We are all doomed. That's the underlying message from The Corporation documentary. Did you hear of it? If you can, watch it, it excels at attempting to make you feel like a milkshake in quicksand.

According to the documentary, corporations have the mindset of a serial killer and are ruining the Earth. As a result, all species in this planet are decaying except one: that heinous evolutionary creation called mankind.

Following the doctrine of depression I cited in my previous columns to boost our economic lives, the documentary wants to make you feel concerned, even stressful. The apogee is reached when Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface compares our civilization with a plane in free fall. Anderson proceeds in a Socrates-like monologue: "The way our civilization is, the very high cliff represents the virtually unlimited resources we seem to have when we began this journey. The craft isn't flying because it's not built according to the laws of aerodynamics and it's subject to the law of gravity." I quoted him verbatim because this CEO deserves some kind of award. Nice try Ray, you got close.

The only caveat with what Anderson says is a little thinking. You tell me now, what's in this universe which is not in a "free fall" status? Of course in the end it's just a matter of time for about everything. Look, your life itself is in a free fall. And it's just a matter of time that another giant meteorite hits the Earth.

But if an arbitrary meteorite wiped out 90 percent of species 65 million years ago, well, it's OK. But if mankind does it now to a lesser scale, it's a no-no. The real problem here is that for the first time in history, a "disease" has conscience.

Overall, the situation this documentary displays is another case of hating the mirror for displaying the image. Everybody wants gadgets, TVs, cars, in a word: modern civilization. But some pretend that they are shipped by storks from Paris. Here everybody wants to buy for less, but wait, we are all hypocrites because we don't want corporations exploiting 12-year old Malaysians to provide for it. Come on genius, come here with an economically viable alternative then.

Alongside the documentary, though, there is an unexpected turn. As if bad things always had to come by pairs, they play the weather affair card. "Corporations contribute to global warming and polluting the Earth," the documentary suggests. But everyone who nowadays evangelize that human activities are responsible for harming the planet won't modify their lifestyles an inch accordingly. That's because any drastic change is actually impossible. We are already in such a mesh of interlinked and unavoidable lifestyles that the truly only way to avoid "harming" the planet would be to go live with yaks in a Mongolian desert. Objectively, anything short of that is like trying to douse the "fire" with spoons of water.

But wait a moment, what fire? If you look around, there is anything but good news popping out. For example, did you hear seven million people were cured of HIV recently? According to the United Nations now there are only 33 million infected people compared to the 40 previously "known." Well, all were cured because of a statistical miscalculation.

But nobody is interested in good news: A world without concerns isn't as interesting as a completely screwed up kindergarten. Even if the whole shtick is a fake.

David Soler is a biomedical sciences graduate and a columnist for the Daily Kent Stater. Contact him at dsoler@kent.edu.

 

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