Beneficence

Building Bridges

Ahhhh, now we're getting somewhere.  Dave Pollard has discovered Ivan Illich!   De-Schooling Society has been prominent on my recommended reading list here from the beginning.    Yes, Dave, I think there are several places of common agreement from which we can together leap forward toward a more unifying understanding of social cooperation and order, but we'll have to go back a bit.  The decade between about 1965 and 1975 was a fertile period, and we would do look back to those years and pick up Cornuelle, Jonas Salk, Illich, Kenneth Boulding, and a handful of others grappling with the problems honestly and inventively but in ways that were largely buried by the increasing politicization of American intellectual life that ensued in the wake of Deconstruction and postmodernism. 

You outline part of the challenge:   "Instead of being obsessed with 'building something better' should we instead be focused on 'deconstruction tools' that liberate us from institutions and government and business and systems, and allow us to apply them to self-organized community-based networks?"   

I would suggest it is really the work of building that is required.. the deconstruction will take care of itself once people have better alternatives from which to choose.  But there is another problem with your vocabulary of deconstruction:  the politics of difference promulgated by deconstructionists and postmodernists in the academy and embraced by many progressives today throws up strange and unnecessary barriers to the creation of the strong and weak links necessary in self-organizing networks.   For an organic society to be possible, we have to believe that we can communicate with one another, and that our modes of discourse are not merely attempts at hegemony over one another. 

Phil Cubeta at GiftHub doesn't like my choice of language at times--complaining that my earnest desire to explore the possibility and problems of "beneficence" is merely a front for "stinginess--and one of his commentors supposes that the religious roots of my approach to the world are merely "warmed over calvinism" that has little appeal to "adults."   These are not trust-building criticisms.

If I'm speaking as truly as possible here from my heart and mind, but I'm condemned as one capable only of either false consciousness (a conservative "head fake" I believe Phil calls it) or a facile intellectual and spiritual immaturity, it really doesn't leave us much room to have a conversation about Illich or anyone else. 

My faith enjoins charity and humility and provides me a robust model of communication in the Three-in-One (and through the sacrament of communion)--which holds that the signifiers we call language can and do point to deeper truths about reality than what we meagerly minded humans can make up on our own.  Ultimately, it is only through my faith that I have hope that there can be trust and common ground between us, and it is in good faith that I continue to try to build bridges rather than throw up walls.

Identifying Need

How do we best deal with the needs of the others?  Phil Cubeta at GiftHub writes:

Involuntary philanthropy or taxation is a forced exaction to make up for the limitations of our own sympathy and range of personal experience and face to face compassion. As citizens in our little communities of interest, we do not know, often, who needs what most. Government programs fill in what glamorous giving, and elite giving, and "be like me" giving so often forgets, that those most in need may be out of sight, beyond the pale of our sympathy and yet have a call upon us as fellow citizens. Nor can business do much for those without marketable skills, good health, or the ability to buy things.

The problem with this critique of our giving patterns, is in the assumption that government programs which tend to centralization and bureaucratization can have BETTER knowledge of "who needs what most."  The conservative case when stated at its best does not deny that needs exist but hones in on the critical problem of the limited knowledge of central planners.  The failure of centralized Soviet-style economic planning is patent, so why do so many continue to presume that bureaucratized government-centered social planning (aka redistribution) can succeed any better. 

Phil has identified the key problem:  how do we come to know the who, what, when, and where of true needs.  But the answer is not to pretend that government can put on some mighty spectacles that grant omnivision.   Rather the challenge is to help us all become better citizens by looking more closely at the needs of our neighbors--and that includes the communities we drive through from our bedroom communities in suburbia to our jobs in downtown highrises.   Dislocation of civic responsibility by entrusting it all to government merely allows me to put on my sunglasses, lock the doors, and turn up my satellite radio so I'm not required to look.

I fear that  the  "limitations of our own sympathy" are more encouraged by "forced exactions" than by our participation in the life-changing "little platoons" of civil society.  What we should be pursuing is both to foster more personal engagement in the nexus of associations and organizations--the "communities of interest"--that comprise society and to raise the sights, expand the interests, increase connections and communication among these communities so that the needs of some of the poorest among us become known to us personally, not written off as "not my problem anymore" each year when we pay our tax bill. 

