beautiful day, now threatening thunderstorms. last night i went downtown and stood in the square with the ladies in black for an hour. they have been doing this since the warped war began. the air was very crisp, the wind blowing, and the echos of the traffic bouncing off the high rises all made it feel like some timeless place. i made the papers in today's offering, photo of prayer for peace gathering i'm in there somewhere. wondered down to civic center, great latin band from richmond playing, beautiful crowd, good food, little kids dancing. then i sat for an hour or so in the drum circle happening in the square. body music, total immersion, tourists gathering round and breaking into dance.
aville is definitely either the paris of the south or the sedona of the east. i'm ready to enjoy it.
perhaps because of the van gogh stars shining empty space i was released from the spell that has been pulling at me these last few weeks. the ghost of the spanish harlem mona lisa finally faded into fact. some of the girls who dated ted bundy must have felt like i do. i was conned, but by one of the best. totally sociopathic dissociated persona, a broken preditor who gives nihilism a bad name. how unbelievable, sad and unecessary.
from
Black Mountain College Museum&Arts Center:
Isn't it interesting that the muddle of one's personal search turns into human history for others! Doesn�t it feel substantial that what we choose to do individually makes a supportive fabric for others in due course. The interweavings of time past, present, and future-the interweavings of personal imagination and community endeavor-this spiritual cloth, this gold of our life-looms is being woven whether we sleep or wake, a garment we are making for each other and the planet. Or so it seems. Though it be beaten thin by the impact of experiences, still the gold of our lives keeps its nature even when worn through, even when dust, gold dust.
yesterday was an unusual day. i spent the afternoon dealing with the health dept., archetypal state civil service, endless ugly green corridors, employees sleepwalking here and there with paperwork in hand, endless waiting in hard chairs.
but the occasional bodhisattva would appear, fully human and cheerful, to inject a little humor and perspective into this setting.
then last evening dinner for 45th high school reunion. six of us showed up for very elegant and pleasant time. the ambience was southern aristocratic living at it's best. an atmosphere i do not experience often these days.
you might think that visiting these two separate worlds in a single day would be confusing. but at this point in my life it was like any other day, each minute a mysterious surprise.
when i got home my trusty g4 would not boot up, system wouldn't load. i fixed it this morning - i hope. thank you disk warrior.
from an oil i did awhile back:
you probably never read bill the galactic hero by harry harrison, a sci-fi tongue in cheek book of about 30 years ago. pretty good one too. it features a large group of people described as "the unplanned". these are folks who have fallen thru the cultural cracks of the hypothetical future and no longer possess official papers or a plan.
i find myself in a similar situation, but by the end of the day should belong to the "re-planned". my sister convinced me not to go camping while i'm on antibiotics for the respitory illness that's going around and which she says is bad to reoccur. i don't think i'm going to make it to myrtle beach mid-may. and i'm bumping up trip to arizona to around the same time.
spent yesterday printing color samples from epson r300, what a spiffy piece of hardware. using it, i think i can emulate pretty closely archival giclee prints on hevay matte or watercolor paper, not to mention postcards and notecards. so get ready summer tourists, they'll be in the shops.
monday around 5:00. what my sister used to call the "arsnic hour". visited doctor who gave me antibiotic for tail-end of galloping gozodiac, chest rattle, "it's going around". bobby c. from columbia moved in a u haul load of furniture and such. i met him at the southerndharma center seems like a hundred years ago.
did a little business downtown, like buying shoelaces at tops shoe store. light rain, the streets seemed empty.
i'm in a delimma as to what to notice here; what to write about. usually i let my fingers do the talking, and that's what i think i'll keep doing. reframe the mundane.
survived another sunday. so far. reminds me of a routine i heard on the radio today:
"have you lived your whole life here?"
