Corporate America Meets Feudalism: The Path to Freedom

Corporate America Meets Feudalism (see article above) covered some of the ways in which corporate hierarchy mirrors the feudalistic systems of the Middle Ages. With this article, I hope to provide one type of alternative to these systems.

I noted before that "we should work to find a paradigm that benefits a majority of people, not a minority of elite individuals born into privilege and resource." How do we go about doing that?

The answer is "not easily." As mentioned in the prior article, corporations exert an almost omnipresent control over our lives. Everything from the house you live in to the keyboard I am typing on bears the stamp of some corporate system. We listen to, look at, and are surrounded by advertisements for these corporations. Our lives are inundated with corporate jargon, and as if that weren't enough, they represent the sole source of income for millions of us.

Perhaps before concerning ourselves with new paradigms, we should first ask how we could possibly wrest back control of our lives from these virtually god-like systems. The answer is simple: community. Corporations seek to divide and categorize people into demographic groups. Advertisement functions primarily by making the individual permanently isolated and insecure. If we can be slotted into a demographic, forced to feel insecure, and then told that there is something out there that will finally fill that hole in our lives, something that can make us self-actualized simply by virtue of having it, we will jump at the chance to buy whatever they are selling. To defeat that system, we have only to talk to each other. By establishing a sense of community with other people (where community is defined as a group of people joined together formally or informally because of common interests or ideas) we can actually define ourselves outside of the messages being fed to us by the surrounding media.

Once we form an identity independent of what they (corporations) are selling, we can begin to move forward and we can begin to change the status quo. Any hierarchical system you can think of only works through the complicity and support of the people involved. As noted by Brad Pitt's character in Fight Club:

"God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off." (Pahlaniuk)

Once people begin to identify themselves outside of consumerist culture they can begin to deconstruct it. When people discover that their connections with each other matter more than the need to collect goods, corporations have lost their battle to isolate, categorize, and manipulate. People very well may be "pissed off" as they realize how their lives, indeed the human condition, has been sterilized, packaged, and mass-marketed. But what is the next step?

Having common ideas and ideals is one thing, but forming those commonalities into a sustainable working community can be another entirely. If the best way to short-circuit corporate power involves placing limits upon that power through disidentification, then to deconstruct that power one can gradually replace goods and services provided normally by corporations with goods/services produced locally by members of the community. This can be something as simple as buying your produce from the local Farmer's Market to something as complicated as starting a small business/non-profit devoted to providing an important service to community members. This kind of activity inhibits the growth of big business in your area, and you have the added bonus of getting great services that you normally wouldn't be getting from a no-name corporate hierarchy.

The key is to go local, and to provide people in the community with a support network that no corporate hierarchy can provide. The best defense we all have against being crushed by the psychological violence of our consumerist and corporate culture is ourselves; and we must learn that if we intend on changing anything in our social sphere. People in Washington can talk, but it is people on the ground, helping and talking with other people, who make the real changes in any society. We must start rebuilding autonomous communities if we are to have any hope of reconnecting with each other, ourselves, and with intelligent public discourse.