During the month of June, I will be teaching a course on alternative economies at the UC Berkeley Extension Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.
To learn more about the course–a description, the syllabus and an interview–visit the OLLI web site.
Soon after the financial crisis in 2008 and immediately after the Occupy Wall Street event, the issue before us was framed as a conflict between Wall Street and Main Street. The issue before us is actually a much deeper conflict between two centers: civic centers and financial centers.
Say I am walking down a street in a large city and come across a homeless person on the sidewalk, and I ask myself if that could have been my fate. If I think that I could have been that person—except for different circumstances—then we share a common humanity. Our differences are basically social. If I say that I would never become such a person, then I take our social differences—class, race, religion, and so on—as essential. We have nothing in common.
Marvin T. Brown, Ph.D teaches business and organizational ethics at the University of San Francisco and Saybrook University in San Francisco.
This book is the culmination of 30 years of teaching and writing on business and society from a communicative perspective. Visit workingethics.com for more information.
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