I saw this ad on Queen Street: Experience Survival, a Discovery Channel advertisement that shows a young bushman creeping through the grass with a bow and arrow. I’ve seen the ad in different locations, but I was struck by its position here immediately below the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce logo. CIBC ranks a paltry 170 on Forbes’ Global 2000 list published in April, 2010.
What does survival mean in our world? Is survival just another ideological code word? When we import the idea of survival into our corporate environment, do we import a kind of economic Darwinism into our view of how the world works? If we live in this confusion (between personal and corporate survival) what does that do to ethics? For example, if we apply the imperative of personal survival to corporations, do we tacitly give corporations permission to do whatever is necessary? Is our view of survival killing us?
