With notable exceptions, modern Capitalists do not seem inclined to bestow large sums of money on charity, the way their 19th Century counterparts used to. I have come up with a possible explanation for this lack of generosity on the part of our Eras money men. In the 19th Century, everyone was a lot more religious than they are now, and the dominant protestant religions were a lot more Calvanistic than they are today. (Think of todays United Church and compare it with its forebears in the 19th Century: Wesleyanism or Methodism and Scottish Reformed Church.) These religions believed in work for its own sake, as opposed to working for a goal, as well as in a rigid interpretation of the teachings of Christ. Capitalists of the 19th Century were generally brought up in these religions and thus, these ideas would have been deeply ingrained, along with their ingrained work ethic. (19th Century capitalists and industrialists were even more driven than their modern day counterparts.) Comes the 19th Century man of business towards that melancholy day all of us can someday expect, that of his inevitable demise, and he starts thinking of his past life as a greedy, exploitive, money grubbing bastard. Deep down, somewhere inside he has avoided looking at for most of his grasping, covetous and rather miserable life, lies that little prick of conscience leftover from his protestant upbringing reminding him that the God he worships piously whenever his wife can drag him off to church of a Sunday, probably doesnt really approve of people like him. After all, was it not his Saviour who said it were easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven? So, confronted with the likelihood that he is soon to shuffle off his mortal coil in order to have that overdue and less than sanguine (from our businessmans point-of-view) board meeting with his Maker in order to reckon up his accounts, the canny man of business reckons he can square the issue with the Man in the Sky by, as he has ever done, buying Him off! Everyone has his price, even God, surely! After all, the Catholic Church sold indulgences for centuries based upon this premise, so surely to God, Protestants should be able to do likewise, since they are clearly closer to God already! Thus, the astute man of business sets about squaring his accounts with the Man in the Sky by investing his money in things he hopes God will approve of: he starts donating to charitable organisations or creating them himself in the belief that this will get him off the hook with The Ultimate Chairman of that Big Board up there somewhere he was told about in his childhood. Todays men (and women) of business and finance have not usually been brought up with these Calvinistic ideas. Even if they are brought up to be religious, todays fundamentalist protestant sects seem to have ditched the New Testament (except for Jesus, who they personalise, as though they were on real buddy buddy terms with Him, and who now tends to agree with their ideas, rather than the converse) in favour of the more firey and brimstoney old one, especially those books full of self-righteousness punishment for non-believers, idolators and people they just dont like for whatever reason. So, since the God they choose to believe in, if they do believe in one other than Mammon, could care less about Charity (and probably disapproves of it as much as His followers do) – there is no longer any need to rack up brownie points against the day of that inevitable meeting with ones conscience. Thus, the distinct and noticeable lack of generosity on the part of todays moneybags.
Posted on: Mon, 03 Mar 2014 04:59:11 +0000
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