Chapter Eight

When Moses came down from the mountain and found his followers merrily worshipping the Golden Calf he was enraged. The dualistic division between the spiritual and the material had been violated. He would be similarly horrified by a present day religious leader like Pat Robertson, who doubles as financial advisor to his congregation. The real reason for Christ’s crucifixion was for driving the money changers from the temple. “What profiteth a man if he gain the world and lose his immortal soul?” Christ advised the rich man to sell all he owned and give it to the poor. He admonished his disciples to follow the path of poverty. From Bhudda to Ghandi simple poverty characterized the life of every son of God.

If we are to learn from this it would seem that these bearers of light were offering a lesson with their own lives. The British government would certainly have made Ghandi wealthy if he would only accept their occupation of India. Martin Luther King would not have been shot for using the congregations money to speculate on the stock market. What did we have to learn from these servants of God? What were they trying to drum into our thick skulls? Where they saying that it is good to be poor? They were not stupid and knew the degradation that comes with poverty. They were telling us, “I am of the spirit! I am Man! I am of the human tribe! Do not mistake me for an animal! I have not come here to tell you about the jungle. My name is Martin Luther King and I talk about brotherhood. My name is Christ I will show you the spirit is real . . . My name is Ghandi!--take your arrogant ass out of my country!

A lobbyist for corporations has about as much right in the halls of Congress as does a money changer in a temple of God. Is Congress a temple of God? It could be and it should be. The original intention of the framers of the Constitution was that the Congress people would be elected by the conscience of the tribe. A free people would vote for free representatives who would act for the benefit of the tribe. This has all changed. Mammon has entered the temple. The peoples representatives are worshipping the golden calf.
Corporation lobbyists are writing legislation in House chambers. The people are lied to by the corporation media. The religion business is attempting to worm its way in. The temple of the people gives the people’s taxes to armament dealers. The Beast is in the tribal council.

It is perfectly apparent from reading the Bible that Christ hated preachers. He called them whited sepulchers.  How he would have hated those politicians who take money from the corporations! Of course everyone is doing it. The system has been so skewed by the corporations that if a politician does not take their money he never gets to Washington.

Essentially we are concerned with spiritual things. In this discussion the ethical concepts, good and bad, are like Einstein’s idea of space-time . . .It all depends on your point of view. In abstract we would not say the jungle was bad and the tribe was good. We say they are dual concepts. They are separate and are meant to be kept separate. The jungle is good and beautiful but its spirit is different and opposite from the good tribe. The spirit of the jungle is a spirit that rejoices in survival of the individual at the expense of other individuals. It is simple Darwinism. The spirit of the tribe will cause a tribesman to fall on a grenade to save his fellows. The spirit of the tribe is love between its members. Murder in the jungle is a way of life, but murder within the tribe is a crime. If, within the tribe, the spirit of the jungle enters a tribesman and he commits a murder, he must be excommunicated from the tribe.  It is as though he became possessed of a devil. When we think of the spirit of the jungle entering our tribal compound we see a devil in our midst. Perhaps it is why we invented the vampire or the were-wolf. It must be why we gave the Devil horns and a tail.

Mammon and The Golden Calf are symbols of greed and greed is the deadliest of the deadly sins. Wall Street is dedicated to greed. Business was born of greed. Jungle Darwinism and greed are a positive growing force for a jungle. Competition in the market-place is good for production. But while we humans have lived from the jungle as hunter-gatherers, and we live from the jungle of the modern market-place today; we lived within the confines of the tribal kraal, and today we live within a closely knit interdependent society. As we would not permit a jaguar to enter where our children sleep; we must not let business into our government. Until we learn to keep these two opposites separate we are going to continue to suffer poverty and unhappiness.