"not yet."
i'm not bored, just a tad depressed. found scattered, which is mona's book and i'll send it to her in the a.m. reading it, it is interesting to note how the words motivation, interest, libido, hyperfocus and love can all be used, to a point, interchangably. and how the lack of interest or respect for the outside, the other, can be a desert of forgotten bones.
so i keep my eye on depression level by interest level. which is low right now, but bumping along. finished two long term projects today, working on two others.
talking to richard today about "creativity". my present take is that it does not function inside humans, humans function inside it. the lame and the blind, which we all are, do not feel this. which like all denial takes a lot of energy, if not all of it.
some of us get a taste of it now and then and god what a relief to deal with the real, or the realest that you can deal with. it's the only way out, and the only way in.
on the other hand, to just live the life of a persona, say a gangster's moll or a bank president, and nothing more is just waiting to die.
i've slowly been learning that jung's "active imagination", which i've always been curious about, is something that i have been doing for awhile, in my manner. it's nothing more than actively engaging the little people. respect them, talk to them, listen to them. treat them like they don't exist and they get pissed. i know the feeling myself, having been treated that way in the recent past.
ok i'm signing off. that line of mr. d's, "feel like talking to someone, but i don't know who".
god it's only 2 in the afternoon. i feel like it's been weeks since i woke up, but good weeks: the air is clear, the inner winds are a breeze, some kind of sun is shining on me.
been cleaning up all week, loose ends, unfinished business, lost items. i feel like i've been thru some natural disaster, like a flood or fire. or tornado actually. strolling thru the aftermath slowly, shaking my head now and then at the wreakage.
actually i'm making good progress and things - objects, moods, intentions - are already more comfortable. i'm outward bound, ready - i think - to re-engage the world of 10,000 things.
haven't mentioned the ken wilber study group that met tuesday evening. i really enjoyed it, the frothy edge is really splashing around, and none of us knows why we are meeting. but, as i think we all agree, why not? there is an unfolding taking place, each new minute is a mystery.
plan to go to photgraphic exhibit tonight to see what happens.
pay some bills today and wash the dishes and i'm almost caught up with that wispy, tantalizing, moist and misty always receding thing, life with a lower case "L".
tuesday morning. good nights sleep. here's my astrology tip for the week past:
monday evening. quiet. light low. birds asleep. it's not dark yet, but it's gettin' there.
the weekend was a wowser. my lady friend, the Spanish Harlem Mona Lisa had been keeping me at arms length all week for no reason i was aware of.
saturday i walked to town and saw a movie, touching the void. absolutely beautiful high andes scenery. the narrative was grim survival,
sunday morning i went to the friends meeting at 10. it was held outside, in a quiet spell and space, cool wind, hot sun, birdsong, the quiet murmer of children at play. the best hour i've had in weeks. stayed until 2 with a group of maybe 20 to ponder some of the quaker ways of doing something.
came home and called the Spanish Harlem Mona Lisa who told me she was unavailable for visiting, no further details. this is a person i thought i was in a relationship with, a strange one, but a relationship nonetheless.
so i flipped, totally lost it, drove to her place where she was hiding, not answering locked doors or phone, hiding god knows what. my pretense was to give her back her assorted paraphernalia, and get mine, altho i could care less about it. i just wanted to confront her. it had to be done. somehow i got into the house and banged on her door. she slipped out, intent on one thing: getting me outside all locked doors. cool, collected, her expertise at running parallel lives showing.
i don't feel good at having to lose my temper to survive core deceit but as silly as it is, i guess that is what it is for. in full blown anger i said some things i meant, and somethings i didn't. i guess it doesn't matter when you're talking to a brick wall.
too much information here for you? that's too bad, i'm so sick of lying and denial i don't want to spread any more around. i'm venting here, angry, hurt and very disappointed.
one of those days yesterday when i never took a step outdoors. there are a few too many objects hidden in the house somewhere i can't seem to find, so i have backed into what you might call "spring kleening". my biggest find so far is a pair of blue jeans, near new. no easter eggs.
this morning it's gray and misty out, had to turn heat on last nite. so i guess i'll stay put another day or two. working on "new life" book every day, trying to get it to a point where it is presentable before the month is over.
watched a bit of the sunday news shows. all concerned are speaking a stylized lost language i can only get pieces of meaning from.
