All along, Literature has been or- chestrating pious human plati- tudes. One among of the many is the act of expounding the concept of "utilitarianism" of man, which posits that nothing but the utility of the man to the society or to that of the state as weighed by "reason" seemed mattered. As though driven by this philosophy, Shakespeare often found accusing the characters in his dramas such as Corionanus, Hamlet, Richard II etc., since they proved to be of no use for the society, or the State. They remained as mere expressions of their personalities. Hence, he accused these characters, and in so doing, is it any wonder, if he has subtly directed us to be more careful in our behavior, lest we should attract similar accusations. Yet, all his commands had gone unnoticed and unheeded by the humans. Intriguingly, in many of his dramas, we often find men becoming useless to the state or to themselves, by the "abundance"of say, abundance of power, abundance of ambition, abundance of stupidity etc.,as much as their "emptiness". And as a result, man's business simply turned out to be revelation rather than reformation.
That
could be one significant reason why we often come across their recurrences year
after year and century after century. Today's business world is no exception to
this phenomenon: Leaders of WorldCom, executives of Enron etc. are a testimony
to the current state of affairs. Now, it came to the turn of Robert L Nardelli,
the Chief Executive Officer of the Home Depot, the second biggest retailer in
the US. Newspapers screamed in chorus: "Nardelli resigned as Chairman and
CEO of Home Depot." And the shareholder activists were obviously the joyous
lot. |
