The Ecology of Commerce

Tweet

The horse is that part of ourself that says, "Things are going to be OK, don't rock the boat." People will take care of things, and other people can solve the problems that face us, and . . . when you make money, you'll start to contribute to environmental causes, but right now the mortgage is expensive and the kids have schools. . . . right now you've got to take care of yourself. Somebody else is going to have to take care of the rest of the world. But what's the feather? That feather is our own innocence. It is the self we put aside in order to be successful, ambitious, and "strong." It is what we lost in our crusade to "achieve."

We can't change ourselves. But we can become ourselves. The economics of restoration is wholly dependent on all people beginning to restore their own nature and to heal themselves, to recognize their sense of connectedness to life around them. You cannot save the world if you're destroying yourself on the altar of workaholism, wolfing food, gulping coffee, taking red-eyes in the middle of the night, trying to do the work of three people. We cannot point the finger of blame for the Exxon Valdez when the underlying cause is a country completely drunk on oil. If our corporate organizations are dysfunctional, and I believe they are, it's because they allow us to continue our own illusions. Business is the only socially sanctioned addiction, the addiction to fame, wealth, and power. It is peculiarly male and represents only one possible reality. The economics of restoration is decidedly female. It is not an economy of stuff and things. It's one of processes, relationships, and connectedness.

Futurist Willis Harman summed it up far better than I when he said, "Business has become, in the last century, the most powerful institution on the planet. The dominant institution in any society needs to take responsibility for the whole. Every decision that is made, every action taken has to be viewed in the light of, in the context of, that kind of responsibility."

Do such businesses exist? I think they do. The Esprit Co., in San Francisco, is making a remark able effort in relationship to cotton farming, a crop that is without question the most destructive cash crop grown today. Patagonia, in Ventura, consistently has been the most generous corporation in America when it comes to supporting the environment. The Body Shop, headquartered in the United Kingdom but also with offices here in San Francisco, is a wonderful company, which not only works to clean up nurseries in Romania to prevent HIV infection, but works with Cultural Survival in the Amazon Basin, producing botanical products that ensure the long-term viability of both the forests and the tribes people that live there.

People today want leadership from their companies. They want business to stand up and be counted. Our government, as you know by reading today's headlines, is paralyzed, no more so than the former Soviet Union's, but just as much so. At the end of this century, people are beginning to draw near, and people are reevaluating and sorting out what is valuable in their lives and what is not. After all, that's what economics is all about -- deciding what's valuable. What the world desperately needs now is to have more value added to it, which is exactly what business should be about. Too much value has been taken away and destroyed. If adding value is what business should be about, then I suggest you can't add values unless you have them. Our personal values, seemingly so distant and removed from the juggernauts of commerce, are important and integral to the healthy functioning of our economy. Does capitalism in the free market have the vitality and integrity to reverse the destruction of the earth? I certainly don't know, but when I think about this question I recall what Mao Tse-tung said when he was asked about the French Revolution: he said it was too early to tell.

We know one thing: tomorrow we can't be the same business we are today. We can no longer evolve at our customers, we have to evolve with them, with their needs. Our businesses, I think, offer us as rich a way to change the world around us as does any institution. Every transaction in the scheme of things is small; it's incremental. It seems inconsequential, but each moment has potential to create real change. Our customers out there are now very apprehensive and they're very unsure. It's a very tough time in the economy. Not all of them are working, but those who are, are working hard, and they're fashioning lives that are connected to the needs and wants of others. They live within budgets. They wear many hats during the day, as do we, and go home, sometimes too tired to become mother and father. What do they want from us as businesses? They actually don't want that much, not really.

They know that commerce has its warts and its faults. Most of them work for a business. But in that moment when we contact one another, when a person comes to us for help and for a product, it's not just a service opportunity to sell more. It's a human opportunity. Because both we and the customer know what poets and rabbis and pastors and preachers have been trying to tell us for years: that this life is transient and ephemeral, that success and failure as popularly defined are really impostors, and that we as people find meaning with our hearts and our minds and our hands and our souls when we have the opportunity to serve another human being.

 PREV  1 | 2 | 3 | 4