Assimilation and Accomodation among the Culled in Social Enterprise

I am very slow learner. Decades ago I studied Piaget and was perplexed by his terminololgy, "Assimilation" and "Accomodation." He said kids go through from assimilation to accomodation in their understanding of the world as it evolves in jerks from one stage to another. Now I get it. The idea is akin to what Thomas Kuhn later articulated as pardigm change. So, lets update this for philanthropy and social innovation.

Raise a kid in front of tv. Raise a kid in the mall. Cull kids every year with objective tests until their moral imagination and irreverence is stunted and dies. Rank and measure. Cull again. Rank and measure. Then take the best culled kids and give them an education in management or investment skills leading to business success. Put the social on their owned platforms. Let them operate like Kings and Queens of Intellectual Property, owning the social. Let a few make it billionaire big, and let that validate the worldview system to which all is assimilated.  Let those few then transition to philanthropy. Of course they know nothing about it, and have no frame of reference, and have no understanding of civics, and no self awarenenss of their own limitations, and no commitment to equity or social justice or working polity. They are culled of the culled via metrics! They are world beaters, and know the secret is ownership, mastery, hierarchy, and power from above within markets for what else is there? What else is there but a Market? What else have these stunted souls ever known?

Accomodation, then, is the wrenching open of this worldview, it is metanoia, meaning both mindshift and repentence. Accomodation is when you realize that the world of social capital markets are a market in which, for example, politicians are trafficked no less than sex workers, in bondage to wealth, and education in public schools is managed and measured like corporate training and for the same instrumentalist purposes.  Accomodation is when you realize that your uptopia - the mall and the cull writ large - are Wealth Bondage and Freedom is your enslavement.  I see faint signs among the leading lights in the social innovation movement of accomodation. I do not wish them the dark night of the soul, but without it they will not emerge as more than they are, nor face into the pain of an understanding that is systemically deficient.

Except here and there. I can point to my generous patron., Candidia, as one excellent example of human excellence  and a role model for me in disrupting and innovating spiritual and artistic and politcal traditions in our shared commitment to the worldwide success of Wealth Bondage, the highest expression of Freedom in a social world owned and managed like a Mall. We are Culled for in Wealth Bondage to a Higher Purpose. And I kneel not to pray.

 

Comments

[JAMES SCHAFFER]

Thank you as always for helping me place my own bewilderment with the powers and what in trending into proper perspective, one that is older and slower than the advent and speed of the Internet. Jim

[phil]

Where you find mega-trends, particularly generational, you find the future. The future of the 60's is the dismal now we created. And the future of social venture and impact philanthropy will be an intensification of this new generation's blindness, and the ultimate moment of sorry self-recognition. It took us 20 years to see how foolish we were, in our youth, and should we expect the rising generation to cycle through the stages of intoxication, hangover, and vow of sobriety any quicker? As for vows of sobriety, years ago I confessed by weakness, acknowledged God as my savior, went through the 12 steps, and - God forgive me - I still crave wealth and power. One day at time.

[dqkelley]

I thought you were talking about China. Social venture, impact, fools.

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Or, as Jerry Campbell said when I said maybe he'll spend it on drugs: It doesn't matter.