Philanthropy in the context of what? When we blog about philanthropy, what is our presumptive context?
- Business
- Religion
- Political policy
- The underground economy in drugs
- Money laundering
- Hagiography (Celebration of Donors)
- Business models for working with the wealthy
- Governmental collusion with legal and illegal elites
- The national security state
- Citizenship
- Career options for philanthropy professionals
- Announcements and press releases in the vicinity of philanthropy
- The state of the media
- Environmental collapse
- Activism
- Fundraising
- Financial services
- Civil rights, human rights, and social control
- The liberal arts
- Client values
- Family Values
- Legacy
- The history and practice of satire
- The theory and practice of spin
- Moral and philosophical traditions of healing
- The penal system
- The pillory and other devices to induce shame in wrong-doers
- Vigilante social reform
- The role of the internet in sourcing mobs, crowds, wisdom, and rough justice
For the last few years I have been trying to stay on topic by reading a good many blogs devoted to giving, philanthropy, fundraising, social ventures, philanthropic capital markets, and other subjects clearly central to "blogging philanthropy." Yet, I find myself still sneaking off to read the irreverent, well informed few who are blogging about how our world is going, and who are piecing together an understanding of that world (both its overt and covert dynamics) in the light of deeper traditions, whether from the liberal arts or from spiritual disciplines. I have become more and more convinced that the Dewey Decimal System is a poor guide to giving. Further, I have become convinced that plain style link and comment blogging is about useless for motivating social change. The plain style is by its nature even handed, respectful and moderate. It forces us to use as Speaker our Authentic Self, the one that has swallowed so many lies with a smile, whose social bearing is that of courtesy and deference to the intolerable. What might change us is what is forbidden; what is interdicted, what is inadmissible in polite society. We do need to bring back the Feast of Fools. Maybe that is the proper context for Blogging Philanthropy? The world turned upside down.
Another way to ask it: Is giving a lens we look at, or through? Is it the subject, or the lens through which many a subject comes into focus? Maybe the topic is not blogging philanthropy, but blogging the world we have, and the world we want, from the perspective of philanthropy? What philanthropy is, and what it might yet be?
