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LIBERATION
OF LIVING INSIDE THE MARKET
The religion
of the network today.
Colorado Springs; the city of moral fabulousness. The place where Pastor
Ted Haggard began the New Life Congregation. Under his umbrella are the
following movements; Young Life, Navigators, Compassion International,
Every Home for Christ and Global Ethnic Missions (Youth Ablaze), and Dr.
James Dobson’s “Focus on the Family” which provides
the national scold we require. Currently, the church is housed inside
an old strip mall – the only businesses remaining are a bar and
a massage parlor, and then of course there is The New Life Church. During
a mass, the congregation spills out blocking the other businesses.
(Paraphrased from Harpers Magazine, August 2005)
Today’s successful business model mimics that of many healing and
religious models’, specifically of the 12-step program, and of the
Tree of Life. The successful business will convince its employees that
it is injecting meaning into his or her life, a meaning that will finally
be found by following a step-by-step program towards enlightenment. In
order to retain employee satisfaction, the employee needs to think of
his or her business journey as a path that brings him closer and closer
to reaching the phenomenology of the spirit.
The 12 steps for today’s successful business:
1. As employers, we admit that we are powerless without our employees.
2. We must believe a collective mind (rather than just our own) can improve
our brand
3. As an employee, you must make a decision to turn your creative will
over to the brand
4. In order to break new grounds within the business and capitalize on
ideas, everyone - the employees and the employer must work together to
make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves and our collective
goal.
5. As a business, we must openly admit to the public the exact nature
or our wrongs, when and if we make them.
6. We then must eagerly accept and change all these defects of the brand
7. We must humbly ask the consumer to forgive our previous shortcomings
8 and 9. Make list of all we have harmed, and try to make amends
Make amends
Continue to take personal inventory and when we are wrong admit it
Through meditation improve our conscious contact with the boss praying
for knowledge of his will and the power to carry it out
Then you reach the spiritual awakening and carry message to others
(In order to learn the secrets to the last three [and respectively, most
important] steps to business success, please contact me at mary_pnca@hotmail.com,
and we’ll see what we can do.)
The Future of Religion. As religion and business merge, there are several
social and network evolutions that will take place. The Orgy of Communal
Spending is one of them.THE ORGY OF COMMUNAL SPENDING
Finally, as a society, we are looking for love in all the right places.
On weekends employees will find themselves online, blogging on product
sites about their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with a passion equivalent
to the feeling of good drugs. Or they will find themselves on an adventure,
trekking to the malls to view and participate in the S&M (standing
and modeling) part of communal spending.
The mall as a community paralleled to religion – shows its shiny,
happy face. As today’s shopper, one thing that we expect is to be
confronted with another reality upon entrance of a new store. That said,
the stores are also organized by districts, to help corral like-minded
shoppers. Look at 28th street in Manhattan for example of how mall adapts
natural city-village models. The mall as suburban babysitter. Park your
loved one at one of the many human parking lots that line the aisles,
or drop them off at an entertainment Mecca usually situated near the center
or on one of the upper floors. The mall as happiness – look at the
Japanese chain “Three Minute Happiness”. The sign on the outside
of the store reads “Just three minutes / Enjoy Shopping/ A Happy
Feeling. The Mall of America has more visitors than Disney World, Graceland,
and the Grand Canyon combined.
Hyper-Capitalism
Our desires are filled by the inventorying, quantifying and exploiting
of the need to create a homogenous mass culture of production and consumption
of corporate signs. This cycle of production permeates all aspects of
society from the cradle to the grave to the orgy in between.
These, and teledildonics, are some things that really excite me.
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