I know it may sound funny, but by the appearance of the systemically unethical activities taking place routinely in the corporate sphere, of aggregating utterly ridiculous sums of money into the hands of a very few, at the expense of the vast majority of not just the American, but the world population, one could very reasonably infer that those in charge of the corporations who are perpetuating, if not promulgating such practices, missed out on some fundamentals in childhood: parents raising and rearing their children with a code of ethics, reasonableness, justice and fair play.
I don't know about you, but in the places where I grew up and in the family into which I was born, there were some specific rules of conduct that were laid down quite definitively. One was "share and share alike." Another was "Be kind and fair with your sister." And yet another was "Don't be selfish or greedy. Always think of others. And finish the food on your plate. There are people out there who don't have that and are starving..." I don't know how my finishing my food would ameliorate the world hunger situation, but I listened anyway. Perhaps it was my mother's way of instilling in us a sense of gratitude which would later result in my trying to be of some help to those in greater need. What a good idea.
Children learn decency, civility and respect from their parents, compassion and integrity. We learn to treat others courteously and respectfully, otherwise we'd pay a price! Our fathers typically taught these lessons with a more paternal, disciplined sensibility and mothers, by and large, with a gentler, more merciful attitude, but the lessons were learned. It's mainly an elaboration on The Golden Rule.
These early childhood-through-adolescence were learned at home and reinforced in school, in sports and other social contexts. These values of human dignity, integrity, treating each other well and looking out for the underdog, were instilled. The classic, All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, by minister and author, Robert Fulghum, spoke to this point loudly and clearly:
•Share everything.
•Play fair.
•Don't hit people.
•Put things back where you found them.
•Clean up your own mess.
•Don't take things that aren't yours.
•Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
•Wash your hands before you eat.
•Flush.
•Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
•Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
•Take a nap every afternoon.
•When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
•Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
•Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.
•And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.
So what happened? Where did things go wrong? How did money become a God instead of a means of creating some sense of stability for Self and Other? How is it that 2% of the population owns 50% of the world's land and wealth? How did people's sense of proportion, propriety and priority go so far afield? But it has. Making money on Wall St. has become a sporting event and the more the better at any cost. What's legal or not is hardly a boundary because the wealth of Wall St. controls the White House and the Judicial Branch of government.
As the director of Inside Job, Charles Ferguson stated when being awarded the Oscar for best documentary of the year, said: "Forgive me, I must start by pointing out that three years after our horrific financial crisis caused by financial fraud, not a single financial executive has gone to jail, and that's wrong."
Award-winning filmmaker, author and media personage, Danny Schechter, in his film Plunder, makes the loud point, in paraphrase, that after such a theft as the American people have witnessed, the financial meltdown is not a civil offense punishable simply by monetary fines, it is a criminal offense to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
There are some captains of industry who are guided by what their parents taught them and what they learned in Kindergarten. But not enough. It appears that those in political office and corporate executive positions are often older men but I suggest to you that they are physically aging but emotionally arrested. The companies are operated as though they are the bullies in the schoolyard and there is no cop in sight? Why? He's been paid off.
On a psychological level, we are really dealing with a series of complex issues, basically cited above, on top of which is the sheer issue of "the junkie." We are dealing with a profoundly serious addiction problem, but the addiction isn't to cocaine (although often it is that too) but to a rush of excitement, a thrill at "the new killing" made on Wall Street or on the battlefield. It is an addiction to risk at anyone or anything's expense. It is this pathology that I feel needs to be addressed if we plan to see any meaningful change in this world, and the dizzying, blinding, narcissistic effect of this addictive pattern and accompanying pathology.
As a society, we really want to see "what's what" get over the money addiction and seek to equalize the madness that is now passed off as "normal" and "business-as-usual." It is literally killing us and destroying our society. If only we could remember the words we learned in Kindergarten and The Golden Rule, we could allow the currently-designed economic institutionalized paradigm die its appropriate death and give birth to a new one, which is beginning to manifest. The work of David Korten in Agenda for a New Economy and the work of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in The Spirit Level about the importance of economic equality and a middle class in society for health, longevity, happiness and well-being, cannot be equaled and can help to guide us in a wiser, more human and respectable direction.
I would like to recruit the parents of the leading, destruction-leading CEO's back into the role of parenting and have a few words with their offspring who are driving our society to the brink of disaster and decimating the Earth and her eco-systems to the point of near no return.