Gift Hub

Teaching Discernment under Dire Condtions

In the world outside of our Asylum for Advisors to the World's Wealthiest Families, things must be getting tough. The nurses, doctors, therapists, and guards have been fired, due to austerity cuts, and now new inmates are being shipped in from the streets: homeless families without shirts, pants, or shoes; the demented;  pensioners without pensions; the sick; disabled veterans from foreign wars; and some young protesters with negative net worth and attitudes that are even worse. There is no one to care for us except each other and none of us much care about anyone other than ourselves and our family. There is, according to the news that reaches us here, just no money for public services. The body politic is broke. In service to a better world, I continue to teach my courses on Moral Counselling for the Ultra-Wealthy, and we still have classes by leading practitioners on how to facilitate the Governance of Dynastic Wealth so it doubles every 7 years for at least 100 years, as the virtues of the family also increase exponentially, and how to reduce taxes to zero, but with so many indigents roaming the halls, interrupting our Symposia, and offering their own opinions at the least convenient times, and with the hungry children wailing, and the groans of the elders in extremis, I have had to reconsider my class on What Wealth Advisors can Learn from Chaucer. It is a shame, though, because Chaucer is all about the Journey, and life is like that, you know. We, from all walks of life, are riding, on donkeys or horses, to the Shrine of our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow, entertaining ourselves as we go with various Fictions. That was my theme, but it seems a little risky under the circumstances. Those designated as donkies may resist the bridle no matter how blinkered and whipped. Or maybe I am too pessimistic. I see alot of my fellow advisors who make good donkies. And if the good donkies are fed, and the rest left to die, there may be a Workable Journey left in this yet.

Satire, Havoc, and Healing - How Charism Ends

I recall back in the old days, before my life in Wealth Bondage, and then in the Ultra High Net Worth Private Client Meaning and Money racket, and now in Dynastic Family Morals Consulting, I had won a fellowship for people who would become college teachers. One of us when we attended a conference together said, in effect, "charisma is corruption." We all nodded because we had known such professors and we vowed never to become that. Looking into it later, it became apparent to me how charisma happens. You need a group that does not yet quite cohere. It needs a central figure that all see, and who all see each other see, to articulate the emergent ethos. Greek amphitheaters carved in the mountain rock have that shape. We see and see each other see how we respond to the orator who lays down what is. Having seen and heard it in each other's presence, when none protest, a social fact is made, and passes current.  The Bull Lunatic, in the last post,  had us sit in a semi-circle facing him in the lunch room of our asylum. He said we are secular priests to dynastic families. And he had us then look at each other in the face. This is how charisma is fabricated and a set of semi-truths becomes confirmed as truth. I have doodled this on legal pads for going on 20 years. I am obsessed with it, because this structure of one to many communication where all see the others react, or fail to react, is one of the most powerful elements in drama, political oratory, propagada, preaching, religious sacrifice, and advertising. I see it happening to me in my own work as a teacher in a distance learning program. I do the lectures to which others react. They see each other reactions as they come together in study groups to discuss my lectures. I become charismatic, to my shame. My foolish or idiosyncratic opinons become confirmed as "Fact." For me this is a malign consequence of having to teach long distance, rather than sitting in a circle, where I can deflect attention rather than aggrandize it. 

 "Laughter is the best cure," for many ills of the body and body politic. Laughter cures imposture.  Laughter cures blindness. ("Know thyself" is a joke; only those who laugh at themselves do.)  "Physician heal thyself," means laugh at thyself. Laugher can isolate and wound (laughter at) or bring us together in carnivalesque joy (laughter with). So likewise satire. At the heart of it is the pariah and the priest, two figures who are one figure, self-divided.  Satire is an archaic survival from Dionysian cults. It is a healing dance of death in which the priest slays the goat/man. Again, the focal figure. Again, the circle convened to see and see each other see. Genres high and low. Tragedy and satire (both dances of the goat). Altus. The sublime and the bathetic. Done as poorly as I am doing satire now, the only acceptable scapegoat is me. Hence, a deranged priest who manages to sacrifice the goat, only to discover it was his own throat he slit. That might be funny enough, if staged as slapstick, but my hand shakes with fear not mirth. In this dance to heal a sick society, the Happy Tutor's aphorism comes to mind: "The goatkin that holds wine at dawn, holds blood at sunset." Sacrifice will follow systemic injustice, if only to deflect attention from it and shift blame from King/Priest to victim. Sophocles: Oidipus. Euripedes: The Bacchae. Have you noticed who is the goat by these plays' end?  Heavy is the crown. We enter this charmed circle of charisma, regally, at our own risk, to sacrifice the least among us, holding our own severed head by play's end. Dynasty! My God! How can we who claim a liberal education speak of dynastic families without memory of what history and art teach us of havoc.  I would rather be a fool than a priest for the fool outlives the fall (Lear with its Fool draws on the myth of Alexander and Diogenes to dramatize this point.) When the Great Alexander falls, or Lear's body is pulled from the stage, the body politic may be healed and the Fool is nowhere to be found.

