R.K.: Tell me!
J.B.: As I said, I write. I try to educate the public. I am involved in various kinds of non-governmental organizations, in particular, some unions, and I am involved quite substantially in a political party, The New Democratic Party in Canada (NDP), which is the official opposition federally. And you know, it's historically part of the Socialist International. It's a progressive political party and I believe my time as a citizen is best spent trying to get that party elected and trying to help it maintain it's momentum in being a critical voice in Canadian politics. So that's what I do.
R.K.: Okay. So are there people who have been in touch with who have seen the movie and been inspired by it who stand out as taking positive actions?
J.B.: Yeah. It's really one of the most gratifying sort of aspects of that film that I occasionally get the email and, I am sure there are many anecdotal stories out there than the ones I hear, but somebody says: I saw your film, or I read your book and it changed the way I think about these things; and, you know, I was on my way to becoming a chartered accountant and I just completely changed my career course and I am now working for Move-On, or some other organization. And, you know, that is very gratifying to me. It is hard for me to gauge in a less anecdotal more empirical way what the effect of the work has been, but as I said at the outset, it clearly hasn't changed the world because the issues that we addressed have not progressed in a positive way.
R.K.: Others have written about how different inventions have changed human cultures, even the way people think and perceive, particularly the invention of writing, printing, the Gutenberg Press. What about the corporation? Do you see ways that the existence of corporations has changed the way that people see, think; the way the culture functions?
J.B.: Yes, that's a great question. That's a really interesting point. The corporation itself was a product of inventions, namely the invention of the steam engine which led to the possibility of creating large scale industry be it large factories, or in particular railroads were very much a precipitating factor. And once you had these large entities you needed more money to fund them and finance then than you could get from existing business forms, namely the partnership.
And so the corporation was actually invented to be a financing vehicle for large industry that in turn was made possible through the invention of the steam engine. And then, once the corporation was invented, yes, it had a profound impact on our society. And what I am tracing in" to kind of try to put this in a nutshell,what I am tracing in my current work is how the operating principles of the corporation, which I identified as psychopathic in the corporation, have now in effect become the operating principles of our society as a whole.
So that the corporation is no longer just an institution within our society, but we are becoming, or have become, a corporate society. One that has, in effect, adopted those narrowly self-interested operating principles to define what we're supposed to be doing as a society, to create a kind of hyper individualism, to corrode any sense of collective, or solidaristic ties among us, to suggest that there are no values anymore. There is only value.
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