Healing the Collective Body

The Root-Cause Remedy We Need

In modern medicine, we’ve grown accustomed to treating symptoms. Take metabolic disease: obesity, diabetes, heart disease - conditions that plague millions. Allopathic medicine often prescribes pills to manage blood sugar, statins for cholesterol, or surgeries to bypass clogged arteries. These interventions can work, temporarily, but they rarely address the root causes: poor diet, sedentary lifestyles, stress, or environmental toxins. The patient may feel better, but the underlying disease festers, often worsening over time.

Now, consider our society. We see symptoms everywhere: political polarization, economic inequality, eroding trust in institutions, and a creeping sense of disconnection and moral decay. Like doctors prescribing pills, we propose quick fixes: new laws, charismatic leaders, or movements, hoping to patch the cracks. But these are Band-Aids on a deeper wound. Just as metabolic disease stems from systemic imbalances in the body, our societal disease arises from systemic imbalances in power, wealth, and influence. And at the heart of this imbalance lies the unhealthy partnership of corporate power and state power.

The Disease of Corporatism

Corporatism, or the corporatocracy, is the fusion of corporate power with state authority, where policies and laws increasingly serve the interests of a few megacorporations and their shareholders rather than the public. Corporate lobbying shapes legislation, regulatory agencies are captured by the industries they oversee, and public discourse is molded by media conglomerates with vested interests. The result? A society where wealth concentrates, an erosion of civil rights ensues, and the average person is powerless to do anything about it, even if they've been directly harmed as a result.

When defense contractors lobby for a perpetual warfare economy, a pharmaceutical giant hikes insulin prices while lobbying against affordable generics, or when a tech monopoly censors free speech to protect industry’s market dominance, we can directly see the corporatocracy’s fingerprints prioritizing profit over human lives.

This is the root cause of our societal disease, much like determining the root causes of metabolic dysfunction. Yet, just as allopathic medicine focuses on managing symptoms such as high blood sugar or hypertension, our political and cultural debates often fixate on surface-level issues. We argue over culture wars, wars in other countries, or election outcomes, while the deeper issue - the entanglement of corporate and state power - goes unaddressed. Being distracted by the symptoms and not going after the disease has allowed the problem to fester like necrosis. To break this cycle of decay, we must move beyond symptom management and embrace a holistic cure - one that restores balance to our systems of power.

The Logic of a Holistic Cure

To heal metabolic disease, holistic medicine looks at the whole person: diet, exercise, sleep, stress, and environment. It seeks to restore balance, not just suppress symptoms. Similarly, to heal our collective body, we also need a holistic approach that restores balance to our systems of governance and power.

This is why I’ve proposed a radical yet necessary policy realignment: The Separation of the Corporatocracy and the State: Addressing Corporate Personhood.

The logic is simple. Just as the separation of church and state protects individual freedom by preventing any single ideology from dominating governance, separating corporate power from the state protects our Constitutional Republic - a system where the rule of law, individual rights, and the public good prevail over private interests.

Thomas Jefferson foresaw the threat of corporate dominance and urged action to safeguard our republic:

“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

Why This Proposal Matters

The Separation of the Corporatocracy and the State: Addressing Corporate Personhood proposal cuts to the heart of our societal disease, excising the corporatocracy’s metastatic spread rather than chasing symptoms. Without this shift, even our best efforts, whether reforming healthcare, addressing term limits, or reducing poisons from our food supply, will fall short. Why? Because a system captured by corporate interests cannot prioritize the collective good, just as a body riddled with metabolic dysfunction cannot thrive on temporary symptomatic fixes.

Just as cancer spreads by exploiting the body’s systems, corporatocracy metastasizes through our institutions, diverting resources from the public.

Shifting From Diseased Models to Healthy Ones

Not all corporations are bad, so this isn’t about vilifying corporations. Businesses can operate ethically, drive innovation and prosperity, and provide plenty of benefits. Corporate leaders aren’t the enemy; they’re navigating a broken system. But if we don’t fix the broken system, and the human vice of greed is not properly tempered, that does have real and lasting deleterious consequences.

By choosing transparency and fairness, they can lead a transformation that secures their legacy and society’s future. The focus here is on recognizing that unchecked corporate influence skews the process to favor industries at the expense of life itself, much like unchecked sugar consumption distorts metabolic health and gives rise to cancers that feed on it to the detriment of the human body.