The Blameless Sacrifice - Role Play in Group Therapy for Wealth Counselors

You call yourself Secular Priest?  I expostulated to the Bull Loon in Group in the Asylum for Senior Advisors to Multi-Generational Wealth. Well and good, I said, stretching my arms out wide, what does that make me? I must be The Blameless Sacrifice! The spirit moved then upon me, and I said, Lord, our Father in Heaven, thou who hast created all, I take upon myself the sins of my entire profession, my company, this entire asylum. Let my sacrifice, the giving of my only brain to lobotomy, repay the debt owed to Thee by my  profession! May I through my selfless sacrifice atone for the sins of Trusted Advisors from the Snake in Eden down to this very Facility, where the Devil Himself says High Mass, on an altar of Gold, and his fellows cry, Amen!  In the moment, I became Head Loon. These wouldbe priests, I saw, as they looked at me in bewilderment and awe, need something to worship. For me to have proposed myself may seem immodest to some, but if not me, who? Asking that, of course, I see all hands go up around our circle. My Fellow lunatics, I shouted, Our Asylum is sick! They nodded each looking at the others nodding. By show of hands, I continued,  who wants to be Sorcerer, to purge our body politic of evil? And who among us will be the Blameless Sacrifice? We then paired off.  Some with  matches and wood from broken furniture, others with cleavers.  It all went fine. Each day we take turns, and within a week or two, the place will be empty, long before the food runs out, due to austerity induced budget cuts.

Future of the Charitable Deduction

From the NYTIMES.  What we must not do, apparently, is raise rates on the highest income earners whose generosity supports the politicians who are mulling over how best to distribute the pain of an economy that works for fewer and fewer. The premise is austerity. The side effect of economic and tax policy for thirty years is staggering wealth accumulation in few hands. The answer is to reduce incentivives for philanthropy from the wealthiest and to provide greater giving incentives to the precariate so they can help each other? The writing in its smoothness and in the NYTimes demonstrates how educated words can be used to reinforce a mythos that serves a very small class and win the assent of those ill served.

Wealth, Culture, Barbarism

Income gap greatest since Gilded Age. English Butlers in high demand worldwide. Austerity necessary to balance budgets and support tax breaks for job creators.  Economy struggles. Jobs disappear. Miley twerks. Wealth Advisors masquerade as Secular Priests. Adjunct French professor, dead at 83, buried in cardboard coffin. To what are we in service, we serving professionals, high and low? "Relief of human suffering," as I was told by a counselor to centa-millionaires, by which was meant the suffering of the client. Of course the wealthiest suffer in their splendid isolation. Every wisdom tradition says that the head cannot prosper if the body starves, or the organs decay. In Rome such was the teaching of the Stoics (including Marcus Aurelius) and Cynics (my dear Diogenes). So teaches Jewish scripture, as do the Gospel parables. What saith our Secular Priests as to wealth and the will of God?  Or, the proper uses of riches? Or, Contemptus mundi?Or, Ubi sunt? ("Tell me your moral biography, again, Handsome, how you prospered through virtue," as we Meaning-Sluts say in Wealth Bondage.)

Grim Death of an Adjunct French Professor at age 83

Died on her lawn, of a heart attack, broke, her house falling in about her head, had cancer, no health benefits, never made more than $25,000 teaching a full load, let go by her school, a Catholic college, not unionized. Her pauper's coffin was cardboard. Do any of my comp lit friends know a prayer for the dead in French?

A Society of Wealth unto Itself

When I was first asked to come here, to the Sanatorium for Morally Deranged Tax, Legal, and Moral Advisors to the World's  Wealthiest Families, I was told I was being brought in as a Morals Tutor to stem an epidemic of moral insanity among the inmates, who are forming a little society of their own, with its own Compact and Governance as if they could float off into air like a little country or planet. Only once inside do I discover that all the other inmates had been fed the same story. (That they are immigrants to a Brave New World of Great and Permanent Wealth, that the Ship of Fools in the harbor is bound for Nirvana, that they are on Pilgrimage to a Shining city on a Hill where the wisest and richest rule us in accordance with Ancient Models of Aristocratic Excellence embodied in us and our noble clients.) So we all take turns curing each other, operating on each other's brains, doing each other's taxes, trading retainer checks, taking confession, writing Constitutional Articles, propoposing new forms of family governance, writing each other's moral biographies, divining the will of God, and sharing our spiritual best practices, from fasting and prayer, to discernment of the proper uses of riches, and our true calling.  The real staff is long gone, since the sequester cuts in public services kicked in.  No one here has a key, and the food is running out. Send help, America, if you still can.

