at the age of 26-27, matt damon served up Zinn's A People's History of the US to a massive audience of pop culture in Good Will Hunting and i saw some video early on of him just plain tee-ing off on some chuddy libertarian in a parking lot, because the chud was advocating for dismantling teacher unions and other scott walker type "reforms" of public education. damon told the guy that he had "MBA brain" and therefore was a narrow minded idiot. it stuck with me because "MBA brain" is hilarious and accurate.
but somewhere in there, matt's activism seems to have been completely channelled into his NPO/sustainable dev/anti-poverty work with water.org [link to wiki, not organization] to the point that it has massive corporate partners laundering their reputation. he claims the commercial terms were that cryto would donate $1 million to the org and that any other royalties/compensation he would get from the crypto superbowl ad would go 100% into the org as well.
after my own decade of working within the toxic and ethically compromised sphere of non-profits, i am very cynical about them. doubly so after reading the INCITE!'s The Revolution Will Not Be Funded , which brought data and theory into the mix. i also have negative associations with microloans, but looking into this organization does give the impression that their microloans for household infrastructure are undermining the existing power structure of water privatization schemes. it's impossible for me to say what's true, of course.
i don't know exactly what i would do if i were a bankable actor with easy access to corporate philanthropy cash and idiot money, but i probably would not have appeared in that commercial for many reasons. or maybe i would have said "fuck it" and done it to cut a fat check to something i believe to be good. it's hard to say, because i am not in that position. honestly, my principles would probably come a lot cheaper, because i'm still stuck between the gears of the system.
i have a hard time caring that he did crpyto commercials. if we assume he's based, he has seen the eye of the beast. he's seen more things to make him disillusioned than any of us.
Hah, I read The Revolution Will Not Be Funded right after my career switch into the non-profit sector.
:agony-deep:
matt damon served up Zinn’s A People’s History of the US to a massive audience of pop culture in Good Will Hunting
:pain: how can you forget about the contributions of mr. affleck
I'm gonna hire Larry David to reenact stuff like Tulip mania and the founding of Enron and imply you're a loser if you didn't invest in them
Crypto Bros like to think they invented the Wheel, but they actually invented the Segway.