Consider the evidence. In the U.S., the top 1% own more wealth than the bottom 90%, a gap fueled by policies favoring corporate tax breaks and deregulation. OpenSecrets reported $3.7 billion in corporate lobbying expenditures for 2024, accounting for 86.3% of total lobbying spending, with 2025 data (January–December) still being compiled but expected to exceed this. Regulatory agencies, from the FDA to the SEC, are often staffed by former industry executives, creating revolving doors that prioritize profit over people. These aren’t isolated issues; they’re symptoms of a system where corporate power has merged with state power, undermining the public good.

To corporate leaders, this is an invitation to lead with integrity, securing both your legacy and society’s future. This proposal matters because it’s a call to restore health to our collective body. Ethical governance, as business leader Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. articulates, is the antidote to our societal disease:

“At its core, ethical governance is about doing the right thing, even when it’s difficult or costly. It’s about prioritizing values like honesty, fairness, transparency, and accountability in all business dealings.”

This proposal envisions a call to restore health to our collective body, to a societal framework where policies reflect the needs of people, not the demands of profit-driven entities.

It requires bold steps: banning corporate lobbying, closing the revolving door between industry and government, enforcing antitrust laws to break up monopolies, and amplifying public funding for campaigns to reduce corporate influence. These measures aren’t easy, but neither is reversing metabolic disease through lifestyle overhaul. Both require a deep commitment and discipline to actively address the root causes of our suffering.

Individual Health + Collective Health

Here’s where the analogy deepens. Restoring health to the human body through holistic means like better nutrition, movement, and stress management isn’t enough if the society we live in remains sick. A healthy individual in a dysfunctional society is like a clean river flowing through a polluted landscape; it’s only a matter of time before the broader environment takes its toll and pollutes the river all over again. Our personal health and societal health are intertwined. We cannot thrive as individuals if our collective body is diseased, just as we cannot heal society without empowering individuals to live healthier lives. These are interdependent ways of being, and one is the reflection of the other. Thus, truth is exemplified in the maxims, as within, so without, and as above, so below. Just as we heal our bodies by aligning with nature’s rhythms, we heal society by aligning with principles of truth, justice, and interdependence. As within, so without: our inner clarity must reflect the outer systems we build.

This is why the call for the Separation of Corporatocracy and the State is an urgent one. At this stage of the game, it’s not about ideology or partisanship; it’s about our collective survival. After all, we will reap what we sow. Continue to sow war, we will have more war. We must remove the profit motive altogether from both war and pestilence, or we will perpetuate immeasurable misery and pain on generations. Causing diseases or war for economic reasons is itself a metastatic disease of society, which must be excised. A society that fails to address the root causes of its dysfunction risks collapse, just as a body ignoring metabolic disease risks organ failure. The symptoms - division, inequality, distrust - are already severe. We can’t afford to keep prescribing pills when what we need is a cure.

Shifting from profit-at-all-costs to ethical innovation isn’t just moral - it’s profitable. Companies like Patagonia thrive by prioritizing people over short-term gains, proving that ethics and prosperity align.

Corporate leaders have the power to redefine success. By championing transparency and fairness, they can pioneer a system where everyone thrives, cementing their legacy as visionaries.

A Clarion Call for All

The path forward isn’t easy, but it’s clear. Just as healing metabolic disease requires discipline and a willingness to rethink old habits, healing our society demands the courage to challenge entrenched power.

Start by educating yourself and others about the corporatocracy’s grip on governance. Support policies and leaders who prioritize the public over profits. Demand transparency and accountability in how decisions are made. And above all, reject the temptation to settle for symptom-focused solutions when the root cause is staring us in the face.

What kind of society do you want to live in?

One ruled by profit, or one rooted in principles of truth and justice?

To corporate leaders: join us in building a system where ethics and prosperity align. Your leadership can transform society for the better, for everyone.

To consumers, actionable steps we can take start by voting with our wallets. Support local businesses and B-Corps that prioritize people over profit, join grassroots movements like the Global Wellness Forum or Move to Amend, advocating for systemic changes, and foster community dialogues to rebuild trust from the ground up.

We all have the power to heal our collective body, just as we have the power to heal our own body. The proposal for the separation of corporatocracy and the state is the holistic remedy we need for our greater body. It is a bold step toward a healthier, more equitable, and ethical society governed by principles first.

So, let’s stop treating symptoms and start curing the disease.

Our collective well-being depends on it.

Like my content?

Support my work with Ko-Fi