except for somone on the moyers show, in fact two someones: kevin philips was one, jon anderson of the new yorker the other. the democrats should pay to have these two interviews broadcast everyday until the election.
interesting movie out there somewhere:Quantum Physics, Brain Science and Spirituality in the Movies.
saw mr dylan and band last nite:
Asheville, North Carolina
The Orange Peel
April 9, 2004
1. To Be Alone With You
2. It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
*3. Unbelievable
4. Make You Feel My Love
* 5. Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine
* 6. Can't Wait
7. If Not for You
* 8. Cold Irons Bound
* 9. If Dogs Run Free
10. Highway 61 Revisited
*11. Not Dark Yet
12. Honest With Me
13. I Believe In You
*14. Summer Days
(encore)
15. Cat's In the Well
16. Like a Rolling Stone
**17. All Along the Watchtower
small venue, 900 people i guess. i stayed in back where i could lean against the rail. great sound from that location. i guess it's pretty much agreed at this point that this ain't no nostalgia act. the starred songs were magnificent.
there was something sweet and enduring about hearing these songs at this point in time. the band, including bob on keyboards, was rock- (so to speak) solid. his delivery was crystal clear, confident, playful. he used his present voice to great advantage, mixed perfectly. there was something elegaic about the whole evening. it's not dark yet...
total communication and respect between the musicains and the audience, a venacular understood by all having to do with the experience of humans living today. what a relief and rest to be in a crowd of people so receptive and uncynical in these times. an oasis. don't miss this tour.
couple of restless nights. visit to doc's yesterday to check burnt hand, he did some minor clean-up, seems to be healing ok. just woke up from a nap, first one in a long time.
home is chaotic, rampant entropy, too many objects misplaced or otherwise among the missing.
finished reading cosmopolis by delillio. spooky. kept running into sentences that were... well, odd but timely, remote, icy, but somehow personal.
bought a hammer today.
heard the most horrifying reportage on shortwave last night on child soldiers in sudan or somewhere. then dreamlike report on diabetes from some christian outfit broadcasting from the west.
good idea: know your enemy, know where you are, know your assumptions are assumptions.
beautiful day yesterday. worked on odds and ends of maintainence in the morning and walked to town at 12:30. (wait - i just remembered that this was saturday). saw a 1:00 movie matinee, the fog of war, a documentary consisting of robert macnamara, age 85, looking directly into the camera, closeup, dark background, talking, intercut with news and tv footage. veeery slow, i almost dozed off, but liked the movie. it was more personal than political - there is a difference - and i think we could all star in a vehicle such as this if we make it to old age. there are things to say, and you won't find them in written text.
on the way home saw the bumper sticker of the day:
had to fix that thing below. it was the ugliest thing i've ever put up - i hope.
but then i'm feeling ugly these days. i think it goes something like this:
"...for it is human nature, as we popularly define it, to react to insult with insult, to fear with fear, and take an eye for an eye. this is the crucial point in the whole matter. to refrain from taking revenge may be merely an escape. in my own case this has often been true. but this is not the work we have in mind, even though it may seem saintly. there is nothing to be gained in 'taking things laying down' or false martyrdom, except some spurious credit from others. no, the point is that we must really know and feel all our inner devils, and at the same time not let them possess us. and perhaps before we can know them we may have had to act them out, really see ourselves possessed by them, and really see their effects in the world. the wrong way has to precede the right way."
david hart, from vol. 3, psychological perspectives.
i guess that's what i saw in myself last night. the internalized undeveloped bitch. didn't know i had it in me.
