How Do STS's View Other Selves?

[Nía]

Just an example I came across...

After seeing the pages aren't available at Google Books anymore, I just OCR'ed the story from the book, so here you can read it in full:

In the early '90s I was at a meeting in New York with several of the leading organizers of what was to be the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development in Rio. A quiet, handsome, well-dressed man in his 40s took me aside afterward and introduced himself as the head of a major agribusiness corporation. He said, "I have something very important to tell you, and I will pay for the joy of telling it to you by offering you lunch."

At lunch the next day, he cut to the chase: "Rio will accomplish absolutely nothing because you do-gooders are so naive about the real world. Most of you that I have met truly believe that if the CEOs—like me, for instance—really knew what harm their corporate policies were doing, they would rend their Armani suits, fling out their Rolex-wreathed arms, burst into tears, and change. This is madness and shows how little you dare to know about what is really going on. And how can you even begin to be effective until you understand what you are up against?

"Let me tell you what you are up against. You are up against people like me. I know exactly what my company is doing and what devastation it is causing to thousands of lives. I should know; I am running it. I know and I do not care. I have decided I want a grand gold-plated lifestyle and the perks and jets and houses that go with it and I will do anything—bend the law, have people 'removed,' bribe local governmental officials, you name it—to get what I want. I know, too, that none of my shareholders care a rat's ass what I do or how I do it, providing I keep them swimming in cash.

"I said that you were up against people like me. That is true in one sense, but not in another. Because the truth is that I am in you too. A part of you is like me, just as ruthless and dedicated to your own selfish agenda. But you can dress up this ruthlessness as your 'mission' and never unmask the lust for power that might be lurking behind your righteous facade.

"What limits all so-called seekers and activists that I meet is that they both shy away from the full realization of the powers of the dark. The seekers I meet are, frankly, 'bliss bunnies,' about as useful in the real world as a rubber ball would be in a war. The activists I know enjoy denouncing others but aren't at all in the business of unmasking their own destructiveness, or the self-destructiveness of their dreary and banal self-righteousness.

"The bliss-bunnyhood of seekers and the offensive self-righteousness of activists make it very easy for people like me to control the world. I know too, by the way, that the dark forces I play with are playing with me. I am under no illusion that I will not someday have to pay the price. Don't the French say, 'The devil has no friends'? I'm willing to pay that price in return for the pleasure of being able to afford this restaurant, in return for being able to ring up the president of the United States in front of house-guests to impress them. Am I getting through to you?"

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