Yeah, I’m not really feeling the first bit, but then that’s just me. I reckon put a shot of your mug and sign it, and make plural intros; have a few different folks’ take on it. Although you seem to have put in a bit of work whittling it down; maybe try to make that one a bit more passive voice and impersonal, and then put your name to a more expansive introduction, like this:
This is what’s happening.
We are Morpheus offering you the red pill, for real.
In case you don’t get that reference (wow, really?), you should totally go and watch The Matrix, and then come back.
Okay, are we on the same page? Let’s hope so…
Now if you’ve been paying attention you’ll have seen over the decades that as wealth disparity has increased in the developed world, so has corruption, which has led to greater wealth disparity and so on - until it’s reached the point where an apt description for what we once referred to without irony as the seats of Western Democracy might be something closer to ‘contemptible cesspits’… If you look at the whole of human activity as organised by politicians and corporations, you can be forgiven for seeing it as a sad indictment of human nature.
But don’t despair, because that’s only human nature under a given set of circumstances. If we were somehow able to change the circumstances, we could change our nature. But obviously, this is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, the kind that requires extreme cleverness in the solution…
Guess what? Circumstances have aligned, somebody clever enough has put their mind to the problem, and now we have a solution that has the promise of taking humanity to the next level, mostly just by taking the brakes off our potential. This is so elegant it’s beautiful.
Many of us have come to think of global corporations as vast, heartless monsters stomping carelessly through our lives, but imagine you could climb aboard one of these monsters and get it to quit stomping on people, and start protecting them from the rat race instead. Imagine you could tell this vast machine to go and do something really cool, instead of sordidly having its way with the biosphere.
So as an employee of the Co-operNation, get a load of your job description - to have the most awesome life we can help you manage. We’ll need a minimum commitment of 20 hours a week minus vacation time, but aside from that you get complete freedom as long as you don’t try to hurt or control anybody! And as a member of the co-op you’ll have an inalienable stake in the new society - nay, (actual) civilisation.
Sound too good to be true? Well, no, actually - folks have been saying for years that we could enjoy far more freedom and leisure by virtue of the intelligent application of science and technology to our lives, if only we could figure out a way to kick out the jams and start from a clean sheet. And thanks to the increasing corruption of government by commerce, now there’s an avenue. It’s always been pretty hard to start your own country, but now that corporations can be more powerful than nations…
Are you feeling it yet? If you like this idea, you can see that anyone devoting themselves to any single cause (or handful) is going about it the hard way. Instead of burning yourself out thanklessly fighting losing battles with the corporatocracy, help give the enemy cancer - we’ll poach all their talent! This is like judo, you dig?
We’re putting a revolution inside a box labelled business as usual. The system has no antibodies for us! Once this snowball gets rolling, it’ll become an avalanche.
So as a global megacorp we’ll encompass a complete supply chain and thereby eliminate scarcity and thus money (mostly) amongst our members. In return for your 20 hours a week, you take what you want (within reason), and if we don’t have what you want we’ll make it or grow it or acquire it. We’ll be hugely profitable because we’ll have forgone the vast inefficiency of employing people to figure out how to get other people to part with their money and other such awful busywork, and our products will be sustainably made to last for generations by processes that are almost completely automated, except for products that people actually might want to make and/or buy hand-made, like instruments or bicycles. Money backfires as a motivator for pretty much anything that can’t be automated, that’s a scientific fact. People don’t want money per se; they want their needs and wants met, and the ability and freedom to pursue their interests. They like to have autonomy; a chance to acquire mastery at something and earn the authority of expertise.
So let’s do that, instead.
But it’s early days yet; you’re getting in on the ground floor. We need your help to make this magnificent possibility an incredibly awesome reality. Take a look at the rest of the site, particularly at what other folks have to say by way of introduction if I’ve failed to pique your interest, and please, get in touch if you like this idea, and help us grow it.
Oh yeah - as an eventual bonus, one day you’ll get mad props for helping liberate humanity.
Kimmo
