Does philanthropy play a role in making bright futures?

Independence Day is a good time to reflect on the big picture. Like "what will it take to create a civilization that's truly worthy of the name? One that might be much better than ours, because we planted seeds to make it so?"  

It can happen! Every single day, more than 200,000 human beings exit grinding poverty and another 200,000 or so depart mere poverty and enter something that could be called "lower middle class," with electricity, potable water, a safe roof and kids in school. That's every day, so clearly some combination of efforts by entrepreneurs, governments and donors can work... just not fast enough. There's always a desperate need to speed things up.

Yesterday I had lunch with Keith Kegley, who has helped develop Social Venture Partners into a dynamo in the philanthropic world, by guiding groups, NGOs, and individuals to invest in ongoing enterprises that do good -- many of them while at least breaking even, or perhaps making enough money to plow back into more positive sum activities.  SVP has 3000+ partners, from Boston to Bangalore.  Great, world-changing work, Keith.

I've been writing about philanthropy for twenty years. The most important pair of concepts I've pushed deal with two ends of the giving spectrum... 

   ...how to convince zillionaires to get more involved... 

   ...and how each middle class citizen can maximize impact to help save the world, according to her or his own, quirky standards. A method that's inexpensive and so easy it might even be called lazy, but that lets you check off boxes -- "I want someone to deal with that... and that" -- so each year you can confirm: "I'm one of the good people, not part of the problem."

We'll return to both of those concepts in a bit. But first...

== (Almost) the world's most successful entrepreneur weighs in ==

Amazon chief Jeff Bezos stirred a lot of discussion with his tweeted request for ideas/suggestions for how to do well-targeted philanthropy.  A great question! Here's my tweet response: 

"Jeff, years ago we spoke of getting ALL zillionaires to do this. e.g. via a catalog of pre-vetted projects."

Here's a more extended answer that I sent by email:

Jeff, you may recall how once, over dinner, we discussed my paper about a core problem (and solution) for philanthropy. 

- Host a series of fascinating meetings, asking top visionaries and practical solvers to create a list of projects needed by the world and by people -- a catalog that's pre-vetted for plausibility.

- That catalog would make a great book, inspiring folks to look at ambitious projects. (Some with long range profit potential.)

- The meetings, arguments and vetting could make a great TV series! That, by itself, might do good, even when a project is rejected.

- If just two or three other well-off families were inspired to take on a catalogued project, the multiplier effect could be huge.

I'll discuss this "EON" concept a little more, below. But first, some illustrations of how seriously some folks take the need to prod at the definitions of "giving."

== Philanthropic Innovation ==

Michael J. Totten and Brian C. Anderson discuss the rising homelessness facing Portland, Oregon. Within their dialogue they discuss Dignity Village, an informal homeless “city” democratically organized by residents and privately maintained. Over time, the village evolved from a typical homeless camp to a neighborhood of tiny homes. The village prohibits drug use and self-regulates its membership while requiring no tax-payer funds.

Along similar lines, Nolan Gray elevates our view of trailer parks by highlighting how they represent one of the last market-based, low-income housing solutions. Moreover, Gray explains, these neighborhoods bear aspects of traditional urban design as well as a blend of individual choice and private governance. While not failing to recognize their inherent challenges, Gray brings the virtues of spontaneous community order into focus.

These articles, published by my friends at the Philanthropic Enterprise, represent the last, fading glimmers of grownup, generously positive-thinking conservatism, extolling the benefits of self-organizing communities that do not wait for largesse from cumbersome governments.  

By the way, that spirit is also expressed by author Brenda Cooper in her story “Streetlife in the Emerald City,” in our recent anthology, Chasing Shadows.

Alas, it will be more plausible to listen to the well-meaning Philanthropic Enterprise folks when we finally hear them admit: 

“Yes, 90% of the U.S. right has gone stark, jabbering, treasonously insane and this resurgent confederacy must be defeated. But, while we join all decent Americans in thwarting the fox-feudalist lunacy, we’ll also nurse the embers of a decent, not-socialist tomorrow.”

(Okay, I won't insist on exactly those words. How about just: "Supply side never worked. And Rupert Murdoch has deeply harmed American conservatism. And let's oppose feudalism as vigorously as we oppose Big Brother government."  I'll settle for that.)

But let's get back to the big picture. Is the world improvable by human intervention? 

== Perspective ==

Nostalgia is a condition that all humans produce, often evoking either pain or pleasure, or both. 

It can also be one of the “addictive mental states” that I’ve written about, which trigger chemical releases that become compulsory.  

