Chomsky On Human Destiny

The Secret Buried in the Torture Bill [VIDEO]

Posted on Alternet by Evan Derkacz at 10:17 AM on September 29, 2006.

WOW!!!

The Myth Of A Christian Nation > Central Thesis

Gregory A. Boyd, the Author of "The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church", writes,
"My thesis which caused such an uproar, is this: I believe a significant segment of American evangelicalism is guilty of nationalistic and political idolatry, to a frightful degree, I think, evangelicals fuse the kingdom of God with a preferred version of the kingdom of the world (whether it's our national interests, a particular form of government, a particular political program, or so on). Rather than focusing our understanding of God's Kingdom on the person of Jesus- who incidentally, never allowed himself to get pulled into the political disputes of his day- I believe many of us American evangelicals have allowed our understanding of the Kingdom of God to be polluted with political ideals, agendas, and issues."

Theocracy Watch

Contrast of God's Kingdom and Empires of the World > repost

I have realized lately that part of what drives me to write about some of these things is a certain guilt that I feel in my own heart. Not only am I priveleged to be an American, but a Christian and God fearing person as well. As both American and Christian I am a member of a group that not only has proclaimed that it is right about the meaning of life on this planet...but that we, the chosen, are the ONLY ones correct on matters of religion and geopolitics. That proclomation bears a heavy weight and responsibility. It begs the question that if such is true..why all the chaos and confusion and injustice and disharmony in our own society and in our own churches and in the world at large to which we assume to be the arbiters of freedom and reason? How can we look upon the horrors we have both enabled and in some cases caused in this world with such equanimity? I know that America often regarded as the best hope for a safe and humane world that has ever been seen...this is the scary part...that this is as good as it gets.

I remember when my public school teachers first began to indoctrinate me and my peers in the early 1970's (I started kindergarten in 1969). Our country was engaged in an unpopular military conflict then as now. The Viet Nam war and the war in Iraq are not the same exactly...but there are a good many paralells. One paralell for sure is that we have a huge miltary machine engaged in a theater of guerilla warfare. So, far it does not appear that the outcome is going to be much different this time around. My schoolteachers saw fit to try to explain to us concepts like "Utopian ideals" and why we should not ever expect to see them work because the world was so full of evil and selfish people. They explained that anarchy would surely ensue...if certain utopian ideals were played out in the real world of "civilization". They were of course talking to a bunch of 3rd and 4th graders that would have believed that the earth was pyramid shaped and the moon was an enormous glowing spitball coughed up by the Supreme Being if they had insisted so and provided some slick graphics to drive the point home. I am pretty sure in fact that most of my peers and I all still believed in Jolly Old Saint Nick back then too.

The teachers further explained to us how carpet bombing Viet Nam so that people would stop being communists or dropping atomic bombs on non- military targets in WW2 actually saved more lives than it snuffed. The same would be true of the fire bombings of dozens of Japanese cities full of men women and children- hundreds of thousands in fact- that were burnt to smithereens although the only thing they may have had to do with the miltary machine-states waging war across the globe was perhaps their desire to maintain a lifestyle...i.e. continue being Japanese. As I have gone on through life I have noticed that not too many people ponder or question the conventional wisdom of all of this geopolitical generalization and indoctrination and actually determine if these ideas and/or methods are philosophically sound and morally correct or even historically accurate or not. To do so invites instant derision.

I have actually dared to read up on the dropping of the atomic bomb, for instance, instead of just figuring that whatever my fourth grade teacher contended was golden gospel- and guess what....there actually are some folks that contend that Japan was on the verge of surrendering before the bombs...they were in fact strategically defeated already and within months the conflict in the Pacific theater would have concluded...without opening pandora's box of atomic/nuclear weapons. I cannot say whether or not this is true...who knows? Precisely...nobody can say for sure one way or the other...but the debate is not over and done with because some teacher or some author or some commentator said so.

