Dear readers and friends:

As soon as I sent out my lifeletter today, I realized there was one sentence I wanted to change: ‘The ego is like a mini-corporation, driven by its own addictions..’ My use of the word corporation was a generalization, and therefore a distortion of the way things actually are. I want to make it very clear that there are some wonderful corporations on our planet.

One of my readers, Trevor Giles, noticed the same thing. A copy of his email is below.

Shayla,

Thanks for this. I really enjoy these. I did want to make a comment about the following line “every ego is a mini-corporation, driven by its own addictions, endlessly moving away from the feeling at the core”.

I hear a lot of less than positive comments from people in Nelson about
“corporations” and the comment above seems to fall into that category. I really wish we could all move away from this idea that corporations are souless empty creatures. Corporations are two things. The first being a taxation structure on paper and the second being a collection of people with a common business goal.

I will not delve into the taxation issue except to say that there is no such thing as a tax write-off that did not cost money in some shape or form and that for a corporation to not pay any taxes simply meant they did not make any money or that they lost money in a previous year.

As for the collection of people, this is what makes or breaks a Corporation. No different than it makes or breaks a church, a non-profit society, or any other collection of individuals with a common goal, business or not. There are many Corporations that have very deep souls and are very in touch with their people, their world, and their customers, and their core ideals. Take Patagonia, the clothing maker and the many other positive examples that exist. I believe it is not fair to broad brush Corporations in the manner above.

Corporations are typically a reflection of their leadership and the people who ultimately work for them, no different than the Catholic Church is a function of its Leader and its preists. There are always good and bad examples of every form of organization. That is just the nature of the world.

Respectfully,

Trevor Giles