Another bit of nothing much: this one i found penciled in a book i don't remember buying, much less reading.
if you have any interest in the future of the web you might want to check this out:
Search upstarts storm Google's gates | CNET News.com
one of the interesting search engines in the pipeline is group oriented. that is, for a group with a common interest, the collective searches would somehow (can you say "synergisticalay? can you spell it?) increase search results of the context you have in mind.
ok so i am not making sense.
found a new old notebook the other day. here's a sample from it:
no image today. ninian arrived from tennessee a day early, , so we walked downtown, wondered around, feet on the ground. it was another gorgeous day to stumble forward. worked on mimi's website, hoping to have version 1 up this week. wrote a letter to someone who may be a figment of my overwrought imagination.. checked lunar colander. busy 3 days ahead for me, beginning with dentist's appointment this am (toothache).
began reading attitudes and latitudes by thomas friedman. he's a funny one. his grasp of the Palestinian dilemma seems accurate and helpful, but his insistence on inevitable globism seems a little Darwinian - peoples that can't keep up go under. at least that's what i got from his last book.
watched a bit of the sunday news shows instead of going to friend's meeting. the sound was off. i think the bushies (they are not real republicans) have got the democratic candidate they want to run against. kerry just doesn't come across on the tube. my advice for what it is worth: he needs to play up a lincolnesque persona, not grow a beard but evolve from craggy to just a touch of haggard, thoughtful, deep. edwards as VP is crucial, he's the only guy who can respond tit for tat to the deluge of public innuendo the bushies have lined up for kerry. and he can unravel the mimetic tangle they are going to tie kerry in knots with. in a heartbeat.
the spread of pseudo-democracies across the globe has highlighted an unnoticed trend: fake elections. remember the soviet union? all of the 3rd world countries with their various ways to have an "election" that one way or another is a setup? they are just beginning the process, do not have the infrastructure or cultural history to use the electoral process in an ideal manner.
we, on the other hand, are evolving past the electoral way. public relations - a bland description of a well worn manipulative path - and big money has pulled the plug on our own elections. witness the last presidential election. it was an invisible coup-d'etat.
as far as the republican ads featuring bush puffed up in front of 9/11, let him wrap himself up in that image. then ask why it happened, why planes weren't scrambled per SOP, and why we responded by declaring war on a nation state when the enemy is a group of "super-empowered individuals" (friedman).
Daily Devotional: "In his essay, �Peaks and Vales,� Jungian analyst James Hillman writes of cultivating the vales of our low-lying moods. Compared to the glittering peaks of spiritual aloofness-the Mount Siniai of the spirit- the bottomlands of our despair are fertile with imagination and insight.
The brooding desolation of such depressed emotional landscapes, Hillman writes, was described by the poet John Keats as "the vale of soulmaking." To Keats "the use of the world"-the defeats and dejection�s of everyday life-was that it forged the individual soul.
But the plunge from the heights of spiritual joy into the depths of spiritual darkness often feels like the loss of faith. In the grip of such darkness, life seems meaningless, a landscape drained of color.
"I felt that the ground on which I stood was crumbling,� wrote the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy of his own crisis of faith, "...that I had no reason for living..."
In the Words of James Hillman, Psyche's Hermetic Highwayman: "Neglect of beauty neglects the Goddess, who then has to steal back into the departments as sexual harassment, into the laboratories as 'research' experiments with sex and gender, and into the consulting rooms as seductive assignations."
"... and if I shed a tear I won't cage it.
I won't fear love
and if I feel a rage I won't deny it.
I won't fear love."
-- Sarah McLaughlin, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy
shows you how much i know; i figured Sarah McLaughlin was a literary figure, maybe a poet, when i ran across the above....maybe she is.
i don't much care for the quicky pics i've been posting this week. somethings take the time they take.
rereading hillman's the thought of the heart. let me flip it open to a page and maybe i can find something that illuminates why:
"a second fundamental trait of this cardiac conciousness has been described by d.h. lawrence in his symbolic physiology:
'at the cardiac plexus...there in the center of the breast, we have a great new sun of knowledge and being...how i only know the delightful revelation that you are. the wonder is no longer within me, my own dark, centrifical exultant self. the wonder is without me. the wonder is outside me... i look with wonder, with tenderness, with joyful yearning towards that which is outside me, beyond me...'