Practically no-one endeavors to answer the question of, "even if a world free of strife (Utopia) is not possible- shouldn't we be trying to get as close as possible?" It has been done- this getting very close. Tribal Native America was as peaceful, God -fearing and stable of a place as ever existed (still not sin or violence free I acknowledge)...and it existed for tens of thousands of years...as opposed to any other known empire you can name. So it got wiped out by a group that eventually became the United States. Fair enough... a liberally idealistic society gets wiped out by a more heartless and greedy group, the only thing that this proves is that a "Quasi-Utopian" system of direct democracy cannot co-exist with the existing paradigms of western thought..yea, though it pains me to say so...Western Judeo Christian thought- or more specifically still- what this brand of thought has become.

It often puzzles me how the masses in this country can fail to understand that when the rest of the world sees America engaging in acts of "sanitized" warfare, bombings (shock and awe), WMD's, mass violence, manipulation, fear, intimidation, coercion and so on they see TERROR tactics. They see us as living by a double standard. Listing the litany of good, humanitarian things the U.S. has done does nothing to erase this point in the minds of much of the rest of the world whether you and I "get it" or not. The bloodshed leaves more of an impression than the noble things we are trying to do. This concept is now being bitterly debated in the media. It is duly noted that the ongoing violence and the knowing, willfull slaughter of innocents in Iraq is being perpetrated mainly by insurgents (or terrorists if that makes you more comfortable) and not our people (even though our bombing campaigns and sanctions have killed untold numbers of innocents). The fact is that they are reacting to our presence there and our foreign policy...we are part of the equation.

So...is warfare the ONLY way to deal with this situation? To even suggest such a thing..to even enter into this discourse is all but squelched in the mainstream.
People who ask these types of questions and seriously grapple with the answers are often labled as liberal (read as socialist=communist) seditious (read as aiding and abetting the enemy=terrorist), politically motivated (read as democrats seeking power) or lost in fantasy. Now that the media is beginning to wake up (after being totally on the "Operation Iraqi Freedom and Shock and Awe bandwagon at the start) and ask hard questions and put all the carnage in perspective...they too are being attacked as anti-American and accused of sensationalizing the bad news. Does it make sense for the media to attempt to undermine the system that enpowers and enriches them ...undermine the world by default...just to make some political hay and/or sell newspapers? If you believe that the media is actually doing just that...tell me again who the pessimist and unrealistic idealist is...I am getting confused. The definitions of conservative and liberal are all a blur.

Now, this brings us back around to a point I have been working up to concerning how CHRISTIANS should feel and react to the situation at hand. I think this is relevant because this whole Iraq-war enterprise has been sold to us as a primarily "conservative", hence, Western- Judeo- Christian- ideological- exercise in military humanitarianism. Let me paraphrase some thoughts of other Christian writers (credits to Lee Camp and his book Mere Discipleship) in this arena of warfare and utopian dreams:

"...Underneath the end justifies the means" logic lies the assumption that the way of Christ is simply not a relevant social ethic, lest injustice reign and the violent vanquish the righteous. Christians cannot take the way of Christ Seriously, or society will fall apart, will sink into a spiral of unmitigated violence. Civilization itself is at stake. Jesus cannot have meant that we take him seriously in the realm of social and political realities- after all, WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF EVERYONE DID THAT?! Consequently, "Jesus", "Christianity", and even "discipleship" are reduced to mere "spirituality", a realm that has little if anything to do with the concrete realities of culture, civilization, and politics. To use different language- Christendom (the blending of religion and empire) has seperated doctrine and ethics into two seperable categories, rather than seeing them as two sides of the same coin. Numerous times the book of Acts describes the Christian faith as "The Way", a designation that strikes one as remarkably different than our word "religion". "Religion" often connotates a set of beliefs and practices seperable from everyday life; as such, "religion" is in a sphere distinct and seperate from things like politics and society and culture. But if the claim that Jesus is Lord is "a Way or The Way"- then we cannot so easily seperate his "Way" from every facet of life. Note that the Jews expected a MILITARISTIC style Messiah...that is not what they got.

One of the most ardent pagan critics of the early church posed the "what would happen if" question to the early Christians' refusal to either employ violence or venerate the empire as the primary means through which they might contribute to society. Castigating second century disciples, the pagan Celsus angrily maintained that "if all were to do the same as you, there would be nothing to prevent [the emperor] being left in utter solitude and desertion, and the affairs of the Earth would fall into the hands of the wildest and most lawless barbarians; and then there would no longer remain among men any of the glory of your religion or of the true wisdom'. I.E. Celsus asked, What if everybody did that? Answering himself he stated that the empire would fall apart, we would be overcome by our enemies and on top of that you would not get to practice your religion! But the response of the early Christian theologian, Origen, demonstrates that the "commonsensical" nature of Celsus' attack was not always seen as a trump card.