Not all addictive mental states are unwholesome! We are addicts to our kids, love, friendship and the exercise of profound skill.  Others, like sanctimony and rage, can be as driving and as destructive as heroin. See: Indignation, addiction and hope: Does it help to be 'mad as hell?'

Nostalgia's debilitating effects are more subtle than rage-addiction. But it can be almost as deeply harmful, undermining our confidence that problems can be solved with goodwill, pragmatism, negotiation and belied that our parents and grandparents weren't fools. They believed in us and we can prove them to have been right.

Ah, but there's another mental disease. One that is closely related to nostalgia.


== Romantics could be the death of us ==

People keep asking me why -- given that the most noxiously dangerous madness is currently on the political right -- I keep reminding folks to also keep a way eye on the far-left. The reason is simple. 

Romanticism should stick to novels, poems and movies. In politics it turns deadly and generally does evil.

Take just one trait that nearly all zero-sum, romantic-transcendentalist-dogmatists share. That trait is TELEOLOGY. A tendency to assume that history has a predictable pattern that it is destined to follow. (Bear in mind, below, that I actually quite despise the so-called "left-right political axis" -- a metaphor that is lobotomizing, dumb, inaccurate and misleading; but we must use it because so many romantics self-define that way.)

Simplistically-speaking: leftists tend to believe that history has a direction, toward upward progress that's unstoppable. They almost never contemplate the implications, but they do believe in upward teleology.

Rightists tend to glom onto different versions of teleology -- generally "cyclical history."  They often declare that civilization is fated to rise and fall, going back well before Oswald Spengler's infamously stupid screed "The Decline of the West," and Hitler's loony Horbigger Cult of cyclical falling moons and so on. See also the dumb and easily-refuted "Tytler Calumny" that rightists use to slander democracy. And the more recent alluring incantation called the "Fourth Turning."

It doesn't matter that professional historians, statisticians and others who actually seek such patterns never, ever find them. Both teleologies are purely incantations, designed to flatter the believer's biases.  

The leftist gets to murmur: "we shall overcome, no matter how many troops the Czar has!"

The rightist gets to mutter: "No matter how much so-called "progress" you bastard reformers make, it will inevitably get trashed and go to hell!"

Different dreams but the same romantic-teleological twaddle.

How does this relate to philanthropy?

Because generosity to the poor -- or the planet -- has grown up a bit and become fixed on outcomes rather than the old emphasis -- benefiting the soul of the giver. Both romantic mythologies -- focused on either inevitability or futility -- stab at the thing that is making all the difference in the world: pragmatically vigorous reform. Negotiated and practical action. Vigorously confident belief in both a commons and entrepreneurship. 

Awareness that the odds have always been stacked against this enlightenment renaissance. But determination to make a whole new path for history, despite the impediments of romantic fools.

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== Related Miscellany ==

Clear-eyed examination of the guilty past can find both cause for reflective regret and also surprising glimpses of decency, as people adapt to change. This moving little piece tells one such tale.

Vaclav Vincalek has an interesting series of podcasts on information, data, programming and such.

All right, one admits to mixed feelings about this video, combining admiration with outrage. With appreciation of precocious competence!  

Will the “true 21st century” bring us back to feudalism?

Almost exactly a century ago, a lone gunman set in motion events that transformed the world -- ending the lives of millions and shattering empires. With that anniversary in mind, I pondered the clear fact that the last three centuries all seem to have started on their FOURTEENTH YEAR. The brutal arc and themes of the 20th Century - a concave pit that hit its nadir in 1943 - all of it began with shots fired in Sarajevo in the summer of 1914. And 1714 and 1814 were years of similar, transforming portent.

 See my explanation... along with speculation where we might be heading, if 2014 proves to be the "real beginning" of the 21st Century. And sure… that great, over-arching, 21st Century theme might turn out to be pragmatic, adult problem-solving, science and reason! Heck, throw in the Age of Aquarius! I’m all for all of that.

But let’s be frank, the odds have always been against those traits ever getting the upper hand for long. Too many deep, animal drives have propelled most human cultures toward slumping into pyramids of hierarchy and domineering privilege. And rationalization, as portrayed by this poignantly sarcastic piece in the Onion.

Conniving cheaters and their lickspittle excuse-makers will always be an anchor on our ankles, dragging us backward.

== Traitors to the Enlightenment ==

How far does it go? Corey Pein takes on (and eviscerates) one extreme cult — the New Feudalism -- a weird and deeply sick mind-herpes that has infected some of our worst indignation junkies out there -- resentful fanatics who love drawing attention by declaring hatred of democracy, egalitarian justice and science, pledging fealty instead to rule by a new lordly caste.

