John Perkins has led a schizophrenic life. For years he served as an officer in the global corporatocracy, peddling economic strategies to developing nations that widened the gap between the rich and poor. Then his conscience got the better of him. He switched teams and has been a tireless advocate for a just and sustainable world ever since.
Perkins’ 2004 exposé, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, spent nearly a year and a half on the New York Times bestseller list and made Perkins a star in the sustainability world. His most recent book, Hoodwinked: An Economic Hit Man Reveals Why the World Financial Markets IMPLODED—and What We Need to Do to Remake Them (Broadway Business, 2009), works the same formula that made Confessions such a huge success, combining political and economic analysis with juicy tales about Perkins’s travels and adventures.
At the end of the day, though, it’s not Perkins who’s schizophrenic: It’s our politico-economic system. The global corporatocracy presents two faces to the world. One face—the one that comes to us all gussied up by its promoters—is virtuous and benign, while the other is more menacing. It’s this latter reality, this shadow reality, that Perkins experienced and is intent on sharing with the world.
Although Perkins is delivering a very contemporary and progressive message, in conversation he comes across as a guy with bedrock, old-time values. He wants us to become a true democracy again—a democracy, in others words, in which an engaged and knowledgeable public acts wisely. Perkins sees personal empowerment—claiming and acting on our passion—as the way to make this happen. Wake up! Don’t be hoodwinked or downhearted! Together we can make America great again! This is his message.
I caught up with Perkins recently for a conversation about his views, his life, and our prospects for the future.
John Perkins will be speaking on April 22 (Earth Day) at 7pm at SUNY New Paltz, Lecture Center 100. www.johnperkins.org.
John, you’ve had some dramatic personal transformations in your life, most notably, the one that shifted you from Economic Hit Man to sustainability activist. Was there a particular epiphany that sparked this change?
I joined the Peace Corps as a young man and lived with the Shuar Indians of Ecuador, so from early on I was drawn to spiritual and shamanic paths. When I was working as an Economic Hit Man, my conscience bothered me more and more. At first, I could justify it because I believed in the macroeconomic models we were putting out. Over time, though, I could see that we were selling a bill of goods.
One day, I was sailing in the Virgin Islands. I docked at St. John and walked up to an old sugar cane plantation. I was sitting there admiring the extraordinary scenery when it dawned on me that this plantation had been built on the bones of thousands of slaves. And then I realized: I was a modern-day slaver. I resolved to never do it again.
That’s really a comment about transparency, which is one of the critical issues of our time. You pierced the curtain of time and space.
Every day, we make choices. Which company do we buy our gas from? Our sneakers? Our blue jeans? Are we going to support companies that are in service to people and the planet, or companies that aren’t? Collectively, the choices we make in this area have huge consequences. The world is run by big corporations, but at the end of the day, the marketplace is democratic. We have a powerful vote in the marketplace if we use our power wisely.
To do that, though, we have to know about a product’s life cycle. The information has to be transparent, and it’s not because the big corporations don’t want it to be.
The global “corporatocracy” controls the mainstream media, and so it’s easy to feel we’re stuck with this, but we’re not. We can overcome this situation. We’ve already seen huge changes come about through popular action in the marketplace. We got rid of apartheid by opposing the corporations that supported it. We’ve gotten rid of the type of aerosol cans that destroyed the ozone layer. We got trans fats out of foods and antibiotics out of chickens.
What do you hope to accomplish with Hoodwinked?
I was asked by my publisher to write about the deep causes underlying the current economic crisis. The problem isn’t capitalism, it’s predatory capitalism, a form of capitalism that’s been with us for less than a half century and has created a failed economic system. I wanted to reveal this form of capitalism for what it is, and I also wanted to offer ways to move beyond it. I wanted to help us move toward a world that my two-and-a-half-year-old grandson would be happy to live in.
Speaking broadly, one can separate your audience into two groups. There are those who believe that we live in a true democracy, not a corporatocracy, and there are those who subscribe to the darker (and, in your view, more accurate) narrative that corporations rule the world. Which group did you write Hoodwinked for?
That’s not how I operate. While I hope that both groups will read the book, I wasn’t targeting either of them. I wrote the book to go on record about what I think is wrong with the world. People like Tom Paine and Rachel Carson put their passion out there and let it produce whatever it produced. That’s my attitude, too. You need to have faith that the right people will read what you write. You need to have faith that if you put pen to paper, the truth will prevail.
For the last few years, I’ve been traveling the world giving speeches. Sometimes I speak to thousands of people, sometimes to 10. If I’m talking to 10 people, I’ll have faith that at least three of them will be the “right people”—people who will be influenced in a positive way. The fact is, we never know who’s listening. Who had heard of Barack Obama eight years ago? Maybe one of those 10 people is the next president!
Are you hopeful?
Yes. Things can change very fast, especially once the mental model shifts. Did you know that, when the car first came out, people thought that going so fast would cause serious brain damage? And yet look at where we are today.
I also believe awareness is growing that we have no choice but to take care of the planet—and this awareness isn’t only among progressives. Increasingly, I’m being asked to speak to conservative groups.
What gives you the most hope?
Young people, who strike me as increasingly committed to creating positive change. Five years ago, when I spoke with business school students, they were all about making lots of money. Now they want to help bring about a better world.
Another reason for hope is the huge changes I’ve seen in my lifetime. Here’s an example. A few years ago, I spoke with a Tibetan nomad who was lamenting that they’d never have telephones because they couldn’t run telephone poles so high into the mountains. Now they all have cell phones!
Third, because of those cell phones and the Internet, we’re all talking with one another, all realizing that we face the same crisis. We’re all beginning to understand that we live on a very tiny planet that is very fragile. We’ve never been connected like this before.
Finally, there’s China, which is rapidly becoming the world’s leading economic force and, according to the majority of students I spoke with while I was there last summer, is determined to be the greenest country on the planet.
One of your earlier books is called The World Is as You Dream It. The message I take from this is that if we want to change the world, we first need to change the stories inside our heads. What’s the relationship between consciousness change and social change?
The two are closely linked. But consciousness change alone isn’t enough. I once spent time with the Dalai Lama. Someone asked him what he thought about the value of praying for peace. His response was that it’s a good thing, but you can’t stop there. First you need to have a dream, then you need to meditate or pray on it, and then you need to take action.
When you talk, an image keeps coming to mind: the Declaration of Independence. I think it’s because of your affection for the term “We the People.”
You’re right, I do use the term a lot. Women didn’t get the vote because Woodrow Wilson was pro-women’s suffrage. They got it because they got out there and persuaded him to support them. We didn’t get out of Vietnam because Nixon was antiwar. We got out of Vietnam because We the People spoke up. There are hundreds of examples like this throughout history. It’s We the People who have always changed things.
We the People can create the world we dream of, but we need to play an active role. We need to get off our butts and get out there and take action, and we need to have some fun doing it. There is nothing more gratifying than knowing that you’re devoting yourself to making the world a more sustainable, just and peaceful place.
