Why We Do What We Do
“Sometimes you are born into the ending of a world. The story you were born into doesn't have much further to run. The future no longer works. This is a thing that happens. It has happened to others before you. What moves are worth trying, in such a time? First, as far as you can, stop trying to make sense according to the logic of the world that is ending. Then start trying to make good ruins, to release materials from the structures of that ending world, materials that could be put to use in the building of worlds we can't even imagine yet.”
Dougald Hine, November 2023.
“During times between worlds, there emerge certain ideas and thinkers that are, properly speaking, without a world. Their work is about creating a new world, by necessity…” Perspectiva, 2024.
We are living through an extraordinary moment in the history of our shared world. Many clever people have done great analyses of these times we are in - from the above quoted Perspectiva to the Nate Hagens Great Simplification series, to name just a few. We especially appreciate the work of Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures for a framing of this time between worlds.
This sense of “being in-between” was a core part of Arising Quo’s inception, motivated by a dissatisfaction with the prevailing dichotomy within philanthropy and ‘progressive’ wealth redistribution. It is the binary between a data-driven and risk-averse camp searching for certainty and impact, on the one hand, and a relationships and participation oriented grant-making with a presumed prerogative of shifting power, on the other hand.
We sensed and believed in a possible third way, where the old and emergent begin to remix and create something yet unknown and beautiful. To get there, we have been asking ourselves what we mean by ‘transformative’ - a central question that we will continue to hold and come back to as the work unfolds. In this phase of Arising Quo, we are particularly interested in work that is ‘propositional’:
“Propositional work builds the wireframes to scaffold us out of current systems, into new paradigms (just transition, abolitionist futures, protopias etc). Unlike oppositional work (needed too), it's concerned with practicing more than dismantling, it is creative and constructive.” Farzana Khan, 2024.
We feel that the vast majority of current efforts promoted by philanthropy are trying to dismantle or alleviate the worst effects of current systems. In the case of progressive philanthropy, they seek to address the problems born out of capital creation and accumulation in the first place. This ‘oppositional’ work is crucial. Yet, it often does not affect deeper, transformative systemic changes and instead calcifies our temporal focus on the First Horizon of Bill Sharpe’s Three-Horizon-Model.
In the words of Ursula K. Le Guin, “To oppose something is to maintain it.… You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk a different road.”
In this unknown space, we’ve been holding some different threads of enquiry:
We have been moving the resources into different explorations of alternative futures or worlds we can’t even yet imagine. They are micro-demonstrators, they signal towards something with transformative potential, and they discover the pre-conditions for more transformative work. You can find more information about these explorations here.
We have been exploring what a process of reparation and reconciliation that goes beyond wealth holders interrogating their relationship with their wealth or inheritance (and their origins) could look like. The focus of this work is on the 'doing' - repair in action - related to the wealth that enables Arising Quo to exist in the first place. You can find more information here.
This sits along an enquiry about how Arising Quo can engage with other wealth holders, philanthropic institutions, family offices, and more generally, places where vast amounts of wealth are accumulated and held. Arising Quo would like to invite these places to become critical catalysts for transition, rather than remaining benevolent but tame actors, whose impact is constrained under the logics of capitalism. We have a hunch that there are compelling ways to use wealth, in a timely way, to liberate further wealth - and to do this in service of a transition to life-centric economic models, cultural renewal, systemic re-imagination and transformation.
Some further reading:
Bayo Akomolafe’s latest provocation - Philanthropy: Giving Money its Freedom Papers.
Culture Hack’s publication - Post-capitalist Philanthropy.
Cassie Robinson’s blog post - Funding the Third Horizon.