Like a parody of evil techie libertarians, these fellows would be funny, if they weren't potentially dangerous. See my own take on this "movement," which declares hatred of all the things that brought us the richest, wisest, gentlest, most productive, insightful, generous, creative, socially-mobile, artistic, scientific and enlightened era of all time. Indeed, delusional rationalization is the greatest human talent, and the one gift in which pathetic under-achievers truly excel.

See the root cause of all this, in my talk: “Indignation, Addiction and Hope: Does it help to be “Mad as Hell?”  Follow along with the slides on Slideshare!

Mr. Pein may go a bit too far by interpolating and extrapolating similar views that he attributes to Silicon Valley libertarian-investor Peter Thiel. Thiel likes to poke at a very wide horizon of concepts and he is entitled, even if some of those what-if experiments push the envelope of plausibility. I can hardly throw stones at that trait! And Thiel has done enough pragmatic delivery of genuine goods and services that he is no under-achiever. Again, if he wants to poke at our heads with provocative ideas — he’s earned it.

As for the others? Facts will not stall indignation junkies, even when nearly all of their assertions prove diametrically opposite to actual truth. It is the Rapture of the Ingrates.

Oh, one final, amusing thing about the neo-feudalists? Their hilarious adoration of Vladimir Putin.

== Putin… the expected one? ==

I kid you not. Track the admiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin, which is lavish and open among the neo-feudalists but only softens a little — to “grudging admiration” —among the pundits at Fox. And why not? Everything now happening in Russia suits the Fox Design, as does the Putin narrative. Religion, hierarchy, inherited status, venerated values, top-down monopolies organized around families…

During the Crimea takeover, President Putin derided Western notions of tolerance and universal rights as “barren and neutered.” Said Putin, it is time to resist this scourge of "diversity" creeping in from the West. “More and more people in the world support our position on defending traditional values.”  He asserted Russia’s role to “prevent movement backward and downward, into chaotic darkness and a return to a primitive state.”

I do not blame him for saying this! It is, after all, exactly (almost word-for-word) the dismissal that zero-sum thinkers — even very bright ones — always come up with, when faced with the stunning successes of the Enlightenment West. Our wealth and productivity and power and freedom and joys must have come at a cost! Something precious must have been sacrificed in a “tradeoff.”

Osama, Stalin, Hitler, even the Civil War Confederates… all said the same thing in various ways. Western/northern decadence must have been purchased at cost of our “soul”… or manhood, or grit, or resilience, or style, or willingness to sacrifice.

Zero-summers must believe this! The only alternative, when staring jealously at our innumerable successes, would be to admit “those people in the scientific-tolerant West know a better way to live.” And rather than utter those words, they would rather die, or else make up a good story.

Every generation of Americans, especially, has had to disprove the Zero Sum Canard, sometimes at great cost. In comparative terms, we got off easy with 9/11. The grit and determination exhibited by New Yorkers, who stood atop the rubble and shouted “Is that all you got?” was capped by the courageous rebellion of the passengers on flight UA93, who reacted within minutes, showing what resilience and grit truly mean. No zero-sum society would ever see common citizens react with such rapid agility, resilience or guts.

I do not blame the zero-summers for not understanding the Positive Sum Game. Zero-sum thinking is deeply rooted in human nature. But understanding why they go back, again and again, to the same dreary rationalization does not mean we must put up with it. Because it always forces us into a position of pain, having to prove, yet again, that we have (figurative) cojones.

We cannot surrender our method — our positive sum revolution. Not even while merchants of fear on both the left and the right are yammering at us to give up and give in to despair.

== Speaking of ingrates… ==

With just a few exceptions, the states whose politicians most-loudly preach small government tend to be much more reliant on it than other states. Red States by far are more dependent on the federal government and are poorer. In aggregate, these states take back much more from the federal government than they put in. More of their gross domestic product comes from direct and indirect government outlays. This turns the takers vs makers debate on its head as those pushing that message represent the end they portend to despise.

And more -- a composite ranking (map) differentiates those counties where Americans are healthy and wealthy, educated and thin... versus struggling, poor and obese.

Sorry. The left has its haters of the enlightenment, too. But our biggest problem, right now, is the New Confederacy. Instead of seceding, this time, they think they have a better plan. They are tearing it all down from within.

A Plague of Outrage

A while back, I referred to this book: “The Outrage Industry: Political Opinion Media and the New Incivility” by Jeffrey M. Barry and Sarah Sobieraj.  An interesting rumination on how political disagreements unfold in American media can be found in Salon Online: How Right-wing Media Spiraled out of control, excerpted from the book. Skim past a lengthy and somewhat tendentious introduction about Michelle Bachman, and head to the meat, where the authors suggest that our current Era of Outrage is rather unprecedented and driven by deliberate incitement in media that are out of all proportion or control.