friday afternoon, on the way back from an appointment, i decided to stop and spend some time downtown in the paris of the south, aville. it was a gorgeous day and i strolled around, stopping here and there. so many new shops, street life up and running. i paid a visit to the old tried and true newstand, where a large format book of plates of the cezanne collection at the hermitage jumped out into my hands which i bought for $10. the plates are amazing, well printed and including closeups. I have always admired cezanne, but the closeups of some of his earlier work astounded me.
i looked unsuccessfully for CD by dave olney, wheel (LoudHouse Records: David Olney/The Wheel). dave is another of the old chapel hill bunch who lives in nasheville and works as a fulltime songwriter and performer. i've heard one cut from this cd, "god-shaped hole", which blew me away. as real as it gets.
i decided then and there to spend more time out of the house from now until the weather gets too hot. i've spent enough time underground, time for a little daylight.
yesterday a visit to dr. r's world, very pleasant interlude. driving back, i noticed a storefront and sign i hadn't noticed before. i may be mistaken, but the sign read "deja-vu dialysis". catchy but mysterious.
according to the conventional thinking - or maybe feeling - bush and the corporate oligarchy that have hijacked the government are in trouble. the spreading bubble of unease felt by just about everyone has been transforming into the thought that the 5 or 6 people running the government by fiat, PR, and outright lies have to go.
my own opinion is what it was several months ago.
one, the cabel will not go gracefully. the shakier thier hold on the public becomes, the more backup shenannigans they are putting in place. the most obvious is the trick being talked about lately, capture osama right before the election.
two, i don't think kerry is the man to snake through the barrage of dirty tricks that lay in wait. i thought, and still think, that any democrat can win the election, provided they have one ability: to talk straight in such a way that it penetrates the wall of media and gets through to you and me. i don't think kerry can do this - his mediated persona too stiff, his words too reminescent of rehearsed and learned thoughts from advisors. i think he is a good man, but the skull and bones wealthy and priviliged background he comes from seems could be a vast negitive.
edwards, on the other hand, can talk straight in such a manner that he gets through. he is the man who can navigate through the semantic traps of the public discourse without losing a beat. slick lawyer though he is, or maybe because he is, he could twist the oligarchy into pretzels, and tell it like it is.
it's late, but i'm behind edwards. or maybe i'm just behind.
below are two reviews of a book and a movie forwarded to me by my friend tharpa d. they are worth posting here because they both seem to clearly articulate the rising inchoate feelings of humans everywhere. my comments are colored red.
-----------
CORPORATION AS PSYCHOPATH By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman February 17, 2004
http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus/2004/000174.html
People ask -- Rob, Russell, the world is going to hell in a handbasket. What can we do about it?
We say -- read one book, see one movie.
Unfortunately, the movie and the book are available now only in Canada.
But wait -- before you head north of the border -- they will be available here in a month or so.
And believe us, it is worth the wait. (Full disclosure -- our work -- the Top 100 Corporate Criminals of the 1990s -- is featured in the movie.)
The book is titled: The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. It is by Joel Bakan (Free Press, 2004).
The movie is called: The Corporation. It is by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott, and Joel Bakan.
We've seen an advance copy of the movie.
We're read an advance copy of the book.
And here's our review:
Scrap the civics curricula in your schools, if they exist.
Cancel your cable TV subscriptions.
Call your friends, your enemies and your family.
Get your hands on a copy of this movie and a copy of this book.
Read the book. Discuss it. Dissect it. Rip it apart.
Watch the movie. Show it to your children. Show it to your right-wing relatives. Show it to everyone. Organize a party around it. Then organize another.
For years, we've been reporting on critics of corporate power -- Robert Monks, Richard Grossman, Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, Sam Epstein, Charles Kernaghan, Michael Moore, Jeremy Rifkin.
[i saw noam chomsky talk about his new book last week on c-span. i hadn�t followed him through the years and now regret it. he is lucid and right on about so many things that are virtually �unspeakable� in our world today. he was cited for always speaking (and writing) in a calm manner, no rants, no shouts, no banging on the table. his new book:Amazon.com: Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (The American Empire Project) see also Chomsky Archive]
For years, we've reported on the defenders of the corporate status quo like Milton Friedman, Peter Drucker and William Niskanen.
