The True Corporate Responsibility

I was reading yet another article lamenting the dearth of corporate regulatory instruments when an insight hit me broadside yesterday. Follow my thought process, if you will.rnThe author—and now, of course, I can’t find whatever it was I was reading—offered corporate responsibility as the antidote for the mass corporate corruption that is currently on display in the United States. I gave a mental hip, hip, hooray, but then the word corporate slapped my cheek. rnThe root of the word corporate is the Latin corpus; it means body. Has anybody else noticed the nearly universal Western lamentation about our bodies, our health, and our healthcare system? Of course you have. rnAs people are living longer, due to advances in both Western and complementary medicines, as well as advances in self-care, bodies are lasting longer, but not always better. My beloved, whose parents have reached nonagenarian status, calls this “death by paper cut.” They're not ill, but they’re not well either. rnAs for younger folk, they are, up to a point, indestructible, until they reach a destructible mass. There are epidemics of obesity, diabetes, cancer, HIV/AIDS. We, as a species with bodies, are not particularly healthy. rnNeither, for that matter, is our healthcare system. I might even go so far as to say that healthcare, at least in the United States, is bankrupt. rnCorporations are actually aggregates of bodies, human bodies, individuals who work together for an agreed-upon purpose. When I gave motivational speeches, one of the things I had to remind workers of consistently was that people don’t hire corporations—they hire people. This is why there is so much emphasis placed on creating good relationships in business. rnAnd here, at last, is the insight: how can we expect our aggregates of bodies—the corporations—to be healthy when they are made up of human beings with bodies which aren’t healthy? St. Paul asked a very good question a long, long time ago, “Know ye not that your body is the temple of the living God?” If we are not allowing Divinity its perfect way with our bodies, why should we expect gatherings of unhealthy, imperfect, bankrupt bodies to yield anything close to perfection? rnWhat does it mean to allow God to indwell our bodies? rnIt means that we listen within for how to treat our Living Temples, and we exercise Corporate Responsibility, to wit, the ability to respond to our bodies, by seeking, hearing, heeding and following that guidance. rnI wonder how many corporations consider Divinity as a member of the Board? rnI wonder how many individuals consider Divinity as a member of their life team? rnThis idea affirms for me the microcosm/macrocosm theory of mystics worldwide. Want change? Excellent. Change yourself, and the whole world changes. rnThe first corporate responsibility is to care for our own bodies. Once our bodies are no longer corrupt/bankrupt— (Yes, this means accepting that we have bodies and that bodies, by nature, are good. Take that, St. Augustine!) —then, and only then, can we apply true corporate responsibility to our business institutions.