From the May 2002 Idaho Observer:

From the Editor's Desk

The Grand Inversion

Sometimes a thing becomes less complicated when you strip away all but its most essential elements. Do you remember in grade school when we learned that humans must have three basic elements to survive: Food, water and shelter. The diagram at left is a lot like that.

In the beginning, God made people.

People made governments.

Governments made corporations.

If you know in God, then you know that the simple flow chart described above illustrates the basic components of society just as food, water and shelter represent the essentials for survival.

Something happened on the way to the 21st century: Corporations run the governments, governments rule the people and God is merely used as a convenience to justify the perverse constructs of man.

If the original flow chart were in place, people would live under the direction of a moral code that rewards the more admirable of human traits. A limited government of limited power is all that would be necessary for those people and, therefore, less likely to become oppressive. People then would grant corporate status to businesses insofar as such mechanisms would fall within a framework of laws designed by the people to facilitate the fair and peaceful exchange of goods and services.

Restacking the most basic building blocks of society has turned it upside down. Instead of societies building upon age old values of trust, respect, compassion, hard work, faith and knowledge, our world feeds off greed, lust and the desire to please oneself at the expense of others. Rather than being societies where people engage one another in peaceable commerce, we are continually at war and looking at each other as if the other is to blame. Because corporations are running our contemporary show, we do not live in societies where justice prevails. Instead we live in states where people are row crops to be harvested or weeds to be killed.

How can we be surprised? What is the bottom line for God? Souls. What is the bottom line for corporations? Profit.

So in a world that starts with corporations people's hopes and dreams are important only if they produce material wealth. They, like any other resource, will be exploited for maximum profits. If it is more profitable to kill a bunch of people than to harvest their energies through production, they will be killed. Profit is the bottom line in a world run by corporations.

On the other hand, in a world that starts with God, people not only have hopes and dreams, they have souls. It is God's desire that people live their lives in such a way that they have the opportunity to grow and refine themselves so that they may get closer to Him. Soul growth and enlightenment is the bottom line in a world run by God.

God gave us choice as a birthright. As societies of people we choose to live in a western world that places corporations above God, people and governments. What a deal. We trade the virtues of humankind and soul growth for the ability to be exploited or killed in the interest of having our wants temporarily satisfied en route to global chaos.

This is the Grand Inversion: Our world is upside down because corporations, not God, are running our lives. We have a tendency to overcomplicate life and argue over minutia to explain what we believe to be the deeper meanings of things. The obvious becomes apparent only after all the nonsense is stripped away to lay bare the essential elements.

Justice and decency will not prevail on earth until God is at the top of the chart and corporations are at the bottom. (DWH)