First off, Origen realized that the one who asks the "what would happen if everybody did that" question does not, of course, mean for us to take the question literally. If everyone loved their enemies then Jesus' teachings would not be problematic. If everyone shared their wealth, then Jesus' commands would not be seen as a stumbling block. If everyone forgave offenses "seventy times seven", then Jesus' insistence would fail to disturb us. So, Origen responded to Celsus, if in folowing Christ "they do as I do" then it is evident that even the barbarians, when they yield obedience to the Word of God, will become most obedient to the law, and most humane. But the reality, of course, is that not everyone "does that". And thus when face with the "reality" of a world in which people appear to always "look out for number one", when our world proclaims "take care of yourself or no-one else will", when our culture surrounds us with a message that we should "go for the gusto", "acquire as much material welath as possible", and to make sure that WE are happy and secure- then the call to discipleship sounds quite threatening. The "reality" of sin, the "reality" of injustice and oppression, the "reality of "market and economic drives, the "reality" of "how things work" are thought to trump the serious calling to follow Jesus: "Many people will not love you in return", "and some people'd just as soon kill you as look at you" and "you just can't reason with some people", and some people are just taking advantage of you and/or the system". "Jesus' Way works in an "ideal world" but not in the "real world" where you must "get your hands dirty" if you're going to "make a relevant contibution to society". But we must question as Origen did whether the logic of Celsus was very realistic after all. To the unbliever, Origen maintained that it is not the warring and self seeking peoples of the Earth who preserve society- instead, it is the people of God who are "assuredly" the salt of the earth: THEY preserve the order of the world; and society is held together as long as the salt is uncorrupted.

So, the question ought not be "what if everybody did that", but, "what will happen if Jesus' "disciples" refuse to act like Jesus?". For Origen, if "disciples" refuse to act like disciples, there will be no salt, there will be no light, and then indeed there will be no "order", "justice" or "civilization". and if the salt has lost its saltiness, so Jesus said, it is foolish, insipid, good for nothing, but to be thrown out in the mud and be walked upon. Nonetheless, the pagan logic of Celsus ultimately won over a large number of adherents among christian tradition ( a legacy which continues to this day in the "conservative" movement in geoploitics). The percieved need to run the world, or the empire, or the market economy, or the nation-state gives rise to the apparent "commonsensical" basis of the pagan's logic: if you take Jesus seriously, things will simply fall apart. And so in varied, nuanced and subtle ways, the "Way of Christ" has been set aside in favor of other authorities, which would show us what we should do and how we should do it...when we're out here kicking around in the "real world". "

So to close out these thoughts let me say that insofar as I can tell by the contemporary definitions (which I have often stated are restrictive and insufficient) Jesus IS A LIBERAL. Therefore if you wish to call me one...I will accept it as a compliment...not that it really means anything relevant in any holistic sense. Also, if you wish to call yourself a Christian you cannot do so realisticly and also be someone who primarily espouses the values of the WORLD. You cannot serve two masters. You can respect civil authority and abide by the laws of the land so long as they do not contradict God's laws.

Bring Me To Life

I like to think of this song as a prayer.

Look what happens when you change the word darling to God.

EVANESCENCE LYRICS

"Bring Me To Life"
(feat. Paul McCoy)

how can you see into my eyes like open doors
leading you down into my core
where I’ve become so numb without a soul my spirit sleeping somewhere cold
until you find it there and lead it back home

(Wake me up)
Wake me up inside
(I can’t wake up)
Wake me up inside
(Save me)
call my name and save me from the dark
(Wake me up)
bid my blood to run
(I can’t wake up)
before I come undone
(Save me)
save me from the nothing I’ve become

now that I know what I’m without
you can't just leave me
breathe into me and make me real
bring me to life