But Bakan, a professor of law at British Columbia Law School, and Achbar and Abbott have pulled these leading lights together in a 145-minute documentary that grabs the viewer by the throat and refuses to let go.
The movie is selling out major theaters across Canada. And if it detonates here -- which in our view is still a long shot -- the U.S. after all is not Canada -- it could have a profound impact on politics.
The filmmakers juxtapose well-shot interviews of defenders and critics with the reality on the ground -- Charles Kernaghan in Central America showing how, for example, big apparel manufacturers pay workers pennies for products that sell for hundreds of dollars in the United States -- with defenders of the regime -- Milton Friedman looking frumpy as he says with as straight a face as he can -- the only moral imperative for a corporate executive is to make as much money for the corporate owners as he or she can.
[i disagree: the only legal imperative is to make as much money for the corporate owners as he or she can.]
Others agree with Friedman. Management guru Peter Drucker tells Bakan: "If you find an executive who wants to take on social responsibilities, fire him. Fast." And William Niskanen, chair of the libertarian Cato Institute, says that he would not invest in a company that pioneered in corporate responsibility.
Of course, state corporation laws actually impose a legal duty on corporate executives to make money for shareholders. Engage in social responsibility -- pay more money to workers, stop legal pollution, lower the price to customers -- and you'll likely be sued by your shareholders. Robert Monks, the investment manager, puts it this way: "The corporation is an externalizing machine, in the same way that a shark is a killing machine (shark seeking young woman swimming on the screen). There isn't any question of malevolence or of will. The enterprise has within it, and the shark has within it, those characteristics that enable it to do that for which it was designed."
Business insiders like Monks and Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface Corporation, the world's largest commercial carpet manufacturer, lend needed balance to a movie that otherwise would have been dominated by outside critics like Chomsky, Moore, Grossman and Rifkin. Anderson calls the corporation a "present day instrument of destruction" because of its compulsion to "externalize any cost that an unwary or uncaring public will allow it externalize."
"The notion that we can take and take and take and take, waste and waste, without consequences, is driving the biosphere to destruction," Anderson says, as pictures of biological and chemical wastes pouring into the atmosphere roll across the screen.
Like Republican Kevin Phillips is doing as he criss-crosses the nation, pummeling Bush from the right, Anderson and Monks are opening a new front against corporate power from inside the belly of the beast. They are stars of this movie and book.
The movie and the book drive home one fundamental point -- the corporation is a psychopath.
[years ago i worked at a major corporation with a programmer who said �any group or institution of over 25,000 people is psychopathic, despite the fact that all 25,000 people are fundamentally not�. that was awhile back, and i�m not sure the latter part of that statement holds true today...]
Psychologist Dr. Robert Hare runs down a checklist of psychopathic traits and there is a close match.
The corporation is irresponsible because in an attempt to satisfy the corporate goal, everybody else is put at risk.
Corporations try to manipulate everything, including public opinion.
Corporations are grandiose, always insisting that "we're number one, we're the best."
Corporations refuse to accept responsibility for their own actions and are unable to feel remorse.
And the key to reversing the control of this psychopathic institution is to understand the nature of the beast.
No better place to start than right here.
Read the book.
Watch the movie
Organize for resistance.
............
Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter, http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, http://www.multinationalmonitor.org. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press; http://www.corporatepredators.org).
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CORPORATIONS NEED TREATMENT, DOCUMENTARY ARGUES By Stephen Leahy Inter Press Service / Common Dreams January 20, 2004
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0120-03.htm
TORONTO - Corporations are not only the most powerful institutions in the world, they are also psychopathic, a new Canadian documentary on globalization elegantly argues.
While the corporation has the rights and responsibilities of "a legal person", its owners and shareholders are not liable for its actions. Moreover, the film explains, a corporation's directors are legally required to do what is best for the company, regardless of the harm created.
[corporations legally are people but there are some differences: they can live forever, and get away with murder.]
What kind of person would a corporation be? A clinical psychopath, answers the documentary, which is now playing in four Canadian theatres.
