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Add to My Group(s)
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By Wanda Woodward (about the author)
Become a Fan (3 fans) -- Page 2 of 7 page(s)
10. corporate hegemony
11. weakening of governments by corporatacracy
12. nuclear proliferation
Absent overpopulation, however, overconsumption, deforestation, overharvesting and global warming would most likely not exist. On the other side of the coin of overpopulation, there must be mention of lack of sufficient mineral and natural resources to sustain an overpopulated and increasingly ecologically decimated earth which can be summed up as "overconsumption." According to a Washington Post article in 1998, a majority of biologists (7 out of 10 scientists from the American Institute of Biological Sciences polled in a survey commissioned by the New York American Museum of Natural History) are convinced that a mass extinction is underway and that within 30 years, one fifth of all living species could become extinct (Warrick, 1998). The last mass extinction occurred 65 million years ago when dinosaurs did not survive a meteor collision. According to the NASA Earth Observatory web site (2006), deforestation occurs through commercial logging, development of infrastructure such as the building of dams, agricultural uses such as grazing cattle and planting crops. It has been identified, along with fossil fuel use, as a major anthropogenic cause of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide emissions (IPCC, 2007). Indeed, in the Working Group I Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) Report released February 2007, scientists have concluded with a "very high confidence" (meaning 9 out of 10 chance for accuracy) that it is very likely that global warming, including carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide emissions, has anthropogenic causes primarily from agriculture, land use changes and fossil fuel use, and that it is "very likely" (meaning >90% probability) this is unprecedented in the past 10,000 years (IPCC, 2007, pp. 4-5. Eight out of the last twelve years (1995-2006) have reported the warmest surface temperatures in recorded history (p. 5).? The IPCC, which builds upon the 2001 TAR Assessment by the IPCC, points to increased droughts, heavy precipitation, floods, extreme wind patterns leading to increased tropical cyclone activity (hurricanes and typhoons), heat waves, rising in air and ocean temperatures, glacier melts, and rises in sea level. Further, the February 2007 IPCC Report states that both past and future anthropogenic causes of carbon dioxide emissions will continue to negatively impact the planet for another 1,000 years due to the time it takes for the gases to dissipate from the atmosphere (IPCC, 2007, p. 17). According to World Wildlife Fund Director-General, James Leape, "if everyone around the world lived as those in America, we would need five planets to support us" referring to the 2006 Living Planet Report (MSNBC web page, 2006).? The Report also noted that in 2003, the world exceeded biocapacity by 25%. Another troubling statistic is that, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, a leading science-based non-profit organization working for a healthier environment, America has 5% of the world's population, but emits 25% of the world's carbon dioxide (UCS, 2006).? The Union of Concerned Scientists' web site also exposes the efforts of ExxonMobil which spent $16 million between 1998 and 2005 hiring advocacy organizations that intentionally discredit the overwhelming evidence pointing to global warming (UCS, 2006).
The noted "Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change," issued in September 2006 by Sir Nicholas Stern, an economist for the British government, states that "the scientific evidence is now overwhelming: climate change is a serious global threat, and it demands an urgent global response" (Stern, 2006, p. 1). Stern cautions that global warming may become the greatest economic failure ever experienced in the world as hunger, water shortages, flooding and increased temperatures are imminent unless action is taken within the next two decades. If no action or insufficient action is taken, severe adverse economic and social results will occur that parallel the World Wars and the Depression in the 20th century. Only an international collaboration in which all parties agree on long-term goals can avert this impending risk to the entire species on the planet.
The World Wildlife Federation (WWF, 2007) reports that the use of toxic man-made chemical has increased from 1 million to 400 million tons between 1930 and 2000 and is seeping into the soil and into the food chain of all animals which, ultimately, ends up in the human body. Additionally, the WWF (2007) also lists anthropogenic causes of invasive species as a major threat to the biosphere. Intentional and unintentional release of one species into another habitat has resulted in certain species of animals or plants consuming and eradicating the native species, thus, resulting in an unnatural biospheric arrangement, species devastation and/or near extinction. There are now thousands of invasive species listed by the WWF. Also listed as a major environmental hazard is overharvesting of fisheries in the world. The WWF (2007) reports that the global fishing fleet is 2.5 times larger than what the ocean can provide us and 52% of the world's fisheries have been fully exploited.
