Peter Edman
John Miller, author of a book on the Olin Foundation, has a commentary in the Wall Street Journal of 7 July 2006 on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I am with him in agreeing that it is better that Warren Buffett give his money to the Gates Foundation rather than spend it himself on global population control.
In “Open the FloodGates,” Miller argues that the Gates family should follow the Olin model at least, and either give the money away during their lifetime or arrange for it to be done so within a couple decades after their death. This is certainly what Andrew Carnegie would have advised, I expect, seeing what has become of his foundations.
Definitely worth a quick read. But let me also comment on a few items of interest.
I am particularly interested in his opening.
When Warren Buffett announced his philanthropic merger with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation two weeks ago, Bill Gates described one of the motives behind dispensing untold billions: “We really owe it to society to give the wealth back.”
His statement was a cliché, but a strange one. Are we to assume that he has spent his adult life “taking away"--as if he and the other parasites at Microsoft must make amends for having sucked the life out of the U.S. economy? Surely there are better reasons to embark upon the world’s biggest grant-making program than to salve the conscience of a guy who has no business feeling guilty in the first place.
I’m no Microsoft fan, but the only thing Bill Gates should feel guilty for is the horrendous security nightmares of the past few generations of his products. No one can argue that he hasn’t created good (some dubious goods included) along with creating wealth. Yet isn’t it interesting that he does feel so? It’s worth consideration why.
It does seem to me that our culture has abandoned any conception of sin. At the same time, public guilt for the successful is exacerbated by a naked but nameless notion that used to be called envy.
If Mr. Gates views his foundation as a vehicle for guilt riddance, chances are his grants will fail often and spectacularly. Yet if he views it as a way of furthering his already enormous contribution to society through nonprofit rather than for-profit means, then perhaps he will make a positive difference in the areas where he is focusing his efforts: global health and American education.
This is a profound statement. In addition to abandoning the traditional definition of the problem, we have also abandoned the traditional spiritual remedies (confession, repentance, and the like). It looks to me like a failed experiment. The guilt isn’t going away, particularly for the successful. And there are no secular practices that will help them.
You see similar things in the environmental discussions (didn’t hellfire and brimstone used to be reserved for the pulpit and revival tent?) and in the corporate corruption scandals. Consider the recent untimely death of Ken Lay: people are still looking for some “closure” or justice. But it seems to me they’re looking in the wrong place. Without some external standard to appeal to, envy and rage and guilt can never be assuaged.
Gleanings, Philanthropy, Fri 07 Jul 2006
We are apt to mistake our vocation by looking out of the way for occasions to exercise great and rare virtues, and by stepping over the ordinary ones that lie directly in the road before us.
Hannah More
A Cultural Manifesto and Showcase
China, Tibet, and the Olympics
A Spiritual Pilgrimage by Malcolm Muggeridge, Foreword by Alonzo L. McDonald.
A life in perspective, offering questions to consider and a path worth exploring.
Orthodoxy: Georgetown’s Father Schall reviews G. K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy on its 100 year anniversary. “In coming to believe in Christianity, Chesterton, as he tells us, did not read a single Christian book in the process. Rather, he read book after book of those who maintained that Christianity could not possibly be true. After he had read many of these tractates, he suddenly realized that the intellectual opponents of Christianity were constantly contradicting themselves about what they were opposing. Chesterton, the most logical of men, figured that anything so odd as to be opposed for the exact opposite reasons must either be quite strange or, in fact, rather normal and true.” A helpful introduction to a lovely book. (James V. Schall, SJ, InsideCatholic.com , 2008 05 05)
Where Were Obama’s Friends?: Friendship under fire: “As for the supersized candidates, what strikes one most about them is their ‘aloneness.’ They look so solitary. Indeed, it is possible that the old and honorable notion of ‘standing with’ a candidate like Obama simply didn’t occur to his famous supporters this week. Everyone has become used to watching celebrity stars and athletes take it in the neck on their own. Even someone running for the nation’s presidency looks like just another personal crack-up.” Makes one pause. (Daniel Henninger, The Wall Street Journal , 2008 05 01)
There’s no way you’re going to convince me: Catholic professor Scott Carson covers the current debates on evil between N T Wright and Bart Ehrman on Beliefnet: “[H]aving had a look at this most recent exchange I have to say that it continues to astound me how simplistic and thoughtless the popular treatment of the problem has become. . . . It’s as if generations of sophisticated and complex theological and philosophical argument amount to nothing when compared to the emotional attitudes of a single individual living in a highly particularized time and place. . . . Just as atheists and agnostics are often—perhaps way too often—tempted to assume that believers only believe for emotional or psychological reasons, so too, it seems rather obvious to me, every non-believer almost certainly has emotional and psychological reasons for not believing that will trump any and every legitimate argument posed against them.” (extensive links from the article to the primary sources) (An Examined Life , 2008 04 27)
The Way We Weren’t: “The fifties really were a time when the culture broadly affirmed Christianity as a Good Thing. I was there. I saw it; I heard it. And yet some kind of demurral is strongly indicated: some sign of recognition that no human society, whatever its good intentions and methods, has lived unburdened, unencumbered by the crushing weight of human fallenness. Good as life may appear to have been in the cities and universities of France and Italy in the thirteenth century, or amid the sweaty fervor of the camp meetings in nineteenth-century America, or among the fierce faith of the emancipators, always human pride and general nuttiness were there to spoil the broth.” (William Murchison, in Touchstone , 2008 04 23)
• Not on Sale (2008 04 14)
• Seven New Deadly Sins, Suitably Updated (2008 04 10)
• The Pope Comes to America (2008 04 09)
• Both Read the Same Bible (2008 04 09)
• Muslims Outnumber World’s Catholics (2008 03 31)
