Wow! Real humanity v. Fake humanity

Yes, blog reader, Wow! As I type on this clunky Mac computer sitting on my 40 year old steel desk, a relic probably handed down from the engineering department at UCLA 30 years ago, I ponder and think about what happened yesterday on one of my Palmer bike rides. Let's see what these stupid sticking shift keys can make out of this humane event on Sunday and how it compares to corporate fakery in the name of humanity, or some other cultural criticism like that.

As I was "mole-ing out" from my entrenched Westside state of mind to Olympic and Robertson, I stopped to see a struggling pigeon, with a broken wing, hopping madly in the middle of traffic. I quickly pulled over and watched as it would struggle to fly above the cars to only land in front of their pumping ABS brakes. Traffic stopped to allow the hurt pigeon pass only to be narrowly missed by other vehicles who were too impatient or unaware to care. I hopped off my bike and leaned it against a wall. I slowly entered traffic and saw a guy in his MBZ, jump out and pick up the pigeon. He then walked across the street and placed it on the front lawn of one of those 60's style anonymous buildings you see in L.A. He walked back to his car, beaming happily of his goodwill. I even thanked him. His act was genuine. It was human.

This reminds me of something I read in The Starbucks Experience about real people "paying it forward" or backward as they waited in line at the drive through of a starbucks. I know I am sounding like an overly critical a-hole but this nice act of paying for your neighbor's coffee reeks of corporate back room marketing strategy in order to celebrate customers, boost employee morale and sell more starbucks coffee. Creating a corporate atmosphere where it's okay to do this behavior of "paying it forward" makes people use to the cultural action of doing "good" deeds of using money instead of policy. In other words, when you use money it persuades corporations to act nicely when in fact, we should create a world where morals are guiding policies to achieve a better quality of life. It creates a cultural phenomenon where consumers create change using their change and makes corporations think about their impact on the environment. Is this really what we need? Have corporations do "good" when we should just make the shareholders legally responsible for their negative actions?

I can see why many people have a great need for the Church and for religious leaders and church action groups to petition but the churches are failing b/c of this cultural consumerist need to use money to create change when instead, we should use morals based upon laws and progressive policies instead. We need to separate religion from policies, government and corporations. We should not apply human values to organizations that are not legally responsible for their people. We should make corporations legally responsible to ensure that humanity is real and not fake.