Holy Profits

“For complex reasons, our culture allows ‘economy’ to mean only ‘money economy.’ It equates success and even goodness with monetary profit because it lacks any other standard of measurement.” –Wendell Berry

The only benefit of monoculture is to allow a farmer to more easily make greater sums of money. The species of plant used is inevitably worse off for it, as it is more vulnerable to disease due to its lack of genetic variety. Of the literally thousands of potato varieties that exist, no more than twenty make up three-quarters of the total potato harvest in the United States. Monoculture makes all the steps from sowing to harvesting to selling a crop more palatable to an individual or group’s revenue. Therefore, a monoculture is a method of harnessing the Earth’s resources for financial gain, regardless of the side effects to life itself.

So what is globalization then, if it is that? It may be used as a way to reduce variety to more simply market and milk a populace for their resources, regardless of ill effects on those being used or the users themselves. This cynical view should not be seen as attempting to exclude possible good effects. However, one must also take into account the fact that international corporations have jumped on the bandwagon of this globalization movement. At the risk of sounding paranoid, why would so many corporations want to be a part of something that wasn’t going to be a boon for them? And as we’ve seen time and again, big business corporations are Machiavellian entities with very little accountability.

In the corporate world, you will hear individuals extol their belief that capitalism means maximizing their profits by any means, in order to “best serve their stockholders.” This results in corporations having an ethical blank check, as profit is the only guiding principle. Western civilization has become a materialistic society with very little reverence for life, even the lives of our own kind. The culture of separation has made it exceedingly difficult for us to care for anyone or anything “different” from us. Now corporate economist culture is making a power play to encompass the whole world with unsustainable consumerism driven by a natural human desire to feel safe and connected to others. However, despite the rhetoric, there is far less room for diversity of thought in the globalization monoculture than in the previous eras of “fragmentation.” It is much easier to market to people who share the same worldview.