I hate all corporations.
There’s not a single one I feel an iota of affection for; because why would I have good feelings for inhuman entities obsessed with money? This post isn’t to convince you how to feel but to share how my relationships with corporations evolve.
I think it was only last year that I found and fell in love with Over The Garden Wall. It’s a fall cartoon series that I have been looking forward to rewatching all year. (I watched it many times last fall and winter—and possibly spring!) It is a Cartoon Network production, part of Warner that was bought out by Discovery. Discovery has trashed a ton of programs, to make room I suppose for all their reality series they push in my face that I will never watch. OTGW is no longer there. A search produces nothing. I use JustWatch.com to see where things are steaming. OTGW is on Hulu now. That means ad breaks. Even with a good ad blocker some get through or there’s a pointless minute or two of silence. I may or may not watch this program I was affectionately anticipating. I have lost none of my appreciation for the production, the creators, the voices, the characters. That all remains strong. All I have is greater hatred of a corporation. It’s a small example. Multiply by dozens of daily experiences and by billions of humans on this planet and that’s a significant factor in alienation. We interact at all times with entities that have no feelings, no respect for us or anything but profit. Surely I’m not the only human alive who feels nothing but contempt for dozens of corporations every day. At this point I pause and wonder if I seem “too negative.” Funny thing is I don’t feel negative. I feel unconflicted. Clear. Corporations and I are enemies. There may be some people within each and every one of them who I’m able to get along with well enough, but the larger entity is a dangerous beast that I will never let my guard down to. I was not always this way. I do not expect to ever regrow affection for capitalism. The love of money is the root of ALL evil. No equivocation. Written about 1,850 years ago and put into the Bible. Some people obviously thought highly of those words of warning. If I were to rewrite the expression as part of a soft reboot of the Bible for modern sensibilities I would only need to leave off one word: The love of money is the root of all.
By Rob Middleton who can be reached @[email protected] on Mastodon