Brown Sludge

Why Brown Sludge?

October 30th, 2005

Brown Sludge?

What is “Brown Sludge” all about?

In a word?

It’s about “corporatism”.

Now, corporatism is a tricky word. It’s been around for a long, long time, and it has come to have a few different meanings.

One of those meanings is an older traditional meaning that has its roots way back in the days of European feudalism and represents the way that different socio-economic classes used to organize themselves so they would be included in state politics.

But… there is another more modern, pejorative meaning that is generally accepted to refer to the way in which today’s corporations, aided by a willing government via legislation and unrestricted lobbying, are growing in power and influence at the expense of the public’s welfare.

This later definition is the sun around which the term Brown Sludge orbits.

What do you get when you take every good, nutritious, vital thing – and process it completely. Grinding down into it’s base elements and stripping it of all nutrition. What comes out on the other end? Brown Sludge of course.

Remember when you were a child in school, and your art teacher explained to you that the color White was the “absence” of all color, and that Black was the “presence” of all color? The idea was that when you stripped out all of the colors of the spectrum – you were left with white, and when you blended every color together – you ended up with black.

So… when it came time to paint – you mixed all those thick beautiful tempura colors together – and got what? Not the literal black that you expected. Instead you got a grotesque brown color – the color of… sludge. You’d seen that crass color before of course. It’s when you suddenly understood that combining all things together and mixing them mercilessly would always yield something that sickly brown and viscous. That color and texture of all things that have been “digested”.

Every day in almost every city across the country, the forces of greed and corporatism are consuming and then digesting the true American way of life.

The original Independent Small Businessman doesn’t stand a chance against Behemoth Big Box Monsters.

The original American Consumer doesn’t stand a chance against a culture that has legitimized Greed as a legitimate business tactic.

Your Community doesn’t’ stand a chance either. When every Independent Local Businessman has been ground into Brown Sludge, and soulless corporations are leeching the money and resources that *should* be going back into YOUR Community, what will be left? Who will you work for?

It’s time.

It’s time we de-legitimize the Culture of Corporate Greed.
It’s time we let our politicians know that the price to be paid for selling their soul to Big Money Corporate Lobbyists is to be voted out of a job, and into obscurity.
It’s time we neuter Big Corporate Money’s ability to buy favorable legislation by making it swift and terrible political death to any politician who accepts it.

It’s time we return to our roots and learn the high price we pay for those low prices that our own greed drives us to seek out.

It starts here.

It starts today.

It’s not enough to Talk the Talk.
You gotta Walk the Walk.

The Walk:

I quit my job working for a Fortune 100 Brown Sludge Monster - one of the worst of the worst - and just walked away.
I found a job with a local, independently owned company that isn’t publically traded and went to work for them.
I ponied up the money for this Blog (this is significant, when you’re struggling to make ends meet - a couple hundred dollars for a domain and hosting package and all the associated extras is meaningful).

Feels good.

Entry Filed under: Brown Sludge Explained