The recent Supreme Court 5–4 ruling that major corporations have all the rights of ‘natural persons’, human beings, has many persons upset. As ‘natural persons’ this means corporations have the right of freedom of speech, and with their money can control elections and the legislative process. Is it not that they do not already do so, but now they can do it openly and legally. Maybe Walmart or ExxonMobil will run for president. They both were born in the United States and are of the right age.

Now if corporations, created by human beings, are ‘natural persons’ with the same rights as human beings, what about other creatures in nature. What about animals? If Walmart is a ‘natural person’ certainly an ape is too. They say the genetic makeup of apes is something like 98% or more similar to human beings. I am not sure corporations even have a genetic makeup.

What about plants? They certainly are natural and if a non-living corporation is a person, plants are a higher form of being.

However, the real good news of this Supreme Court ruling is for worms. I have been watching a series on the Charlie Rose TV show about the human brain. One of the scientists in the series studies worms, with the smallest of brains, to learn how the human brain works. Just like week we saw how many worms socialize. A major corporation may have many persons with brains working for it but no biologist would study a corporation to learn about the human brain. A worm, however, unlike Walmart, could never run for President of the USA, although born in the United States, a worm would not be old enough.

So the way I see it, if corporations, which are artificial legal entities, are ‘natural persons’ and have rights like free speech, then all creation are natural persons and creatures with brains are higher forms of persons than those, like corporations that are artificial legal entities. Following this logic a worm is more a human than Walmart. This may explain why I value worms and am attracted to them, and abhor Walmart and disgusted by it.

I’d better remember to water the worms in my Growing Power box in the sun room. All they need is a little water once in awhile to be ‘natural persons’ eating compost, casting out rich organic soil and reproducing. Walmart, on the other hand, needs a lot of money fed to it to keep it happy, its castings are cheap and break easily, and its means of reproducing are harmful to nature. As a ‘natural person’, give me a worm over Walmart any day.

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