Suitable for Framing

I have adopted the term ‘Hero’s Journey’ to mean- small, helpless struggler overcomes odds and makes it to what we generally perceive as a better life.’

So, why does Americanized charity have to look like a swashbuckling glamorized version of itself. Picture Mother Teresa leaning down to cradle a child or old person. Just the right combination of strain and benevolence on her weathered face. That’s the picture we all seem to strive for when giving to charity.

Heart Tugs

Lately there seems to be a glut of third world country charity which I think is great but the silhouette has become a bit predictable. More important, the idea of charity has become stupid, meaning slow to catch on)

Well, You Chose to be a Target, Seth

Seth Godin, in “Linchpin”, implies that the minute money changes hands, your act of art ceases to be art.

If I am reading that correctly– I think it is  too black and white a sentiment.

Money and art can mingle just fine. If you give me two dollars for gas on my way to cover a mountain in pink canvass have I ruined the art moment?

If I get paid to offer art in any form have I crossed the line of ‘art purity’ and dashed all hope of my gift being Christlike? Hell no.

An Artist Simply Knows What to Frame

Which brings me back to charity. Ken Wilber is more developed than most any American President. Giving the President an opportunity to bridge that gap would be the utmost in charity, far eclipsing that of the typical poses we see of third world country help. Why? Because to bridge that  gap  would mean more for the world’s potential. If our leaders were all at a firm Integral stage, the world’s table scraps would be closer to gourmet.

But that goes unperceived and the typical American and  developed European’s perceive charity as the hero’s journey it is not.

Frame This

What if all school teachers were suddenly at a high level of personal development? What if all business leaders transformed and woke up?

That’s charity. That would change the world at a rate never before seen on Earth.

But who wants to change the world?

Apparently the people who are so methodically involved in old style charity. ( giving to the externally poor). There is an idea that  by somehow bringing others along to a better way of life, they become hero’s and the gifter becomes a benevolent catalyst.

That idea does have merit, based on thousands of years of connectedness. Of course giving connects. Of course art is the act of pulling together various elements until something new is inspired. Of course money has a history of taint. But to assign money with the disgust of unraveling art is as perceptually vacant as claiming the best charity is also that which appears to make a good poster.

Great charity doesn’t have to look like a Habitat documentary. It can look like me helping a Wall Street executive to overcome stuttering.

It can look like me paying for an executive’s latte and cab fare  so they can get to an important meeting in time to ‘change the world’. You may never know how vital that meeting was. It could have saved the world from a disaster never before imagined. But it won’t be counted as charity by the do-gooders who can only perceive such as a survival scene.

Humm

Which brings me back to the hero’s journey. It is based on ego. As long as ego get’s stroked and the format of the journey plays out in grand fashion, the ego counts it as  a win. But if the art is far too complex or is found at the place of simplicity on the other side of complexity, it does not (seem to) get a hero check mark. Curious.

And the beat goes on.

Filed under: Copywriting

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