To buzz phrases like social capital markets, double bottomline philanthropy, philanthropic capital, social capital, aligned investing, social investing, microfranchising, and microlending, might we not add Rabelaisian Philanthropy - ribald, boisterous, inclusive, disruptive, and as contagious as laughter in Church? No, we may not. Those who try will be escorted quickly by the Guardians of the Safe Places right to the Dumpster. Rabelaisian laughter is not philanthropy as we know it. Rabelaisian Philanthropy is giving as in gifted, as in wild music played for free, as in wine cascading from the broached barrel, as in the intercourse on the altar of the Priest and Prostitute, or on the front steps of the Courthouse by the Mayor's Wife and the Stablehand, that momentarily turns the world upside down, and liberates the spirit and the flesh from the iron cage of the market, and governmental forms, and the rigid roles and rigid proprieties that our social order imposes. The Protestant Work Ethic has ever been humorless, repressed and violent, veiling its rage in pieties and grim faces, finding its calling in money, and its means in self-control and staying relentlessly and obsessively on track, on time, on budget and on task. No child left behind. No adult left behind. All standing in rows to have their heads counted. Neither Mardi Gras for Calvin, nor Lent, only money and money metaphors and Day Timers and Palm Pilots, and metrics, and efficiency and effectiveness, and optimization. The result is death in life , or as we call it the Market.
If money language. the language of markets, budgets, and business plans, the language of accounting and accountability, of ownership, investment, and control has taken over philanthropy, I suspect it is out of fear, more so that stupidity or cultural illiteracy or ignorance of the traditions that come down to us from the cults of Dionysus, through satirists, aphorists, moralists, mad monks, scabrous artists, mountebanks, and holy fools. We are afraid of what we are, of what we have become, as we are afraid of our own bodily functions and filth. We are afraid even of our mother tongue - fart, piss, swig. We are afraid that just for once the mechanism that steers us might not be money, or markets, but the great urge to laugh, rejoice, drink, eat, act out, be insolent, and merry in the King's Hall as he serves us, dressed as a Scullion. We imagine that we would then feel embarrassed and skulk out of the Great Hall, our faces averted, shaken by the sight of a joyous humanity in which we, as dead souls, can no longer share. We would be in our cell, counting our coin, computing interest on a loan, going over our daily schedule, seeing if we could be more effective and efficient, computing a second or third bottom line, as the wild music and drunken voices reach us from the great hall, and the Queen herself scratches on our door offering the most obscene services imaginable.
In the Middle Ages on Feast Days, such was the carnivalesque inversion of the moral order, thereby both upsetting that order and affirming it. To that impulse of inversion and reciprocity, of the endless procession of the seasons, the cycle not of markets but of sowing, cultivating, and reaping, of fornication, birth, christening, marriage, and funerals, belongs art, feasting, fasting, solidarity, and giving. Yet you would never know that from the prune-faced bloggers for whom philanthropy is all about money, all about results, all about doing the King's bidding, as lackey, courtier, speechwriter, pundit, strategist, tactician, Homme De Confiance, or trusted advisor.
Come, let us drink!
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.