Numinous Nonsense

My buddy Duff wrote a devastating critique of Multi-Level Marketing outfits, and used Ken Wilber’s 4-quadrant model to frame the problem in a brilliant way. Here is a little excerpt from his post, “Have You Been Infected by an MLM? How to Heal from the Great American Socio-Economic Virus.“:

MLM’s are the tapeworm of America, the ringworm of Capitalism, the computer virus of the social matrix. They are the opposite of Conscious Business–no matter how conscious the product sold, no matter how conscious the people selling it. The individual still remains unconscious of how economics and business structures actually work, and the MLM’s are structured to encourage this ignorance by distracting from it with an emphasis on personal attitude and effort.

You want to serve while helping your financial condition. Wonderful! Your intentions are pure, but pure intentions can still be manipulated by a pathological structure. No amount of upper-left pure intentions or even upper-right pure actions can completely overcome a situation in which the dominant problem is in the structure of an organization.

Duff and I have discussed this issue several times, as we’ve both had friends and family who have run amok with MLMs, liquidating their “social capital”, and justifying their desire greed to make money by saying how wonderful the product is. This is such a common (and rampant) issue, that I’m happy that Duff has unleashed a little intelligence into the fray.