Douglas Rushkoff traces how corporations went from a convenient legal fiction to the dominant fact of contemporary life. His movie traces the history of our current economic debacle back to the Middle Ages, and how current crisis is actually an opportunity to reinstate commerce and communities based in creating value for one another, rather than continuing to extract it for the benefit of institutions that no longer exist.
Rushkoff has struck a nerve in Life Inc. We are undergoing a values shift in North America, and in my coaching conversations with clients, newly unemployed senior executives and managers, are telling me they do not want to go back to a corporate environment. They are tired, angry and frustrated by the dehumanising effects of bureaucracy. Moreover they are unwilling to continue allowing their creativity to be buried. It occurs to me we have entered an era of corporate refugees.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not opposed to corporations per se. There are enlightened corporations who value creativity, talent and initiative, and who want to improve quality of life, but the truth is, these companies are rare in the larger scheme of things.
I do see hope for the future. The crisis is causing us to re-think what’s important in work and life, and to re-design the economic landscape.
Life Inc. is available at Amazon
[...] Life Inc.: A movie + book about how the world became a corporation and how to take it back [...]