(Wake me up)
Wake me up inside
(I can’t wake up)
Wake me up inside
(Save me)
call my name and save me from the dark
(Wake me up)
bid my blood to run
(I can’t wake up)
before I come undone
(Save me)
save me from the nothing I’ve become

Bring me to life
(I've been living a lie, there's nothing inside)
Bring me to life

frozen inside without your touch without your love (God)
only you are the life among the dead

all this time I can't believe I couldn't see
kept in the dark but you were there in front of me
I’ve been sleeping a thousand years it seems
got to open my eyes to everything
without a thought without a voice without a soul
don't let me die here
there must be something more
bring me to life

(Wake me up)
Wake me up inside
(I can’t wake up)
Wake me up inside
(Save me)
call my name and save me from the dark
(Wake me up)
bid my blood to run
(I can’t wake up)
before I come undone
(Save me)
save me from the nothing I’ve become

(Bring me to life)
I’ve been living a lie, there’s nothing inside
(Bring me to life)

Where The Streets Have No Name

Where The Streets Have No Name"

I want to run
I want to hide
I want to tear down the walls
That hold me inside
I want to reach out
And touch the flame
Where the streets have no name

I want to feel sunlight on my face
I see the dust cloud disappear
Without a trace
I want to take shelter from the poison rain
Where the streets have no name

Where the streets have no name
Where the streets have no name
We're still building
Then burning down love
Burning down love
And when I go there
I go there with you
It's all I can do

The city's aflood
And our love turns to rust
We're beaten and blown by the wind
Trampled in dust
I'll show you a place
High on a desert plain
Where the streets have no name

Where the streets have no name
Where the streets have no name
We're still building
Then burning down love
Burning down love
And when I go there
I go there with you
It's all I can do
Our love turns to rust
We're beaten and blown by the wind
Blown by the wind
Oh, and I see love
See our love turn to rust
We're beaten and blown by the wind
Blown by the wind
Oh, when I go there
I go there with you
It's all I can do

The Government VS. All Saints Church (AKA "The Body of Christ")

Concerning the articles below...forget for a moment whatever your position might be on the war and pretend the same conflict of interests exists over one of your own pet issues...like say abortion, gay marriage, cat juggling or whatever...Say your Church takes a stand on that issue contrary to what the goverment is considering doing or has done and the government decides to make moves to shut you up and shut you down. This is indeed an untennable situation for us to be in. Now, really think about whether its possible to get around this situation of unacceptable compromise by infiltrating the government with Christians. Or would it not be better to work in unity and servanthood within the Church...in other words BE the Church...BE the City on a Hill....BE salt and Light...be an example instead of being in a business arrangement where you can never really serve two masters at once? This does not mean sitting back and doing nothing while the World (government) countermands us. After all...BE ( as in- BE the Church) is a verb.
I have long held the belief, bolstered by my knowledge of the American Indian experience (the concept of manifest destiny) as well as examples taken from Islam- that when geo-politics and religion, church and empire mix...bad things happen. Keeping the Church and empire seperate seems then to be healthy for both in the end. Feel free to comment...I am not trying to flaunt my "rightness"....I am seeking the right answers just like you.

Here's two articles about a case that clearly demonstrates how the government always subordinates the message of the Church and how the Church co-opts itself to the Government. The second link that argues the Government's case is the most telling of the two with its "Business Deal" thesis.
The third link is a pdf file of the incident that put the IRS on the Church's tail.

Cut and paste these url's to read the articles

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1107-02.htm

http://www.christianexaminer.com/Articles/Articles Jan06/Art_Jan06_oped2.html

http://www.allsaints-pas.org/pdf/


ALERT!!!

Ok- forget whatever your position might be on the issue being discussed in this article and see if you can spot a slight inconsistency with the application of the IRS laws- this group apparently being immune. Be sure to run the video stream and take special note of the big posters of candidates behind the speaker...UNBELIEVABLE....the double standard...my God!! this regime is wiping their butt with the constitution...it seems they only police those who disagree with them...or at least just those that mess with their pet campaign issues (copy and paste the url):

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/05/1429230&mode=thread&tid=25

cross reference this article with the article entitled "The Christian Right and the Rising Power of the Evangelical Political Movement" - by clicking on "All Saints" at the bottom of this post.

