All This and World War III

For nonprofit arts organizations (and society at large), it’s all the rage

Before anything else, it behooves me to let you know that my book, Scene Change: Why Today’s Nonprofit Arts Organizations Have to Stop Producing Art and Start Producing Impact is now on the shelves, be they internet shelves or real ones, in the UK and the US. If your bookstore isn’t carrying it (yet), please let them know that you want a copy and that they should stock up. Just give them this ISBN: 978-1-80341-446-1. Or just have them look up Alan Harrison and Scene Change. If it’s still not listed, contact me directly at alan@501c3.guru. (unless you’d rather contact the publisher, Changemakers Books, a division of John Hunt Publishing/Collective Ink).

We have two launch events scheduled, a reading on February 3 at Book Tree (Kirkland, WA) at 2:00 and an interview/reading at Seattle Rep on February 10 at 5:15. The emcee of the latter event will be local, award-winning acting legend Allen Fitzpatrick.

In the meantime, just click on the appropriate word if you’d like to order Scene Change from… Amazon… Barnes & Noble… Booksamillion… Thriftbooks… Indiebound… Amazon (UK)… Bookshop (UK)… Amazon (Australia)… Boomerang Books (Australia)… well, you get the idea. Here’s the cover:

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Now, on to today’s column. “It’s about the end of the world,” as David Mamet wrote in Speed-the-Plow.

According to Smithsonian Magazine, “In the case of H. sapiens, known remains date back some 300,000 years.” There were precursors who lived hundreds of thousands of years before that, the Homo neanderthalensis and the Denisovans, for example. Somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago, many migrated from East Africa to Europe, Asia, and all the other parts of the world. All those cousins of the Homo Sapiens folks seems to have died out somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 years ago.

So. 50,000 years of humankind. If that’s all there is, well, I guess we had a nice run. But like anything else that exists only as potential with no guidebook or plan, it’s not ending well. I mean, just look at the report card.

50,000 years is nothing compared to the Jurassic Period, of course, which lasted some 60,000,000 years. But a nice run nonetheless. In theater terms, we humans are not Phantom of the Opera. But we’re not Carrie either. Somewhere in the lower middle. Maybe something like A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Nice run, even the revivals, but nothing record-breaking.

Why the doom and gloom? I saw this headline the other day on my Associated Press feed.

Demonstrators brawl outside LA’s Museum of Tolerance

Need I say more?

All this self-destruction was foreseeable. Inevitable. And it’s all likely solvable, but, alas, not yet.

Going from 1999 to 2000 was a man-made magic trick based on nothing but an arbitrary decision to start when we started counting these things. It had nothing to do with anything important. No, the real fin de siècle is coming in about 10 years, give or take 5 years, according to historian and author Neil Howe in his latest book, The Fourth Turning is Here. To Howe, the last section of any life-cycleis one in which systems disintegrate.

In the United States, the fabric of society is clearly unraveling, causing more hate, less tolerance, and no trust at all in the concept of democracy. In fact, Howe’s research showed that more than 50% of Americans want something other than democracy. And so we turn on each other with evil glee, especially those in the generations about to take charge of the controls. Frighteningly, we’re only part-way down this waterfall of this cynical subterfuge to rule. We haven’t nearly hit the sharp, painful bottom of this particularly rocky gorge, but we can see it as we plummet.

“Feeling increasingly isolated and vulnerable as individuals, Americans find it harder to bear genuine diversity. We seek to surround ourselves with our like-minded tribe, canceling or censoring others….Americans are turning inward. We are building walls around our immediate perimeter — to protect our town, our tribe, our kin.”

Neil Howe, The Fourth Turning is Here

Something earth-shattering (with luck, not literally) will have to escort us into the beginning of the next rebirth of society. Maybe it’s WWIII, aka The Big One. Maybe the results of global climate change will force the world’s countries into making fossil fuels illegal – putting the oil, coal, and natural gas companies out of business and forcing high unemployment. Or maybe it’s merely the Balkanization of North America into a series of countries where each country’s citizens believe in the same things – not unlike what we have now, but with no reason to collaborate with those bad, wrong people who live over there, except to sign peace treaties and such. Turning North America into Europe might not be so bad, right?

In the case of nonprofit arts organizations, the throughline of destruction continues, as yet unabated except for those companies that choose to find reasons to be essential (rather than those merely claiming it). More companies are closing. Others are barely holding on. Few are thriving. This is not unexpected in a system that mostly benefits elderly, wealthy, White folks.

For those who look to the almighty dollar as the bellwether statistic to determine arts essentialness, try squinting a bit to look past that. Look instead at the issues that damage relationships to human beings when determining the worth of a nonprofit arts organization. Dollars are not the reason for success (or failure, for that matter). They’re simply irrelevant to the matter at hand. Arts administrators and boards who cling to a dinosaur-like insistence that that thing in the sky is not an incoming asteroid will suffer the same fate as the ignoble T-Rex.

Most effective nonprofit organizations throughout the sector are in the business of serving human beings (or animals, in the case of animal-rights nonprofits).

Serving humans.

In the nonprofit arts portion of the sector, leaders continue to bleat about “serving the art.” Instead of asking: “Hey Alan, what’s wrong with serving the art?”; ask “How best can I serve those who need the help?” Instead of defending a position that, frankly, is indefensible, why not try to change the purpose of your organization to something more effective for the community? And instead of decrying those who disagree with you as uncaring, baseless philistines, why not use art as a catalyst to make your environment one with fewer social ills.

Why would any charity (like yours) choose to serve anything but people, especially when those people desperately need service?  

As long as nonprofit arts organizations continue to serve only those who serve them through donations and big-ticket purchases, the next ten years are going to continue to be quite rocky indeed for the industry. And, sadly, well-earned destruction is likely to follow. Look at the bright side: after that happens, we can build the kind of society that works for more people. Broken baggage will no longer be an acceptable excuse for stasis. We might still have to wait to see if this is the end of mankind or just dividing the land a bit differently, but if we can make it through that, the renaissance is coming.