Gift Hub

The Road to Feudalism

If you were David Koch evaluating Beck's contribution to the Teaparty Movement, how would you rate the rally? Do the demonstrators show adequate understanding of the talking points? We must kill the government to save Freedom and America. Do we have sufficient uptake? No banners reading, "Defend the Oligarchs!" Yet such is the cause in which they are enlisted, to make America safe for the most ruthless corporate interests.  Perhaps only the strong can save the weak. The wolf may be the best guardian of the lambs. Soros is Beck's stalking horse. Has he ever discussed Koch?

Meanwhile, on my desk I have a novel, longer than Moby Dick, by Ralph Nader, Tribune of the Poor. Only The Superrich can Save Us.Perhaps Soros? Perhaps Koch? Perhaps Gates? Save us from them. Only a rich person can save us from the other rich. Wasn't this the way society was organized under Feudalism?

The Oligarchs for Freedom Foundation

Jane Mayer in the New Yorker on the political and cultural influence of the Koch family. A case study in Social Change Philanthropy in a liberatarian direction. Does anyone know if the Kochs will take the Gates Giving Pledge, or will they go the dynastic oligarch route? Maybe they need a Trusted Advisor, Homme de Confiance, Wisdom Consultant, or Morals Tutor? Just from hanging around in the sector I know the family has serving professionals worthy of the name.

Niceness Counts in Foundation World

Pablo Eisenberg:

The greatest weakness of philanthropy is the lack of critical analysis about it. Nobody wants to say anything negative or bad! It is often assumed to be so good that it is beyond criticism, and grantees seldom dare to raise any concerns lest they lose their funding.

News Professionally Smoothed

Tom,

Wikileaks is lifting two veils: one on the war, the other -- perhaps more significant -- on the unreality of everyday journalism, the fictional, smooth, clear narrative arcs of the Times, NPR, MSNBC, etc.

Jail House Tats for the Wealth Bondage Masquerade Ball

Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations may terrify our preppy Wealth and Wisdom clients, but we are all human under the tattoos, business suits, or designer made jailhouse stripes. Come let us drink! Life is a masquerade! The world turned upside down is our favorite song. Maybe Glenn Beck will strike up the Band on the Capitol steps. Kiss up and kick down. Some poor innocent dog will be beaten before this night sees dawn. Asked how he could afford the mock jail house leisure suit, the heir said, "My Daddy made a fortune in forprofit prisons, and now in AZ, he will make another killing. Too bad about the vets, too bad about the poor, too bad about the homeless and the undocumented workers, too bad about what was once the middle class, those morons, but I got mine, Jack!"

Summary of the themes: Wealth Bondage and the Will of God

With Wealth Bondage and the Will of God, and the discussion of related posts, we almost reached the next plateau in our discussion of the themes of this blog, and its corporate sponsor. We saw that the themes treated in the book itself, by two very intelligent highly educated authors read the wisdom of the ages from within a framework the book did not interrogate: the vulgar,prereflective libertarianism of Wealth Bondage, the esteemed funder of my blog too. The well qualified authors of the potted summaries of spiritual traditions, condescend to both the audience and some of the greatest moral and religious thinkers in history, implicitly proffering as "gospel" the gospel of wealth.

We also saw with humiliating clarity what real scholarship looks like. Tom reminded us, showed us, and with good humored ease, reduced the corruption of learning to the corruption of learning. That is not hard to do, frankly.

Tom keeps learning alive not in a Dumpster, but in a public library, with his fellow close readers. He does keep wisdom alive, he and his cohort. Again, maintaining high standards among educated people who have devoted decades to mining a tradition, one book at a time, those books including The Book of Job, Paradise Lost, The Paradiso, and who are reading for the sake of understanding and appreciation, who are reading to grow themselves, is difficult but also it is known science. We know how to do that. When all that is at stake is taste, ethics, and wisdom in a public library, sequestered from the world of wealth and power - how hard is that? Very hard, but still possible in Sarasota, and anywhere a few like minded educated folks can find a quiet place to talk.