Virtue Rewarded with a Bottle

"Cherishing is the root of all suffering," said The Happy Tutor, Dungeon Master to the Stars in Wealth Bondage, my mentor and ego ideal, in his most recent gig as a spiritual advisor, or as he prefers to say, Secular Priest, to a Gen 1 Silicon Valley Billionaire and his Bounteous Bimbo Bride. I asked Tutor why he preaches this recycled Zen rot to the uncultured rich when his noble heart is with the educated poor. He said, "Because it pays better." Then we toasted Wisdom and Virtue, and all the other Human Capitals, and drank ourselves to oblivion in our dumpster. Tutor does not make much in these moral mentoring gigs, basically tips, but he always spreads it around among his friends, and I appreciate that.  When we return last evenings empty bottles, for the refund, we may have enough for another binge. Then its back to peddling our fannies.

Foundation to Support Ne'er-do-well Heirs in Perpetual Comfort

Word has reached me, in the Asylum for Lunatic Advisors to Wealth,  that many, if not most, of the world's wealthiest families go, as the saying is, "from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations"! I find this shattering. I had no idea of this pressing and worldwide social crisis, which calls into question the Compact Among Generations, Rich and Poor Alike.  Why is the media not covering this? As one without a shirt, who has known the night air, hunger,  and now madness (though I am getting better with each lobotomy), I can feel the pain of the founding generation of wouldbe dynasties as they contemplate the possibility that their heirs, their own bloodline, lawfully begotten of their loins, let alone the bastards, in laws and outlaws, by gen 6 might fall as as low as have I in my best day in my best year in my most fervent dream of the good life. I dream still, even now strapped to the bed in my cell, of livery, with tall hat, jacket, ruffled shirt,  kneebritches with ribbons, and buckled shoes, in the service of a Great Family, and six horse carriage on which I could stand, head high, as proud as the Fortunate Family I serve, as we dash through the streets of London or Paris, as the canaille run from our wheels, lest they be broken beneath. So satisfying to hear the bones of the lesser people crunch, and hear their screams, as they cling to the wheels, imploring alms, as I nose high, smile for I am with the Family, not of them, but with them, and not on the street running with the blood of the broken. For this reason, out of concern for my betters, and in service to the greater good, which is best served by serving the best among us, without whom we would all be sorry losers, I am proposing to my Fellows in the Asyluym a 501c(3) to alleviate the suffering of ne'er-do-well heirs of once dynastic now broke families, who might otherwise have to get a job, serve an apprenticeship, wear a workshirt for work, or go from being served to serving others. The money will be provided discreetly through trusted intermediaries, so that the heir need not feel the shame of dependency on charity. For funding, I look to the great unwashed who stand at the checkout line fumbling People Magazine to see how celebrities are getting on, their identity invested in fantasy, as is mine, in my saner moments. A few dollars each, less than the price of a few lottery tickets, from hundreds of millions of dupes in shirtsleeves might support 10 or even 15 formerly dynastic heirs in their accustomed comfort for all their days; and if we can keep the fundraising going and growing exponentially, we might support their heirs, and the heirs of the heirs, and so on, unless they breed like rabbits and ultimately outspend all available funds of the poor. The solution is Primogeniture. How else can we establish and fund a proper Aristocracy?

The Generosity Network

Today, for The Wealth Channel, I had a chance to interview Jennifer McCrea and Jeff Walker about their upcoming book, The Generosity Network.  They did an extraordinary duet on head and heart, Jeffersonian dinners, solidarity, money and meaning, jazz, public narrative, community, hope and how fundraisers and funders are partners in the work. I was jarred, though, after the interview ended to hear from Jennifer that she reads Gifthub. As a philosophy major, she may know Diogenes, who is my excuse, the best I have, and inadequate, for my disreputable peformances here. Found rattling dry bones in his wooden tub, his home,  Diogenes was asked by the King, "What are you doing in there?" The naked philosopher (serious jokester) answered, "Trying to sort my father's bones from your father's." What came across in the interview with Jeff and Jennifer was their humanity.