PPP, the recipe for happyness

There’s a lot of talk nowadays about the sustainability of corporate enterprise. Corporations operate in a natural context. They bring about changes in the environment and upset the natural balance, while trying to impose their own. What kind of governance can there be for this sort of activity?
Corporations live off nature. It’s essential that they learn to bear in mind the 3 “Ps”, that is People, Planet, and Profit, for whatever action they plan to undertake.
It’s the modern-day consumer who demands it of them. It’s a consumer who will no longer put up with their customary reckless, short-sighted misconduct of polluting our planet.
It’s important to be aware that we, each and everyone of us, are the “People”. Satisfying human needs, respecting the individual, paying attention to the quality of life must become part and parcel of our very mind set and the beacons by which we steer our course when undertaking any enterprise or action.
“Planet” means the place where we live. It’s where we breathe and move; it’s the food we eat, the water we drink. Not taking the needs of the planet into due account is tantamount to sawing off the limb we’re sitting on. The ecosystem can no longer be exploited to the extent it has been thus far.
“Profit” is what permits to satisfy the primary needs for our survival. But profit cannot stand on its own. People, planet, and profit are interrelated, like the links making up a chain. Satisfying the needs of the people through the resources of the planet by generating profit, not as end in itself but for effectively and efficiently responding to demand, and at the same time caring for the needs of the planet without which there would be no profit or people, is the challenge with which we are confronted.

Do you reckon exploitation of the environment has grown worse in recent years or do you feel there’s been a growing awareness, greater foresight, a more respectful and positive attitude towards nature?
The anxiety-ridden biped that chooses to call itself “man” has managed to live off nature, but only insofar as man was a minor biological incident. Population-wise the naked ape will never be able to compete with other life forms far less demanding on the environment and yet far more prolific. How many stalks of grass can grow and live next to one another in a hectare of land? There’s no Tokyo that could ever cope with such a population density. How big is a swarm of insects that can fit into a bed-sit? Not even the most rent-hungry landlord could cram that many immigrants into such a tight space. But our species’ impact on the environment has reached alarming proportions and the damages it causes are increasingly difficult to keep under check. What’s amazing is that we’ve reached this stage in such a short time. If we take the Earth to be, let’s say, forty years old, then the last ice-age occurred no later than last week. In the end, the appearance on the scene of the civilised (mechanised) biped could turn out to be but a brief interlude, no more than a few hours in the life span of this shrewd and sagacious forty-year old, intelligent enough for one thing to have invented and to continue renewing a remarkable mechanism we call the ecosystem.
Working through the mad, muddled medley of life’s multifarious manifestations it manages to achieve a state of natural equilibrium. If the balance is in any way upset, it does its best to withstand the shock and goes about with patience and perseverance to recover its natural poise and harmony. It is a precious gem that could even be said to be endowed with an imaginative force, such is the amazing, unpredictable variety of its responses. It even appears to be capable of learning from its enemies.
How foolish this attachment of ours to the Ptolemaic vision is. It obliges the hairless gorilla to continue believing itself to be the centre of the universe, which is conversely and perversely seen as having being made for its boundless lust and pleasure. Nature always manages though to metabolise any problem or conceit confronting it, be it glaciations or industrialisation.
The biped has two options open to it at this stage. It can either decide to live fully respecting the ecosystem and in the awareness of being part of it, or it can keep on as is and be wiped out by nature. For nature has always responded ruthlessly when mishandled, making its come back though in an even more beautiful, fabulous, and prolific guise than before. It is indeed presumptuous on our part to presume that we ourselves can decide for our own extinction, as through a nuclear war, for instance.
No, it’ll be nature itself that will take care us if we don’t play the game according to its rules, for it always manages to offset whatever tips the scales. And it would go about it by surprisingly simple means, like causing widespread human sterility. Already now one couple out of five is sadly childless.
We’re even warned in the Bible that before the Last Judgement comes to pass humanity will have turned completely barren. But we’re still in time to redress the situation. After all, isn’t it said that life really begins at forty. Perhaps by starting off from a Copernican revolution.

You’ve abided by the law, your law. You’ve let it guide your conduct and your business decisions, without letting yourself be hemmed in by conventional standards or official rules and regulations. What was your vision and what led you to make this choice?
The driving force was the search for happiness. Not in the sense of mere contentment or selfsatisfaction but as a special state of grace that can only be achieved by giving scope and meaning to one’s life. To me that scope and meaning was doing my bit to make the world a morsel better than what I’d found it. I’ve always endorsed a philosophy of life in which the social and economic order of things, with its traditional division of rich and poor, is replaced by social and cultural priorities. First and foremost there are persons whose affluence comes in the form of non-economic values and ideals. But there are also “humanoids”, like for instance the kind of individual who doesn’t think twice about getting rid of a dog by dropping it off on the motorway. These I would rank last in my scale of values.

Based on your personal experience, that of the man of the street, how do you view order and disorder?
Order is poise and balance, disorder disruptive unbalance.