One of my readers asked me to plug this site where he's webmaster. I generally like non-profit NGOs and Buddhists, so why not? The "educating moral" part is a little weird to me -- I tend not to believe helping people should have any proselytizing strings attached, and that in any case morals shouldn't be taught by strangers from other countries -- but one cannot argue that the people of Cambodia are in sore need of an altruistic helping hand.
And upon hearing what a lousy time we had at the Ninth Avenue Food Fest, PJ sent along a NY Post article talking about how little of that fair's profit goes to the Hell's Kitchen organizations which it was originally set up to benefit.
I've been fascinated for some time by the contrast between capitalist workings abnd non-capitalist impulses. I do think our tendency as humans is to want to help others, and you see "the better angels of our nature" come to the fore in times of great tragedy, both collective and individual. But that basic human instinct is incompatible with capitalism, which by its very nature plays to the worst in humans (greed, envy, lust and probably the rest of the seven deadly sins while we're at it) and needs to be constantly reinforced to be effective. Against this centuries-long brainwashing, sensible ideas like running government services to help people rather than to make money are viewed as alien, traitorous, unAmerican. Even people who suspect somewhere in their lizard brains that there may be something wrong with the worship of money feel the need to fall over themselves excusing it; I remember listening to Tim McCarver this past weekend during the Yankees/Mets game that FOX broadcast, actually praising the Yanks' decision to re-sign Clemens with (and I paraphrase) "Sure, it's an obscene amount of money, but we live in a capitalist society, there's nothing wrong with that!"
That's the thing about hyper-capitalism, there's no room for nuance (not that there ever was in GWB's America). It's not money itself, but the "obscene amount" of it that everyone instinctually understands is wrong but can't quite articulate why. Just as we no longer have the solid vocabulary to express why it's wrong to run services -- from utilities to pharmaceuticals -- at a profit (a profit may be a happy outcome but should not be the point of helping people), why it's wrong that the 1% of the population which makes exponentially more money than the other 99% get away with not sharing their bounty, why it's wrong that corporations with unusually large profits not get taken to task for gaming the system along with their political buddies, why it's terribly wrong that there isn't actually a free-market level playing field at all and hasn't been for some time.
Without anyone high-level enough to articulate these suspicions and be credible and understood by others at high levels, we continue along on this profit-gilded path. As Peter Stone wrote in the musical 1776, "Don't forget that most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor." And as the vast majority of this country's citizens cling to that remote possibility, they allow capitalism to be their master rather than the other way around -- money as a means to an end, not the end itself.
My fear is that it will take another, greater collective tragedy before folks remember that we're really put on this earth to help each other, not to amass wealth.
And upon hearing what a lousy time we had at the Ninth Avenue Food Fest, PJ sent along a NY Post article talking about how little of that fair's profit goes to the Hell's Kitchen organizations which it was originally set up to benefit.
I've been fascinated for some time by the contrast between capitalist workings abnd non-capitalist impulses. I do think our tendency as humans is to want to help others, and you see "the better angels of our nature" come to the fore in times of great tragedy, both collective and individual. But that basic human instinct is incompatible with capitalism, which by its very nature plays to the worst in humans (greed, envy, lust and probably the rest of the seven deadly sins while we're at it) and needs to be constantly reinforced to be effective. Against this centuries-long brainwashing, sensible ideas like running government services to help people rather than to make money are viewed as alien, traitorous, unAmerican. Even people who suspect somewhere in their lizard brains that there may be something wrong with the worship of money feel the need to fall over themselves excusing it; I remember listening to Tim McCarver this past weekend during the Yankees/Mets game that FOX broadcast, actually praising the Yanks' decision to re-sign Clemens with (and I paraphrase) "Sure, it's an obscene amount of money, but we live in a capitalist society, there's nothing wrong with that!"
That's the thing about hyper-capitalism, there's no room for nuance (not that there ever was in GWB's America). It's not money itself, but the "obscene amount" of it that everyone instinctually understands is wrong but can't quite articulate why. Just as we no longer have the solid vocabulary to express why it's wrong to run services -- from utilities to pharmaceuticals -- at a profit (a profit may be a happy outcome but should not be the point of helping people), why it's wrong that the 1% of the population which makes exponentially more money than the other 99% get away with not sharing their bounty, why it's wrong that corporations with unusually large profits not get taken to task for gaming the system along with their political buddies, why it's terribly wrong that there isn't actually a free-market level playing field at all and hasn't been for some time.
Without anyone high-level enough to articulate these suspicions and be credible and understood by others at high levels, we continue along on this profit-gilded path. As Peter Stone wrote in the musical 1776, "Don't forget that most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor." And as the vast majority of this country's citizens cling to that remote possibility, they allow capitalism to be their master rather than the other way around -- money as a means to an end, not the end itself.
My fear is that it will take another, greater collective tragedy before folks remember that we're really put on this earth to help each other, not to amass wealth.
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