The Pew Center on Global Climate Change issued the Coastal and Marine Ecosystems And Global Climate Change report in August 2002, the Forest and Global Climate Change Report in February 2003, and the Coral Reefs and Global Climate Change Report in February 2004, all reports by scientific experts warning of the imminent adverse impact that global warming, overconsumption, overharvesting and overpopulation are causing these ecological systems and, ultimately, due to the interdependence of humanity and the biosphere, the impending demise of life on Earth.
These portend to be the most pernicious enemies of existing and future life on the planet. However, even if the world population were, for example, only a mere 100,000 people, there is no guarantee that the social, economic and political problems on the remainder of the list above would not exist as harmful threats. Factoring in overpopulation and global warming, however, old methods and means are sure to put all life species on Earth in ultimate peril. With an ever flattening social and cultural landscape due to the technological advances marking what Friedman calls the "Flat Earth" (Friedman, 2000), this makes hierarchical economic systems such as capitalism obsolete as effective tools since capitalism is based upon the premise that there has to be a sufficient number of people to purchase the ever constantly growing number of products and services being marketed and sold. It does not take a rocket scientist to understand that, in a capitalistic system, there must exist a large, robust middle class who is financially able to purchase the goods and services from those who own the capital.? When the middle class disappears and there is only a handful of extreme wealth at the top and the mass population is poor, capitalism cannot exist for long.? Of equal importance, neither can democracy.? Either a totalitarian and fascist society manifests where the masses are oppressed and suppressed, with no democracy; or a revolution unfolds which forces a coup and ousts the corrupt in power, resulting in one of a number of alternatives. It is unlikely that economists would be uninformed of all these data mentioned and that they would be ignorant of the necessity of a large middle class in order for capitalism to exist.? Given that, how can we explain economists who attempt to convince a gullible, uneducated and uninformed populace that "growth" is the answer to all world problems when it is growth that is actually the very factor which will bring about the demise of all life on the planet if it is left unbalanced and unchecked with a moral, social and ecological duty to the common good.
With a few hundred multinational enterprises controlling approximately 25% of the productive assets in the world (Barnet & Cavanagh, 1994), these are becoming the imperial monarchies of the past. Barnet & Cavanagh (1994) refer to the "surplus of gifted, skilled, undervalued, and unwanted human beings" as the "Achilles heel" of the global system and that an astonishingly large and increasing number of people are not needed or wanted to make the goods or to provide the services that the paying customers of the world can afford". Referring to it as a "world economy out of control," Barnet and Cavanagh (1994) refer to a corporate, economic and political system that is unresponsive and unaccountable to the ever growing numbers of people who have lost jobs and are being bypassed due to chronic overproduction and global competition and advances in automation and training which make it easier to cut labor costs by shipping jobs overseas. With corporate executives riding the gravy train of unprecedented executive compensation, they are arrogantly denying responsibility for social and ecological consequences of a world economy out of control from avarice. The Calvin Klein shirt for which an American pays used to be sewn with domestic labor. Today, there is surely some worker in China, Bangladesh, Vietnam or United Arab Emirates who is working for slave labor wages in a sweatshop which now allows the maker to produce that shirt for substantially less and likely up to as much as 80% or 90% less. Unfortunately, for many Americans who buy the shirt, they are now working for lower wages after experiencing a lay-off and having to accept a lower income, so that when making that purchase, the maker is reaping substantially greater profits, but the purchasing power of the American is substantially less. In other words, the average American is paying more for goods, but because the increase in the cost of goods far outweighs the increase in wages, fewer goods can be purchased, or credit is increasingly used to maintain the same lifestyle prior to the decreased income. Meanwhile, the profit margin for the corporation continues to increase, the corporate executive compensation increases at annual averages of double digits, but the average annual wage increase for Americans between 2000 and 2006 was 1% (Herbert, 2007) and the median family income between 2001 and 2004 rose only 1.5% (Hall, 2006). According to a 2006 study by the Center for American Progress, a political think tank, Americans are now spending 126.4% of their income to cover the cost of living (CNN Money web site, 2006). Said another way, Americans are going into debt by about 26.4% to pay for daily consumption. Even a lay person with little background in economics could deduce that this cannot continue indefinitely. Indeed, George Soros, billionaire investor, stated before a 1998 Congressional inquiry that "the global capitalist system...is coming apart at the seams" (Soros, 2006). He argued that unless global financial markets are regulated internationally, the protectionist strategies of individual states vying to protect their own interests will lead to a global economic breakdown. Soros vehemently disagrees with the market fundamentalists such as those during the Reagan "politics of denial" era (Henderson, 1991) and Thatcher era who propound that a completely unregulated global market has an in-built tendency towards creating a stable supply and demand scenario and that the market is the best means to regulate human behavior. Soros states that "the capitalist system by itself shows no tendency toward equilibrium...the owners of capital seek to maximize their profits. Left to their own devices, they would continue to accumulate capital until the situation became unbalanced" (Soros, 2006). Korten, in When Corporations Rule the World, rightly tells us that the "freedom of the market is the freedom of those with money" (p. 89). He further states that:
"institutions of a capitalist economy are designed to concentrate control of the means of production in the hands of the few to the exclusion of the many. A capitalist economy is characterized by concentrations of monopoly power, financial speculation, absentee ownership, deregulation, public subsidies, the externalization of costs, and central economic planning by mega-corporations....the publicly traded, limited liability corporation is capitalism's institutional form of choice because it allows the virtually unlimited concentration of power with minimal public accountability or legal liability (p. 104)."
