The deadliest sin? Shame and entitlement can both be toxic to upward mobility

Most sensible people of all ideological stripes can probably agree that feeling excessive shame (for whatever reason) probably inhibits the formation of fruitful social connections and that feeling an excessive sense of entitlement (also for whatever reason) probably inhibits fruitful individual effort. The conviction that one feeling is problematic to the exclusion of the other, however, leads not only to dueling studies and paper-writing efforts to prove the other side wrong, but also to mutually exclusive prescriptions for cultural change.

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“Participatoriness” in philanthropy: a conservative perspective

If proponents of participatory philanthropy are looking to attract receptive conservatives to their cause, it may be impossible if participatoriness comes to be—or even to seem—just another mechanism to rationalize tax-incentivized philanthropy in furtherance of one particular ideological or partisan political end. If conservative philanthropy is honestly and self-critically looking to exemplify anti-elitism in and improve its grantmaking, however, it would more aggressively explore options to humbly check what might be its own elitism and increase participatoriness in that grantmaking.

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Finding—not creating—the parallel polis

“This will not be the first movement in human history to flourish by incorporating the wisdom of unorthodox groups hitherto exiled to the margins of respectable society. … [I]t’s time for a conservative parallel polis. But the outline of that polis is already there, to be discovered and nurtured, not created. It’s up to us to provide it the attention and resources that it deserves.”

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