We become what we practice to be. Just as a musician or a writer starts out with one mindset and limited experience, as he practices to be whom he wants to become, he progressively becomes more similar to that person.

Many times, his attitude and philosophy are radically different from the ones he began with. A shy 17-yr-old computer geek is not made into the Marine on the recruiting poster merely by wishing it or saying it. He becomes a Marine by dedicated practice and 13 weeks of intense training. He is transformed into an entirely different person, physically and mentally.

It may be that mandated force of habit has the power to transform even the unwilling. Remember that resolution you made a month ago to run 5 miles every day, even though you hate to run? If you have kept to that promise, your attitude and body are likely significantly different today. Your perspective and self-image are changed.

But there is one benefit from public promises - it draws attention and closer scrutiny to the actions of the offender, and he will be much more likely to follow the rules in the future, because now the boundaries have been clearly defined.

Of course, the exception to that rule is the idgit in the White House. He just destroys the evidence and moves his secret torture chambers to new locations.

Thank you for the correction on Rockefeller. I knew I should have done some research last night before adding random names I'd heard of on to Carnegie (who was the only one I was certain about -- he spoke a great deal about the culture of philanthropy).

I'll keep that in mind for the future.

Reminds me of a quote from Kurt Vonnegut, "Be careful what you pretend to be, because you are what you pretend to be," which I discovered here -- http://www.syntheticzero.com/politics.oct2001.php -- and the post makes a similar argument about politics:

"I don't expect that much from our government. I don't expect it to generate a utopian society, or to avoid grabbing for power or monetary influence, or to stop pandering to corporate interests. What I expect is that these activities will be moderated, or limited, or constrained, to a certain degree. So, to me, the question is not whether there are ulterior motives for our actions (there _always_ are), but to what extent are these ulterior motives being constrained, and why?

"To me, politics is not about achieving ideological purity, but it has to do with memes that get circulated within what is essentially a complex system. I do not believe in 'the' reason we're doing things --- I don't think there is ever a single reason, or an underlying 'real' truth. Every story about what we're doing is both right and wrong. However, there is something important about the official reasoning, especially in a society with some degree of voter feedback, and that is that whatever we do has to in the end roughly be constrained to what is acceptable to the official reasoning.

"In other words, in a society with some voting feedback (I will avoid the word 'democracy' since this implies a level of control by the people that is, of course, only a fantasy), the government does not have to be good, but it has to avoid violating the norms of our society to the point that it becomes obvious that the official story (for example, the story that we're a 'free' country) is a sham. In other words, our leaders do not have to really be fighting for justice and freedom, they just have to appear to be doing so..."

By the way, I also recently came across another quote -- http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/25/AR2008012502780.html :P

"Be what you would seem to be -- or, if you'd like it put more simply -- Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise." -- The Duchess in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

Cheers!

John D. Rockefeller, Sr, the one who generated the fortune, was a bigoted, nasty piece of garbage. He gave nothing to anyone. His son, John D, Jr was the philanthropist.

I went back and read the original article and was struck by Gate's comment:

"We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well."

You would think, by this comment, that Gates is addressing an intractable problem that has yet to be solved. But it has. Konrad Adenauer had his "Market economic policies with a social conscience" (Die Soziale Marktwirtshaft), which were based on the ideas of John Maynard Keynes. And it worked. The post WWII era of Keynesian economics was one of the most prosperous of our history.

So in answer to Gates, yes we have found a way. It's just not a way that is palatable to the plutocrats who run our world as it involves government stepping in to ensure everyone gets a fair share of the spoils, thus lowering their profits from monstrous to merely stupendous. They advocate that The Market do this instead, knowing full well that it never can, since "the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people" cannot serve the poor because capitalism is about wealth and the poor, surprisingly, don't have wealth! Thus Gates and Scott are pretenders and will ever remain pretenders.

And anyway, it's not the CEOs; I imagine that they are for the most part a fairly decent lot. The real problem is that laissez-faire capitalism is systemically evil and thus cannot, even with all the best will in the world, do what Gates and Scott are claiming it can.

I don't have the foggiest whether Gates or Wal-Mart mean what they say. The fallacy in the argument is what catches the eye. The sore thumb I see here is this dotty notion of C.S. Lewis, AA or whoever or whatever of "Fake it until you make it." C. S. Lewis ASSUMES that the boor in polite society WANTS to be part of polite society. In reality, he's more like than not thinking of hieing it back to Hazzard county where his two coondogs are waiting to be fed and where he can relax on his front porch far from all this pretentious rot (He would employ slightly different terms.) Likewise, the AA slogan ASSUMES the the party in question WANTS to cease drinking and become a part of their organisation. As it happens, the same slogan and mentality can be applied to not so politically correct, philanthropic aims and organisations as well, such as Nuremberg rallies and KKK meetings, assuming, again, that the party in question really wants to fit in and is not, secretly, disgusted by the whole thing. The point is that it's rather a faint hope than any sort of compelling logic to suggest that Wal-Mart is going to change its ways due to a "Fake it until you make it" mentality. Posturing only leads to true change in parties that are weak, insecure and malleable. Neither Gates nor Wal-Mart fit this category. The long tradition of noblesse oblige that another reviewer has brought up is a far more cogent argument for a Wal-Mart/Gates change in policy than the rather cozy notion advanced here.