Especially interesting is a historical survey of how TV news used to be a forum for consensus and how shows like William F. Buckley's Firing Line encouraged debate that was constructive and mostly civil:

"Firing Line emerged in the context of these dramatic and often divisive events. The program was a one-hour debate-style public affairs show hosted by conservative William F. Buckley, during which Buckley posed challenging questions of the day to high-profile guests ranging from Hugh Hefner to Noam Chomsky. The interviews were interesting, with a more adversarial tone than found in network news and yet markedly more civilized than today’s cable news analysis shows. Questions were thoughtful, answers tended to be substantive, and those involved treated one another respectfully. Disagreement was ever present, but disparagement was rare.

“Firing Line” is noteworthy not only because it created space for extended exchange of political opinion on television, but also because it aired for over 30 years. “Agronsky and Company,” which debuted a few years later, but had less durability, also began to offer opinion-laden public affairs programming on television with a recurring slate of combatants who would reliably disagree with more personality than was typical of other news-based content of the time, though still in a far more respectful manner than is characteristic in similar formats in the outrage era."

It is an interesting essay by Berry and Sobieraj -- a chapter from their book -- though I might demur from some of its assertions… e.g. that there was not an Outrage Industry in earlier eras.  One has only to look at the almost uniformly noxious press that fomented treason in the South before the Civil War. (Newspapers that drifted from the Slave-o-crats' party line were burned.  Indeed, the principal complaint and grievance mentioned in nearly all documents declaring secession was fury over the stubborn refusal of Northern states to quell freedom of press and close down abolitionist papers.)

Other periods saw the swell and fume of "yellow journalism"  that stoked bitter rage and stymied sober debate. Indeed, one of these intervals encompassed the first two decades of the American Republic.

Still, the authors' point is well-made. We boomers grew up in a golden age of journalism that, ironically, was undermined by the generally wondrous advances in electronic media that have freed us to wander out of the paternalistic firelight of journalist-professionals.  Inevitably, along with the good aspects (e.g. being able to research any topic independently and gather points of view from all over the globe) we have also seen wretched things like the consolidation of millions of rivetted followers, stoked on monochrome opinion and hate, via subsidized cable and radio "news." Systems that create, in effect diatribe-based  "nuremberg rallies". Given the addictive allure of indignation -- and freed from any Fairness Doctrine requirement to show all sides -- we had all the ingredients for a genuine plague of outrage.

Have a look and then grasp that this destruction of adult discourse in the United States was almost entirely deliberate, sabotaging the political negotiation and problem-solving systems that had served the republic for two centuries.  There is no clearer case of treason.

== A case in point ==

David Frum is far from the cleverest of the high-IQ-but-dingbat students of Leo Strauss who came to be known as "neo-cons" in the late 1990s and early 2000s,  members of an arrogant-triumphalist wing of conservatism who thought they ruled the roost, amid the dawning years of the George W. Bush presidency. In those heady times, especially right after the events of 9/11 filled them with a bracing sense of mission and empowerment, men like Paul Wolfowitz, Paul Nitze, Richard Perle and Kenneth Adelman concocted grand rationalizations for why America should rush to do what it had sworn never to do again, after Vietnam -- plunging into vast, decadal, land-wars of insurgency in Asia. Two such wars, pouring arterial gushers of national wealth, prestige, honor and lives into distant desert sands. Wars that left the battlefield s owned by bitter foes of the U.S.

It was the coterie of neocons who provided grand, Straussian incantations, proclaiming for America a sense of imperial mission -- not the mild-consensus Pax Americana designed by Marshall, Acheson, Truman and Eisenhower, but an aggressively-resolute, romanesque imperium, unashamedly applying Manichaean power to transform the world any way their dear leader - George Bush - desired.

And if those lunges into middle-eastern quicksand happened to be exactly what Osama bin Laden and every enemy of the U.S. wanted us to do? Especially a certain petro-kingdom whose influence over the Dear Leader was near-total, and who also provided most of the 9/11 attackers?  No matter.  It is a tragedy of human existence that (as we also saw among the communists) high IQs and the ability to craft polysyllabic conjurations offer no protection against irony.

It can be hard to look back a whole ten years or more to the heyday and then sudden collapse of neoconservatism, but in retrospect we can see it as a shining era for the last intellectuals of the American Right. At last, they had their revenge upon those Che-tee-shirt-wearing leftist students who had trashed their offices and driven them away from real universities, into the welcoming arms of faux-academies like Heritage… where they willingly crafted whatever rationalizations that were asked of them.  In those heady times, they could ignore the grave spinning of Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley, as every principle of true, erudite conservatism was handily reversed.

