive rate. As I hear their attempts to reassure present and potential customers that “they are doing everything they can” to keep us and their employees safe so we might keep buying their stuff online, I am struck with some measure of gratitude and a greater portion of boredom.
The decision by some multi-national corporations to continue paying their employees while their doors are closed before the impending federal bailout was announced is laudable, and deserving of our gratitude. Using their resources to care for the people who make their profits possible is a tangible gesture of concern and public responsibility, as the Federal Treasury is about to open the flood gates. It is on that fact alone, that some of these retail stores may pique enough interest to continue generating revenue in this strange time. After all, the timing may have been callous for George W. Bush to tell us to keep shopping after 9/11, but his advisors weren’t wrong about the effects of crises on our demand-based economy.
On the other hand, hearing “we’re all in this together” from CEO’s, luxury car companies, and sports TV personalities induces boredom at best because, without any prejudice, it means nothing coming from corporate representatives. Using these words in their roles may be an expedient means to provoke a necessary sensation of the common good in these disorienting times, but these words do not represent the primary values of our corporate culture.
Some might call it not just boring, but actually disingenuous, if not manipulative for corporate culture to speak of public togetherness in times of crisis, but evade public responsibility in “peace time.” Because after all, appropriate gestures of solidarity and “doing the right thing,” do not undo the overarching nature of the corporate culture we have created and allowed, which precisely does not resemble “we’re all in this together.”
We can support or decry our corporate models, but the for-profit, pro-investor economy objectively is not about “we’re all in this together.” It’s not the goal or guiding principle of corporate culture to provide for or promote the common good and as legal entities they are not required to do so. Current trends in federal and state deregulation, are expressly for the sake of corporate profit, and not public responsibility.
This is not to say that some corporations don’t have vibrant philanthropic arms that spend large sums of money or that corporations are inherently against the common good. Nevertheless, “we are all in this together” does not accurately describe the goal or purpose of corporate culture. Any attempt to make-believe that it does, or get distracted by “what about this good work of a corporation” is the intention and success of the indomitable and obscenely lucrative advertising industry.
We are better poised to address our current circumstances when we allow ourselves to accept the broadest sweep of corporate culture as a deliberately manufactured political reality which exists as a contradiction to “we’re all in this together.” We do not need to demonize corporate culture for this. We never constructed it to be that. We do ourselves a disservice when we demonize anything for being something it never claimed to be.
“We are all in this together,” is however, representative of the ancient spiritual traditions of the world, even though this thread is largely lost today. We can reject our spiritual nature and still gather around this interconnected reality because the cutting edges of quantum and astro physics, sociology, and biology also attest to the deep, intricately interwoven reality of our existence.
The task at hand is not the effective use of mantras or to attack corporate culture, but to see these words about togetherness for what they are. How will we actually discover what it means for all of us to be together now across the planet? If we’re willing, in the midst of a global pandemic, perhaps we can allow the Earth to become small, and as fellow earthlings, see anew that we share the same plight even when a virus is not crossing all of our borders.
Perhaps in this time, the fire will be hot enough to crack open the husks of seeds of global communion that have lay fallow up until now. Perhaps we can in this time move beyond cheap sayings and these words can shake off the cynical shackles of cliche, and become something meaningful for our future - the necessary spark to remember the deepest nature of our ecosystem. Perhaps the truth, even as a line in a multi-million dollar advertising campaign, can infect us in a way that we have a fighting chance to all be in this together now.
The decision by some multi-national corporations to continue paying their employees while their doors are closed before the impending federal bailout was announced is laudable, and deserving of our gratitude. Using their resources to care for the people who make their profits possible is a tangible gesture of concern and public responsibility, as the Federal Treasury is about to open the flood gates. It is on that fact alone, that some of these retail stores may pique enough interest to continue generating revenue in this strange time. After all, the timing may have been callous for George W. Bush to tell us to keep shopping after 9/11, but his advisors weren’t wrong about the effects of crises on our demand-based economy.
On the other hand, hearing “we’re all in this together” from CEO’s, luxury car companies, and sports TV personalities induces boredom at best because, without any prejudice, it means nothing coming from corporate representatives. Using these words in their roles may be an expedient means to provoke a necessary sensation of the common good in these disorienting times, but these words do not represent the primary values of our corporate culture.
Some might call it not just boring, but actually disingenuous, if not manipulative for corporate culture to speak of public togetherness in times of crisis, but evade public responsibility in “peace time.” Because after all, appropriate gestures of solidarity and “doing the right thing,” do not undo the overarching nature of the corporate culture we have created and allowed, which precisely does not resemble “we’re all in this together.”
We can support or decry our corporate models, but the for-profit, pro-investor economy objectively is not about “we’re all in this together.” It’s not the goal or guiding principle of corporate culture to provide for or promote the common good and as legal entities they are not required to do so. Current trends in federal and state deregulation, are expressly for the sake of corporate profit, and not public responsibility.
This is not to say that some corporations don’t have vibrant philanthropic arms that spend large sums of money or that corporations are inherently against the common good. Nevertheless, “we are all in this together” does not accurately describe the goal or purpose of corporate culture. Any attempt to make-believe that it does, or get distracted by “what about this good work of a corporation” is the intention and success of the indomitable and obscenely lucrative advertising industry.
We are better poised to address our current circumstances when we allow ourselves to accept the broadest sweep of corporate culture as a deliberately manufactured political reality which exists as a contradiction to “we’re all in this together.” We do not need to demonize corporate culture for this. We never constructed it to be that. We do ourselves a disservice when we demonize anything for being something it never claimed to be.
“We are all in this together,” is however, representative of the ancient spiritual traditions of the world, even though this thread is largely lost today. We can reject our spiritual nature and still gather around this interconnected reality because the cutting edges of quantum and astro physics, sociology, and biology also attest to the deep, intricately interwoven reality of our existence.
The task at hand is not the effective use of mantras or to attack corporate culture, but to see these words about togetherness for what they are. How will we actually discover what it means for all of us to be together now across the planet? If we’re willing, in the midst of a global pandemic, perhaps we can allow the Earth to become small, and as fellow earthlings, see anew that we share the same plight even when a virus is not crossing all of our borders.
Perhaps in this time, the fire will be hot enough to crack open the husks of seeds of global communion that have lay fallow up until now. Perhaps we can in this time move beyond cheap sayings and these words can shake off the cynical shackles of cliche, and become something meaningful for our future - the necessary spark to remember the deepest nature of our ecosystem. Perhaps the truth, even as a line in a multi-million dollar advertising campaign, can infect us in a way that we have a fighting chance to all be in this together now.
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