7gen Bloc

The Giants beat the New England in the Super Bowl. John McCain is leading the GOP presidential race. Lee Scott and Bill Gates are calling for a more responsible form of capitalism. In ads for Burt's Bees, Clorox takes the personal care industry to task over dangerous chemicals. Ministers of Parliament in the UK have condemned Heinz for appropriating the name “Farmers Market” without adhering to the stringent regulations that go along with its use. The unsustainable farming of palm oil is on the front page of the New York Times. Starbucks discontinues sale of organic milk due to lack of demand. And the Pope makes an appeal to protect the environment.

What’s next?

The avalanche of change, often from the most unexpected places, makes me feel as if I’m in a giant rocket ship lifting off from the Earth. It’s already going pretty fast, but I know that in the moments ahead it will continue to accelerate. The question is where are we headed?

This amount of change is stressful and confusing, especially if you maintain a commitment to helping to direct the trajectory or at least have the illusion that you can.

These feel like unprecedented times, times that could irretrievably cast us off onto a path to the destruction of much of the human race and parts of the planet that have yet to be appreciated by most of its inhabitants.

I believe we will follow another direction, one best described by David Callahan
a few days ago in the LA Times. Because I believe that the path taken by business will determine where we end up going as a race. Despite these immensely turbulent times, take heart. There’s real hope, for as Callahan writes:

“Every few decades, America's business leaders change their minds about what obligations corporations and the wealthy have to society. This happened 100 years ago, when ex-robber barons like Andrew Carnegie invented modern philanthropy to address social ills, and in the mid-20th century, when leading executives stopped fighting unions and backed more generous wages and benefits. It also happened in the 1970s, when big business rejected that compact with labor, leading to the harsher free-market ethos of the 1980s and 1990s.

Now, corporate leaders are shifting their thinking once more, calling for a gentler form of capitalism.”