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PERSONAL FROM
What's Wrong
with Business and
Industry?
EAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
threaten to erase human life from the earth!
What part have business and industry played
in the modern society that now stands on the
brink of human extinction?
Surely, when we look at modern business,
industry and commerce we find the spectacle of
modern development that excites enraptured
admiration.
Or has this facet of civilization contributed to the
CAUSE of humanity's plight today?
If
a Lincoln, a Vanderbilt oran Emerson could come
back to life today, he would gasp in amazed
wonderment at the astonishing development of modern
business and industry!
The amazing development of the telephone, motion
picture in fui! color, radio, television, motor car,
mammoth oil tankers, jet planes, spacecraft hurtling
men around the earth in 90 minutes, men traveling to
the moon and back, unmanned spacecraft transmitting
close-up pictures of the Martian surfac.e to earth, the
incredible modern computers and almost every
conceivable technical business machine, as well as
modern mass industrial production and modern sales
and distribution systems- all this would cause men of a
short hundred years ago to gasp in awe!
What AMAZING PROGRESS ANO DEVELOPMENT!
Commerce and industry is a world within a world- a
fast-moving, pulsating world of high-geared activity.
Februa ry 1985
Surely al! these magic advancements could in no way
have contributed to the EVILS that face our world
today? ·
Seemingly not. But if we look deeper we find in this
facet of society the same evils that have CAUSED
humanity's debacle today. We find these vibrant,
high-pressure fields of activity motivated by
self-seeking competition and greed. And too often, in
selling and marketing products, the sales appeal has
been to vanity and wrong desires, utilizing dishonesty,
misrepresentation, deception, unfair dealing. The
motivating incentive is to "GET"-give less while
charging more.
There are basics "to life we usual!y do not look
deeply enough to see. There are, basically, only the
two broad ways of life. They travel in opposite
directions. I state them very simply. The one is LOVE,
meaning outftowing concern for the good of others,
cooperation, serving, sharing. 1 term it "GIVE." The
opposite way to which this world is drawn is "GET."
Atan ad-club luncheon back in 1910,
J
heard a
speaker ring out with emphasis, "Competition, NOT
COOPERATION, is the life of trade today!" We al!
seemed to believe that then.
But later, my wise "Ben Franklín" uncle, Frank
Armstrong, then leading advertising man in lowa,
explained it tome differently.
"The value of business conventions," he observed,
"lies in COOPERATION. Jones has used a new idea that
reduces costs. He shares his experience, and al!
profit- none is hurt. Smith tells how he increased
sales and distribution into new markets. All profit by
bis experience- none is hurt."
But human nature simply doesn't see it that way.
That's the way the Creator designed it- but humans
differ with him who said, "It is more blessed to GIVE
than to receive." Unfortunately that has been
regarded as impractical idealism. Yet EVERY EVIL IN
TODAY'S SICK, SICK WORLD HAS BEEN CAUSED BY THE
"GET" MOTIVE- self-advantage at the cost of others,
vanity, coveting, lust and greed- envy and jealousy,
hostile competition, strife, violence, war, destruction.
And above all, resentment of authority!
Unfortunately the basic activating motive in
modern business and industry has been the "GET"
philosophy. In spite of materialistic advances,
humanity's problems are
(Continued on page 40)