Hong’s Stories: The individual disappears

“As we’ve seen the collectivist pattern taking over all over society the paradox is you get a form of totalitarianism which is producing collectivism, and then you get a kind of creation of greater and greater monopolies of commerce bigger and bigger business producing a kind of organization of man that is the equivalent to totalitarianism, an organization of man where this individual disappears, where this politics of individuation which you might call democracy ceases to exists. This is the point where we have reached, at the moment, and at this point, all that is inferior which Jung used to call the shadow in man comes to the surface.”
Matter of Heart

At all cost

This prescient quote comes from one of Carl Jung’s disciples speaking 50 years ago. Yet his words ring even truer today — we have been asked to sacrifice our individuality in order to fit into a corporate mold, a form of economic totalitarianism.

The nature of business in the US is to seek growth at all cost. A company starts out focused on building relationships and customer demand for its product or service, but inevitably if successful the original business matures, and the company must look outside for growth. The bigger the company the bigger the targets it must go after, and at the same the more interesting it becomes to even bigger players.

As our US economy matures, the biggest companies keep getting bigger with enormous and growing monopolistic appetites. Walmart and Amazon can theoretically buy any business if they so wish. The result of these monopolies carving up the market is the destruction of the local business model.

Studies have shown that at the simple employment level, the effect of a regional Walmart opening appears to be neutral as Walmart hires about as many people as it displaces.

“Though the actual extent of job loss is hard to determine according to research by the Institute of Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), in 2015 Amazon’s impact on jobs in the U.S. was a net loss estimated at 148,774 jobs. Another estimate by American Booksellers Association (ABA) and Civic Economics pegged net job loss at 222,000 for 2015. This gap could increase further with automation.” The Amazon Effect On The U.S. Economy | Investopedia https://www.investopedia.com/insights/amazon-effect-us-economy/#ixzz5PgdS4E9G

But is employment the right metric?

When independent local entrepreneurs serve their community, they host and support a vibrant local economy with fundamentally aspirational qualities of community-based business and home ownership, of following in footsteps and growing a family business, of struggling to build something. Walmart and other big companies replace this with a future of economic servitude and turn downtowns into ghost towns.

At the same time, these large corporations that have taken over the economy have also taken over the political system. Since 2012, they have gained the legal rights of a citizen, yet with bottomless pockets to promote their self-interests.

While technology has been the single biggest driver of consolidation, it also has the potential to swing the pendulum back. Next wave business support platforms and technology such as blockchain help even the playing field for individual entrepreneurs by enabling them to link up their businesses to more efficiently share resources and compete with bigger players.

Beyond the numbers, people should recognize the spiritual destruction that is caused by propagating and supporting corporate monopolies. By giving up the individual struggle for true self-definition in the interest of financial security, we dig our own early grave.

Hong’s Stories are reflections of a Shaolin monk in training