Korten further articulates that, while communism is the hegemony of the state,
"capitalism manifests a hegemony of financial markets and the corporation. Unconcerned with civic or social responsibility, the corporation has the primary goal of maximizing profits and "creating artificial demand for unnecessary and even harmful products" (p. 103). Because the people who work in corporations develop a master/slave relationship whereby they have an unhealthy need to remain in the corporate milieu due to fear of job loss, rising debts and less purchasing power, they are fearful to speak out in opposition for fear of jeopardizing their jobs and their careers (Korten, 2001, p. 92)."
From the 1950s through the 1990s, the neo-classical economists such as Milton Freidman have been touting "increased economic growth" as the savior of humankind. In other words, produce more and sell more. Because the wealthy stood to gain the most from "growth, growth, growth," they conveniently failed to tell the mass population that this also means consume more, waste more, pollute more and destroy the ecological system more. Put simply, "more growth" means digging your own grave faster and faster---literally. The masses of Americans in the middle and poor classes have borne the brunt of this devastating experiment developed by, perpetrated by and marketed by the wealthy elite. Those who have born the costs of this pathologically narcissistic corporatacracy have had their decision-making power stripped and many remain uninformed and unclear about what has happened and what is continuing to happen right under their noses because the media is now owned by major corporations who incessantly bombard the masses with interpretations of the crisis based on perceptions of those who hold all the power.? In Nazi Germany, it was called "propaganda," a means to mold, shape, and influence the masses to believe what those in power wanted them to believe. Similarly, the news and entertainment provided Americans is what the power holders, the top wealthiest in America, want the masses to be exposed to.? Some would call it "the fleecing of America" through corporate owned television, newspaper and radio stations. In 1989, Richard Douthwaite, an Irish economist who had once extolled the benefits of a "growth economy," had this sobering analysis upon realization of the illusion of a "free growth market economy" where corporations are virtually unregulated by governments:
Problems arose when I attempted to identify what they (the benefits) were, especially as it quickly became apparent that almost every social indicator had worsened over the third of a century the experiment had taken. Chronic disease had increased, crime had gone up eight fold, unemployment soared and many more marriage were ending in divorce. Almost frantically I looked for gains to set against these losses which, in most cases I felt, had to be blamed on growth. [E]ventually...I gave up.? The weight of evidence was overwhelming: the unquestioning quest for growth had been an unmitigated social and environmental disaster. Almost all of the extra resources the process had created had been used to keep the system functioning in an increasingly inefficient way. The new wealth had been squandered on producing pallets and corrugated cardboard, non-returnable bottles and ring-pull drink cans. It had built airports, supertankers and heavy goods lorries, motorways, flyovers and car parks with many floors. It had enabled the banking, insurance, stock brokering, tax collecting and accountancy sector to expand from 439,000 to 2,475,000 employees during the thirty-three years. It had financed the recruitment of over three million people to the 'reserve army of the unemployed.'? Very little was left for more positive achievements when all these had taken their share (in Korten, 2001, p. 45).
Because there is such an intimacy between society and the individual as it pertains to interlinking influences and changes, who can say how much of the collective psyche has influenced globalization versus how much globalization has influenced the individual and collective psyche of humankind?
From a philosophical standpoint, globalization is about the many versus the few elite. From a socio-economic view, it is about the struggle between the classes, between the few privileged elite who are garnering increasingly larger amounts of the world's wealth at the expense of the many who continue to experience job loss and decreasing purchasing power or, worse still, those who are living in abject poverty.
