out, at intervals, about the shocking lack of social responsibility big business demonstrates.
But most of the public is not stupid. Itâs been burned before. Itâs burned every day. Itâs been a learning experience.
The public has learned. The contempt corporation PR liaisons have for the publicâs attention span is palpable; still, people were paying attention when it was revealed in the 1960s and â70s that most major manufacturers were poisoning us with pollution; people were paying attention when it was revealed that those manufacturers dragged their feet, and bit and scratched and struggled, when they were told to curtail their pollution. And people noticed when industry shrieked with wholly unconvincing outrage when it was told to clean up the toxic waste mess it had already made.
People noticed. The billions that the public is forced to spend on clean-ups were noticed. The astounding obliviousness to forethought in the Exxon Valdez and BP Gulf Spill disasters did not go unnoticed.
The public can see that most corporations just donât care unless theyâre forced to. Despite what may be touted in TV commercials, for every insignificant effort from an oil company on behalf of the environment, there are ten new environmental atrocities somewhere, ten efforts on the part of that industryâs lobbyists to squelch laws demanding accountability.
Cancer strikes one in three Americans and kills one in four. According to Samuel Epstein, professor of occupational medicine at the University of Illinois School of Public Health, millions people have died during the last decades in what Epstein calls âthis cancer epidemic.â Epstein indicates that âthere is plenty of evidence that the cancer increase is due to progressive permeation of air, water, food and the workplace with cancer-causing industrial chemicals and pesticides. There is also well-establishedevidence that a substantial proportion of all cancers is avoidable.â
It may be that those deliberately sacrificing lives by knowingly permitting the release of needless carcinogens have convinced themselves that itâs all for the sake of a healthy, unimpeded economy. Surely, they tell themselves, people would starve without industry.
In some secret, time-shared corner of their hearts they know full well that we could have industry, and jobsâeven more jobsâwithout polluting, without toxifying, without cheating workers, without underpaying womenâif we made the needed investment. Technology doesnât have to pollute. Itâs like a dog that hasnât been housebroken. To acknowledge that realization, though, would be to curtail their major drive in life: greed, in all its manifestations. The world is their smorgasbord.
Mitt Romney was half right when he said that âcorporations are people,â since corporate culture is a reflection of its leadership. There are people at the top who give it its character. When they knowingly toxify, when they mistreat workers, when they bust unions and create dangerous working conditions for the sake of higher profits, they think they are âkings of the worldââand so far we have not impregnated them with a bad smell â¦
But we can. Not as literally as in Knightâs allegorical story. But we can do itâwith New Taboos.
We will still need punitive regulations. But we need something more, something lasting, something impregnated into our beings: the recognition that we arenât alone, that there is no social vacuum.
I suggest that we utilize a social device that is generally either underused or misused. The
taboo.
Taboos may seem primitive, and indeed many of the old ones are based on archaic religious ideas. But the better taboos are not based on superstition: they are complex, efficient, and self-perpetuating expressions of solid tribal valuesâthat is, of social values.
Before I get to the inevitable list of New Taboos, we have
But most of the public is not stupid. Itâs been burned before. Itâs burned every day. Itâs been a learning experience.
The public has learned. The contempt corporation PR liaisons have for the publicâs attention span is palpable; still, people were paying attention when it was revealed in the 1960s and â70s that most major manufacturers were poisoning us with pollution; people were paying attention when it was revealed that those manufacturers dragged their feet, and bit and scratched and struggled, when they were told to curtail their pollution. And people noticed when industry shrieked with wholly unconvincing outrage when it was told to clean up the toxic waste mess it had already made.
People noticed. The billions that the public is forced to spend on clean-ups were noticed. The astounding obliviousness to forethought in the Exxon Valdez and BP Gulf Spill disasters did not go unnoticed.
The public can see that most corporations just donât care unless theyâre forced to. Despite what may be touted in TV commercials, for every insignificant effort from an oil company on behalf of the environment, there are ten new environmental atrocities somewhere, ten efforts on the part of that industryâs lobbyists to squelch laws demanding accountability.
Cancer strikes one in three Americans and kills one in four. According to Samuel Epstein, professor of occupational medicine at the University of Illinois School of Public Health, millions people have died during the last decades in what Epstein calls âthis cancer epidemic.â Epstein indicates that âthere is plenty of evidence that the cancer increase is due to progressive permeation of air, water, food and the workplace with cancer-causing industrial chemicals and pesticides. There is also well-establishedevidence that a substantial proportion of all cancers is avoidable.â
It may be that those deliberately sacrificing lives by knowingly permitting the release of needless carcinogens have convinced themselves that itâs all for the sake of a healthy, unimpeded economy. Surely, they tell themselves, people would starve without industry.
In some secret, time-shared corner of their hearts they know full well that we could have industry, and jobsâeven more jobsâwithout polluting, without toxifying, without cheating workers, without underpaying womenâif we made the needed investment. Technology doesnât have to pollute. Itâs like a dog that hasnât been housebroken. To acknowledge that realization, though, would be to curtail their major drive in life: greed, in all its manifestations. The world is their smorgasbord.
Mitt Romney was half right when he said that âcorporations are people,â since corporate culture is a reflection of its leadership. There are people at the top who give it its character. When they knowingly toxify, when they mistreat workers, when they bust unions and create dangerous working conditions for the sake of higher profits, they think they are âkings of the worldââand so far we have not impregnated them with a bad smell â¦
But we can. Not as literally as in Knightâs allegorical story. But we can do itâwith New Taboos.
We will still need punitive regulations. But we need something more, something lasting, something impregnated into our beings: the recognition that we arenât alone, that there is no social vacuum.
I suggest that we utilize a social device that is generally either underused or misused. The
taboo.
Taboos may seem primitive, and indeed many of the old ones are based on archaic religious ideas. But the better taboos are not based on superstition: they are complex, efficient, and self-perpetuating expressions of solid tribal valuesâthat is, of social values.
Before I get to the inevitable list of New Taboos, we have
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