Big Brother Online

LINK

Pink Floyd, Echoes- Live @ Pompeii

Hit the arrow for a video treat

Crispy Critter (deep fried Fox) > have some

Click on the little green arrow for part 1.

pt.2 here (cut and paste):

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/42120/

Let's say I break into your home...

I recently recieved a propaganda e-mail about a hypothetical situation as commentary about immigration. I have modified it as seen below.

Let's say I break into your home. Let's say that when you discover me in your house, you insist that I leave. But I say,"I've made all the beds and washed the dishes and did the laundry and swept the floors; I've done all the things you don't like to do. I'm hard-working and honest (except for when I broke into your house).

According to the protesters, not only must you let me stay, you must add me to your family's insurance plan, educate my kids, and provide other benefits
to me and to my family (my husband will do your yard work because he too is hard-working and honest, except for that breaking in part).

If you try to call the police or force me out, I will call my friends who will picket your house carrying signs that proclaim my right to be there.

It's only fair, after all, because you have a nicer house than I do, and I'm just trying to better myself. I'm hard-working and honest, um, except for well, you know.

And what a deal it is for me!! I live in your house, contributing only a fraction of the cost of my keep, and there is nothing you can do about it without being accused of selfishness, prejudice and being an anti-housebreaker. Oh yeah, and I want you to learn my language so you can communicate with me.

Why can't people see how ridiculous this is?! Only in America....

Sitting Bull says, "HMMM, interesting...among the most elementary of moral truisms is the principle of universality: we must apply to ourselves the same standards we do to others, if not more stringent ones. It is a remarkable comment on Western intellectual culture that this principle is so often ignored and, if occasionally mentioned, condemned as outrageous. This is particularly shameful on the part of those who flaunt their Christian piety, and therefore have presumably at least heard of the definition of the hypocrite in the Gospels."

Now, circulate this if you still feel the same way.

Eleven Inherent Rules of Corporate Behavior - Jerry Mander

"Technological evolution is leading to something new: a worldwide, interlocked, monolithic, technical-political web of unprecedented negative proportions"












Source

The following list is an attempt to articulate the obligatory rules by which corporations operate. Some of the rules overlap, but taken together they help reveal why corporations behave as they do and how they have come to dominate their environment and the human beings within it.

• The Profit Imperative: Profit is the ultimate measure of all corporate decisions. It takes precedence over community well-being, worker health, public health, peace, environmental preservation or national security. Corporations will even find ways to trade with national "enemies"—Libya, Iran, the former Soviet Union, Cuba—when public policy abhors it. The profit imperative and the growth imperative are the most fundamental corporate drives; together they represent the corporation's instinct to "live."

• The Growth Imperative: Corporations live or die by whether they can sustain growth. On this depends relationships to investors, to the stock market, to banks and to public perception. The growth imperative also fuels the corporate desire to find and develop scarce resources in obscure parts of the world.

  This effect is now clearly visible, as the world's few remaining pristine places are sacrificed to corporate production. The peoples who inhabit these resource-rich regions are similarly pressured to give up their traditional ways and climb on the wheel of production-consumption. Corporate planners consciously attempt to bring "less developed societies into the modem world" to create infrastructures for development, as well as new workers and new consumers. Corporations claim that they do this for altruistic reasons to raise the living standard—but corporations have no altruism.

  Theoretically, privately held corporations—those owned by individuals or families—do not have the imperative to expand. In practice, however, their behavior is the same. Such privately held giants as Bechtel Corporation have shown no propensity to moderate growth.

• Competition and Aggression: Corporations place every person in management in fierce competition with each other. Anyone interested in a corporate career must hone his or her ability to seize the moment. This applies to gaining an edge over another company or over a colleague within the company. As an employee, you are expected to be part of the "team," but you also must be ready to climb over your own colleagues.

  Corporate ideology holds that competition improves worker incentive and corporate performances and therefore benefits society. Our society has accepted this premise utterly. Unfortunately, however, it also surfaces in personal relationships. Living by standards of competition and aggression on the job, human beings have few avenues to express softer, more personal feelings. (In politics, non-aggressive behavior is interpreted as weakness.)

