M = E/C^2: Corporations do not care?

To our good friends–

I have been tempted often to think “Corporations do not care.” Is that true? In a purely logical way it is–corporations are legal fictional persons, and as such have no feelings or abilities to care.

But on the other hand, they are fictions peopled, and people do care.

It could be a large self-fulfilling myth that people in corporations are living out: we are here for the money. Is that really true? If, as we say, money is only a medium of exchange, what are we exchanging our energy and lives for? Is it not for making life better for a group larger than me, indeed for a group than those of us within the corporation?

This gets back to Michael Herman’s take on Einstein’s E=MC2: energy is exchanged for material things and vice versa: we exchange our efforts (energy) and our dreams (also energy) for a paycheck (stored energy) which we then exchange for a house, car, food, clothing (mass). In the corporation we also exchange the efforts and ideas as energy for massive machinery, buildings, desks and chairs (mass).

It goes the other way too: we exchange our machinery and earth moving equipment for influence in the world’s councils of power (energy). Personally we exchange a visit in our opulent house and an offering of our food (mass) for favors and reputation among those we want to think well of us (energy).

So this is news; how do we use it?

* We can become more fluid in how we think: we can see that we really fluidly move back and forth between the physical and the non-physical realms.

* We can listen more openly to others who habitually think in a way different from how we habitually think and speak.

Surely there is more here.

* We can learn to speak in the language of those we often consider different from and therefore less human than us.

* We can ask of ourselves and the things we say, Is it true? Can I know for sure it is true? What if it were not true? What if the opposite were true? Who am I beneath all this if neither is true?

What is mass? Is it true that it is the same as matter? I do not know the scientific answer to that.

If we turn the equation around, we get M-E/C2. Mass therefore is smaller than Energy, energy is more powerful than mass. Hmmm…. Our brains and our culture have been telling us for some time that mass–amassed fortunes for instance, amassed power–is more important that the energy of thousands of poor and lowly people.

People in corporations, people in power are not the enemy. Only our myths are. They are living in these myths and caught up in the sticky spider webs of our myths as much as we are. We think we are free; likely we are not, either. We only therefore have a call to be kind with each other, to live in truth, and in truth’s mother, beauty, and in truth’s grandfather, love.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on November 5th, 2005 | No Comments »

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