Become a Fan (3 fans) -- Page 2 of 7 page(s)
11. weakening of governments by corporatacracy
12. nuclear proliferation
Absent overpopulation, however, overconsumption, deforestation, overharvesting and global warming would most likely not exist. On the other side of the coin of overpopulation, there must be mention of lack of sufficient mineral and natural resources to sustain an overpopulated and increasingly ecologically decimated earth which can be summed up as "overconsumption." According to a Washington Post article in 1998, a majority of biologists (7 out of 10 scientists from the American Institute of Biological Sciences polled in a survey commissioned by the New York American Museum of Natural History) are convinced that a mass extinction is underway and that within 30 years, one fifth of all living species could become extinct (Warrick, 1998). The last mass extinction occurred 65 million years ago when dinosaurs did not survive a meteor collision. According to the NASA Earth Observatory web site (2006), deforestation occurs through commercial logging, development of infrastructure such as the building of dams, agricultural uses such as grazing cattle and planting crops. It has been identified, along with fossil fuel use, as a major anthropogenic cause of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide emissions (IPCC, 2007). Indeed, in the Working Group I Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) Report released February 2007, scientists have concluded with a "very high confidence" (meaning 9 out of 10 chance for accuracy) that it is very likely that global warming, including carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide emissions, has anthropogenic causes primarily from agriculture, land use changes and fossil fuel use, and that it is "very likely" (meaning >90% probability) this is unprecedented in the past 10,000 years (IPCC, 2007, pp. 4-5. Eight out of the last twelve years (1995-2006) have reported the warmest surface temperatures in recorded history (p. 5).? The IPCC, which builds upon the 2001 TAR Assessment by the IPCC, points to increased droughts, heavy precipitation, floods, extreme wind patterns leading to increased tropical cyclone activity (hurricanes and typhoons), heat waves, rising in air and ocean temperatures, glacier melts, and rises in sea level. Further, the February 2007 IPCC Report states that both past and future anthropogenic causes of carbon dioxide emissions will continue to negatively impact the planet for another 1,000 years due to the time it takes for the gases to dissipate from the atmosphere (IPCC, 2007, p. 17). According to World Wildlife Fund Director-General, James Leape, "if everyone around the world lived as those in America, we would need five planets to support us" referring to the 2006 Living Planet Report (MSNBC web page, 2006).? The Report also noted that in 2003, the world exceeded biocapacity by 25%. Another troubling statistic is that, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, a leading science-based non-profit organization working for a healthier environment, America has 5% of the world's population, but emits 25% of the world's carbon dioxide (UCS, 2006).? The Union of Concerned Scientists' web site also exposes the efforts of ExxonMobil which spent $16 million between 1998 and 2005 hiring advocacy organizations that intentionally discredit the overwhelming evidence pointing to global warming (UCS, 2006).
The noted "Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change," issued in September 2006 by Sir Nicholas Stern, an economist for the British government, states that "the scientific evidence is now overwhelming: climate change is a serious global threat, and it demands an urgent global response" (Stern, 2006, p. 1). Stern cautions that global warming may become the greatest economic failure ever experienced in the world as hunger, water shortages, flooding and increased temperatures are imminent unless action is taken within the next two decades. If no action or insufficient action is taken, severe adverse economic and social results will occur that parallel the World Wars and the Depression in the 20th century. Only an international collaboration in which all parties agree on long-term goals can avert this impending risk to the entire species on the planet.
The World Wildlife Federation (WWF, 2007) reports that the use of toxic man-made chemical has increased from 1 million to 400 million tons between 1930 and 2000 and is seeping into the soil and into the food chain of all animals which, ultimately, ends up in the human body. Additionally, the WWF (2007) also lists anthropogenic causes of invasive species as a major threat to the biosphere. Intentional and unintentional release of one species into another habitat has resulted in certain species of animals or plants consuming and eradicating the native species, thus, resulting in an unnatural biospheric arrangement, species devastation and/or near extinction. There are now thousands of invasive species listed by the WWF. Also listed as a major environmental hazard is overharvesting of fisheries in the world. The WWF (2007) reports that the global fishing fleet is 2.5 times larger than what the ocean can provide us and 52% of the world's fisheries have been fully exploited.
The Pew Center on Global Climate Change issued the Coastal and Marine Ecosystems And Global Climate Change report in August 2002, the Forest and Global Climate Change Report in February 2003, and the Coral Reefs and Global Climate Change Report in February 2004, all reports by scientific experts warning of the imminent adverse impact that global warming, overconsumption, overharvesting and overpopulation are causing these ecological systems and, ultimately, due to the interdependence of humanity and the biosphere, the impending demise of life on Earth.