• Amorality: Not being human, corporations do not have morals or altruistic goals. So decisions that maybe antithetical to community goals or environmental health are made without misgivings. In fact, corporate executives praise "non-emotionality" as a basis for "objective" decision-making.

  Corporations, however, seek to hide their amorality and attempt to act as if they were altruistic. Lately, there has been a concerted effort by American industry to appear concerned with environmental cleanup, community arts or drug programs. Corporate efforts that seem altruistic are really Public relations ploys or directly self-serving projects.

  There has recently been a spurt of corporate advertising about how corporations work to clean the environment. A company that installs offshore oil rigs will run ads about how fish are thriving under the rigs. Logging companies known for their clearcutting practices will run millions of dollars' worth of ads about their "tree farms."

  It is a fair rule of thumb that corporations tend to advertise the very qualities they do not have in order to allay negative public perceptions. When corporations say "we care," it is almost always in response to the widespread perception that they do not have feelings or morals.

  If the benefits do not accrue, the altruistic pose is dropped. When Exxon realized that its cleanup of Alaskan shores was not easing the public rage about the oil spill, it simply dropped all pretense of altruism and ceased working.

• Hierarchy: Corporate laws require that corporations be structured into classes of superiors and subordinated within a centralized pyramidal structure: chairman, directors, chief executive officer, vice presidents, division managers and so on. The efficiency of this hierarchical form (which also characterizes the military, the government and most institutions in our society) is rarely questioned.

  The effect on society from adopting the hierarchical form is to make it seem natural that we have all been placed within a national pecking order. Some jobs are better than others, some lifestyles are better than others, some neighborhoods, some races, some kinds of knowledge. Men over women. Westerners over non-Westerners. Humans over nature.

  That effective, non-hierarchical modes of organization exist on the planet, and have been successful for millennia, is barely known by most Americans.

• Quantification, Linearity, Segmentation: Corporations require that subjective information be translated into objective form, i.e. numbers. The subjective or spiritual aspects of forests, for example, cannot be translated, and so do not enter corporate equations. Forests are evaluated only as "board feet."

  When corporations are asked to clean up their smokestack emissions, they lobby to relax the new standards in order to contain costs. The result is that a predictable number of people are expected to become sick and die.

  The operative corporate standard is not "as safe as humanly possible," but rather, "as safe as possible commensurate with maintaining acceptable profit."

• Dehumanization: In the great majority of corporations, employees are viewed as ciphers, as non-managerial cogs in the wheel, replaceable by others or by machines.

  As for management employees, not subject to quite the same indignities, they nonetheless must practice a style of decision making that "does not let feelings get in the way." This applies as much to firing employees as it does to dealing with the consequences of corporate behavior in the environment or the community.

• Exploitation: All corporate profit is obtained by a simple formula: Profit equals the difference between the amount paid to an employee and the economic value of the employee's output, and/or the difference between the amount paid for raw materials used in production (including costs of processing), and the ultimate sales price of processed raw materials. Karl Marx was right: a worker is not compensated for full value of his or her labor—neither is the raw material supplier. The owners of capital skim off part of the value as profit. Profit is based on underpayment.

  Capitalists argue that this is a fair deal, since both workers and the people who mine or farm the resources (usually in Third World environments) get paid. But this arrangement is inherently imbalanced. The owner of the capital—the corporation or the bank always obtains additional benefit. While the worker makes a wage, the owner of capital gets the benefit of the worker's labor, plus the surplus profit the worker produces, which is then reinvested to produce yet more surplus.

• Ephemerality: Corporations exist beyond time and space: they are legal creations that only exist on paper. They do not die a natural death; they outlive their own creators. They have no commitment to locale, employees or neighbors. Having no morality, no commitment to place and no physical nature (a factory, while being a physical entity, is not the corporation). A corporation can relocate all of its operations at the first sign of inconvenience—demanding employees, high taxes and restrictive environmental laws. The traditional ideal of community engagement is antithetical to corporation behavior.

• Opposition to Nature: Though individuals who work for corporations may personally love nature, corporations themselves, and corporate societies, are intrinsically committed to intervening in, altering and transforming nature. For corporations engaged in commodity manufacturing, profit comes from transmogrifying raw materials into saleable forms. Metals from the ground are converted into cars.

