06 September 2008

Corporate Power: the Ethics of Social and Environmental Degradation

This is a work in progress. Here are few statements that I want to explore, and a few questions that I want to answer and work with in more depth.

1) Statement: Corporate Power - that power which is vested in the biggest and most massive (primarily) international corporations - is doing harm to humanity and to the planet (to animals, plants, rocks, landscapes, mountains, oceans, air, water, etc.).

2) Question: Is it unethical to reap financial profit, from those activities which do harm and cause degradation: whether to individuals, whole societies, or whole systems (eco-systems or planets)? An alternative question is to ask "what are the ethics involved in" the process of reaping financial reward from activities which do harm / cause degradation.

(Yes, moralizing can be difficult, but we have social values and morals and ethics for a reason - to provide for the well-being, and to protect, individual, society, and increasingly more so, the very planet itself.)

Taken to its extreme and ultimate final end product, social and environmental degradation could possibly result in a destroyed planet - i.e. planetary destruction. It's scary to think that humanity may be so advanced "techno'logically'" that it will even be able to escape such a destroyed planet - only to spread a culture of degradation and destruction into other worlds...

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