These portend to be the most pernicious enemies of existing and future life on the planet. However, even if the world population were, for example, only a mere 100,000 people, there is no guarantee that the social, economic and political problems on the remainder of the list above would not exist as harmful threats. Factoring in overpopulation and global warming, however, old methods and means are sure to put all life species on Earth in ultimate peril. With an ever flattening social and cultural landscape due to the technological advances marking what Friedman calls the "Flat Earth" (Friedman, 2000), this makes hierarchical economic systems such as capitalism obsolete as effective tools since capitalism is based upon the premise that there has to be a sufficient number of people to purchase the ever constantly growing number of products and services being marketed and sold. It does not take a rocket scientist to understand that, in a capitalistic system, there must exist a large, robust middle class who is financially able to purchase the goods and services from those who own the capital.? When the middle class disappears and there is only a handful of extreme wealth at the top and the mass population is poor, capitalism cannot exist for long.? Of equal importance, neither can democracy.? Either a totalitarian and fascist society manifests where the masses are oppressed and suppressed, with no democracy; or a revolution unfolds which forces a coup and ousts the corrupt in power, resulting in one of a number of alternatives. It is unlikely that economists would be uninformed of all these data mentioned and that they would be ignorant of the necessity of a large middle class in order for capitalism to exist.? Given that, how can we explain economists who attempt to convince a gullible, uneducated and uninformed populace that "growth" is the answer to all world problems when it is growth that is actually the very factor which will bring about the demise of all life on the planet if it is left unbalanced and unchecked with a moral, social and ecological duty to the common good.
With a few hundred multinational enterprises controlling approximately 25% of the productive assets in the world (Barnet & Cavanagh, 1994), these are becoming the imperial monarchies of the past. Barnet & Cavanagh (1994) refer to the "surplus of gifted, skilled, undervalued, and unwanted human beings" as the "Achilles heel" of the global system and that an astonishingly large and increasing number of people are not needed or wanted to make the goods or to provide the services that the paying customers of the world can afford". Referring to it as a "world economy out of control," Barnet and Cavanagh (1994) refer to a corporate, economic and political system that is unresponsive and unaccountable to the ever growing numbers of people who have lost jobs and are being bypassed due to chronic overproduction and global competition and advances in automation and training which make it easier to cut labor costs by shipping jobs overseas. With corporate executives riding the gravy train of unprecedented executive compensation, they are arrogantly denying responsibility for social and ecological consequences of a world economy out of control from avarice. The Calvin Klein shirt for which an American pays used to be sewn with domestic labor. Today, there is surely some worker in China, Bangladesh, Vietnam or United Arab Emirates who is working for slave labor wages in a sweatshop which now allows the maker to produce that shirt for substantially less and likely up to as much as 80% or 90% less. Unfortunately, for many Americans who buy the shirt, they are now working for lower wages after experiencing a lay-off and having to accept a lower income, so that when making that purchase, the maker is reaping substantially greater profits, but the purchasing power of the American is substantially less. In other words, the average American is paying more for goods, but because the increase in the cost of goods far outweighs the increase in wages, fewer goods can be purchased, or credit is increasingly used to maintain the same lifestyle prior to the decreased income. Meanwhile, the profit margin for the corporation continues to increase, the corporate executive compensation increases at annual averages of double digits, but the average annual wage increase for Americans between 2000 and 2006 was 1% (Herbert, 2007) and the median family income between 2001 and 2004 rose only 1.5% (Hall, 2006). According to a 2006 study by the Center for American Progress, a political think tank, Americans are now spending 126.4% of their income to cover the cost of living (CNN Money web site, 2006). Said another way, Americans are going into debt by about 26.4% to pay for daily consumption. Even a lay person with little background in economics could deduce that this cannot continue indefinitely. Indeed, George Soros, billionaire investor, stated before a 1998 Congressional inquiry that "the global capitalist system...is coming apart at the seams" (Soros, 2006). He argued that unless global financial markets are regulated internationally, the protectionist strategies of individual states vying to protect their own interests will lead to a global economic breakdown. Soros vehemently disagrees with the market fundamentalists such as those during the Reagan "politics of denial" era (Henderson, 1991) and Thatcher era who propound that a completely unregulated global market has an in-built tendency towards creating a stable supply and demand scenario and that the market is the best means to regulate human behavior. Soros states that "the capitalist system by itself shows no tendency toward equilibrium...the owners of capital seek to maximize their profits. Left to their own devices, they would continue to accumulate capital until the situation became unbalanced" (Soros, 2006). Korten, in When Corporations Rule the World, rightly tells us that the "freedom of the market is the freedom of those with money" (p. 89). He further states that:
"institutions of a capitalist economy are designed to concentrate control of the means of production in the hands of the few to the exclusion of the many. A capitalist economy is characterized by concentrations of monopoly power, financial speculation, absentee ownership, deregulation, public subsidies, the externalization of costs, and central economic planning by mega-corporations....the publicly traded, limited liability corporation is capitalism's institutional form of choice because it allows the virtually unlimited concentration of power with minimal public accountability or legal liability (p. 104)."
