severely undermined, is not only unwise, it is also deeply misguided. To absolutise the role of the corporation, then, is effectively to negate the legitimate role of citizens and their governments – a role which they, and they alone, can democratically and legitimately perform. Boomeritis Governance (or Green-meme Governance)110 What all these non-governmental substitutes for binding global governance amount to, then, is what we might call “boomeritis governance”. Boomeritis is a term coined by Wilber to describe the unfortunate combination of a postmodern, liberal, egalitarian worldview shot through with a strong dose of narcissism; a worldview held by those likely to instinctively favour a distributed way of governing under which NGOs, corporations and markets all have a legitimate, front-line role in the job of governance alongside, and equal to, democratically elected national governments. Under this scenario, NGOs, corporations and markets sit alongside national governments as equal partners as they all supposedly “do governance together” in a kind of nonhierarchical, flat, networked fashion; a fashion which subtly inflates the status of NGOs, corporations and markets and which, by the same token, subtly but devastatingly negates the public sphere of democratically elected national governments and their citizens. A way of “doing governance” which, while it may appeal to the Flatland, baby-boomer generation who favour anything egalitarian, distributed and non-hierarchical, will, as global problems steadily worsen under its auspices, soon likely show itself for the poor, inadequate and ineffective substitute that it is. We could conclude, then, that CSR and the endless stream of other concepts which attempt, rather haphazardly, to act as 110
“Boomeritis” is Wilber’s term for “universal pluralism infected by narcissism”, a characteristic of the baby-boomer, “me” generation. For a full explanation, see Boomeritis – A novel that will set you free, Ken Wilber, Shambhala, 2002.
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