{"id":1152,"date":"2025-07-03T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/scenechange\/?p=1152"},"modified":"2025-05-10T04:19:46","modified_gmt":"2025-05-10T04:19:46","slug":"the-planet-will-be-fine-its-the-people-who-will-be-fked-george-carlin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/scenechange\/2025\/07\/03\/the-planet-will-be-fine-its-the-people-who-will-be-fked-george-carlin\/","title":{"rendered":"SUMMER RERUN: \u201cThe Planet Will Be Fine. It\u2019s the People Who Will Be F**ked.\u201d \u2014 George Carlin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

From December 2024 (just after the election): the comedian\u2019s late-career epiphany and the nonprofit arts sector begs the question: what happens when you eliminate \u201chope?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Photo by Insomnia Cured Here licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re rounding the turn and heading into the home stretch of 2024. Your nonprofit arts organization is well into its year-end, give now while you can still get a tax deduction, do it for the children (\u201cWon\u2019t someone think of the children?!\u201d)<\/em>, just click on the \u201cdonate\u201d button, Christmas is coming (Christmas, for Christ\u2019s sake!)<\/em>, ticket sales only cover 50% of the cost of doing business, help us<\/em> reach our<\/em> goal (regardless of what your<\/em> goal might be), and (that golden oldie), \u201cif we don\u2019t raise $20 million by December 31, we\u2019ll go out of business\u201d campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA gift to us is a gift to hope.\u201d Ho. Ho. Ho.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what if we ran our nonprofit arts operations as though hope were not a part of the equation? Not \u201chopeless,\u201d as in sad, woeful, or fatalistic. \u201cNot hope,\u201d as in though there were no such thing. <\/strong>After all, there\u2019s no mention of hope in the IRS 501(C)(3) code<\/a>. Among the biblical troika, only faith and charity are mentioned. And nonprofit arts organizations, especially the largest, most \u201cvenerable\u201d ones, seem to avoid the charity part anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s remove, for the moment, the commercial aspect of the sector and just concentrate on what it would take for your community to be a healthier, more equitable place to live. What if all the promises of hope engendered by the art were stripped away and left to the community\u2019s own devices?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among those paying attention, the most important issue facing mankind right now is climate change. But, as the title of this particular column indicates, the issue plagues mankind, not the planet. This planet will be spinning along for billions more years. So when you hear people begging you to \u201csave the planet,\u201d you can look at them with confidence and know that they\u2019re really asking, \u201cShouldn\u2019t we save the people on the planet?\u201d Shouldn\u2019t we?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Should we?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n

Drill down on that one: if you believe that yes, people are worth saving, is it because you personally don\u2019t want to die? Or are all<\/em> people worth saving? Taken further, would you feel anything if all the people with whom you\u2019ll never come into contact suddenly disappeared and you never heard about their disappearance? And what if you had<\/em> heard and knew that you and everyone you know would be spared, would you feel devastated? Momentarily paranoid? Briefly sad?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What if we eliminated hope from the equation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you choose to eliminate hope from your belief system, this is not a difficult question. That same belief system has given you a relatively arbitrary notion that things should be ideal. Hope is the \u201copiate of the masses,\u201d because without hope, there is no religion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is some disagreement among scientists as to whether hope exists in any other living thing on earth. To me, some confuse hope with expectation, anticipation, or the pursuit of happiness and bend the question toward hope being a universal activity. However, when your dog is waiting by the door, is he\/she really hopeful, or merely happy to have your company, hungry, and ready to go outside? Love is real, but is love hope?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Promoting hope as a primary goal will doom your arts organization to irrelevance. You can\u2019t eat, sleep in, or gain equity with hope; there has to be action. The continuing, dogmatic treatment of the arts as a panacea for all the ills of the world can only fail for charitable organizations. As Ben Davis wrote in artnet recently,<\/a> the story of the 2024 election, an election that relegated those on the left are to a state of torpor and grief, is not that \u201chope\u201d lost. Hope was never in the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[P]eople are suffering a narrative shock. The story that they had in their heads to make sense of the world has collapsed. It is similar in nature to the shock after Biden melted down onstage at the debate \u2014 very alarming on its own, but absolutely traumatic because right up until that moment, many influential voices had insisted that Biden\u2019s mental unfitness was Republican propaganda, that he was about to school Trump. Because that was a more comforting story, a better product to sell.

Now, it\u2019s not just that Donald Trump has triumphed. It\u2019s that the entire Biden-era attempt to disqualify him technically over his crimes and his lies and January 6 prevented a reckoning with Trump\u2019s actual very real popularity in 2020, when he actually did get a really massive popular vote total despite losing (and lying about losing). Focusing so much emotional energy just on emphasizing that he must be too weird, too criminal, to be acceptable to \u201cmainstream\u201d America \u2014 and then suddenly having to face the reality that actually he\u2019s way more mainstream than his critics themselves\u2026 this is a stunning shock. Some people will never recover.<\/p>\u2014 Ben Davis, artnet<\/strong>, November 8, 2024<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Trump, the soon-to-be-even-more-conservative Supreme Court, the right-wing House, the right-wing Senate are going to do a bunch of rotten things to people. They really don\u2019t care. Their views on karma, heaven and hell, and moral turpitude line up with George Carlin\u2019s late-in-life disillusionment. Among the millions of things they\u2019ll do is to increase greenhouse gases past the point of no return (assuming we haven\u2019t passed it already).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But does that matter to the most powerful (financially, at least) American nonprofit arts organizations? Do they aim to be a force for good in their communities, let alone the world? Some do. Most don\u2019t. Those that do will be the ones remembered for, at least temporarily, contributing to a thriving community comprised of housed people, fed people, and dignity for all kinds of people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of those behemoth nonprofit arts organizations don\u2019t really care about anything past their own fundraising goals and artistic vision (whatever that is). Don\u2019t worry. The planet is and will continue to be fine. It\u2019s the people that will be f**ked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It’s been a hell of a 2024. Catch you next year. – AH<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The comedian\u2019s late-career epiphany and the nonprofit arts sector begs the question: what happens when you eliminate \u201chope?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1153,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,20,22,100,40,32,25,23,24,19,18,17,27,99],"tags":[85,125,124,10,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-1152","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-culture","8":"category-board-of-directors","9":"category-board-of-trustees","10":"category-book-recommendation","11":"category-change","12":"category-charity","13":"category-development-and-fundraising","14":"category-executive-director","15":"category-freedom-of-speech","16":"category-leadership","17":"category-nonprofit","18":"category-nonprofit-arts-organizations","19":"category-philanthropy-and-donors","20":"category-scene-change","21":"tag-community","22":"tag-george-carlin","23":"tag-hope","24":"tag-impact","25":"tag-nonprofit-management","26":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/scenechange\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/George-Carlin.jpg?fit=1280%2C800&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1640,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/scenechange\/2026\/01\/06\/its-2026-oy-is-the-nonprofit-arts-sector-in-america-any-healthier\/","url_meta":{"origin":1152,"position":0},"title":"It\u2019s 2026. Oy. 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