when you look at corporate behavior the
behavior of some of the powerful people
in the system it sure looks like the
problem is greed the problem is that
there are these horrible people doing
horrible things and running corporations
and governments that are doing horrible
things and if we can only get rid of
those people no no job the world to be
so much better but when we assign blame
in that way we are substituting a false
problem that we kind of know how to
solve for the real problem which we
don't know how to solve the false
problem that we do know how to solve is
how to defeat a bad guy the movies have
taught us how to do that name you kill
the bad guy or you lock up the bad guy
where you destroy and humiliate and get
him fired and then the problem solved
that picture it gets complicated when
you realize that the behaviors of the
bad guys
are created and to some extent dictated
by the system that they're in not that
there's no be way yes there are always
moral choices in any situation but in
general if you are the CEO of some
corporation and you decide that you're
going to stop using fossil fuels and
your company if you deviate too far in a
way that harms the bottom line then that
institution will eject you even if the
Board of Directors privately agree with
you maybe you're the owner of the
company and you can do whatever you want
then you have to worry about market
sugar and your bottom line the
discipline of the market prevents
anybody from deviating too far from what
the market demands and if certainly
steps that people can take in those
positions to move toward the direction
that we want to go in but those steps
require courage people in those
positions need a lot of support in order
to do the right thing that support can
sometimes take the form of hey we're
watching what you're doing and you did
this and that caused this to happen so
it's not shutting up about the negative
consequences of corporate behavior but
to move from that to aren't you awful
we'll make people defensive and it'll
make you seem like an idiot because they
know that they're not awful they took
care of their neighbor's dog when they
were on vacation they contributed money
to this that the other thing they're
nice they don't think that they're awful
almost nobody has an opinion of
themselves if they're awful so this is
the situation that we're lodged in it's
partly economic it's partly
infrastructural it's partly our habits
that were imbued in us from growing up
in this culture habits of competition
habits of scarcity
habits of judgment
habits of struggle
all of these things make us into who we
are
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as we become aware of these influences
then we're able to overcome them they no
longer operate unconsciously so if I see
myself in judgment of somebody or
reactively seeing them as a competitor
or as mark how can I make money off of
you when I begin developing awareness of
that I'm like oh okay I'm operating out
of a habit and I can choose differently
sometimes even seeing an alternative is
the information and I mean information
in the sense of something that comes in
and forms you having a friend who quit
his job and it's traveling the country
working on permaculture farms oh yeah I
can be doing that it's not like all of a
sudden you became another person it's
that you got new information therefore
if we want to change the system and
change the behavior of people in the
system we can be providers of different
information which doesn't necessarily
mean intellectually articulated data
points it could be the kind of
information that we call unconditional
acceptance
kindness courage
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or it could be seeing them as somebody
just like me who wants to make a
difference in the world from that way of
seeing all kinds of things happen
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you