Let’s talk about gods, corporations, and morality.
Do you remember back in junior high reading the Iliad, where, in Book I, Apollo unleashed the plague on the Achaeans in response to the disrespect shown to his priest Chryses by Agamemnon:
Thus did he pray, and Apollo heard his prayer. He came down furious from the summits of Olympus, with his bow and his quiver upon his shoulder, and the arrows rattled on his back with the rage that trembled within him. He sat himself down away from the ships with a face as dark as night, and his silver bow rang death as he shot his arrow in the midst of them. First, he smote their mules and their hounds, but presently he aimed his shafts at the people themselves, and all day long the pyres of the dead were burning.
Iliad Book I
Or let’s consider Ares whining to Zeus after he was injured by the mortal Diomed (with Athena’s help):
“Father Jove, are you not angered by such doings? We gods are continually suffering in the most cruel manner at one another’s hands while helping mortals; and we all owe you a grudge for having begotten that mad termagant of a daughter, who is always committing outrage of some kind. We other gods must all do as you bid us, but her you neither scold nor punish; you encourage her because the pestilent creature is your daughter. See how she has been inciting proud Diomed to vent his rage on the immortal gods. First he went up to the Cyprian and wounded her in the hand near her wrist, and then he sprang upon me too as though he were a god. Had I not run for it I must either have lain there for long enough in torments among the ghastly corpses, or have been eaten alive with spears till I had no more strength left in me.”
Iliad Book V
The gods certainly have an ethical system—a morality—but it certainly isn’t a human one. And why not? Because they are immortal.
And this is why I think the gods are a metaphor for the current large corporation. Like the gods of old, corporations are powerful (although not all-powerful) and flawed, but they are also something else: they are immortal.
Of course, I am not suggesting that corporations exist forever. But what I am suggesting is corporations act as if they will exist forever. Markets will fluctuate, the business will wax and wane, and corporate names may change, but through it all by pivoting, rebranding, acquisitions, and breakups, corporations continue to exist through the decades. Heck, one can even make the case that bankruptcy is a form of resurrection allowing corporations to continue their existence even after ‘death”.
So what does this mean in practice?
This means when I read corporate websites sections on values and principles, I recognize these are not human values and principles; these are the values and principles of immortality entities, which I consider a pseudo-morality, which I will abbreviate as Ψmorality (and a Ψethics, Ψvalues, and Ψprinciples).
And why is this important to distinguish corporate Ψmorality from human morality?
Because if we don’t, then we are humanizing corporations at the same time they are actively dehumanizing us.
So, let’s be clear. Corporations have a morality—a Ψmorality—and this could well be a good thing. But they don’t have a human morality any more than my toaster does!