Corporations

The recent TV show which explores the power of the large corporations and the resistance that people around the world are demonstrating to their power has been one of the more fascinating shows on television recently.

The admissions from CEOs of some of the world's largest companies that they are not concerned with despoiling the earth they are more concerned with making profits was simply breathtaking.

The struggles of people to prevent the privatisation of water supplies by a provate company and the actions of the world bank to pay this company back for lost business opportunities were no less stunning. The actions of people around the world to prevent companies like Monsanto from gaining a monopoly on the seeds required by people to sow crops also sent messages that need to be heeded.

People who work for large companies like those in the aerospace industries and others that manufacture weapons need to understand that there is a connection between the work that they do and the weapons of mass destruction that threaten them, that kill their sons and daughters in the armed forces of various countries who are engaged in wars of one kind or another.

The most attractive aspect of the programs has been the simple exhortation to people that they need to think more broadly than their own lives and their own situations and expand their consciousness to include the broader human community and ask themselves whether they care or not and if they do what they are prepared to DO to hold companies accountable for the destruction that they are imposing on the world.

I seem to recall that in Genesis there was a portion of the text that in the instructions to Adam and Eve reads something like "go forth and multiply, replenish the earth and subdue it."

I guess the only element we have not really obeyed in recent times has been the component that relates to replenishment. Perhaps if the people around the world who believe in Judaism, Christianity and Islam would like to consider these words, attributed to God in his expulsion of humanity from paradise they might be more inclined to head towards sustainable development rather than despoiling the world to which people were exiled when they were turfed out of paradise in the first place.

While many people talk of the "original sin" that lead to this expulsion there are few it seems that have learned the lesson. It seems we are still willing to despoil the environment in which we live for short term gain.