The question you have to ask of Tom and others who have kept the faith: What would you do if you were working in Wealth Bondage with those whose decisions will shape our world? How would you convey wisdom into the minds of wealthy, proud, addled, and ignorant figures who have taken a knack, craft or product big time, but who as human beings have often very little else to offer? How would you negotiate that position, knowing that the Bank of Wealth Bondage is not interested in excuses. The Bank wants results. And results are driven by assets under management, and by wealthy ultra high net worth clients, and their heirs being totally delighted. Wisdom they want! Wisdom they shall have! Tom, how would you meet this demand?

Answer: "I would never put myself in the position of being such a whore." Agreed, Tom. I, on the other hand, read Wealth and the Will of God with other eyes. I see it as the best book that could be written by a former Jesuit, a classicist, or by me on company time, or within the shadow of the Home Office. Even then, having written it, I would expect to be out on my fanny, since the bottom line is served by the book - yes, but not as well as it could have been served by a book even more vulgar, popular, and crass, or by a video, or maybe a rock band. That is the better part of wisdom. Schervish and Whitaker could hold their own in the Sarasota great books club. You could hold your own as a Wisdom Consultant in Wealth Bondage. But the names change, the roles remain. As Hildy Gottlieb says, "People do what the system leads them to do." How then, dear Holy Spirit, will we re-engineer not the public library, but Wealth Bondage Home Office? Perhaps, Hildy is saying we keep hope alive in our own practice, meet in small groups, and suffer when the suffering comes, but it won't of course, because we hold a positive thought, as did MLK, shot through the head. I expect the suffering will come. I overheard Glenn Beck laughing in the Situation Room with my ultimate superior, Candidia, yesterday. Honor! Rally for honor but leave your guns at home! Martin Luther King does not belong to the black people alone! The world spirit is stirring and wisdom will take awhile to work its way to victory. Those who have the most compelling dream are often demonic, and they serve as useful idiots to those whose status quo is never discussed since it is the frame within which all else happens. Not that I am complaining. I appreciate the generous grant from the good people at Wealth Bondage that makes this blog possible. I speak subject to correction. Wealth Bondage and the Will of God is on sale in the lobby.Two cents of every dollar will go to build libraries, a signature initiative of Wealth Bondage Global for deep social impact, in sub-saharan Africa.

TPI Blog

The Philanthropic Initiative has a blog, with posts open for comments. They have long been a leader in philanthropic advice for "Deep Social Impact," which is in fact the name of the blog. Here they address corporate Signature Initiatives, a strategy that addresses a clearly defined social goal, enables a company to play an important leadership role within a distinctive niche, and leverages financial and other corporate resources in creative ways that maximize impact and visibility.

Special Operations Wounded Warrior Foundation

Chronicle of Philanthropy:

A military charity is raising its profile and reaping record donations through its association with Glenn Beck’s scheduled rally Saturday at the Lincoln Memorial, Time reports.

All proceeds raised by Mr. Beck for his “8/28 Restoring Honor Rally” beyond the costs of the event itself will go to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation...

 

Noble Savages Wealth and Wisdom Retreat

Join us, if you are worth $50 million or more, for the exclusive three day Noble Savages Wealth & Wisdom Retreat in the prestigious Cruickshanks Private Game Park, formerly the National Forest. Tom Matrullo will lead a discussion of The Book of Job. I will be discussing Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality. Jack Clack, Senior Vice President in Charge of Wealth Bondage Private Family Services Group, will host your children on a two day Predator Hunt, including Wild Hogs, to help them learn the skills needed as they inherit your money and your values. College degree preferred. Loin cloth optional.

The Deboskey Group

Bruce Deboskey, a major figure in Denver as the former Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League, has launched The Deboskey Group, offering philanthropic counsel for families, businesses, foundations, and nonprofits. The practice helps clients address these questions:

• How would we most like to help transform our community, our country or our world?
• What is our vision - what are we trying to accomplish with our giving?
• Do we have a strategy to achieve our vision?
• What charitable organizations should we support?
• How do we decide how much to give?
• How do we evaluate the impact of our giving?

I enjoyed talking with Bruce as he incubated this new venture. How to make a practice successful - that was not his most urgent concern. His focus is on cause and community. In the context of a death threat against him, during his time with ADL, here is how he sounds,

“The targets of genocide are always dehumanized,” he says. “We’ve seen that in Uganda, in the Sudan, in every genocide. And we see dehumanization today in the anti-immigration movement. We see some of the same kind of concepts in some of the voices in that movement.”

