Thinking of Jane Jacobs, Bowling Alone, the Gospels, and anomie - does holding grantees accountable, and treating them as if they were contestants paraded before a panel, as if on a reality TV show, to justify themselves or be voted off the show, tend to increase or decrease the circulation of grace and love in our communities? Does it tend to reverse or reinforce systemic injustice? (Asked and answered. Venture Capitalists are now voted off Survivor Island, as unfit for citizenship, unable to think of anything or anything outside the nexus of cash, investment, and financial controls.) Still, compassion is due to all with a brain damaged by an MBA. If Jesus can raise the dead, he can heal a Venture Philanthropist.
As you can tell, this post is not about venture philanthropists per se but about language. What saddens me is the impoverishment of our ways of talking about our shared lives in community with one another. To see the languages of love withering, or sequestered behind closed doors, while the language of money thrives in all venues is a cause and symptom of a decline in the moral imagination. We have become people for whom the master metaphor is finance, even as the markets have failed us. This does not bode well for life among the ruins. What will those who think only in money be like when money has become worthless?
Perfect. Thanks Phil.
Posted by: Chris Corrigan | October 01, 2009 at 10:39 PM
Thought about you, Chris, and some comments you had made about a talk by Carol Newell and Joel Solomon, who do understand what "social capital," or authentic community, really are.
Posted by: Phil Cubeta | October 02, 2009 at 08:49 AM