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Oscar Wilde lived in an age of very visible social injustice, and in an age of very visible philanthropy. Yet his judgement was brutal: “charity degrades and demoralises...in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good.”
Bill Gates revolutionised our lives with PCs, which made him rich. He now wants to revolutionise the lives of billionaires by getting them to pledge to give away the majority of their wealth to philanthropy. He, his bridge partner Warren Buffett, and 40 of America’s wealthiest other families have already taken The Giving Pledge.
Who?
Chairman of Microsoft.
Turned 21
1976.
Famous for
A personal fortune worth roughly $47 billion.
Willing volunteer
Whilst at school, he offered to write the program code for the
software that allocated students to classes, and then modified it so
that he was placed in classes with the largest numbers of girls.
Embarrassing photographs
Gates featured in a 1990s advert for Microsoft with Jerry Seinfeld, in
which he holds up a “discount card”, which features a real mug shot of
Gates that was taken in 1977 for a traffic violation.
Market dominance
“Windows 2000 already contains features such as the human discipline
component, where the PC can send an electric shock through the
keyboard if the human does something that does not please Windows.”
Tolerance
As an executive, he sat in on many presentations. If things weren’t
going well he was known to interject; “that’s the stupidest thing I’ve
ever heard!” or “why don’t you just give up on your opinions and join
the Peace Corps.”
Misspent youth
"I wish him the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a
bit narrow. He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone
off to an ashram when he was younger." - Steve Jobs.
Vision of the future
“Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.”
Good advice
“Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.”
Dreamer
This quote from F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby adorns a wall in
his house; “He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream
must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.”
Who?
Victorian writer, poet and playwright.
Turned 21
1875
Mouthful
His full name was Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde.
Prodigious
He was educated at home until the age of nine, where he mastered
French and German before going to school. He then won a scholarship to
read Classics at Trinity College, Dublin.
Crowd pleaser
His flamboyance was not welcomed by all and resulted in him being
physically attacked by four other students while at Oxford. He was
also suspended for a term following a particularly nonchalant late
return to the College.
On youth
“To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take
exercise, get up early or be respectable.”
Velvet voiced
“Wilde's voice was of the brown velvet order – mellifluous, rounded, in
a sense giving it a plummy quality, rather on the adenotic side, but
practically pure cello, and very pleasing.” - Franlin Dyall
Socialite
After Oxford, Wilde moved to London and became involved in the
aesthetic movement, publishing a book of poetry and embarking on a
lecture tour of America. In London he met his wife to be Constance Lloyd,
with whom he would have two sons, and his lover and undoing, Lord
Alfred Douglas.
Downfall
In 1895, following a failed libel case, Wilde was convicted of gross
indecency (homosexuality) and sentenced to two years prison and hard
labour to be served first at Wandsworth Prison and then Reading Gaol.
The experience left him humiliated, bankrupt and broken, and contributed to his death in Paris in 1900.
On his intellect
“I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of
what I am saying.”
On democracy
“Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people
for the people.”
On his deathbed
"Either this wallpaper goes, or I do!”
On his look
“An Assyrian wax statue, effeminate, but with the vitality of twenty men.” - Max Beerbohm
Life
“Men lived more vividly in his presence, and talked better than themselves.” - Arthur Ransome
Dinner
“The dinner table was Wilde's event and made him the greatest talker
of his time” – William Butler Yeats
The US currently gives $300 billion to charitable causes every year; about 1.7% of its GDP. That is more than twice as generous as the next most charitable countries, the UK and Canada, who give about half a pence for every pound earned. However, American generosity has to be seen in the context of lower taxes, a much less cossetting welfare state and less generous overseas development aid.
In the UK, David Cameron’s “Big Society” program hopes that American-style philanthropy can pick up many aspects of welfare provision that he hopes to take out of State hands. The funds may or may not materialise. But even if the rich in the UK do step up to their proposed responsibilities, there is a long-running argument that philanthropy cannot solve the underlying problems of poverty.
Europe has tended to substitute private giving for social-democratic tax and welfare models, and to view philanthropy as a symptom of 19th century social inequity. The new philanthropists, Bill Gates at their head, think that business thinking, technology and entrepreneurialism can solve problems that have been too tough for welfare states to crack.
If, led by the hard taskmaster of austerity, we are now invited in Europe to become more American in our giving, should we reject Oscar Wilde’s judgement?
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