Moral imagination is rare; moral courage perhaps rarer. Without courage, our virtues perish.  Some give time; some commit money; some give their lives in service or outright. Bruce, thank you for your example.

Moral Dimensions - True Wind and Apparent Wind in Philanthropy, by H. Peter Karoff

H. Peter Karoff sends along to Gifthub readers the attached 9 page presentation which he gave recently at the Santa Barbara Yatch Club Forum. Thank you, Peter! Download Moral Dimension.

Open Letter to H. Peter Karoff on Hildy Gottlieb's Creating the Future

Hildy Gottlieb. Do you know her work? The Pollyanna Principles seem to complete the thought process of The World We Want. She puts the "we" into the world we want. Her sequence of questions might, adapted to yours, might go like this:

1. What is the world we want?
2. What conditions are conductive as this world struggles to be born?
3. What are the preconditions to those conditions?
4. How consistent are we personally in living in the spirit of the world we want?
5. What is the highest use of the resources that each of us commands?
6. Who joins us in this work?
7. Have we heard their voices, and enlisted their resources, as we co-create our future?
8. What in ourselves holds us back?
9. What can we each do today, however little, lest we feel we have forsaken the dream?

In other words, Hildy is doing movement building, as you and yours documented in Eyes on the Prize. We shall overcome some day. That "we" was not the philanthropic plural. Yet only when the philanthropic and the democratic plural link arms will that dream ("I have a dream") be realized.

Anyway, I have been thinking of you. The "we" is also a living tradition whose sources are the great thinkers, artists, and spiritual leaders. Of course, you knew that!

Conversation with Hildy Gottlieb

Hildy spent 90 minutes coaching me today by phone. The image with which I am left is of three parties, standing on a little planet: One is a client/donor pointing with a finger to the moon; the second is an advisor, pointing to the earth; and the third is a fundraiser pointing to a star. When the likes of Bill Gates, Buffet, or other entrepreneurs go from wealth creation to world creation, they are not moved by the fundraiser's dream, and they have outstripped the advisor's earth bound concerns. Beyond that the fundraisers are many, and each points to his or her own preferred star. Today the very wealthy are meeting in restaurants behind closed doors, as hyperagents, to plan for their own vision of a better world. Ask yourself as an advisor, fundraiser, or social change visionary why you are not invited. (I know; they don't have your brochure!)

Is your Voice heard as a Woman at the Planning Table?

With help from Tracy Gary, Margaret Damen, and Marty Carter, here is a piece I wrote for Vivanista: Living Well, Doing Good. Ms. Gary wrote me privately to tell me afterward how much better I could have done. She is right too. Yet, it is women themselves who must carry this conversation. In recent ill-tempered posts here at Gifthub we have been discussing wisdom, business, and money - essentially the business of planning money in the light of whatever wisdom shows up at the planning table, if any. When women are silent there, we all suffer, down the generations. Wealth in families, or wealth in community, are  not topics safely left to male-dominated conversations. Women can and have learned 100% of what men know about money and bidnis. I ask you candidly, however, what % of what women know about family have men learned, on average? When women's voices rise like a great anthem when money is the ostensible subject, when they speak as women for us as human beings - all of us will be on a better path. Now, why am I talking? So women will set me straight!

Enough about Me!, said Narcissus to his Image, What about You?

Satan returns to earth to serve as a Values-Broker to UHNWs (Ultra High Net Worth Individuals). Having surveyed all religions, philosophies, and ways of life, he sets up shop in a bank, or brokerage, or insurance firm to offer values-based planning as a valued added service to the firm's top clients. "Pick the value system that is right for you, then work with our financial advisors to align your meaning and your money." To help in this process, Satan develop cards representative of commandments. "You sort them to find the values that fit you best."  Getting intimate with clients around values makes them more sticky, in the sense that they bond with you and are more loyal and are willing to pay the upcharge.

Against this devolution of morality to narcissistic consumer choice, we have organizations keeping alive moral, artistic, and spiritual traditions through the darkest of eras, including our own. These organizations include houses of worship, schools, arts organizations, and community services organizations.

