Mercury Rising #6 , April 1992
Every now and again, in my line of work, I find myself having to takepart in a delivery for a company or person that I find objectionable onsome moral, environmental, or political grounds.
Those of us who ride for a company can't pick and choose which clientswe want to work for. We all know that corporations operate for profitsnot for the common good. Nor do they protect public health, promote stablesocial order, or produce decent products. They drown the Earth in a blanketof toxic garbage, use misleading advertising to trick us into buying thingswe don't need, and sell us stuff that is designed to have a short lifespan(durable goods). Or we could be talking about a food product made withthe cheapest possible ingredients that you would never think to eat ifyou found them in the food laboratory.
We do know who really benefits from all this deception, and it is notus the consumers. Consumers are like the planet’s most abundant naturalresource. We are bought and sold like potato chips, I mean poker chips.The ones who really benefit (profit) are the stockholders, investors, andsome employees.
Take for example Bechtel, the world’s largest privately held corporation(except for maybe Saudi Arabia), it’s a family business, sort of. Bechtelis now working with the repressive Kuwaiti government to rebuild theircountry, under an agreement that was reached before the highly questionableground assault began last year. Before it was even damaged by our bombs,Bechtel had a contract to rebuild it!
So, we all find ourselves at Bechtel, Chevron, or the gates of someother evil empire when we get sent there to work for these creeps. Buthow do we resolve the moral dilemma of being sent by our dispatcher towork for something we do not approve of? How do I come away from therenot feeling co-opted or like an accessory to a crime? I want to feel goodabout my job and work for something I believe in. I don't want to think/knowmy work is trashing the Earth and turning society into Living Hell!
Let’s check the options:
1.) Quit my job- not an option. Jobs are too scarce and somebody elsewould do the dirty work instead of me.
2.) Ignore the issue lie to myself, I don't think so.
3.) Tell the client how I feel- pretty much the same as quitting unlessdone in a very tactful manner. LAME.
4.) Use any information I gather on the job to act as a watchdog forcorporate misbehaviour.
The way these corporations got their power was from the Industrial Age.The big thing then was being able to move natural resources around andsell them. We cannot compete with these giants on their terms so we mustdevise our own. Besides, we live in a new age called the Information Age.Information and control of it is the crucial factor that decides our future,not our wealth or military strength. It has already been decided (not byus) that we will not have wealth or military might. The only way we standa chance is to utilize our most effective tool/weapon and that is our abilityto interpret and relay inside information we see and hear at work to theoutside world so that we can all decide what is in our (planet’s) bestinterest.
Just about everyone I know indulges in self-destruc tive behaviour (evenGrandma drinks beer) but can we as a single unit (the human family) affordto be self-destructive?
I know sensitive corporate information is very well protected. Thereare spies (corporate and government) out there looking furiously for theleaks that could be right under that package you picked up off that desk.I don't advocate narc-ing on clients for money, glory, foreign governments,or any other twisted reason. This article is about how to clean up yourkarma from delivering all those bankrupcy filings that give companies moretime to hide the money.
Like Dave Foreman says "Our society is like a car doing 90 milesan hour with no brakes, down a one-way street, toward a brick wall."These Death Corporations will never awaken from their shortsightednessin time It is up to us. If they came right out and said, "Will youcooperate and support us while we totally fuck you over?" What wouldyou say to that?
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