The Corporate Cult: More of What Men Know That Women Don't [Paperback]

Rich Zubaty (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2001

Are corporations cults? Do they control our behavior, thoughts, information and emotions? Zubaty makes a pretty good case for that. Should the legal status of corporate ?persons? be challenged as a religious violation ? a gross infringement of the supposed boundary between church and state? He makes a pretty good case for that. Have we done a good job of keeping religion out of government but a miserable job of keeping government out of religion? He makes a pretty good case for that. Is Darwinism a science? Or a religion? You?ll get vertigo over his take on that.

Product Details

• Paperback: 396 pages
• Publisher: Virtualbookworm Publishing (September 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1589390423
• ISBN-13: 978-1589390423
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,089,509 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Rich who? May 8, 2004

By Chad van Liere

Format:Paperback

Who is Zubaty you might ask? Good question. Zubaty followed the American dream: house, kids, business, and he even helped his wife through school. When she graduated, she filed for divorce and got half his stuff and probably most of his dignity. So what does he do? Cut a hole in a trunk of a car and shoot people at gas stations? No. He does what all of us wish we could do under the circumstances and got the heck away from the confused culture we are marinated in every waking hour. He spends his days traveling from country to country, island to island, with not much more than he can carry on his back.
By now you're thinking he's a nut, that he can't cope. Major publishers will not touch his work. He is refused any publicity by the major media conglomerates. So Zubaty is considered not "Disney worthy" and people have attempted to elbow him from the status of, well, being known.
Rich says it best on the book:

"You can't judge a book by lookin' at the cover...
And you sure can't trust reviewers you don't even know!
So flip open to any page and read any sentence.
Yes, NOW!"

Quite a bold statement when most authors just want a flashy cover. So I took his challenge. He's right. You can start on any page, any paragraph, and just read and read. I would classify Zubaty as a social Galileo of our times- he knows the score but people refuse to listen. They refuse to listen because he tells the truth in its dirty, raw, and sobering form. It's too much reality for those who haven't been tested in life.
I spend my days making good money designing tools and parts on the computer. Zubaty calls me a "manhole", a man who spends his days in front of the computer all day, worried about money and toys. And the nut was right. And I like him for his honesty. And I keep reading.
Zubaty goes on to explain that corporations are no longer treating people as people and instead as "units". No new news here, but he keeps going and going, paddling his way further and further from political correctedness, ending up in a place where you are free to think for yourself without worrying about offending anyone. He speaks of a village girl who goes to town every day to try to get a loan approved. She gets her family involved. She lies to her friends. She forges papers. Zubaty hones in with laser-like precision to the observation she's acting like a greedy dimwit who is taken over by American idealism. She wants the money but has no use for it. And then there's Joe the fisherman.
You can decide to not like Zubaty, but I don't think he minds as he's sipping coconut milk or fishing for the families who let him in. Read the book. You'll understand.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A timely critique for the post-Enron era July 8, 2002

By Tom Reilly

Format:Paperback

Rich Zubaty's books will open your eyes to new ways of thinking about relationships, work, and the social issues that affect our lives. On virtually every page you find a new idea, or an old truth that has been long forgotten. I have studied social science and critical thinking for over 20 years, and I still find challenging and inspiring ideas every time I pick up one of Zubaty's books.

In "The Corporate Cult" he examines the rise of the corporation, and the destructive influence it has had on our social welfare. Since the great boom of the 90's, it has been common to hear expressions of faith in the corporate system, such as the "triumph of capitalism" or the "global village". People espouse "freedom" and "democracy" as the highest individual and collective values of the society. But how can we be free participants in a true democracy when a few mega-corporations control nearly the entire economy and dictate the way most of us spend our working days? There is no "freedom" for a corporate employee. And there is often no democratic choice for a community that would rather not have a corporate behemoth, such as Walmart, move in and destroy the traditional economic community. Zubaty asserts that faith in the corporation, and empty concepts of freedom, is a form of cultic behavior. Just as cult members unquestioningly obey and support dubious gurus, the subjects of corporate regimes willingly submit to corporate masters and recite the empty slogans picked up in school. People praise corporations, and marvel at the supremacy of the "American way of life", even as our social lives become more isolating and impoverished.

Zubaty examines the rise of the corporation and how it came to be defined as a legal "person" with all the rights and privileges of a human being. The trouble is, a corporate person has no real responsibility to anything other than the concept of profit. And due to its vast economic resources and unlimited lifespan, it becomes a monster against which individual flesh and blood people cannot compete. The modern corporation is a tool of unbridled greed for the few who own the major portion of corporate stock. Corporations bring profit to the few with out any corresponding responsibility for the social and environmental damages caused. The managers are professional employees with little stake in the communities in which they reside. Profits extracted from communities are funneled to a remote headquarters while residents are given low wage jobs. Small innovative businesses with a real stake in the community go out of business, while a generic "Super Walmart" thrives on the edge of town, paying no taxes to support the community that feeds it.

Things have not always been this way. Zubaty has been to corners of the world where the incursion of corporate values is resisted. People in these places are happy and less afflicted with the endless desire for consumer goods fostered by our corporate society. But as corporations increasingly operate in a "global economy", traditional values and lifeways are destroyed. When the human values of community, friendship, and faith, are supplanted by the endless quest for "profit", people begin to feel a malaise that has no solution. The quest for possessions takes the place of community activity and political action. Corporations gain profit and power even as they destroy the quality of community life. The growth is like a cancer, eventually destroying the host.

Zubaty's writing style interweaves pages of cogent analysis with stories of his encounters with less "advanced" and more happy cultures. It varies the pace of his presentation and makes for a very enjoyable reading experience.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A Work of Shining Brilliance December 28, 2001

By J. Steven Svoboda

Format:Paperback

"...it's a work of shining brilliance, fairly crying out to be read.

I found the book upsetting at times, but this is the nature of Zubaty's
messages. You have to love a guy capable of such pithy statements as, "You
need a woman who puts God first, you second, her kids third, and her job
fourth." Or: "We send diplomats to Japan and Israel. We should be sending
diplomats to General Electric and Archer Daniels Midland to find out what
the hell they're doing on our soil and if we like it or not." Or a guy
capable of some pointed juxtapositions: "Corporations spend $138 billion per
year on advertising -- more than the total salaries we pay for all of our
public elementary and secondary schoolteachers and administrators. One and a
half times what we spend on institutions of higher learning." We are
reminded (or learn for the first time) that, even excluding the chronically
unemployed, one in four men is out of work. Between 1972 and 1994, real
wages fell 19%, the longest slide in our nation's history. "If someone robs
a bank and accidentally shoots someone are we content if the guy gives back
part of the money? That's what corporations get away with every day."

The bottom line is, you'll be glad you read this book. -- Steven Svoboda