Corporations Versus Communities

Of course, some corporation made the computer I’m writing on, and the infrastructure I transmit over, and the…

So I was shopping at Wal-Mart the other day, with that sinking feeling I get whenever I betray humanity, when the words of writer, farmer and secular saint Wendell Berry came to mind. One of his themes is the human cost of loss of community and one compelling example he cites is insurance. Berry points out that citizens in an average small town—say, for example, my beloved Paonia—annually pay out far more in health, home and car insurance than it would actually cost to care for our own sick, repair our own cars, rebuild our own homes and pass the hat as needed. In other words, a community made up of people willing to help each other would wind up expending far less time, energy and money than is now required to pay for our various insurances. In other other words, because we don’t work together we all pay the middleman, and the middleman grows fat on our dollars.

But who is the middleman? Typically it’s a corporation preying on many communities, collecting dollars and grudgingly dispensing a bare minimum of mediocre service in return.

we all pay the middleman, and the middleman grows fat on our dollars

I don’t have a solution for this, but it’s worth pointing out that in this area and in many others, corporations and communities are necessarily opposed; corporations thrive when communities are made up of scared, paranoid, alienated individuals, and communities thrive when they are composed of trusting, generous, openhearted humans. So corporations are, by their nature, always and inevitably engaged in a sort of clandestine propaganda war against community. Using the TV stations, radio and other media they own outright, and also using the governments they control indirectly, corporations present the world as dangerous, and portray our fellow humans as greedy, deceitful and violent. In fact, the opposite is far more true: this planet we live on is astonishingly abundant, and humans are generally, in my experience anyway, generous, brave and kind. It’s corporations that can be described as dangerous, deceitful, greedy and violent – not always, of course, but that’s certainly the way to bet. As Wendell Berry says, “Rats and roaches [and I would add corporations to this list] live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.”

Berry has also said that “To be sane in a mad time is bad for the body and worse for the soul.” and the word on the street is that we do live in mad times. But we are not doomed to live in a world governed by corporate fascists. Solutions are close at hand everywhere, in your own neighborhood and hometown. Support your neighbors, your community radio, your local art center, the library and all the other blessings to be found in a healthy community. Be generous and trusting. Not only will you instantly improve your own life and the life of your region, you’ll also be starving the corporations into submission and irritating the Walton family.

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Tagged as: conspiracy, corporations, people, philosophy