The Shadow(?) of Beneficence

I'm reading now in preparation for a small-group colloquium on the work of Kenneth Boulding on the concept of the grants economy. Found this pregnant paragraph, that seems to shed some light on what I've meant to be up to in this space from time to time:

The pathology of exchange is familiar--depressions, inflation, unemployment, maldistribution of income, inadequate public goods, and so on. The pathology of the grants economy is less familiar because we have not thought about it so much in these terms. Nevertheless, it is equally relevant . . . . Our evaluation of the relative merits and the relative proportions of grants and exchange in the total system will depend a great deal on our evaluation of the relative efficiencies and the relative proneness to pathological states of the two systems. The absence of any theoretical vision of the grants sector of the economy as a system in its own right has distorted opinion and, in some degree, has prevented the resolution of this dispute. We are highly conscious of the nature and the pathologies of the exchange economy. Because we are much less conscious of the nature and pathologies of the grants economy, the grants economy has had an unfair advantage in this dispute. It is only as we come to see the exchange economy and the grants economy as equal partners in the total social enterprise that we can properly determine the role that should be assigned to each. (The Economy of Love and Fear, Ch 1)

Public Benefit

Bill Schambra points me to a story he finds of interest "because we have a major apologist for the plutocratic exploiters of the masses editorializing in favor of a decision that protects small community against . . . well, plutocratic exploitation of the masses. Another category scrambler for your friends at GiftHub."

The more troubling category scrambler is that creative shift from "public use" to "public benefit" argument that created the trouble in the first place.

This is a great example of why we need to take care when presuming "benefit" and to be on guard when beneficence is justified on the grounds of "public" interest.

Poletown's Revenge
Wall Street Journal
August 3, 2004; Page A10

It must come as cold comfort to the citizens of Poletown, who back in 1981 had their homes taken away from them by the city of Detroit and bulldozed for a car factory. But the Michigan Supreme Court has finally stated the obvious: What's good for General Motors wasn't so good for the people -- and it sure didn't justify violating their "sacrosanct" Constitutional property rights.

Though Friday's decision comes nearly a quarter-century after an earlier Michigan Supreme Court cleared the way for Detroit to condemn the homes, churches, schools and hospitals of Poletown on behalf of a Cadillac plant, it's hard to overstate the significance of this reversal. By expanding the justifications for eminent domain seizures to include "economic development," the earlier decision not only ushered in the destruction of a neighborhood. It set a woeful precedent that continues to embolden unseemly coalitions of private developers and tax-hungry municipalities using government powers to take other people's land.

Friday's decision was unanimous. The lead opinion put it this way: "Poletown's 'economic benefit' rationale would validate practically any exercise of the power of eminent domain on behalf of a private entity. After all, if one's ownership of private property is forever subject to the government's determination that another private party would put one's land to better use, then the ownership of real property is perpetually threatened by the expansion plans of any large discount retailer, 'megastore,' or the like."

Exactly. Remember, we're not talking about a public highway or bridge. To the contrary, today we have governments taking land from Peter because they'd rather Paul have it. In the Michigan case, Wayne County was fighting to condemn the property of a handful of owners after they refused to sell land the county wanted to use for a business and technology park.

In one sense you can hardly blame the planners. Once the Poletown case shifted the test from "public use" to "public benefit," it put any limits on eminent domain on a slippery slope. State and local governments all across America have been happily sliding down it ever since -- and citing Poletown as their justification. The Institute for Justice reckons that between 1998 and 2002 some 10,000 private properties were either taken by or threatened with eminent domain on behalf of other private parties.

for entire article see WSJ

Revisionism--Areopagus Revisited

I jumped from thinking about new cultural spaces to reflect on the conversations I had at the Chicago Giving Conference. Chris Corrigan, whom I had the pleasure of meeting there, is discussing some of these issues at Parking Lot by way of his reading of Lewis Hyde's The Gift.

It's such a pleasure to follow these conversations as they are emerging from distinct cultural spaces, none of which look quite like the space in which I live most of my days--and to find that the gift of forbearance is among the greatest we can offer. My effort--and it is at some moments an act of will--to forbear prejudice simply because someone comes from a different cultural space than my own allows me to reap the gift of their words and wisdom. As well as to hope that my boldness in speaking from my own identity might also be a form of gift into the conversation of mankind.

I began these reflections some time ago by thinking aloud about Milton and the Areopagus. It's interesting now to revise my consideration of the use of "Areopagus." The original Areopagus itself was the "hill of Ares," the place in Athens where the tribunal met on matters of justice. Milton's Areopagitica, of course, was a plea to the English parliament forbear the regulation of printing as well as a sturdy defense of truth's ability to hold its own in the court of public opinion.

The Areopagus, then, represents justice, especially of the aristocratic sort.

To achieve the virtue of beneficence, we have to turn the virtue--the strict justice--of the Areopagus on its head, as Milton argued, and as did the Apostle Paul in speaking on Mars Hill (Acts 17):

16 Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. 17 Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him. 18 Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection.

