The Revolution Will Not Be Funded
I remember the first time I read this text. My mind was slightly blown.
Funding is tricky business- you need money to do the things that you hope will enrich the lives of others be it with the beauty of your art, the help it will bring to those who need it, or the awareness it can bring forth.
I live under the influence of my parents money- they fund my schooling, my living expenses, basically the majority of my financial needs, so I understand the way that money has a way of anchoring you to the motives and desires of those providing the funds.
But I had never considered HOW that money gets to you, and what is sacrificed in order to get it into your bank account where it can provided you with the necessities to forgo your projects.
We live in a world of capitalism so it only makes sense that the amount of money you have can change the landscape of your projects drastically. Even still though it's odd to think of non-profit organizations as corporations, but that is essentially what many of them have become.
A large majority of funds put into the non-profit sector goes towards funding events made in order to create publicity for the organization so in turn you can hear about it and donate to the cause so they can help- which in turn gets partially eaten up in more publicity campaigns.
This goes back to the Renzo Martens film. It is a backwards system.
How is it that we have come to live in a world where we feel as though we need to be rewarded in order to do a good deed? Isn't the point of charity to do something selfless? Something where you don't get recognition, you do it out of the goodness of your heart, not even that- the fact that it is the right thing to do when you have more then you need?
I guess that comes around to what is considered "enough" in the Western world. Or appetite for things and material possessions is never satisfied so we continue to gorge on things so that money becomes this thing that must be coaxed from us like it were our only child that we are desperately protecting. Shouldn't human life and others equal happiness mean more to us then the next hot ticket item?
It saddens me to no end.
But it's good to read texts like this to make you think about your actions and how you are participating in the cycle so you can subvert it and find ways to go around these systems so we can break out of this current mould and move on to a world where equality is at least a possibility.