P O S T E D B Y A L B E R T
Phil Cubeta commenting on the hyper-managerial strain in philanthropy:
An abuse of power and logic to keep our expectations small, and to keep the funder in charge and us busy, anxious and grateful. … In reading literature, the first thing you learn is how to identify the speaker and to ask how conscious that speaker is of the meaning of his or her own discourse. An unreliable narrator, a benighted narrator, is a standard trope of modern literature. Once you learn to read that way, it is very hard to read Strategic Philanthropy books without thinking of Ozymandias, or Hard Times, or The Bishop Orders his Tomb. “The frame of the normal” and maintaining the normalcy of domination is the game, of which the MBA is blithely unconscious, he or she is just here to straighten us out, by managing us into small projects that ameliorate a status quo favorable to the manager/owner. The deadening effect of business language, and the obtuseness of these experts, all favors the ongoing status quo. They cannot and will not comprehend a critique that exposes the demonic nature of the enterprise. By demonic I mean Mock-Dionysian as in Wealth Bondage, where all desires are met, at a price.
Just about anything I can put down is crap compared to that. Thanks, Phil, for some great reads over the years.
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