My first post on this blog for some time. I've not lost interest in philosophy; its just that I'm not ready to blog when I've not quite finished my book series of theory on philosophical values. Give me another 6-8 months and I should be there. If you would care to register your expression of interest, you can email me here.
The reason for writing today is not what you might think it is. Here is a case of a 'hero', who has appeared on 60 Minutes, but in fact he is not a hero at all. In fact, he is an all-to-common human who happened to come a 'hero' after making a lot of money. I would also argue that people don't reconstruct their lives, their entire theory of values, in a heart beat. It takes a long time. It takes a long time because people these days are not terribly intellectual at the best of times. There is a reason why Hollywood content is not good; they are appealing to the 'self-evident'. Of course that takes a 'system', but the model is not particularly difficult. So let me outline a model of humanity which might diminish your view of this modern-day hero. It draws on excerpts from an article in the DailyGood.org.
"Scott Neeson left Hollywood to save children rooting in Cambodia's garbage dumps. He sold his mansion, Porsche, and yacht and set off for Cambodia to provide food, shelter, and education to destitute children. Scott Neeson's final epiphany came one day in June 2004. The high-powered Hollywood executive stood, ankle deep in trash, at the sprawling landfill of Stung Meanchey, a poor shantytown in Cambodia's capital....[Today], Scott Neeson, a former head of 20th Century Fox International, cares for more than 1,000 Cambodian children and their families".
This is of course the basis of Christianity and socialism - sacrifice of one's personal interests to something less; after all, if anything was gained, it would not be a sacrifice, right? The popular misconception is that 'helping others is servitude'. Why did he leave then, since he was well-paid to serve demanding actors prepared to pay a great deal. If he was indeed a 'great altruist', then he should have suffered in silence, gathered all his income, and invested in the starving children, not of Cambodia, who actually have scraps to pick over, but in the most destitute kids in the world, the children of Africa, who don't even have the luxury of scraps. Why didn't he invest in these places? Perhaps because he had no personal conntext. i.e. He didn't pick up a map and a book and study the world, and decide, 'here in the most destitute place in the world, I'm going to save this corner of it'. No, he did not think that way. It seems more probable that he made a personal connection with these kids; moreover, he was confronted by derision for Hollywood in the same instance. This is not altruism; its self-importance, so why do we learn later of his derision for 'the ego'.
The difference is that he has created a value proposition where he is beholden to no one. He sounds more self-important than ever, and because he has achieved the much heralded 'accolade' of sacrificing his material interests, as if that was ever in question, he is destined to be praised by a great many unthinking liberals and conservatives alike. That is until he asks them for money; at which point they will need to distance themselves from his apparent virtues...simply because the more objective exponents among them might feel compelled to do more than they are already doing. Of course, they are probably equally as deluded, so maybe its equally as easy for them to distance themselves from that world, as they can always construct their own illusions. Now, the mark of humility is not expounding your virtues. So how was it that this story got out in the first place? Was it leaked? Anyway, it does not matter, because he has not distanced himself from the idea of being a 'hero'. He has not distanced himself from the altruist creed. No, I think we can fully expect him to mobilise to raise money through it.
Now, should I begrudge a millionaire spending money on the starving in Cambodia. Well, actually I will, because starvation in Cambodia is not the problem, its the consequence, or symptom of the problem. Might we consider it 'part' of the solution? No, its actually part of the problem. The ethical pretext under which this 'liberal' is functioning is the problem, because his values don't just manifest in him acting on a personal level, they manifest in liberals extorting similar influence from governments all around the world. The reason they are not effective is not because:
1. They don't have enough power over governments
2. Neeson's liberal friends are not as 'generous' as him
Neeson is acting it seems, or allowing his name to be perceived as sanctioning charity on the basis of 'altruism'. That is the 'problem'. I frankly don't think that is his motivation, for the reasons I have outlined. The problem is that he has perceived himself 'pragmatically' to be functioning under this premise, and has not corrected it. This results in a great deal of moral obfuscation and ambivalence that undermined motives and political justifications for a great deal of public policy, and no one is interested in these 'fundamental' critical issues. These are in fact the critical issues which need to be addressed before we even reform our political system. The problem is that people are so 'dumbed down' and uneducated beyond their 'compartmentalised lives' that they are not in a position to deal with these issues. They are only capable of showing their derision for any 'pertinent' ideas, or they are otherwise at evading the issues to similar effect. Neeson did not 'avoid a problem', he defined the problem in concrete terms that he personally could deal with. There is nothing altruistic about that. He did not raise to the challenge; he sunk to a level where life was no longer a challenge. He didn't like his life in Hollywood; he left it. He quick without making Hollywood a better place. He was there for the money; not for the movie making. These are the things he claims to have given importance. I don't think his business model has changed. Today he is still appealing to the 'dumbed down' self-evident, and we are still watching crappy Hollywood movies.
Even if he did repudiate his 'perceived altruism', in fairness, it would only affirm the idea that he was humble by downplaying his heroism. People don't really care about facts; they will affirm whatever values they want to believe. You only need $1 million to 'survive' or sustain your life. Clearly he realises that you can't take the money with you [to heaven or some collectivist utopia]. It would mean nothing for him to jeopardise it all because he has built in essence a brand.
