In the past 200 years, one institution has come to dominate human existence:

THE CORPORATION ...

* Legal Person (with no moral conscience)
* accountable to stock holders
* not to stakeholders
* relatively recent (after the 14th amendment ... between 1890-1910 there were 307 cases brought to the court ... 288 on behalf of corporations, just 19 for people.)

STRUCTURAL POWER
power and inequality embedded in (and produced by) economic, social, political, and ideological structures
* Hard Power + Soft Power
* Not In Individuals ("if not me then somebody else")
* Can lead to structural violence

STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE
* Environmental (Intergenerational Tyranny)
* Inequality (IMF example from Jamaica)
* Health (McDonald's Advertising, etc.)
* Psychology (example of Dove and Axe)


Next class ...

How to save the world ...

4 Things to Burn into your soul and never forget
* We are the structure.
* It is what we make of it.
* Participation is not a choice.
* How we participate is perhaps our most important choice.


Examples

Shell Protest



Ray Anderson’s Epiphany
* Consumers come to him
* He reads a book (The Ecology of Commerce)
* He begins to transform the corporation from the inside
* Tells others
* THIS VIDEO

Great Hope for our future – the powers we can have ...

Another great threat – Corporations vs. Seed Saving ...

* India: for thousands of years have been saving seeds.
* They exchange seeds with one another
* Ensures biodiversity

Seed Laws --- Forced to buy seed => suicides (can’t survive)

Violate the Laws – Over 2,000 villages have dedicated themselves to violating the laws and saving seed => Corporate Response: Terminator Seeds

Yes Men

Some of the same processes happening right here, including a rise in farmer suicides (x2 the normal population rate)

Internal Colonization (The Accountant)

* lease land
* can’t pay (price driven lower by corporate farm)
* corporate farm buys land
* must sell labor
* media sells him his culture right back to him (starts acting country instead of being country)

The System Has all of us --- Yet we all matter ...

THE KEY IS VISION
* See the system
* See how we all contribute
* See that we are all interconnected

RIGHT NOW WE ARE CONSUMERS AND LOWER LABORORERS
BUT NOT ALWAYS


REMEMBER
* see who makes your life work
* what makes your life work (what is taken from the earth)
* have a vision of all others you are connected to
- presently
- AND future generations

WE ARE A GLOBAL VILLAGE

We’ll need the skills of VILLAGERS to survive

What are those skills
* SUSTAINABILITY – friends in PNG could live indefinitely
* MUTUAL VISIBILITY – THE GIFT
We need to TRULY see each other ... NOT like in Cannibal Cultures ...

COMMUNICATION
Learn – talk – care2.com

EMPATHY
Must stop seeing “them” as a “them” – That’s true dividuality ...

THOUGHTFULNESS
* See that we are related (no blame game)
* Luk Luk -