No excuse for rampant personal greed

Hey Joe,

My admiration for your writing is extreme, boundless. There is a touch of noble ennui, of a strange melancholy that I glean from your essays. The intensity of childhood reality, with its antebellum flowers and breezes, wafts around your words, words implicitly shedding the abstract foolishness of adult normality. Might I even ascribe a tiny measure of the mystical to your turning away from corporatist demons and tempters?

Speaking of "corporatist," I wanted to extend a few free-form thoughts. Until recently, I seethed quietly with utter disgust at the travesty of corporate personhood, as brought out in certain books and articles -- especially the film The Corporation -- that show how these artificial legal entities are sociopathic and amoral. Again, until recently, I bought into the notion that the CEOs and boards of directors were simply caught up in their hapless roles of acquiescing in all things to the bottom line of profit generation. That ordinary workers were exploited and abused as wage-slaves was merely a structural necessity, and managers were really good people just swept along on the corporate tide.

I no longer buy in to that. The bottomline and productivity be damned! There is no excuse for rampant personal greed and mistreatment of others. If one must choose between "success" (as measured by ladder-climbing or share-increasing at all costs) or "failure" (characterized as a lack of wealth and ambition), then one must embrace the latter. To do otherwise is despicable. One is not morally entitled to deflect evil behavior by thinking of himself as just a single cell in the invisible corporate Golem.

So, it's really simple: if one's job requires that they boss around (control) other human beings, then one is a spiritual criminal, an assaulter of souls, a low-life beneath contempt.

Best regards,

Tim

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Tim,

That's quite a mind blowing letter. I have been trying to find the words to write those very same thoughts, and even the same observations for over a month now.

And somehow, I think an ever growing number of us are coming to that same understanding, which can only be called moral and spiritual. And so, even though it will not thrill my book editor or my agent, I have decided to take my writing in that direction -- simply because I have no other choice.

It is quite comforting to know I will be in such fine company as you and so many others I am meeting who believe as you and I do.

In brotherhood,

Joe