Sic transit gloria. By 2004, the neocons had been tossed aside like used tissue, as their nerdiness grew vexing to Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch. Verbose concoctions -- even crazy ones -- no longer fit the narrative that all smartypants types are enemies. From scientists to teachers, medical doctors, journalists, economists, civil servants, law professionals, skilled labor, professors… name one exception… the populist, know-nothing theme on Fox and Right-Radio became hate all elites except the rich.  And yes, that applied even to intellectual courtesans of the no-longer "neo" right. Most of whom slunk away into obscurity, once more --

-- but not David Frum, who has spent recent years inveighing against the lobotomization of his movement.  Far from converting to liberalism, Frum has been among those on the American right with the guts to stand up to Rupert Murdoch, joining others at The American Conservative in appraising what went wrong, how it all got hijacked, and how to rescue something from the murdochian flames.

Frum's latest sally is interesting, an appeal for the reader to look back to the roots of the "left-right" axis and terms like "liberal" and "conservative. In particular, he points to the debates between English parliamentarian Edmund Burke and Anglo-American polemicist Thomas Paine. Frum argues that gradually (I would say recently, and in large part because of the neocons) the entire meaning of Conservatism has undergone a process of reversal, so that many of the virtues professed by Burke are now rejected utterly, in Tea Party America.

I do not endorse all… or even most … of the insights offered by Mr. Frum.  But I found them interesting and a welcome (if brief) look back to days when "conservative" and "intellect" weren't antonyms.

== Conservative media in turmoil ==

Continuing on this… I oft remark that Arizona and New York are drawing copious electricity from coils arranged around the spinning in the graves of Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley Jr., both of whom growled and denounced the trends that were hijacking their beloved -- (and once-upon-a-time intellectual) -- movement.  Now it seems that New York can crank up their power draw a bit…

"The National Review magazine, longstanding house news organ of the establishment right, is facing a lawsuit that could shutter the publication (originally founded by Buckley with money he inherited) permanently. According to The Week, a suit by a climate scientist threatens to bankrupt the already financially shaky publication and its website, the National Review Online (NRO)."

So are we stuck with Fox News to represent the undead, were-thing that has taken over the American right?

As I mentioned above, have a look at the manifesto of The American Conservative, a journal that appears to be trying hard to resurrect the notion of a US conservative movement that argues constructively with their liberal neighbors, without kowtowing to a far right that is controlled by plutocrats and worshippers of aristocracy.

The American Conservative will not be a liberal's cup of tea! Indeed, it still lapses often into rants that betray its roots in a co-founder… one Patrick Buchanon. I do not promise more than one article in ten will rise above baloney.  But even that ratio 'be a blessing,' nowadays… and some of you, propelled (as I am) by curiosity and a desire to hear all sides, will drop in, now and then.

There are embers and glimmers of sanity among our neighbors over there!  Don't denigrate.  Help our "ostrich conservative" friends and neighbors to lift their heads and gradually move away from Fox-induced mania. Help fan the flames of a rebellion against the monsters who have hijacked the once intellectually cogent movement of Buckley and Goldwater.

== More on Divisive Politics ==

What's behind this modern plague of political wrath? Jonathan Haidt, a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, best known for his “moral foundations” theory,  has applied science to  appraising why differences in personality and choice of moral foundations affect the more superficial political leanings of liberals, conservatives and libertarians.  It's actually quite fascinating and sufficiently neutral that most liberals and conservatives nod and say "yeah, that's me."

Climate change: another divisive topic. See this fascinating discussion of how the rapidly changing Arctic will provoke a cascade of secondary effects, from conflicts over resources in the Arctic Shelf to shipping changes to the release of trillions of pounds of methane from melting permafrost.  There are no Naval officers who deny climate change. All are aware that conservatism no longer connects to our strategic needs at any points of overlap.

Welcome to the future? See: The Poor Deserve Equal Protection by the Law:  "Businesses and economic elites in developing countries left frustrated by incompetent police, clogged courts and hopelessly overburdened judges and prosecutors are increasingly circumventing these systems and buying their own protection. In India in late 2010 the private security industry already employed more than 5.5 million people — roughly four times the size of the entire Indian police force. A 2009 World Bank report showed roughly the same ratio in Kenya. The largest employer in all of Africa is a private security firm, Group4Securicor, and in Guatemala, private security forces outnumber public police 7 to 1."

Do we want that for our world?