3DN Matrix or Star Wars
In my career as a lawyer, I worked with people from the full spectrum of the socio-economic scale. I have worked with venture capitalists and corporate CEOs as well as those subsisting on public assistance. At all levels, there are those who will lie and cheat when they think it will profit them. But, for the most part, people at all levels are doing the best they can, for themselves and their families, based on the system we have and the situation in which they find themselves.
Having empathy for both the hard working capitalist and the deprived, I have trouble with the common perception that there is a struggle between good and evil and that evil is those people on the other side. That view of the world is using the movie 'The Matrix' as its metaphor. In that metaphor, the promise of universal peace and prosperity through capitalism is all smoke and mirrors. We need more people to take the red pill and see through the illusion so that we can save humanity from the corporate machines.
It seems to me that there is really nothing hidden. The failings of capitalism are apparent for all to see. We know that billions of people are simply left out of the capitalist dream and that capitalism is unlikely to trickle down to the masses given the increasing gap between rich and poor and the deterioration of natural resources. Therefore, I think the better movie metaphor is 'Star Wars'. Capitalism is a force and it has a dark side.
Yesterday, as I write this, I finished reading David C. Korten's 'The Post Corporate World'. Korten distinguishes capitalism from the Free Market envisioned by Adam Smith. He asserts that capitalism has escaped the human centered limitations that are assumed in Smith's theory and is therefor growing uncontrolled. He likens that growth to a cancer on the body politic that must be cut out and irradiated. Korten asks us to change metaphors from that of a mechanistic dying universe to that of a biological living universe and asserts that it therefor follows that capitalism is a cancer.
I like the biological metaphor and find it useful in describing the function of systems. Korten's formulation, however, poses the struggle between good and evil and therefor assumes the Matrix metaphor. When I apply the biological metaphor, I see the corporation as a recently evolved species. It acts according to its genetic make up and those actions are sometimes destructive. How is that destruction different than the elephant herd stripping bark from acacia trees during a drought. Do we think of the elephant as evil?
Mother nature does not deal in good and evil. Nature seeks balance through systems that cycle resource through complex relationships of species. Korten details how corporations are converting living resources to financial resources. That process, if left unchecked, will ultimately destroy the ability of the planet to support life as we know it. Korten is mistaken, however, that the answer from the biological metaphor is to eliminate the corporation. The answer is to develop a new species that converts financial resources into living resources and thereby bring balance to the force. (See: Financial or Living Resources and Systems to Complement the Market)
“I can save him Leah. There is still good in him. I have felt it” - Luke Skywalker
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