The corporation

The faceless corporate had been painted as the enemy of man in popular culture and broader artistic endeavour. The idea is haunting. Some kind of machinery driving its machinations through its cogs and gears to achieve some broad vague goal that sounds appealing in concept but nefarious in practice.

Of course, the reality is that it is not just the corporate that can behave and seem this way. There is the bureacracy that is a manifestation if a “government” or even a non-profit. There is also loose organisations centered on single-dimensional stuff (hobbies, interest groups, certain kind of political activism, etc).

The point is this idea of a “corporate” or some kind of machinery is anti-thetical to being human. Why would that be so? Here’s the tricky part.

We are all complex and multi-dimensional that in creating singular objectives or goals and trying to relentlessly pursue them reduces us to something less than human. And those “big entities” essentially embody this limited dimensionality compared to what life really is. Same goes with money, when we make everything in business about that. We reduce richness with riches. What a shame.

We don’t have to be anti-corporate. But we probably would do better to understand why its reach should not be all-extending.