Corporatism and cancer

[mqbush]

Commenting on the corporate mindset, someone said “Unrestrained growth is the ideology of cancer.” (I apologize to the author for not remembering her name. Can anyone help me here?)

A human is a cooperative community of many kinds of cells, each of which benefits by contributing to the health of the whole. Skin cells do not cheat liver cells out of their blood supply. Bone cells do not go to war against kidney cells. Eye cells do not compete against pituitary cells. If one wise guy cell thinks he’s so smart for being greedy (ie, becoming cancer), and snickers smugly at his prosperity, he eventually learns that the boring old-time cells knew what they were talking about, because the organism dies from the cancer, and the cancer dies along with it. It’s an expensive lesson, and yet no cancer lives to pass on this knowledge to aspiring future cancers. But healthy organisms do get to pass on the eons-old success of cooperation.

So, come on, tell me,-who’s the airy-fairy, head-in-the-clouds fool, and who’s the shrewd and savvy real-world realist? The cancer/corporation/military empire/robber baron? Or the inner-city clinic volunteer/labor unionist/diplomat/populist? The defier of evolutionary trial and error wisdom? Or the embodiment of it? The rightist or the leftist?

Who’s the fool, and who knows better? Come on, people, tell your friends and neighbors, family and co-workers. The fools have had their way long enough. We can’t afford to let them continue; they’re cancer, you know, and cancer kills.

[madokie]

1. is there any sense to be made of this

are you sure you want an answer

[patrice]

2. One also wonders just how much actual cancer we would be seeing

if it weren't for corporate hegemony.

[Echo In Light]

3. Concrete cancer