When I spoke of business and the market-place as positive jungle necessities that belong in the private sector;  it goes without saying that the public sector should not concern itself with private sector affairs other than insuring that it does not harm our citizens. The corporation is another cup of tea entirely. The corporation takes unfair advantage in the market-place. It is bad for the jungle of commerce because it is constructed to amass gigantic sums of capital that are used to dominate the market-place. Like the communists or socialists who would do away with the market place, the corporations continue to grow larger and become monopolistic. They behave like a herd of gigantic elephants trampling and defoliating the jungle. Perhaps that is why in Russia and China former commissars made the transition to corporation CEOs so easily.

I have heard of Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus and of people who have become hermits to meet God. My experience with the Spirit depended on my being surrounded by people. When and Indian warrior goes to the mountain to dream of the Spirit I wonder which spirit he is seeking. I love the spirit of nature when I am hunting. In that milieu there is nothing evil in it. But when I encounter this same spirit in the city. It fills me with disgust. As humans we have these two spirits in our genes. it is our task as mature citizens to keep each from infecting the other. Perhaps you are dismayed at my calling Congress a temple of God. If its members are divinely chosen by votes representing the conscience of the tribe and it is organized to “provide for the common welfare”, then it is surely the house of a tribal God. If a servant of the jungle is in this holy assembly then he must be driven out. A jungle cat is not evil in the jungle but can not be allowed to enter the tribal compound.

Primitive man was no fool. He knew the members of an enemy tribe were human beings. Unfortunately the mathematics of expansion made war necessary. Unable to face the necessity to murder another human being he invented the convention known as Totemism. He wore the trappings of the warrior, war paint and sharks teeth and he danced the war-dance to the throb of war drums. When he took the warpath he had changed. He left the spirit of the tribe and suffused with the spirit of the jungle, went out to kill. His opponents, no longer human, could be killed and eaten. Totemism exists today as football teams call themselves totemic animal names. It exists with armies that wear different uniforms and dehumanize the enemy. A soldier is no longer a human being. He is a unit. A killer. The object of basic-training is to remove his humanity. When he returns from the battle and dons civvies he again becomes a human being.

A liberated social sciences--liberated from the organized influence of the corporation think-tanks and foundations would become valuable to us. An understanding of what kind of animal we really are when we are stripped of all the cultural garbage that we have been steeped in for the past 10,000 years would be a good place to start. Surely we have a basic instinctual matrix as does the bear or the musk-ox. It is true that part of that matrix is language and the creation of culture. It is certain that we are social and while we celebrate the individual--we do so to those individuals who are of the most value to the society . . . And there can be no doubt that we are symbiotic with technology. The total disregard for technology as a part of the human condition makes the social sciences non-sciences.

How many people go to a psychologist simply because they are lonely? And does the psychologist ask them . . . “are you lonely”? Of course not! He wants to find out how they got along with their parents. Only a hooker asks the “are you lonely” question. That is why hookers and bar-tenders make the best psychologists. If--as our history indicates, we are extremely social animals: Loneliness must be traumatic to us. Have you ever taken a plane to a strange city alone? No wonder they the Gideon’s put bibles in hotel rooms.
Although I am lucky enough to live in the bosom of a large-family and am not lonely, I remember times when I was . . . It was horrible. I have indulged in all kinds of outrageous behavior . . . simply because I was lonely.
 
 

We have turned our cultures over to the corporations. What does an MBA or an accountant do to a culture? They wreck it. Advertising is a form of aggression.  When they train a salesman--they are training an aggressor. A normal amount of advertising and salesmanship would be beneficial to an economy if the economy was not dominated by Wall Street and the corporations. I see little difference between an economy dominated by government and an economy that depends upon corporations.  I do not believe that we need “paper capital” to get things done. When you consider that corporation profits on earnings from products made and sold seldom reach 3%; and that most banks pay more than this for a money-market account, you should ask yourself “where did the extra money come from”.  If General Motors investors are only making 3% . . . why don’t they cash in their stock and put it in the bank? The answer is: that the extra money is being made gambling on whether the stock goes up or down.

