On Philanthropy...
Back in the early 1900s, there was a movement called “social gospel” that preached that everyone, including the leaders of such congregations, should put their backs into helping the poor, making sure everyone was taken care of, clothing the homeless and generally making sure the communities in which they lived were free of oppressive elements. This, combined with the early “pull yourselves up by the bootstraps” mentality of robber barons like Rockefeller and Carnegie, made for interesting bedfellows.
Fast foward to the current era, when philanthropy has become a by-word for corruption, greed, and general societal control. But how did we get here? what happened? is there anything that can be done? Well, in short, not really but we need to analyze the difference between the figures of the past and what we have today.
To start Carnegie had good intentions, he invested many a dollar into projects that would have lasting impact, such as education, the clergy, libraries and other such institutions, such as the Tuskegee institute, to further black education. It was not without its problems, such as his steel ventures under attack from striking workers asking for equal pay, and lest we not forget the flood at South Fork Dam, which killed upwards of 2,000 people. But he has gone down in history as being a generally affable and respected individual for the work he put into his “progress project”. Many philanthropists see themselves as being “a man of the people” despite being very wealthy, often trying to put themselves into the shoes of “the average joe”. They can be left leaning or right leaning in their private lives but always try to show a human face to their subjects, much like a benevolent ruler to his subjects. in the 1980s, despite his name being associated with egoism, musicians such as Bono and Bob Geldof did much to try and bring humanitarian aid to third world hellholes such as Subsarahan Africa and the Amazon rainforest. But that’s behind us, and with the growing cynicism of the public one cannot help but notice many of these so-called “leaders of progress” are really just doing these deeds out of self-subservience and not because they actually care about humanity becoming “one united people”.
Which leads us to people like Bill Gates, who along with his ex-wife Melinda Gates, created the Bill and Melinda Gates fund, with their donations to charity organizations and whatnot, seems to speaking a much different language out the other side of his mouth with some of the things he has been saying, such as creating communities in developing nations with planned vaccine distribution and trying to make communities with optimal healthcare in third world shitholes that, in reality, just sounds like he wants to modify the gene pool of people who have no interest in modern medicine. Its becoming clear that modern philanthropists, instead of actually benefiting the general public, want to make enclaves of their own totally beholden to their own “secret formula” of maximum healthcare and all sorts of other evil transhumanist nonsense, trying to turn the third world into their backwater of experimental medicine and using people not only in the third world but elsewhere into guinea pigs for research purposes, using synthetic life extensions, at the expense of personal freedom and liberty. Which defeats the purpose of the free market altogether by not allowing people to pick and choose what they put into their bodies and instead making a list of mandatory injections, treatments and drugs. I myself want to live a moderately long life but not in this manner, to be turned into someone’s pet experiment. Whats the purpose of life if one cannot enjoy and have to be turned into a lab rat? Being able to make choices that either benefit or are incogruent towards my life should be my own responsibility, and not at the hands of people who claim to mean well but do not. Carnegie at least had the foresight to create institutions which benefit humanity in the long run, instead of treating humanity as a petri dish. What he did was set down the institutions and let us, with own general will, either take advantage of it or have the choice to reject it, whereas Gates, nothing involves our freedom of the will, which is making determinists froth at the mouth. If this keeps up, the very concept of free will could be destroyed and everything will be reduced to a Calvinist mode of telos, where your life is completely predetermined by institutions that control every aspect of your life, instead of giving you an option in life to better yourself, the knowledge to learn at your own disposal. Of course, as determinists might say, this was “meant to happen” that one day all this chasing of progress was inevitable. But it doesn’t have to be. One might also try and shoehorn abortion into this argument but it fails due to the fact of abortion’s negative overall effects on society versus the positive. But I’ve already said my peace about that. Its a matter of what works and what doesn’t, and the Pragmatist philosophers saw this as their rallying cry to keep society making sense. As it should, or it will not continue.
J./Adolf Stalin