Where is society's breaking point for stupidity and corruption spewed out by our 'beloved' corporations?!?!

Culture Jam, 73-136:

1. “This nice ripe, red tomato, a Flavr Savr,” is genetically speaking part flounder.” Really? This is crazy. We need to just grow tomatoes and other vegetables as vegetables. They are delicious the way they are and don’t need to be fiddled with. And of course, this technology is owned by Monsanto, who else? I also found the study done by UCLA on supermarket brussel sprouts to be quite interesting as well. The study found these brussels sprouts had almost no traces of vitamins. No wonder Americans suffer from obesity and malnutrition at the same time. We take perfectly good vegetables and genetically engineer them so they have no nutritional value whatsoever, and then we wonder why we are so sick. The drug companies then swoop in and feed us full of medications to compensate for our sicknesses that probably derived from the “food” we are being fed.
2. A quote from Robert Solow in The Global Economic Pyramid Scheme section absolutely blew my mind. He stated that “If it is easy to substitute other factors for natural resources, then …the world can, in effect, get along without natural resources, so exhaustion is just an event, not a catastrophe.” And this man is a Nobel laureate. It is this kind of thinking that is going to dig planet earth into an ever deepening hole. Even if we could physically get along without natural resources, which I don’t believe we could, the psychological effects on the human psyche, without any nature or natural resources would be a catastrophe in itself. Imagine a world without trees, or any other natural resource. Humans, although we seem to forget it, still need some sort of connection with nature to keep us sane. Take that away, and I don’t want to see what the world would be like then.
3. I also found another concept in this same section to be quite interesting. “Our current economic system cannot tolerate any reduction in consumption. We simply cannot deal with that idea. That is our rigidity. And that is the kind of rigidity that brings civilizations down. For a species to survive in nature they must be flexible and adaptable to the environment and the changing world around them. If they can’t change the environment will prevail, not the species. If humans can’t change the way we think and make the necessary changes to adapt to the rest of the world, then we are silly to think we will come out triumphant.
4. I also found the idea of how cars have “ …eroded our sense of village and the vitality of our neighborhoods” to be really interesting. The introduction of cars has decreased societies need for more face -to -face interaction. As the author put it, “ The arteries may be alive, but the beating heart of community is hard to find.”
5. I also agree that “…chronic TV watching is America’s number one mental health problem, and that a society in which citizens spend a quarter of their waking lives (more than four hours a day) in front of their sets is in serious need of shock therapy.” It’s so true. There is so much out in the world to actually experience. But since pretty much every aspect of life has been televised, people don’t feel the need to actually go out and see for themselves. They don’t know what they are missing. Furthermore, chronic television watching is probably one of the causes of so many of the other mental health problems in our society today.

My question is what is it going to take for people to wake up and smell the corruption and deception flowing right beneath their feet? Where is society’s breaking point for excessive nonsense?


The Corporation:
It’s crazy to follow the progression of the perception of the concept of a person, capital, and property. First slaves were considered capital and property . Then, finally with the fourteenth amendment they were considered to be people in the eyes of the government. Then over the next thirty years, everyone returned to a sort of capital and property with the recognitions of corporations as people. Its quite the nonsensical cycle. Frankly it needs to be stopped. I also found the part of the movie that delved into what kind of person a corporation to be ingenious. In my opinion, their diagnosis of a psychopath fits perfectly. Another issue brought up on the film that really bothers me is the putting of antibiotics into food. We then ingest those antibiotics through the food, however small the amount. This builds up over time, and thus, you have the birth of many bizarre antibiotic resistant strains. People get sicker and then need more medicine. People spend more money on medicine and treatments because they are sick and our economy looks like it has good progress. That should not work. Our GDP should not increase at the expense of peoples’ health. I also found this concept of the person behind the corporation not being as horrible a person as the corporation. It was interesting to hear a CEO of a company talk about how his values and beliefs are different from those he makes for the company because he has to. This seems as though we have created this sort of monster that is now beyond our control. Not good, not good. We cannot let this happen. If our economy and businesses are beyond dour control, we are at their mercy, and should not be. The creator should not become the victim. I also really appreciated the question, “Why does something gain wealth when a company puts a fence around it?” It’s interesting to think about. It goes along with why are designer bags and clothes so much more expensive? You are buying a name, nothing more. Also, there was one point in the film where a marketing woman said she was asked if what she was doing was ethical, and she replied that she didn’t know. Well, lets think about this. If you don’t know if it’s ethical or not, it probably means you really just don’t want to tell the truth. Which means that in all actuality what you are doing is not ethical, which means you should stop doing what your doing. The fact that this woman thought that by not admitting it was unethical made her actions less unethical, is just stupid and wrong. Also another person in the film made a comment along the lines of you should have faith in the corporate world because its always going to be there. This is the absolute wrong thinking a person could possible have. Why don’t you just roll over and die right now. You can’t change anything if you don’t think you can. The exact opposite of their thinking works just as well, it’s just a matter of which school of thought to choose. And I know that everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, but in my opinion, in this case, there is a right and a wrong school of thought; the latter being the correct one.
I think that most of the United States is not familiar with this film’s content because of a number of reasons. For one thing, corporations do a damn good job of covering their asses. They distract people with colors and material goods, and sales and fatty food, and slowly dumb them down over time to be more apt to buy into their advertisements for more stuff. Also, if people are content in how they are living, they aren’t going to seek out problems with their source of pleasure. Corporations are providing people with stuff to satisfy their blind consumer needs. You can’t bite the hand that feeds you, never mind stop to breathe, when the hand that feeds you is forcefully shoving food down your throat. I think if more people knew about the content of this film and acted on it together, a lot more could be accomplished than a few people knowing about this information, and an even fewer amount having the guts to independently act on this information. There is strength in numbers, and without numbers, all you got is a few smart, determined, outside –of-the –box-thinking people without the support to get the ball rolling.