"Everything we do in the world is touched by corporations in some way," says 'The Corporation' writer Joel Bakan.
Six years ago he was researching a book on the subject and teamed up with documentary makers Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott, and then set out to drum up enough money to make the film and to do more than 40 interviews.
"Corporations are the most dominant institutions on the planet today. We thought it was worth taking a close look at what that means," Bakan told IPS.
[throughout the last millennium perhaps the dominant institution has been in some ways invisible, the same way water is invisible to a fish. for instance in medieval europe the catholic church was regarded not so much as an institution as reality. ditto today with the free market, profit, and acquisition. they have been regarded as �the way the world works�.]
In law, today's corporations are treated like a person: they can buy and sell property, have the right to free expression and most other rights that individuals have.
This legal creativity came as a result of U.S. businesses using the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution -- designed to protect blacks in the U.S. South after the Civil War -- to proclaim that corporations should be treated as "persons".
The filmmakers show four examples of corporations at work -- including garment sweatshops in Honduras and Indonesia -- to demonstrate that this "legal person" is inherently amoral, callous and deceitful.
The corporation, the film points out, ignores any social and legal standards to get its way, and does not suffer from guilt while mimicking the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism.
A person with those character traits would be categorized as a psychopath, based on diagnostic criteria from the World Health Organization (WHO), points out the film.
Unlike 'Bowling for Columbine' -- to which it has been compared -- 'The Corporation' does not follow a shambling yet crusading interviewer (Michael Moore) into corporate head offices to ask tough questions.
Instead the filmmakers use simple but beautifully lit head and shoulder shots of its subjects against a black background. The interviewer is never seen or heard; the corporate chiefs, professors and activists speak directly to the viewer.
The technique is so compelling that not listening or turning away would seem impolite.
The interviews are interspersed with archival footage from many sources, including scenes from sweatshops and news conferences. It also includes some ironic and darkly humorous excerpts from corporate ad campaigns and training films from the 1940s and '50s.
But the film is not a rant. It gives ample time to corporate chief executive officers (CEOs) and representatives of right-wing organizations, like Canada's Fraser Institute.
Fraser's Michael Walker tells viewers that hungry people in the developing world are better off when a sweatshop pays them 10 cents an hour to make brand name goods that sell for hundreds of dollars.
And it is just good business sense that a corporation moves to seek out more hungry people when its workers demand higher wages and better working conditions, Walker argues.
Many others are less ruthless. Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, former chairman of Royal Dutch Shell, is honestly concerned about protecting the environment. Under his guidance, Shell adopted many green initiatives and a commitment to developing renewable energy.
At the same time, Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other activists were hung in Nigeria for protesting Shell Oil's pollution of the Niger Delta.
Social critic and linguist Noam Chomsky -- the subject of Achbar's 1992 award-winning 'Manufacturing Consent' -- carefully points out that people who work for corporations, and even those who run them, are often very nice people.
The same could have been said about many slave owners, he observes. The institution -- not the people -- is the problem, Chomsky argues.
Eminent economist Milton Friedman sums up the role of the corporation succinctly: it creates jobs and wealth but is inherently incapable of dealing with the social consequences of its actions.
'The Corporation' documents a bewildering array of these consequences -- including the deaths of citizens who protest corporate ownership of their water in Cochabamba, Bolivia -- that demonstrate the extent and power of today's corporations.
It looks at the often-cozy relationships between corporations and fascist regimes, such as that of IBM and Nazi leader Adolph Hitler.
It demonstrates the power of advertising to create desires for luxury items, as well as how corporations can suppress information.
The documentary shows agribusiness corporation Monsanto successfully preventing the news media from airing a story about the potential health hazards of a genetically engineered drug given to many U.S. diary cows.
'The Corporation' also tells a number of success stories, including activists' successful fight to overturn corporate patents on the neem tree and basmati rice.
Bolivia's Oscar Olivera describes how citizens of Cochabamba city re-took control of their water. The lesson, he explains, is the people's capacity for "reflection, rage and rebellion" as an effective counter to corporate globalization
That is one of the film's messages, says Bakan. "We want people to understand that they can change things."
