[FRIAM] more Epstein fallout

[Marcus Daniels]

Let’s consider a scenario a little closer to home.   Consider a vegan and a person passionate about animal rights.    Such a person is confronted all the time with individuals who do not share their values.  A television program that comes to mind is America’s Test Kitchen.   This program often features the carcass of an animal treated in various ways to make it delicious.   The cooks stand around the carcass and chat about the benefits of their treatment strategy.   The program is really about one form of hedonism.    Another form of hedonism is the Epstein kind.   Instead of an animal carcass, the dialog was probably about the merits of underage females, and the distinct properties of their body development, and (to them) amusing ways to exploit their naivete.    The kind of thinking is not that different, but the conditions of exploitation are different.   It seems pretty plausible to me that when one has a hundreds of millions of dollars at their disposal, that kind of distinction becomes more and more abstract.    People eat animals because they can.   Billionaires can do more things, and so they do.

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of "thompnickson2 at gmail.com" <thompnickson2 at gmail.com>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Date: Sunday, January 12, 2020 at 9:14 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] more Epstein fallout

Wow!  Gives new meaning to the notion of “money laundering”.

Hard to have an opinion, here.  Hard to think of any institution not funded by ill-gotten gains.  Still, one hates to grant nasty people the offramp of philanthropy. “He was a rapist but I gave to MIT”?  “He Hated Women But He Loved Man”?

There is a lot of evidence that people are nasty just to the extent they are wealthy.  The wealthier one is the more one is likely to see wealth disparities as deserved, rather than accidental.  Add to that the fact that it often takes a certain amount of nastiness to become wealthy, and it’s hard not to imagine that billionaires are not a pretty nasty lot.  I am not referring, of course, to all the many billionaires on this list.

But it also follows that anybody who is wealthier than anybody else is nastier than they are.

We all have a lot to explain.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com<mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com>
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/


From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Sunday, January 12, 2020 5:43 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] more Epstein fallout

The queen of strategies for how non-profits can squeeze money out of those who have too much and have earned it in nefarious ways (almost always) is a woman named Lynne Twist.  Lynne teaches a brutal workshop called "The Soul of Money."  The big takeaway from her workshop is:  "those of us advocating positive social change have a sacred duty to move that money from where it was ill-got and put it to use in rightful ways." Unfortunately for us at the Center, we don't know any uber-Capitalists.

On Sat, Jan 11, 2020 at 4:45 PM glen <gepropella at gmail.com<mailto:gepropella at gmail.com>> wrote:
At the risk of offense, I'm not sure how I feel about Lloyd being put on admin leave. The old trope about 'dirty money' has always rang hollow for me. All money is always dirty. It reminds me of this guy:

https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2013/04/portland_man_accused_of_druggi.html

I can't find it now. But he supposedly open sourced his patents and was a member of the dorkbot community. At what point do we forget the origins of some funding? I mean, Bill Gates' money was aggregated via some filthy monopolistic methods. Does that imply nonprofits should turn down their help?

On January 11, 2020 12:35:59 PM PST, Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com<mailto:marcus at snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
>Waiting for the other shoe to drop..
>
>https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mit-review-cites-big-mistakes-taking-epstein-donations-n1113911

--
glen

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--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org<http://emergentdiplomacy.org>
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