  Trees are converted into boards, houses, furniture and paper products. Oil is converted into energy. In all such energy, a piece of nature is taken from where it belongs and processed into a new form. All manufacturing depends upon intervention and reorganization of nature. After natural resources are used up in one part of the globe, the corporation moves on to another part.

  This transformation of nature occurs in all societies where manufacturing takes place. But in capitalist, corporate societies, the process is accelerated because capitalist societies and corporations must grow by extracting resources from nature and reprocessing them at an ever-quickening pace. Meanwhile, the consumption end of the cycle is also accelerated by corporations that have an interest in convincing people that commodities bring material satisfaction. Inner satisfaction, self-sufficiency, contentment in nature or a lack of a desire to acquire wealth are subversive to corporate goals.

  Banks finance the conversion of nature insurance companies help reduce the financial risks involved. On a finite planet, the process cannot continue indefinitely.

• Homogenization: American rhetoric claims that commodity society delivers greater choice and diversity than other societies. "Choice" in this context means product choice in the marketplace: many brands to choose from and diverse features on otherwise identical products. Actually, corporations have a stake in all of us living our lives in a similar manner, achieving our pleasures from things that we buy in a world where each family lives isolated in a single family home and has the same machines as every other family on the block. The "singles" phenomenon has proved even more productive than the nuclear family, since each person duplicates the consumption patterns of every other person.

  Lifestyles and economic systems that emphasize sharing commodities and work, that do not encourage commodity accumulation or that celebrate non-material values, are not good for business. People living collectively, sharing such "hard" goods as washing machines, cars and appliances (or worse, getting along without them) are outrageous to corporate commodity society.

  Native societies—which celebrate an utterly non-material relationship to life, the planet and the spirit—are regarded as backward, inferior and unenlightened. We are told that they envy the choices we have. To the degree these societies continue to exist, they represent a threat to the homogenization of worldwide markets and culture. Corporate society works hard to retrain such people in attitudes and values appropriate to corporate goals.

  In undeveloped parts of the world, satellite communication introduces Western television and advertising, while improvements in the technical infrastructure speed up the pace of development. Most of this activity is funded by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, as well as agencies such as the US Agency for International Development, the Inter-American Bank and the Asian-American Bank, all of which serve multinational corporate enterprise.

  The ultimate goal of corporate multinationals was expressed in a revealing quote by the president of Nabisco Corporation: "One world of homogeneous consumption. . . [I am] looking forward to the day when Arabs and Americans, Latinos and Scandinavians, will be munching Ritz crackers as enthusiastically as they already drink Coke or brush their teeth with Colgate." Page 31

In the book, Trilateralism, editor Holly Sklar wrote: "Corporations not only advertise products, they promote lifestyles rooted in consumption, patterned largely after the United States.... [They] look forward to a post-national age in which [Western] social, economic and political values are transformed into universal values... a world economy in which all national economies beat to the rhythm of transnational corporate capitalism.... The Western way is the good way; national culture is inferior."

Form Is Content Corporations are inherently bold, aggressive and competitive. Though they exist in a society that claims to operate by moral principles, they are structurally amoral. It is inevitable that they will dehumanize people who work for them and the overall society as well. They are disloyal to workers, including their own managers. Corporations can be disloyal to the communities they have been part of for many years. Corporations do not care about nations; they live beyond boundaries. They are intrinsically committed to destroying nature. And they have an inexorable, unabatable, voracious need to grow and to expand. In dominating other cultures, in digging up the Earth, corporations blindly follow the codes that have been built into them as if they were genes.

We must abandon the idea that corporations can reform themselves. To ask corporate executives to behave in a morally defensible manner is absurd. Corporations, and the people within them, are following a system of logic that leads inexorably toward dominant behaviors. To ask corporations to behave otherwise is like asking an army to adopt pacifism.

Corporation: n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1842-1914.

Excerpted from: IN THE ABSENCE OF THE SACRED

Why We Fight > The Military Industrial Complex as the Matrix

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Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere, it is all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

Neo: What truth?

Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage... born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind.

NO SHELTER> Rage Against the Machine

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