Betwixt Optimism and Pessimism There Lies . . .

(Permit me to begin with a word of thanks to Rodger and Madeline Gobel, my friends and congregants who, without knowing it at the time, put a big smile on my face by providing me with an actuality which provided me with the germ from whence this essay evolved.)

Question: when was the last time reading page-one headlines or watching a cable TV news crawler was anything less than a task filled with angst or dread? (Yes, I know, “angst or dread” is an overly-repetitive redundancy . . . so sue me!) For those whose answer is something like “I honestly can’t remember” or “Seems like forever-and-a-day,” you are undoubtedly correct. It’s all too understandable. I mean, consider the menu of malevolence which confronts us on a daily basis: Putin’s maniacal war against Ukraine; teenagers mowing down shoppers and students with AK-47s in Buffalo and Uvalde (which, by the way, has already passed muster with “spell-check”); the damage done to American politics as a result of the “Big Lie”; our quondam POTUS and retrogressive SCOTUS; the dilatory nature of Congress; the daily gaffs and linguistic lunacies of such Luddites as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Ted Cruz and Ron DeSantis; conspiracy theorists whose every off-the-wall inanity is as acceptable as Sinaitic truth by a growing minority of “true believers”; higher and higher gas prices coupled with growing inflation; and on and on and on . . .

As one who has posted more than 900 mostly political essays over the past 17+ years, there are weeks when it is neigh on impossible to put another 1,000-1,500 words up on the screen. Complaining, criticizing – even satirizing – becomes sheer drudgery. And yet, going back to the very first essay (February 4, 2005 - when the blog was called “Beating the Bushes”), I wrote that its overarching purpose would be “to hold up an honest mirror of the times in which we live, regardless of how complex, maddening or incomprehensible those times might be.” The past several weeks have been far more complex, maddening, and incomprehensible than many, many others.

And so, this week I will resort to reportage of a more hopeful sort. Remember, the subtitle of this blog is “. . . & a Whole Lot More.”

Airbnb’s Joe Gebbia: self-made billionaire and philanthropist

This past Wednesday, May 25, 2022, the senior class at Brookwood High School in Snellville, Georgia, held their graduation ceremony. Rodger and Madeline were in attendance, kvelling their hearts out; their grandson was one of the graduates. The commencement address was given by Joe Gebbia, one of the three cofounders of Airbnb, and a 2000 graduate of Brookwood. (Gebbia is now chief product officer of Airbnb, the company’s in-house design studio, Samara, and is chairman of Airbnb.org, the company’s nonprofit arm.) His address contained the expected flourishes about following their dreams and never giving up. The now 40-year old self-made multi-billionaire confided to the graduates that he wasn’t the most serious of students while attending Brookwood, and admitted “I definitely don’t remember the advice I was given at my graduation. And I don’t expect you to, either.”

And while few of the 890 graduates are likely to remember what Gebbia said, they will long remember what he did. Towards the end of his address he said: “I would like to give you a piece of my dream to help inspire yours and let you know that it is possible.” He then went on to inform them that each and every one of the graduates would be getting 22 (for 2022) shares of Airbnb, which works out to about $2,400 worth of stock per graduate, based on that day’s closing price of $110.40 a share. Altogether it was a gift worth nearly $2.2 million.

Turns out this gift was by no means Joe Gebbia’s first. Last year he pledged $700,000 to help boost his school’s arts department and cross country team, both activities he participated in when he was a student. In 2020, he donated $25 million to two organizations in San Francisco (where he and his family live) combating homelessness. Gebbia and his two Airbnb cofounders, Brian Chesky and Nathan Blecharczyk, joined the Giving Pledge in 2016—long before Airbnb went public—promising to donate at least half their wealth to charitable causes.

Though billionaires often donate to educational institutions, it’s becoming increasingly common for the wealthy to help students directly, especially if a billionaire is chosen as a school’s commencement speaker. Earlier this year, Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel paid off the student loans for graduates of the Los Angeles-based Otis College of Art and Design, a gift of more than $10 million. Telecom billionaire Robert Hale Jr. gifted each graduating student at Quincy College in Massachusetts $1,000 each last year. The largest donation to graduating college students, though, comes from private equity tycoon Robert Smith, the richest Black person in America. He spent $34 million in 2019 to pay off the student debt for the entire graduating class of Morehouse College. Smith also gave 15,000 shares of stock from Vista Equity Partners’ portfolio companies to nearly 2,900 students, teachers and staff at Eagle Academies for Young Men, an all-boys school in New York City.

There are now more than 231 billionaires from 28 countries ranging in age from 31 to 98 who have pledged to give away more than 50% of their vast fortunes to charitable causes. Most of this pledging and giving has been done with far, far less fanfare or publicity than those who step on their tongues on an almost daily basis or shoot up schools, synagogues, supermarkets or gay bars. (Just the other day, as an example, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene garnered worldwide attention when she went off the rails, telling her supporters to beware of Bill Gates, who is planning to monitor their eating habits and “zap” them until they eat fake meat grown in a “peach tree dish.” (This is the same woman who, in accusing the Biden Administration of adopting Nazi tactics, accused him of employing “Gazpacho police-to monitor American’s bowel-going habits.

Is it any wonder that a pall of pessimism has enveloped so many otherwise hopeful people? The fact that the utter lunacy of a Marjorie Taylor Greene can garner or an ūber, over-the-top gun supporter like Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks so much more publicity than the generosity of a Joe Gebbia speaks volumes for where we’ve come as a society which is far more often glued to the lunacy of the brainless than the generosity of the accomplished.

Most are familiar with the expression “The pessimist sees the glass as being half empty, the optimist as being half full.” I have long believed that there’s got to be a third option: of being content with the fact that so long as there’s something in the glass that’s a good start. But what do we call these sorts of people (of whom I am proudly one)? I have long believed that laying somewhere betwixt the rosy-hued optimist and the dire, head-for-the-hills pessimist is the possibilist, a term first coined by the late writer/political philosopher/neo-liberal; Max Lerner. For possibilism is far, far better for the stomach than dire pessimism, and far less frustrating to the soul than rosy-hued optimism. And while both optimism and pessimism exist largely in the realm of weltanschauung - “world view” - which is largely reactive It is the balance of which we speak - possibilism is energizing - requiring action. My slightly-older-sister Erica (Riki) just posted a marvelous photo of a heroic looking American Eagle stating what for me is the possibilist’s creed:

We are no longer accepting things we cannot change. It is now time to change the things we cannot accept.

Three . . . or four or five . . . cheers for the Joe Gebbias, Brian Cheskys and Nathan Blecharczyks of the world . . . as well as the largely unknown, unsung possibilists of the planet.

Do remember that betwixt pessimism - which always sees the glass as being half empty - and optimism - which sees the glass as being half full - is possibilism - which avers that so long as there’s something in the glass we can throw a party . . .