Problem: America's Soul?

Critics contend that the power of the business community has become so encompassing that virtually all dimensions of American life have absorbed elements of the business ethic. Values commonly associated with businesspeople (competition, profit-seeking, reliance on technology, faith in growth) have overwhelmed traditional humanist values (cooperation, individual dignity, human rights, meaningful service to society). In the name of wealth, efficiency, and productivity, the warmth, decency, and value of life have been debased. We engage in meaningless work. Objects dominate our existence. We operate as replaceable cogs in a vast, bureaucratic machine. Indeed, we lose ourselves, the critics argue. Charles Reich, former Yale University law professor, addressed the loss of self in his influential book of the Vietnam War era, The Greening of America: Of all of the forms of impoverishment that can be seen or felt in America, loss of self, or death in life, is surely the most devastating. . . . Beginning with school, if not before, an individual is systematically stripped of his imagination, his creativity, his heritage, his dreams, and his personal uniqueness, in order to style him into a productive unit for a mass, technological society. Instinct, feeling, and spontaneity are repressed by over-whelming forces. As the individual is drawn into the meritocracy, his working life is split from his home life, and both suffer from a lack of wholeness. Eventually, people virtually become their professions, roles, or occupations, and are henceforth strangers to themselves.77

Some interesting empirical evidence supports Reich's view that we have become hollow men and women dominated by the demands of big institutions. The Harris Alienation Index measures feelings of economic inequity (the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer), feelings of powerlessness (being left out and not counting for much) and feelings that those running the country do not really care about the welfare of others. Those responses are combined into an alienation "score." That score stood at a low of 29 in its first year, 1966, and has generally been rising since with the 2011 score of 63 among the highest ever.78 Actor and conservative commentator Ben Stein, speaking in 2006, lamented an increasingly divided America where the interests of corporations and the wealthy are dominant and the well-being of others is in danger of being forgotten: The Saturday before Memorial Day I spoke to a gathering of widows and widowers, parents and children of men and women in uniform who have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The person who spoke before me was a beautiful woman named Joanna Wroblewski, whose husband of less than two years-after four years of dating at Rutgers-had been killed in Iraq. She cried as she spoke. . . . She spoke of her devotion to her country and her husband's pride in the flag. . . . Are we keeping the faith with Joanna Wroblewski? . . . Are we maintaining an America that is not just a financial neighborhood, but also a brotherhood and a sisterhood worth losing your husband for? Is this still a community of the heart, or a looting opportunity? Will there even be a free America for Mrs. Wroblewski's descendants, or will we be a colony of the people [foreign lenders] to whom we have sold our soul?79

Questions

1. A brief analysis of social media advertising techniques employed to promote Ford, Mello Yello, Grey Poupon, and Sephora emphasized the value and power of those ads on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. The article, entitled "4 Examples of How Corporate America Is Crushing Social Media,"80 argued that those four products were effectively marketed online by presenting interesting content that readers would be inclined to share with their social networks.

a. Do those corporate advertising campaigns diminish the quality of your social media experience? Explain. b. Do we need a social media "zone" free of corporate advertising messages? Explain.

2. a. Do Americans trust the business community? Explain.

b. Does it matter? Explain.

3. In 1980 Ted Peters, an associate professor of systematic theology at the Pacific Lutheran Seminary and the Graduate Theological Union, asked:

How will the advancing postindustrial culture influence the course of religion? It is my forecast that religion will become increasingly treated as a consumer item. Because our economy produces so much wealth, we are free to consume and consume beyond the point of satisfaction. There is a limit to what we can consume in the way of material goods-new homes, new cars, new electronic gadgets, new brands of beer, new restaurants, and so on. So we go beyond material wants to consume new personal experiences-such as broader travel, exotic vacations, continuing education, exciting conventions, psychotherapy, and sky diving. What will come next and is already on the horizon is the consumption of spiritual experiences-personal growth cults, drug-induced ecstasy, world-traveling gurus, training in mystical meditation to make you feel better, etc. Once aware of this trend, religious entrepreneurs and mainline denominations alike will take to pandering their wares, advertising how much spiritual realities "can do to you." It will be subtle, and it will be cloaked in the noble language of personal growth, but nevertheless the pressure will be on to treat religious experience as a commodity for consumption.81

a. Is Peters's forecast coming true? Explain.

b. Is marketing necessary to the survival and growth of religion? Explain.

c. Is marketing a threat to the legitimacy and value of religion? Explain.

4. In your opinion, which of the following will be the biggest threat to America in the future: big government, big labor, or big business?

5. Do you think allegiance to the company will become more important than allegiance to the state? Is that a desirable direction? Raise the arguments on both sides of the latter question.

6. As expressed in BusinessWeek, "Increasingly, the corporation will take over the role of the mother, supplying day care facilities where children can be tended around the clock."82 How do you feel about the corporation as mother? Explain.