I wonder if these people even have the level of self awareness to realize their hypocrisy.<\/p>\n
The Gospel of Failure<\/a> Let me say, first, that I take no joy in Bill and Melinda Gates\u2019s\u00a0divorce<\/a>. The union of two souls in one flesh is a deep-set spiritual reality, whether the participants know that or not. Things fuse so naturally in marriage that you hardly notice: bank accounts, social networks, families. Untwining two lives means tearing all that asunder. It can\u00a0devastate<\/a>\u00a0even\u00a0adult children<\/a>, of which the Gateses have three. I grieve for them.<\/p>\n But because I take this so seriously, I cannot help remarking that these two people have expressed no intention to reflect, even for a second, on what divorce implies about their qualifications as global lifestyle coaches. Absent from all their public statements thus far has been any indication that this represents a significant personal breakdown for both of them, or that such breakdowns should give pause to people who wish to tell us all, every one of us<\/em>, how to live.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Gateses are reassuring the public that their separation will have effectively no consequences for their other partnership, the\u00a0Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation<\/a>.\u00a0People all over the world<\/a>\u00a0are\u00a0anxious<\/a>\u00a0that this enormous charitable endeavor should continue uninterrupted. The foundation has\u00a0comforted them<\/a>\u00a0by announcing that Bill and Melinda \u201cwill continue to work together to shape and approve foundation strategies, advocate for the foundation\u2019s issues and set the organization\u2019s overall direction.\u201d<\/p>\n In practice this statement will turn out to be heavily footnoted: Mr. and Ms. Gates both have separate firms of their own, through which they will continue to pursue independent ventures and objectives. Melinda, in particular, is widely acknowledged to have ambitions to the left of her soon-to-be former husband. \u201cYou could imagine Melinda Gates being a much more progressive giver on her own,\u201d said David Callahan, founder and editor of the website\u00a0Inside Philanthropy<\/a>. \u201cShe\u2019s going to be a major force in philanthropy for decades to come.\u201d<\/p>\n But should she? The Gateses\u2019 philanthropic donations, like all acts of charity, are values-driven: they fund things that they think ought to happen. Plenty of good can be done this way, of course. But it\u2019s inevitably meddlesome as well: when you give someone money to do something, you encourage them to do it. When you do this on the scale of the Gateses, it can start to look a lot like cultural imperialism.<\/p>\n Consider the enormous sums of money that Melinda has\u00a0earmarked<\/a>\u00a0for \u201cfamily planning\u201d in Africa. Obianuju Ekeocha, an African woman and pro-life activist, wrote in an\u00a0open letter<\/a>\u00a0that funneling contraceptives into Africa is reckless moral adventurism. Ekeocha argues that Gates is importing a thoroughly foreign view of sex and childbirth from the late-modern West into communities where women \u201cLOVE and welcome babies…. I see this [money] buying us misery. I see it buying us unfaithful husbands. I see it buying us streets devoid of the innocent chatter of children. I see it buying us disease and untimely death. I see it buying us a retirement without the tender loving care of our children.\u201d<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s Bill, who has made it clear he\u2019s more ethical than the rest of us. Mr. Gates has insisted that rich countries should eat only\u00a0synthetic beef<\/a>, that we should\u00a0blot out the sun<\/a>\u00a0to optimize our climate, and that we should\u00a0publicly shame<\/a>\u00a0one another for failing to mask up against COVID-19. This is a man who knows what\u2019s good for you.<\/p>\n I am not for a minute suggesting that being divorced disqualifies you forever from having or imparting moral wisdom. Mistakes and tragedies befall every one of us, and I am the last person who should be judging all divorced people wholesale. But when a major personal endeavor falls apart, most decent people take at least a moment to look inward and ask what went wrong. Certainly they process the experience and its causes before preaching to others about good and evil. That\u2019s what grown-ups do.<\/p>\n I predict that the Gateses will not do this. I predict they will continue to proselytize their social philosophy all over the world, to the tune of millions of dollars, without an instant’s hesitation over whether something in that philosophy might be lacking or self-defeating. And I\u2019m sorry, but the arrogance that this reflects is simply staggering to me. It is the same arrogance that our ruling classes show again and again. When everything they do crashes and burns, they just keep pushing the same ideas on us, day after day, because they know best.<\/p>\n \u201cThe only critique of a philosophy that is possible and that proves anything,\u201d\u00a0wrote Nietzsche<\/a>, is \u201ctrying to see whether one can live in accordance with it.\u201d He had a point. Perhaps our self-anointed betters might consider applying this test to their own ways of life, before exporting them forcibly around the globe.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I wonder if these people even have the level of self awareness to realize their hypocrisy. The Gospel of Failure Our ruling classes just keep insisting on the same bad ideas. Let me say, first, that I take no joy in Bill and Melinda Gates\u2019s\u00a0divorce. The union of two souls in one flesh is a … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-hypocrisy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67653"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67656,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67653\/revisions\/67656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nOur ruling classes just keep insisting on the same bad ideas.<\/em><\/p>\n