My so-called second life

I was reminded of the above t-shirt by this post on Gifthub, which asks whether the rhetoric of social capital is causing philanthropy to lose its soul:

"Once upon a time there was a little boy. All he knew of story was what he saw on television. Mostly it was brands and cartoons. Being a precocious child he graduated at age 12 to the financial news, the story of who made a killing. He dreamed that he would some day grow up and turn the whole world into an efficient market...." Is that not the saddest story you ever heard?

It's an important question. Remaking charity in the image of commercial markets has had any number of positive effects vis a vis quantifiable output, but it also has corrosive effects. People who went into charity to escape our society's obsession with metrics and commodified time become disillusioned with nonprofit corporate culture. For every wealthy donor drawn to venture philanthropy there are dozens of lesser donors repelled by notion of a charitable business. And lest we forget, the IRS has long held to the rule that charity must be distinct from commercial markets.

For too long the conflict between these competing visions has been a gnostic struggle between darkness and light, with each side viewing the other as a distracting lie. Yet both sides only see part of the whole.

There is poetry in money and money in poetry. Both are media that serve to transform the material, connected and routine into abstract values. In short, they do the same thing in different ways. A poet who senses this connection has the potential to reach the heights of each without selling out, just as the capitalist who grasps the poetry of finance can make money without feeling the need to quit to find higher meaning.

Does that mean bridging the values of poetry and money is easy? No, not at all, especially in a culture that has for far too long treated them as dueling absolutes. I'll be writing a lot more about this in the coming weeks. For now, here's a bit of moneygami to help point the way: