July 26, 2015
First in a Series
An interesting new national discussion is taking shape in America which may be long overdue. It involves the nature and character of what is called our “corporate culture”. Long a masculine-dominant bastion male ego, self-will and power, it used to mean men adhered to a semi-rigid culture of conformance. Men looked the same, talked the same and largely acted the same. Year in and year out little changed. A status quo existed providing the rest of the country, if not the world, an illusion of stability – the planet was safe in the hands of the men in charge. One now amusing slogan from those days, which actually lasted into the early 1990’s is, “What’s good for GM is good for America!” Any idea how GM is doing these days?
Beyond the irony of course is that the planet was not safe in the hands of the men in charge here or anywhere else, or men at all. Quite the opposite in fact. But that is the topic for another day. On the subject of our corporate culture where men are concerned however, the only slogan worth mentioning is, “Greed is good!” As a reflection of America’s long-standing male-dominant orientation, we shouldn’t be at all surprised that, in the Biblical sense, any attribute or behavior you might think of as masculine is a part of our culture. Lest we get confused, that includes oppression, violence, corruption, envy, jealousy, covetousness, hate, a hundred forms of self-will, prejudice, fear, whatever. This is what men do.
For hundreds, if not thousands of years these characteristics have secured men’s position of power and control of women in particular. And so long as the dividend checks to the mostly male principal stockholders continued, all was right with the world. Since about the mid-1990’s that all began to change. Men in power began making a series of fear-based decisions trying desperately to hold on to their illusion of control. Now keep in mind corporations do make products, create jobs, pay taxes, or abide by the same rules the rest of us do. Corporations exist for just one reason: to maximize the value of the shares held by the men who own them.
No self-respecting corporation could care less about what it makes, who makes it, how it is made or where it is made unless and until they absolutely have to in order to go on selling it. Their primary objective is to get whoever they can to make it as cheaply as possible, and then sell it for as much as they can get away with. So when everyday people began to matter much more so than they had before, it cost these male-dominant corporations money. The income pie had to be cut into more pieces.
One way men resisted valuing social goods and people’s needs while maintaining their power and control was to jack equity sky high. Being largely “froth”, it has little or nothing to do with innovation per se, and everything to do with protecting their position. Another way men resisted valuing people, and even the Earth herself, was to have other bastions of male-dominance like government and the Supreme Court vest all the rights of a human man in a corporation! Seriously, what did we really think would happen when corporations began behaving as men do? Egotistical, self-willed, arrogant? Denying any responsibility and insulated from accountability for their actions they are no different than almost all men since Adam!
Having said that, missing from today’s discussion about the “Tyranny of today’s earnings report”, and the debate over innovation, foreign competition and jobs is that men will only invest their time and money in these goods if they perceive their selfish self-interest. Everyday people – women in particular, but also children, and even other men, including public and private leaders, do not motivate men to do right. A pleasant fantasy, but no. Out of fear, they might react to globalization – that men in other countries might gain power.
You can probably guess from having read my book, “The Word 2.0“, the behaviors of male-dominant corporations are no more than a symptom of the larger imbalance between God’s Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine aspects made manifest on Earth as men and women – you and I. Read the book! When you begin to understand that God created men and women as co-equals, in perfect balance, unified, harmonious, and that Adam not Havah (Eve) brought about the so-called “Fall from Grace“, balance can be restored to all Creation. Jesus taught the restoration of God’s balance to men because their egoic (evil) and selfish (sinful) self-willed nature is responsible for the imbalance we still experience today.
Shalom, peace!
Miguel