If you wonder why today’s dollar is not worth as much as the 1936 dollar, this is the reason. The 1936 Chevrolet deluxe sold for $600.00. It’s equivalent today costs $17,000. Considering that during this space of time computers and automation and technology generally have cut the costs of production. The difference is even more unbelievable. We are living in a paper world.

In an article in The New York Times, October 1, 1997 by William Greider and called: “When Optimism Meets Overcapacity”, quotes from The Wall Street Journal that the globalized economy had entered a “new era” of stronger, trouble-free prosperity. In August, the newspaper revised the outlook. “Actually”, The Journal reported, many industrial sectors are burdened by dangerous levels of overcapacity, too much potential output and not enough buyers. This glut, it said, promises ugly shakeouts ahead -- failing companies, more closed factories -- if not something worse. For the same reason, a cover story in The Economist summed up the global auto industry this way: “Car firms head for a crash.” The industry will be able to produce nearly 80 million vehicles by 2000 for a market of fewer than 60 million buyers. The imbalances create downward pressure on prices and reduce return on sales. More factories must close, more large companies will merge or fail.

The Financial Times reported that, thanks to the deluge of investment, even a hot market like China is now stuck with overcapacity, from cars to chemicals to electronics. A couple of years back, every multinational rushed to build plants there and catch the wave of China’s rising consumption. Now factories, not consumers are overabundant.

William Greider is the author of “One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism.

What does a world wide economic crash mean? Comparing the coming crash to 1929 would be like comparing W.W.II to the invasion of Grenada. There will be no way to bail out the corporations and the money markets again. There will be anarchy on a world scale and if an intellectual leadership does not take charge that understands that the illegal corporation business form must be outlawed -- then it certainly means the end of civilization.

The end of the corporation would end of the domination of our universities.
It would mean a renaissance in the humanities and the social-sciences. While we are going to be stuck with global warming and its changing of the world’s weather; and it will take much time for the ozone layer to repair itself; the honest scientists and ecologists will be free to take leadership on the enormous problems left by an age dominated by corporations. Communications costs will disappear. The culture can recover from the damage done to it by monopoly control of the media, and the interactivity of the new computer driven media will enhance world cooperation. Finally -- the tremendous glut caused by overcapacity, overproduction, and underconsuption will be approached by the planned redistribution of consumer products to people and peoples that now are without.

We who lived through the depression remember that the war that followed it was the only way this overproduction glut could be eliminated. We remember fondly the Roosevelt administration because compared to the Hoover administration that preceded it . . . it was humanistic. But the aim of the Roosevelt administration was to preserve Wall Street and the banks. The only way this could be done was through war. The coming depression is going to be the result of a productive capacity that was undreamed of in 1938. The war answer is not possible without ending life on the planet. The Communist answer is not possible because it depended on tyranny. There is no ideology that is going to have an answer. The problem -- simply stated, is that a redistribution of the enormous wealth that caused the disaster will be necessary. It means that further production must be in the hands of the people. Not a people’s government! The people . . . the people who now work in what were once corporations must become their owners. There must be no more banks and corporations. From here on large production must be carried on by cooperatives, and small production by individual entrepreneurs.

Once again our tribal council will be a government of law, and not a government of the corporations. It will remove from the market those things that belong to the tribe. Medical care will not be a commodity. Those things which belong to all of the people -- like minerals, water, electricity, communications and timber, will be returned to the people. If there is to be a death-penalty for murder . . . there should be a death penalty for those TV and movie producers who teach murder. We will make damned sure that a decent tribal behavior comes into being and that we do not do as the corporations have done . . . create any more murderers. Without thieves and murderers the police state will disappear. Without the corporations -- civil-law will once again regulate human affairs.
Human behavior will change after the corporation is dead. The corporation will no longer propagate its own bottom-line culture. It will no longer be able to project its own cynical contempt for the good, the righteous, and those who love and share. The cult of the individual will disappear. Individual worth will no longer be counted in dollars. There will be no surplus commodities while people are poor, homeless, and hungry. Spirituality will acquire a new meaning as people find joy in their closeness with one another.