When I was a boy I read a story, and that story was about mythology. In that book, I noticed something: here there be dragons, and I always wanted to see a dragon; I never have. I knew they must be real, for they were in all the stories. Yet if they were real, where have they gone? Where are today’s “dragons”?
Across cultures, dragons consistently share three defining traits: immense power, vast wealth, and a morally complex nature. The Aztecs had the god Quetzalcoatl which according to Daniel Thompson, was a “winged serpent that flew too close to the sun and became the sun’s pet.” According to Becky Little, dragons ran rampant in the history of ancient Mesopotamia, from the “savage mušḫuššu, who spatter enemy and foe with deadly venom” to the aždahā which were “portrayed as large, serpent-like creatures that lived in the sea, on land or in the air. Some had wings, some breathed fire, and some could suck horses and people into their mouths.” An aždahā was the penultimate challenge in the epic Shahnama. In the East, more dragons were to be found. Chinese mythology had many, but among the most important were the dragon kings—Ao Kuang of the East, Ao K’in of the South, Ao Jun of the West, and Ao Shun of the North—who paid homage to the Jade Emperor during the heaviest rains of the year, and in ancient Japan the fearsome Yamata no Orochi was a legendary eight-headed, eight-tailed serpent, often associated with chaos and destruction which was the final challenge in the tale of the hero Susanoo. European literature has many prominent dragons, one of the most famous being Fáfnir. In Norse legend, Fáfnir is a dwarf who is transformed into a dragon to guard a cursed hoard after he slew his father for it and he in turn was slain by the hero Sigurd.
This is what a dragon was: an entity of great power associated with malevolence or benevolence who could only be killed through special means by special people (heroes). But where, and what, is the modern dragon? What entities possess a kind of conditional immortality? What creatures hoard such wealth as to warp the world around them? What beings wield such awesome power as to be seen as both benevolent and malevolent? What entities hold such sway that they are present in every corner of the world?
To answer this question, we must ask ourselves, what is a corporation?
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, a corporation is “a legal form of business organization, chartered by a state, that exists as a separate entity from its owners,” and that “can enter contracts, own property, sue, and be sued in its own name.” Another power nearly all corporations have is called “indefinite duration,” which is a fancy way of saying that the corporation “can continue beyond the involvement or lifetime of its founders.”6 To sum up, corporations are a group of conditionally immortal entities (barring dissolution by a group of individuals or legal action by a judge it will continue forevermore), which often wield enormous economic power, and are seen by many as either “good” or “evil.”
I would posit that the term to describe the majestic creatures of yesteryear (dragons) are a perfect summation of the modern global corporation. In what I see only as the most delicious of ironies, corporations are perhaps the most fitting beings on the planet to the mythical dragon. Yet they could not be more native to reality if they tried. It is in their nature to grow in power and size as they grow old. They hoard wealth like the dragons of Europe through subsidiaries, offshore accounts and low-risk investments. They can cause environmental devastation like in 2008 where the corporation Shell devastated vast tracts of land through oil spills, and yet they can also act as defenders of nature, like the Nature Conservancy which works to conserve the environment through a variety of methods.
Corporations have power beyond fiscal as well: some create weapons, some work with governments, some pioneer implements, but all have at least one capability beyond monetary. In some instances these ¨dragons¨ are more powerful than their old-world counterparts, while Fáfnir’s hoard was said to have an incalculable value, it had no buying power, as Fáfnir couldn’t buy anything, and his lair(while certainly large) couldn’t have possible been larger than a big skyscraper. Meanwhile, the corporate juggernaut that is the Catholic Church (yes, it is a corporation) holds over 177 million acres worldwide, and maintains an estimated asset value of 73 billion. Fáfnir’s hoard, pshaw, more like poor dragons’ pennies.
Corporations are dragons, old and strong, yet modern all the same. Neither working for good nor ill, but according to their own design. They grow, they hoard, and they endure. I have seen dragons, and so have you.