Korten further articulates that, while communism is the hegemony of the state,
"capitalism manifests a hegemony of financial markets and the corporation. Unconcerned with civic or social responsibility, the corporation has the primary goal of maximizing profits and "creating artificial demand for unnecessary and even harmful products" (p. 103). Because the people who work in corporations develop a master/slave relationship whereby they have an unhealthy need to remain in the corporate milieu due to fear of job loss, rising debts and less purchasing power, they are fearful to speak out in opposition for fear of jeopardizing their jobs and their careers (Korten, 2001, p. 92)."
From the 1950s through the 1990s, the neo-classical economists such as Milton Freidman have been touting "increased economic growth" as the savior of humankind. In other words, produce more and sell more. Because the wealthy stood to gain the most from "growth, growth, growth," they conveniently failed to tell the mass population that this also means consume more, waste more, pollute more and destroy the ecological system more. Put simply, "more growth" means digging your own grave faster and faster---literally. The masses of Americans in the middle and poor classes have borne the brunt of this devastating experiment developed by, perpetrated by and marketed by the wealthy elite. Those who have born the costs of this pathologically narcissistic corporatacracy have had their decision-making power stripped and many remain uninformed and unclear about what has happened and what is continuing to happen right under their noses because the media is now owned by major corporations who incessantly bombard the masses with interpretations of the crisis based on perceptions of those who hold all the power.? In Nazi Germany, it was called "propaganda," a means to mold, shape, and influence the masses to believe what those in power wanted them to believe. Similarly, the news and entertainment provided Americans is what the power holders, the top wealthiest in America, want the masses to be exposed to.? Some would call it "the fleecing of America" through corporate owned television, newspaper and radio stations. In 1989, Richard Douthwaite, an Irish economist who had once extolled the benefits of a "growth economy," had this sobering analysis upon realization of the illusion of a "free growth market economy" where corporations are virtually unregulated by governments:
Problems arose when I attempted to identify what they (the benefits) were, especially as it quickly became apparent that almost every social indicator had worsened over the third of a century the experiment had taken. Chronic disease had increased, crime had gone up eight fold, unemployment soared and many more marriage were ending in divorce. Almost frantically I looked for gains to set against these losses which, in most cases I felt, had to be blamed on growth. [E]ventually...I gave up.? The weight of evidence was overwhelming: the unquestioning quest for growth had been an unmitigated social and environmental disaster. Almost all of the extra resources the process had created had been used to keep the system functioning in an increasingly inefficient way. The new wealth had been squandered on producing pallets and corrugated cardboard, non-returnable bottles and ring-pull drink cans. It had built airports, supertankers and heavy goods lorries, motorways, flyovers and car parks with many floors. It had enabled the banking, insurance, stock brokering, tax collecting and accountancy sector to expand from 439,000 to 2,475,000 employees during the thirty-three years. It had financed the recruitment of over three million people to the 'reserve army of the unemployed.'? Very little was left for more positive achievements when all these had taken their share (in Korten, 2001, p. 45).
Because there is such an intimacy between society and the individual as it pertains to interlinking influences and changes, who can say how much of the collective psyche has influenced globalization versus how much globalization has influenced the individual and collective psyche of humankind?
From a philosophical standpoint, globalization is about the many versus the few elite. From a socio-economic view, it is about the struggle between the classes, between the few privileged elite who are garnering increasingly larger amounts of the world's wealth at the expense of the many who continue to experience job loss and decreasing purchasing power or, worse still, those who are living in abject poverty.
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Wanda Woodward, M.S., is author of The Anatomy of the Soul: An Authentic Psychology which posits an original theoretical model of the Soul, or Transcendent Psyche. She is currently writing her second book, Malignant Masculine Power: The (more...)
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