Could we then say that the future for us as citizens, human beings, parents, as human souls, in our market-driven society, will be brighter when those who seek meaning, wisdom, purpose, discernment, engagement, selfhood, a sense of their own responsibilities (if any), look for it in the nonprofit, or nongovernmental, or for-benefit organizations best suited to provide it? Then, those organizations, rather than merely asking for money to sustain their operations, would be integral to the very process of deliberating and planning the citizen's "moral compass" and "capacity," to use the terms of Paul Schervish.

I can imagine if values-based inquiry takes hold in the churches, synagogues, and schools that the Bank of Wealth Bondage will lobby Congress to make it illegal, on the grounds that planning money in a nonprofit raising money is a clear conflict of interest. Such work is best done in the Bank, where values can be kept neutral, allowing for a greater range of choices among available ethical systems. I may well be called as an expert witness. I would have to say that unless we do keep the religious organizations and schools out of values based work, there will be Hell to pay on Wall Street when the markets open in the morning, and God through his hidden hand makes His will known to us. I don't believe that, but I am in no position to be candid, given my employment status, as a Morals Tutor to America's Wealthiest Families in Wealth Bondage. You understand, I am sure. We all have to make a living. I will tell the truth when I retire some day and move to Canada, but given how the market fell apart, and never recovered, my retirement plans are on hold.

Enough about me! You seem to be a Person of Wealth. And O! I don't mean just financial. You clearly are very wise in your own right! And your kid too judging by his blue blazer.  May I plan your values please? You and the kid sort these values cards while I take a leak. I will debrief you and offer absolution when I get back. Meanwhile, I will have my assistant verify your bank balance.  

He Discerns Wealth Bondage

 
Wisdom, once considered a goddess, or an angel, is now considered an intangible consumer good, perhaps a luxury good, to be provided to the wealthy, by private banks, for example. Since taste in wisdom differs (and tolerance for it as well), and since we do not want to impose our taste on others, each wealth holder will have a choice of many wisdom systems, so each can pick the one that is right for him or her. Wisdom is one product. Another is virtue. Then too we have meaning, and significance. These too are commodities, but best provided to the wealthy since they can best leverage these gifts across greater capacity. Capacity is defined as financial in the largest sense of financial, intellectual, social, and spiritual. Private Banks best manage such capacity, or attorneys, if they have read Chaucer, or once talked to someone who has.  

The above is the dumbest darn moral and political philosophy I have ever encountered among serious, or educated thinkers. Yet it is the evolving framework of financial services at the highest levels. And, yes, blame me! I am in the middle of this as a purveyor and retailer and enabler of what is clearly an aching, howling absurdity.

Wisdom is learned in brokenness and surrender, in humbleness of heart, and is informed by endless toil in old dusty books, among those dedicated to following the faintest traces of wisdom as she bounds like a deer or rabbit through the dark wood of our own stupidity, pride, and corruption. To think private banks and those they employ, or insurance agents, or values based planners making money through money will be the best guides in this dark wood is clearly delusional. (How can those who are so lost bill themselves as guides?, I ask, bewildered myself, and no model of wisdom, just trying to hold down a job in Wealth Bondage as a Morals Tutor first class, and give no offense, since they just fired three of my peers for ticking off a big customer.)

If the leaders - those who have spent 20-40 years as students before joining Wealth Bondage as Wisdom Consultants - are so lost, where are we to find a real moral compass? Answer: "Phil, what kind of moral compass do you have in mind? We have many we can provide you at a price you can afford, if you are worth $10 million or more and deposit those funds with us for a minimum of three years. You looking for a compass that is religious or secular? Want a Christian tinge to it? You like Buddhism? Or would you be more of a Seneca kind of man? You want one that fits in your pocket, or one you can mount as decoration in your foyer?" I was thinking actually of one for my Dumpster, in case it grows wings.

We, rich or poor, scholar or dunce, learn wisdom as the Goddess of Fortune breaks us on her wheel. We enter this world naked, not even in shirtsleeves, and naked we leave it, though I suppose the corpse can be dressed in a business suit, too. For those seeking wisdom, who have not yet experienced deep suffering - Please! Follow me! The Happy Tutor will be with you shortly, as soon as he finishes another Customer.  

