Is Beast Games the final form of philanthropy?

Last night Larry and I went through all of the existing music for MELISANDE and talked about what worked and what didn't (most of it works [all of it could work if we get the right soprano to sing Fortuna [[and keep in mind this soprano must also play the piano]], otherwise I may need to rescore the part]]] and we can start working with singers to iterate and record); this morning I composed a bit more of the overture, and tomorrow I should start working on the "Enter the Princes" number.

I also finished Middlemarch through the end of Book II, I suspect both Dorothea and Will are meant to be idealistic fools who mature into the acceptance of an ordinary life, they seem a bit like a provincial Natasha and Pierre and in fact both stories have similar endings (yes, I peeked), the importance of doing ordinary things well and so on.

But you're here for Beast Games, so let's get to Beast Games.

"So Mr. Beast is the most popular YouTuber right now," I told Larry. "He got his start by doing all of these weird stunts, and then as he started making money from his videos he realized that he could pay other people to do the weird stunts for him."

"So he's like the guy who did Jackass."

"Sort of," I said. "Except he decided to call it philanthropy. He'll give $500,000 to the person who can stand inside a circle for the longest amount of time, for example, and then he'll do a video where nobody has to compete and he just offers people free cataract surgeries, and then he'll have a hundred pairs of identical twins fight for $250,000, and now he's got an Amazon Prime series called Beast Games where he's making a thousand people compete for $5 million dollars, and he keeps going on and on about how he's giving more money away than anyone has ever given before, and this is why philanthropy is fundamentally evil."

"Philanthropy isn't evil," Larry said. "It can't be."

"It is," I insisted, and then I read him the quote from Middlemarch: "Their system is a sort of worldly-spiritual cliqueism: they really look on the rest of mankind as a doomed carcass which is to nourish them for heaven."

"Their version of heaven."

"Of course."

"Is Mr. Beast a Christian?"

"Sort of. He was raised Evangelical. But he's this role model now, kids want to be him, I've had students tell me they want to be Mr. Beast when they grow up, and his entire deal is about gaining power over others and doling out favors!"

"But that's not philanthropy."

"Yes it is," I said, "which means we need a different word for what we want to do."

At this point we considered the origins of the word philanthropy, which does not precisely mean "love of others" but in fact means "love of man."

"That's me," Larry said. "I'm a speciesist. I want my work to improve the human species."

We also had a brief discussion of whether people like Carnegie and Rockefeller were in it for power or in it for the species, and then decided we didn't really know enough about history to pass that kind of judgment, and either way the species did seem to benefit from their efforts.

"But nobody's benefiting from Mr. Beast," I said. "They're just competing and groveling and trying to please him."

"He's Mr. Potter," Larry said, taking us back (once again) to It's a Wonderful Life.

"Yes," I said, "and guess what, Mr. Beast is involved with this app called MoneyLion that helps people get credit, and of course he's on there dangling these money giveaways, maybe you'll get lucky and he'll give you enough money to pay off your debt."

"So he's a casino owner."

"He's a philanthropist," I argued, "and this is philanthropy's final form."

"Then we definitely need a different word for what we want to do."

We considered this. Charity was out because it implied sanctimony. Altruism came too close to "living one's life for the sake of others," when we really want to live our lives for the benefit of ourselves and the species simultaneously.

"What does George Bailey do that Mr. Potter doesn't do?" Larry asked. "They both make loans, so why is George the real philanthropist while Mr. Potter is the fake one?"

He considered this, and then gave us both the answer –

"George is a mentor. George Bailey gives people the tools they need to improve their lives without making them dependent on him."

"Is that the word for what we want to do?" I asked. "Mentor?"

"Learning something and passing it on is still the Prime Directive," Larry answered – and we ended the conversation there, but I actually think we came up with the answer a bit earlier, when we realized that philanthropy meant love of humanity.

We don't need a different word for what we want to do.

We just need to be such excellent philanthropists – you, me, all of us – that we take that word away from those who would use it for beastly purposes.

More on this later; also, I'm going to take a brief break from Middlemarch and re-read the relevant sections of Herbert Croly's The Promise of American Life, so get yourself a public domain copy if you want to follow along.