I am baking an apple-pie and the smell wafts through the house. I love this smell. Although it doesn’t trigger any specific memories for me, it is a pleasant and warming smell. It reminds me to revisit Diane Ackerman’s book, A Natural History of the Senses. She tells a story describing how Helen Keller ascertained the path that each visitor took throughout her house SOLELY BY THE ODORS they carried with them as they moved through various hallways and rooms.

I ADORE the sense of smell, and am extremely attuned to it. Unlike many, I find pungent smells (body odor, skunks, intense cheeses) rather appealing, mainly because they are incredibly distinct. This brings me to my fascination with nostalgia, as a topic and how it relates to smells (physiologically) and actual longing or grieving, of sorts. Grieving for familiarity, perhaps. Or longing for food, even. Perhaps the smell association is linked to memory (nostalgia) so that we could survive when we were hunters and gatherers. By smells triggering memory, we were perhaps more capable of anticipating weather, tracking prey, and choosing suitable mates through the phermones they released.

CSR, or Corporate Social Resposibility, is the subject of a “survey article” in the Economist this week by Clive Crook. It is complex and far-reaching, to say the least. As I physically stopped my socialist knee from jerking about, I opened my mind and some meaty ideas began to emerge. Like this one; Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations describes the idea that promoting self interest (as an individual/corporation) in turn serves the overall good of the people. Crook differentiates self-interest from greed.

“The kind of self interest that advances the public good is rational and enlightened.”

I can relate. While drinking plenty of wine with my women friends over the years, we often repeat the obvious; if you aren’t taking care of yourself, how can you expect to take care of anyone else?

I am more cynical than the author, however. I don’t happen to believe that left to their own devices (under governmental “scrutiny”, free market competition, etc.) corporations will automatically make a decision that ultimately serves the public good. Crook suggests many possibilities and scenarios that support the opposite, but I am not sold. The reason is simple: greed. ‘Cause even if people are intrinsically good (I believe that we are), bad decisions are often made around and within uncommon circumstances. Most of us will never be in the position to make a decision that directly influences millions of dollars streaming into (or out of) our own pockets. The power involved remains within the circles of our Elite, and history has painted a bleak foundation on which we build our greed palaces.

I envision an interview, Terry Gross style, including Naomi Klein, of No Logo fame and Crook duking out the details.
I’ll produce it.