What I see is a lot of intersection between Scott's giving, and the "leaderless resistance" kinds of movements that have also been popping up in the age of social media. I think it's another facet of the same problem that has led people to think that a lone act of Tweeting about something is somehow an act of courage or an agent of chang…
What I see is a lot of intersection between Scott's giving, and the "leaderless resistance" kinds of movements that have also been popping up in the age of social media. I think it's another facet of the same problem that has led people to think that a lone act of Tweeting about something is somehow an act of courage or an agent of change.
Think about Scott vis-a-vis Occupy Wall Street. That was a "movement" that wanted to protest injustice, acknowledge broken systems, and maybe to fix them. It was a righteous cause at just the right moment. But I add the "maybe" because of their complete, utter, and embarrassing failure when it came time to say what it was they actually were protesting FOR. That simple question fractured the whole movement almost immediately.
So when I read about Mackenzie Scott's "no-strings-attached" giving, it reads more as giving to make her feel better about spending so much of her life benefiting from such a morally questionable system and morally compromised husband. By today's standards, though, that is accepted by the community as having done something. It's Twitter Philanthropy.
Real giving would actually require the effort of investigating ways it could help, establishing those kinds of programs that actually do things, and then funding them. I don't want to diminish the value of her recognizing publicly that these are problems. It really is the first step towards positive change, and it is morally superior to just sitting on that money. But she has company in the Billionaire Club that actually is working to build and fund institutions that add even more systemic distortions to their benefit. If she wants to change that, then she's going to have to think of something more substantive than these spray-and-pray donations.
We really need to reacquaint America with the concept of true leadership - leadership that has plans, demands, and action - in this age of Twitter Virtue.
What I see is a lot of intersection between Scott's giving, and the "leaderless resistance" kinds of movements that have also been popping up in the age of social media. I think it's another facet of the same problem that has led people to think that a lone act of Tweeting about something is somehow an act of courage or an agent of change.
Think about Scott vis-a-vis Occupy Wall Street. That was a "movement" that wanted to protest injustice, acknowledge broken systems, and maybe to fix them. It was a righteous cause at just the right moment. But I add the "maybe" because of their complete, utter, and embarrassing failure when it came time to say what it was they actually were protesting FOR. That simple question fractured the whole movement almost immediately.
So when I read about Mackenzie Scott's "no-strings-attached" giving, it reads more as giving to make her feel better about spending so much of her life benefiting from such a morally questionable system and morally compromised husband. By today's standards, though, that is accepted by the community as having done something. It's Twitter Philanthropy.
Real giving would actually require the effort of investigating ways it could help, establishing those kinds of programs that actually do things, and then funding them. I don't want to diminish the value of her recognizing publicly that these are problems. It really is the first step towards positive change, and it is morally superior to just sitting on that money. But she has company in the Billionaire Club that actually is working to build and fund institutions that add even more systemic distortions to their benefit. If she wants to change that, then she's going to have to think of something more substantive than these spray-and-pray donations.
We really need to reacquaint America with the concept of true leadership - leadership that has plans, demands, and action - in this age of Twitter Virtue.