19 And they took him, and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is? 20 For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: we would know therefore what these things mean. 21 (For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.)

22 Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. 23 For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. 24 God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; 25 Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; 26 And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; 27 That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: 28 For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

29 Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device. 30 And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: 31 Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.

32 And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter. 33 So Paul departed from among them. 34 Howbeit certain men clave unto him, and believed: among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.

For the Christian, beneficence emerges from a cultural space in which charity is made possible only through him who "giveth to all life, and breath, and all things." It is rooted in grace and stands apart from strict justice, the demands of which no man can uphold.

So, it's not the Areopagus itself we seek but the antidote to it. For Paul, the life-gift of the God Who Became Known contra the idolatry of Athens. For Milton, forbearance of over-reaching justice/judgment in order that a space of utmost civil liberty might emerge.

Milton reminds us that there will be dissent and division:

For this is not the liberty which wee can hope, that no grievance ever should arise in the Commonwealth, that let no man in this World expect...

But he continues to paint for us a model of civil and charitable discourse:

but when complaints are freely heard, deeply consider'd, and speedily reform'd, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty attain'd, that wise men looke for.

Anyone seeking liberty beyond this must cast his eyes to the Hill of Golgotha rather than to the Hill of Mars.

Cultural Spaces

Thanks to Will Wilkinson for the pointer to This Blog Sits . MCracken's reflections on the emergence of diverse cultural spaces makes me hope that we can eventually carve out yet another cultural space in which people can pursue their identities as gift-makers.

As I see this space, it would be one where people would share hope in the power of gift as well as explore together the personal, social, political, and cultural impact of gift-making. A place where we might discover what gift-making looks like done well, which must include confronting the shadows of obligation and expectation that accompany gifts. Beneficence has the power to provide blessings as well as to create restraints. This dual nature of the gift requires us to consider its role as both a social lubricant and as an agent of social cohesion.

Beneficence, in other words, may be rather like the carbon atom--it can have radically different properties depending on the way that it forms bonds:

carbon atoms form the substances diamond and graphite. Graphite is soft and slippery, while diamond is the hardest substance known to man. How is it possible for one element to form substances with such different properties? ... Graphite is a good electrical conductor. Diamond is a good insulator. Diamond is an excellent abrasive. Graphite makes a good lubricant. Graphite is opaque. Diamond is transparent. It is because of their respective structures that two substances composed solely of carbon atoms can have such different properties.

Well, I don't know that there is anything profound in all that.. just struck me as interesting!

Problem-Industrial Complexities

Tom Munnecke has made some provocative overtures about the problem of our problem-oriented discourse:

Our understanding of security is shaped by anti-terrorism. Our understanding of "peace" is shaped by war. Our educational standards are shaped by avoiding failure ("no child left behind"). Our health care system is shaped by disease. This framing creates Problem Industrial Complexes which thrive on the growth or existence, not the reduction, of the problem. We lack the language or the systems approaches to take action without a "problem definition."

On the discussion list at Giving Space Richard Gabriel responds:

I think the real problem with problem is not the problem but the idea of a solution. If you *solve* a problem or *fix* the problem, then you have done one thing or small set of things that eliminate all the issues, all the disquiet. But most of the "problems" we need to address cannot be solved, but merely have Good Things done to them so that over time perhaps they heal. So, the problem with problem is that it makes people think there is a single, simple solution.

Now we're cutting to the chase!

I chose the name "Beneficence" for this blog because I want to explore "the complexities of 'doing good' in a free society." Getting at this quick-fix "solutions" mentality is part of the complexity I believe we need to address. Much of this approach originated or at least began to dominate other ways of thinking during the Progressive era when "scientific philanthropy," on the heels of things like Taylor's "scientific management," promised to tackle the root causes of social problems. It was clearly an engineering perspective. A fascinating book, Machine Age Ideology, by John M. Jordan explores this presumption that industrial engineering could apply to social problems.

I have found quite intriguing in the Giving Space conversations over the past few months the emphasis on design, but I have not yet quite grasped the heart of how design differs from engineering. I see glimpses here and there and some promise that an approach through design leads us away from the search for solutions to the more humble effort to foster the emergence of systems better attuned to human nature. [I might emphasize that I say the systems should be attuned to human nature, not to try to "tune up" human nature... But that takes us into another conversation.]

In any event, I am eager to better understand, and am hopeful that the designers, pattern language experts, and other interested parties at Giving Space will help me continue to better understand the differences between engineering and design as well as whether we might be moving toward an era of philanthropic design rather than philanthropic engineering.