Esoteric Wealth 'N Wisdom Consulting

As Tom is at pains to point out, some Wealth 'N Wisdom consulting can appear shallow, when judged by the standards of actual scholarship. That, however, is a well-crafted illusion to which Tom has fallen prey. Here, by way of context, is a letter from Alexander the Great to his Morals Tutor, Aristotle:

Alexander to Aristotle, greeting.

You have not done well to publish your books of oral doctrine; for what is there now that we excel others in, if those things which we have been particularly instructed in be laid open to all? For my part, I assure you, I had rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and dominion.

Farewell.

A prudent Wisdom "N Wealth Counselor will put into writing only the empty rind of his or her wisdom, lest the riffraff attain it for little cost, and the wealthy have nothing special to show for their particular instruction.

Wealth Bondage and the Will of God

I am reading and getting a great deal out of Wealth and the Will of God: Discerning the Use of Riches in the Service of Ultimate Purpose.The book provides helpful summaries of Aristotle, Aquinas, Ignatius, Luther, Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards on the proper uses of riches. The book's authors are Paul Schervish, a former Jesuit, now professor of sociology and Director of the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy at Boston College and Dr.  Keith Whitaker, a Research Fellow at Boston College's Center on Wealth and Philanthropy. He was trained in social thought and in classics. Formerly a Managing Director, Family Dynamics, at Wells Fargo Family Wealth, Keith is now is now in private practice, at Wise Counsel Research.

Wise Counsel Research is a recipient of a Templeton Wisdom Grant.  Our current project is a study of the role of wisdom in wealth advising through structured interviews with advisors and families.  Our initial results from advisor interviews were presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Family Firm Institute.  We are currently conducting our family interviews.....

Besides serving as president of Wise Counsel Research, Dr. Whitaker is also a consultant in Larkmeadow, which helps people with significant resources find wise counsel.

Reading the bios on Wise Counsel is fascinating, as are the Portraits of their distinquished predecessors in our noble trade. See what you think. The wealthy need wise counsel, certainly, the wise, with degrees in Divinity, Classics, Social Thought, Psychotherapy, or in my case, Literature, Philosophy, and Psychology, go into and out of and into and out of posts in financial services companies. Somehow this moral counseling thing has never quite taken root as a good business. I plan to write a Scholarly Paper on Practice Management for The Annual Conference of Wise Counselors, once I can get a rich person, bank, or foundation to fund it. As a pariah, I am finding that difficult. I hope Keith and Paul's efforts will be blessed with greater Success.

On Anger

Since earnest minds seek to learn, here are two excellent essays on anger.

Seneca

Kia

Indignation, righteous rage, is a holy fire. Anger passes, indignation will burn us alive.

Alms Corporal and Spiritual (A Meditation on St. Thomas Aquinas)

Per St. Thomas, alms are as follows. I, as the Morals Tutor to America's Wealthiest Families, have taken these to heart, troubled as I am in the spirit and the flesh, knowing that I am not the the most afflicted, necessarily, at least judging by my clientele, though they may not be a random sample. 

1. Feed the hungry - when I get around to it, maybe
2. Give drink to the thirsty - Thunderbird for my friends!
3. Clothe the naked - First, Diogenes could use a diaper
4. Harbor the harborless - My Dumpster is your Dumpster
5. Visit the sick - Moral illness is my specialty; I live among and visit the morally insane, until it has come to me to seem normal that people are as crazy as they are
6. Ransom the captive - From sin and death, yes, as best I can!
7. Bury the dead - And among them the living dead, yes.

The spiritual alms are these:

1. Instruct the ignorant -  as I do daily here on Gifthub as in Wealth Bondage generally; this highly informative post being a case in point, and representive of the high quality content for which I stand.
2. Counsel the doubtful - as I do in the comment section below, daily
3. Comfort the sorrowful - as in the comment section, yes
4. Reprove the sinner - of course! It is my pleasure to do so!
5. Forgive injuries - this is a development opportunity for me
6. Bear with those who trouble and annoy me - Do I ever! Daily! Those SOBs.
7. Pray for all - I have just now said a prayer for the immortal soul of Rush Limbaugh, that he might, no less than I be saved. We are sinners all. We have all fallen into Wealth Bondage, its snares. God forgive me, Rush, Candidia our mutual boss, and all who fall into the snares and traps of the media, and consumer society generally. At least I don't smoke cigars, though Freud did.