Neeson overheard the actor griping in the background. 'My life wasn't meant to be this difficult'. Those were his exact words, Neeson says. "I was standing there in that humid, stinking garbage dump with children sick with typhoid, and this guy was refusing to get on a Gulfstream IV because he couldn't find a specific item onboard", he recalls. "If I ever wanted validation I was doing the right thing, this was it".
So he goes from self-important actors verging on the deluded to starving children. Was there not a space in between? Was there not some middle ground, or was he just looking for a new challenge. Sounds like the machinations of an 'ego'; but not the 'pseudo-ego' he is accustomed to seeing in Hollywood. Perhaps he never understood egoism. Running a business, you'd think that he'd leave and set up his own business. That would be self-important to, but I suggest it would demand a sense of efficacy I suspect he did not possess. The efficacy I'm talking about is not the 'people skills' that saw him running a business, but the discipline and knowledge that he could have easily outsourced to others in a large organisation. When you run your own business, you have to be more responsible for everything because you don't have the same resources, though clearly he could make a better go of it than most people by virtue of having a large amount of cash.
Much to everyone's surprise, within months the Australian native, who as president of 20th Century Fox International had overseen the global success of block-busters like "Titanic," "Braveheart," and "Die Another Day," quit Hollywood. He sold his mansion in Los Angeles and held a garage sale for "all the useless stuff I owned." He sold off his Porsche and yacht, too. His sole focus would now be his charity, the Cambodian Children's Fund, which he had set up the previous year after coming face to face, while on vacation in Cambodia, with children living at the garbage dump.
Overseeing success is not really the same as being creative. Perhaps it was a rather shallow 'achievement' in the sense that he only needed to suck up to important people, and that just came natural to him. I suspect that he felt like he never 'earned' that success, that he was only one step away from losing his job. I suspect he left because of a self-doubt rather than anything else. If there was any shortcomings in Hollywood, he had the opportunity to change the culture, if he knew how. I am not impressed by this gesture at all.
"The perks in Hollywood were good – limos, private jets, gorgeous girlfriends, going to the Academy Awards," says Neeson.... "But it's not about what lifestyle I'd enjoy more when I can make life better for hundreds of children".
Clearly the perks were supposed to be good; but at the end of the day, it impressed others, apparently not him. Yet this was important to him for many years, whilst a great many people do not seek it. Did he simply 'have enough', or did he come to appreciate the folly of it all. Maybe he felt so self-important that he thought he could be no more self-important than snubbing demanding actors, and embracing people who have no qualms at all about the quality of his support. Starving people will tell you everything you want to hear. You don't have to do much if you want to impress starving people. So there is effectively no 'counterparty' at that end. Of course, I dare say, he is not going to sustain spending his own money, so he will want to tap into some of those Hollywood actors who has has previously shown dismay for. Of course, some of them will want to suck up to him, if only to avoid him telling the media who were the difficult actors to work with. Oh, but don't we know them all?
Not helping the poor; the ethical construct he made above. Ask yourself, what's wrong with being a productive member of society in Hollywood. He didn't have to leave that job to help people in Hollywood. In fact, he could have helped them more with his quintillions if he stayed there and employed people. He is positing himself as a selfless man; he's not. He's just redefined his self-interest. Sadly, its not a healthy construct, but if you have no empathy for his self-interest, you might superficially say that 'he's helped children'. Not saying he should have stayed at his company, but its really a straw argument/choice. There were many other things he could have done. But people can be impressed by the fact that he's at the coal face - one man helping others. It reaffirms people that at least one person in the world is pursuing their 'noble ideal', or most particularly a wealthy person. But its not unusual for people to help. Angelina Jolie, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, are among a cast of many to help others. What is particular about Neeson is that he is a businessman who snubbed 'materialism'. The reality however is that most business people care little about opulence; as we are accustomed to expecting from Hollywood celebrities.
The problem is the ethical construct that leads to poverty; not this deluded 'lone' act, which no one else can bring themselves to follow, which does not address the real 'fundamental' problem. I'm not attacking his charitable motivations; I am critical of his motivations and the rationalisations that he is tacitly permitting by not repudiating them....but read this...
At times he even sounds like a Buddhist monk. "You've got to take the ego out of it", he says. "One person's self-indulgence versus the needs of hundreds of children, that's the moral equation".
The implication is that he is not an advocate of egoism at all; he is advocating altruism, or the repudiation of self-importance. Does he not identify the identity which states these words. Can he distance himself from his own mind? Never discount the capacity of a person to do so. The problem is not the ego, whether in Cambodia or Hollywood, the problem is what neither culture has fashioned a set of values which conveys a coherent notion of what it means to be an egoist. After all, it was not the West that made these 'starving kids' poor and destitute, it was Cambodian values. Neeson does not suggest as much; but neither can be point to any 'altruistic culture' which has elevated the lives of people. He is doing so, not from altruism, but from:
1. Unsustainable resources earned in a productive 'egoistic' market economy, which merely fell into the hands of an ambivalent custodian of said funds
2. Resources derived from people with a similar ambivalence about whom they trade with; or with no discernible notion about what values actually achieve one's optimal interests.
Source: DailyGood.org
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Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com
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