There is a poisonous idea that is floated - and used as an excuse for all manner of artrocious behavior... That idea is this: It's ok to be a terrible human being to other people if it's Business.
You have seen this being promoted on TV shows and in movies... (maybe not so much in books) - Where somebody does something horrible, cruel, terrible and without ANY consideration for the impact that their action or decision is making... and they toss off this line "It's nothing personal. It's just business"
I would submit the following to counter that... There is NOTHING more personal than business.
The act of exchanging one value for another with another person IS a deeply intimate act. Where you earn your money... how you earn your money... where you spend your money, what you spend your money on... these are ALL very very important decisions and choices.
The idea that we should behave with sociopathy in so far as our relationship with consumers, purchasers, employers, employees etc... on the basis that "it's not personal.. it' s just busienss" -- is a CANCER on modern society and popular culture.
I have always been fascinated by the study of these kinds of relationships... the study of Economics. I have been horrified over the years to see all manner of evil behavior being justified by people, on the basis that because something is a "business" decision... that anything goes, just so long as the shareholders/owners of a business are getting their interests respected.
When I came home to Cowichan I wanted to learn about how our people engaged in traditional trade practices. And that was where Tetla was born from.. the idea that we could and SHOULD revitalize the principles, ethics and morality of our ancestors when conducting business or trade.
Our people believe in relationships as a primary way of looking at the world. We are told that it's very very short-sighted to not care about what impact a trade has on the people we do business with. We are taught that when doing business it's MOST important to make sure that the people who you trade with do not walk away from any transaction feeling cheated or blind-sided or in some way that they got the worse end of the deal. In fact, we are taught to be overly generous... to give more... to avoid even the appearance of cheating somebody... even if that appearance is a foolish conclusion based on faulty evidence.
And THIS is the wisdom that my ancestors developed over THOUSANDS of years... THAT in any trade, it was extremely short-sighted to engage in predatory behavior. To take any action that might be ruinous to others.
THIS is the OPPOSITE of "capitalism" -- Maybe that's not the right way to express this... I think the word "capitalism" is a lost cause to be honest. I prefer to use the term "natural market: as opposed to the so called "free market" or "capitalism" -- When I consider the wisdom of my ancestors who spent on average at least 1/3 of their lives engaged in business and trade. Our people enjoyed aquiring wealth because by doing so, we were always able to help the families and friends and relatives whomever might need the help for any reason. To be a Siem was to be somebody who made sure that nobody who they called relative was in need - particularly those who were vulnerable, or infirm or simply not capable of providing for themselves. It was a point of honor amongst the wealthiest of Siem that THEY - Siem would be the last to eat and the first to starve in ANY situation.
Siem had very very high standards of honesty, integrity and virtue. A Siem would bend over backwards to demonstrate their disdain for the hoarding of wealth for it's own sake... But would celebrate his/her wealth by demonstrating how much they could afford to give -- and give they did... But this was an investment in the people of his//her life. Our wealthy ancestors looked at wealth in a very very different way than people look at wealth today. I think our ancestors would be very puzzled by obscene displays of ostentatious consumption that serves no purpose other than to demonstrate how much one can afford to dispose of... In our culture -- the only time one would dispose of that kind of wealth would be to give huge amounts of wealth to friends, family, relatives, guests... and unless it was EXPLICITLY stated otherwise, it was understood that these gifts WERE in fact a kind of debt-loan-obligation, and that in due course and in gratitude for the use of these resources for a time, the loan-debt-gift would always be returned to the giver or their family... when the person who had recieved that gift decided... and that person would also decide how MUCH to increase or multiply the gift back.
See.. in an economy such as this -- It ONLY makes total SENSE to make sure that when you have concluded a deal with somebody that THEY walk away happy and continue to be happy with their end of the deal... It's only in a situation where it's dog-eat-dog -- "fuck you - it's not personal.. it's just business" -- where the attitude is "I'm gonna get whatever the fuck I can get away with!" --
AND THAT is what must change in our culture and our society in the years to come. A complete abdication of the idea that Business is not Personal... Business is THE most personal thing you can do. When you earn money.. you have given the most precious thing in the world in exchange for it.. YOUR TIME... Time can never be gotten back. Time is gone forever once it's been spent. So where you have spent your TIME in exchange for MONEY is perhaps the very most important kind of decision you can make. And the MONEY that has been aquired thanks to your use of your very limited time... well -- It's of the UTMOST importance where you decide that Time/Money will end up. It's only a kind of intellectual laziness and moral bankruptcy that has people intentionally refusing to make conscious and deliberate decisions about where their money/time is going... how it's being used.. what it is serving... what purpose it is being put to.
So THAT is part of the Tetla Manifesto that I am working on as well right now. Asking people to really think about the subconscious messages that they have been getting for decades of their lives about themselves and their relationship to money and spending practices... earning practices... business relationships.
One of the failures of the Environmentalist movements that I see is that they ask people to re-think their relationship with the biosphere - while ignoring the impact that changes in decisions and behaviors will have on people's ability to properly and effeciently manage to make decisions about how to earn enough resources to live beyond mere survival. People who are comfortable with the status quo need to be shown that it's extremely short-sighted to engage in spending/trade/earnings of things that ultimately will lead to a LOSS of time in their lives... At the worst extreme of this is if a person's life is cut short because they become sick/diseased because of the toxins in the biosphere and the poisons in the foods they consume... We are being constantly numbed to thinking about this... We are told over and over in every concievable way to think in only the very very short term when it comes to our health, our economy, our day to day choices...
This is what needs to be changed...
And I hate to break it to people -- but Government, Politics and Voting... NONE of that is going to get people to change or think more clearly about this stuff.
That idea that doing something terrible is okay if it's "just business", but not okay if it's "personal" seems to have entered pop culture in 1972 in the movie "The Godfather". It is pretty clear from the context that they were not referring to an idea that the audience was expected to understand.
After 1972, this "just business" idea is all over the place, often involving "business" that isn't business at all such as in the movie "Full Metal Jacket" where the line "nothing personal, it's just business" idea is expressed in almost those exact words. But it is two US Marines in the Vietnam War talking about the actions of the enemy in the war, not actual business.
This makes perfect sense when we understand that in the original context, in The Godfather, the "it's only business idea" wasn't talking about business either. It was members of a mafia organization discussing when they consider it okay to murder someone. The idea was that if it was done for strategic reasons to further the interests of their mafia family, then it was called "business". When it was done solely because someone had a personal grudge it was labeled "personal". In the movie, Al Pacino's character, Michael Corleone, wanted to kill the people who had killed his father -- mafia leader Vito Corleone. Michael was advised by others in the Corleone family that it was better to not to give in to such "personal" motives, but only to kill when it made strategic sense. Michael then made the case that it was "business" after all and gave a rationale based on that. The others were convinced and assisted Michael in murdering a police officer and a rival gangster. This is not real business. This is gangsters murdering people and calling it "business" as a euphemism for their organized crime operation.
I suspect that anyone who ever applied this idea to actual business probably doesn't understand the origin of the idea.
That's very interesting and not something that you see much in the world today. It's so counter to most things that we're taught: accumulate, buy, look better, get newer, be cooler. How different would life be if we were all in constant states of debt-loan-obligation. You would probably have closer relationships with those people and have more incentive to see them succeed.
Great food for thought!
:)