The Invasion of The Corporate Bodysnatchers

The Poet Charles Bukowski

Joining and allegiance. Power and control. Becoming and reward. Success and recognition. This is the ebb and flow of worldly life as played out within our human organizations. Give this and you'll get that. All within the well worn manufactured paths of production, for it's all about doing, not being. Groups are the temporal ground of this world into which our psychic roots grow. What I do is who I am, this is becomings illusory identity. Maya. Any group you join is fertile ground for thoughts illusions, spawning many a Plato's Cave and untold Shakespearean Tragedies, but society's fires seem to give us comfort and security from the darkness that surrounds us. So we accept the good with the bad, put on our masks, and go to work. We do our jobs. We don't want to die in the night.

So why do we live the corporate life? It's where the money is.

It's survival of the fittest. I got mine so you get yours. Survival is the core mission of every corporate endeavor and the basest of all values. Us or them. Kill or be killed. The impunity with which corporate multinationals have raped indigenous peoples, ethnic groups, individuals, towns, cities, states, the American middle class, third world countries, and even the earth itself over the last few centuries reveals the extent of their values. Values? They don't need no stinking values, for corporate social responsibility is pure fiction. Sure they fund a few charities with golf tournaments and such, but that's just sheep's clothing to hide the teeth of devouring wolves. Advertising's con game. The corporate world is responsible for The Sixth Great Extinction of Species, the one going on now, what they call Global Warming. Do you see them doing anything of significance about what they have done?

So there he is. Some guy in a three piece suit at the airport staring into his laptop, face aglow. He believed what they told him and so divided his world. He's put the blinders on and doesn't look up to see the people around him. Money and function determine his judgements and limit his vision. No one he loves is near. The flashing screen seems to be all that he is. Conditioned by the superficial, he's a hollow man. There just isn't much to him. Day by day, moment by moment, he walks the line. Conforms to the norms. Doesn't rock the boat. Never is free to ask himself the big questions. What a waste, committing psychological suicide for money.

Is it responsibility that drives him? Fear? Greed? Observing ambition is like watching a fat person attack a big plate of juicy spare ribs, all hot off the grill. It's not a pretty thing to watch. The plastic values, plywood dreams, and cardboard personalities are what modern society have produced. Our lives, and all the life around us, is diminished as the world is being destroyed by bureaucrats. No bang, just a whimper.

Bukowski used to look out of his window at his neighbors returning home from work, their faces so twisted by the horror that they looked worse than any ghoulish Halloween mask. Good old Bukowski, there wasn't a corporate bone in his body.