In the previous post I gave some light examples of corporate closed-ness – but now to more serious matters!
I like to read of all sorts of different books and articles in magazines, and nowadays, internet sources. I have often, like most people, read conspiracy type theories about how the world, as most of us experience it, is fashioned by groups of super-rich people who have the international media and politicians in their pockets and who foment strife and conflict, even leading to war if it suits them, so that they can increase their wealth and power even more.
These theories always seemed, to me, to be very exciting to read about, but a little unlikely. I always reckoned that too many people would have to be bought by too few and that people’s natural goodness would prevent it happening. And, indeed, there are many good people among the super-rich echelons of society who have a strong social conscience and do a lot for the world.
But then ……… I experienced the financial crash and subsequent recession of 2008 – 2010.
After that recession, in order to rescue failing economies, we all witnessed democratically elected governments in highly developed and civilised European countries caving in to pressure from financial interests.
What we didn’t know (well, what I didn’t know anyway until I read a little bit more about it) is that this caving in had been going on since the mid-1980’s when Governments allowed banks issue mortgages without having the capital to back them up, and depending instead on shadow global type investment portfolios that didn’t have to be shown on the banks’ accounts. I will not go into the complicated world of high-finance here – I don’t understand it well enough to explain it properly.
But the end result of this caving in to the corporate banking world over many decades was the financial crash that we all know about now, and as a result of the crash, (just to give one of many examples) vital services were taken away from suffering children while the reckless global stock-market gamblers were bailed out with public money.
Surely, I thought to myself, average civil servants, public servants and politicians, ordinary decent people all, would not choose to do this unless they and their masters were under unendurable pressure from external financial sources that had global reach.
So while the jury is out on the truthfulness or otherwise of conspiracy theories it is true there is real harm done to ordinary people by the uncaring corporate world that, as I said above, has zero compassion.
And conspiracy theories aside, it is very important for community workers to remember that the people who are in charge of the world’s finances, (or, to put it another way, the corporate – political cartel that run the world) would let you and I and our families starve to death rather than upset their economic model.
And they do!
Our own Great Hunger (1845-47) was caused by catastrophic failure of the potato crop, but the harm done to our population was greatly exacerbated by the corporate closed-ness that existed at that time. (The same is true for many famines the world over in decades and centuries past, and indeed nowadays, as people in vulnerable countries in the world go hungry and in some cases starve to death because the world economic order cannot be upset).
And how do they do it? How do a relatively small number of people who are privileged and wealthy manage to control all of us?
Sometimes I think that a good metaphor for the power of the corporate world is the example of the bullies on the bus.
Let us say that there are 30 people in the bus and three bullies get on. They start making a nuisance of themselves and, perhaps, start picking on a passenger that they perceive to be a little vulnerable. Everyone in the bus is disgusted with this behaviour but all, individually, are reluctant to challenge the bullying. If everyone stood up together and supported the person being bullied it would end the bullying very quickly. But who will be first? And what will happen if I take it upon myself to do something and no one follows suit? Then I am on my own —– and will I be punished too? So it is a big risk!
I think that there are many parallels between this and real life. A small number of people, through the power of corporate closed-ness, control what we often refer to as the silent majority (that is, a generally fearful and insecure population) and do what they can get away with.
And they get away with a lot.
We want to be safe – it is one of our greatest motivations. The urgency to protect ourselves becomes higher if we perceive our status or position to be insecure, or even our survival to be under threat. One way to stay safe – if it is possible for us – is to stay close to the powerful, even if they are behaving in a patently unjust or unfair manner, rely on them to keep us safe, and hope for the best.
The other is to collaborate with others who are in the same boat as ourselves and, in solidarity, rise up against the injustice of the strong ones.
Mostly, the evidence points to our tendency to identify with the powerful.
In many parts of the world, poverty is the outcome of an exploitative economic model which increasingly, devalues nature and prioritises profit over environmental wellbeing.
Consider water, for example. Despite its scarcity, and despite access to safe drinkable water being a basic human right, there is a growing tendency towards the commodification of its supply. Sectors such as mining and oil extraction, large scale agribusiness, and logging – the products of which are heavily intertwined into our daily lives – drive the mass consumption of land and forests and drive poverty through the displacement of communities and violation of human rights.
The crisis of global poverty and the death of nature are not independent, but closely intertwined. The earth’s ecological limits are being surpassed; and the gap between rich and poor widens.
It is very important for us community workers to remember this.