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“If you don’t stand for something, you fall for anything”. – Harder than You Think, Public Enemy.   

What is your message, what is your purpose, what is your reason for being here?

It’s fine for that to be whatever you want it to be, and it’s fine for you to appeal to any tribe or subset that you like to achieve maximum gains, whatever that might look like to you.

When your message, your presence or your reason for existence is philosophical, not financial, it’s wrong to change the message for external financial reasons.

If you decide to work with someone because they have a specific philosophical approach, an example of this would be giving your time or your money to Oxfam or one of the other large charities whose controversial antics have damaged their brands recently.

If you decide to work with someone like that and they change the goal posts in the middle of your agreement to be something that they weren’t when you started, then it’s right for you to move in another direction.

You might think it would be difficult to find someone else to work with whose values equate to yours and who keep their promises based on moral philosophy but that would be the job, the job would be finding people like that.

Inevitably as organisations grow larger they need to continue to grow and they will extend into activities and markets and the great edges of philosophy to maximise their gains.

The good news is that as a consumer, a customer, a day to day investor in these organisations you get to decide as an individual whether you support it or not.

There is a responsibility of the organisation to be honest and to tell you where they’re going, who they’re working with and what they’re investing in.

To conceal information in that regard would be to be dishonest and that would break the deal anyway.

Will you continue to use Facebook after everything they have done with data?

Will you continue to use Apple after the well-publicised conditions of the people who work in their factories?

Will you continue to use plastic?

Will we try to move in the other direction, put pressure on organisations to act in a more responsible way or will we embrace the individualist society. Say ‘there is nothing that I can do as an individual’ and then carry on in the pursuit to get more stuff at the expense of anything else, in particular the expense of our morals and souls.

You can stand outside the circle, lift your head and see the mess that exists within, or you can keep your head down and pretend it’s not happening.

If you don’t stand for something though, you will definitely fall for anything.

Blog post number: 1633