"Everyone keeps thanking us for making the film," says Mark Achbar, from the Sundance festival of independent films in Utah state.
"People are fed up with being talked down to and enjoy being intellectually engaged," he adds, trying to explain the documentary's popularity and several international festival awards.
Despite its current limited distribution in Canada, 'The Corporation' has been sold as a three-part, one-hour TV series to international markets, and Achbar is hoping it will be translated into Spanish.
Of course, there will not be a multi-million marketing campaign. The number of people who will see it will depend on those who have, spreading the word.
That is just one way to take back the power that corporations have usurped.
http://www.thecorporation.tv
the winter bluz have really set in. lotta long faces around, twitchy. i have for some time thought that this phase did not start until march. but that was based on another time and another place. the winter bluz are here now.
yesterday was one of the longer days of my life.
my friend john r asked me today about all this "heart" business. come to find out he associated it with the western picture of "heart", all sappy and goofy and satin red. i was thinking of "heart" in the eastern manner, something to act from and on, a connection to beauty. beauty is reality, reality is beauty. a doorway.
then there is rilke:
"For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure and are awed
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying."
then there's the laundry.
woke up. got out of bed. pulled the covers over my head.
finished three more long chapters in book i am typesetting, caught up on online course. washed the dishes and vacuumed. work as distraction.
then this jumped into my head:
"...that the thought of the heart is the thought of images, that the heart is the seat of the imagination, that imagination is the authentic voice of the heart, so that if we speak from the heart we must speak imaginatively."
james hillman
the thought of the heart
long 24 hours. i think i am beginning to see with new eyes. the illumined world presents itself through the heart. head bobs along behind. it is a good day to be now.
the soul is messy, earthbound, fluid, moist, lives in the damp valleys, near water. spirit enfolds souls. the pull of a beautiful woman's soul illuminates the dark spaces of the heart and illuminates the world in a suprising novel new manner. continually.
got this from tharpa d. "onelist" just now. don't know what book it is from. but hillman seems to be suffering an eclipse right now, and it's good to remember what his subject matter was (is):
"We cannot go further . . . because we are bereft in our culture of an adequate psychology and philosophy of the heart, and therefore also of the imagination. Our hearts cannot apprehend that they are imaginatively thinking hearts, because we have so long been told that the mind thinks and the heart feels and that imagination leads us astray from both. Even when the heart is allowed its reasons, they are those of faith or of feeling, for we have forgotten that philosophy itself --the most complex and profound demonstration of thought-- is not 'wisdom' or 'truth' in an abstract sense of 'sophic'. Rather, philosophy begins in philos arising in the heart of our blood, together with the lion, the wound, and the rose. If we would recover the imaginal we must first recover its organ, the heart, and its kind of philosophy."
-James Hillman
nice birthday. i used to go to great lengths to deny them, but i just let this one slide by.
a little dionysian revelry last night, good for the soul.
my first experience with DSL outage - yesterday around noon i couldn't log on, tried a few things and phoned bellsouth support. after the usual beeps and clicks i didn't hear what i expected - "outage in your area" - but got into trouble shooting lines and modem. really did not want to do this so left it dysfunctional. phoned about 8 tonight, recorded message "your area has just recovered from an outage, you may have to reboot etc."
now why didn't they tell me that to begin with?
doug b. phoned this after noon, over at steve and racheal's, reitzals, doug, pleasant afternnon of conversation.
ok it's 9:41 pm est. i'm going to sign off and see how quickly i can get the image of the day done. ready, set, go...
spent yesterday at the computer and the easel. cold gray day but by 4 it was sunny but still cool. took an hour downtime walk 5-6, beautiful warm light glowing from the treetops. recorded a long guitar piece i think i can work with.
been working on dreamweaver online course since 6 this morning. now it's up and out to run errands before freezing rain hits around noon.
BTW it is my birthday this coming saturday. be sure to ship titanium g5 notebook computer to get here on time, as well as digital camcorder and camera.
