Philanthropy

I was talking with a co-worker the other day about philanthropy. We're disappointed that the word seems reserved for really, really, ridiculously rich people who give their money away. At its root, the word means "people loving" and a philanthropist is a person who loves people. You probably don't need to be convinced that our world needs more of these type of philanthropists. So let's create a distinction. There are big-P and little-p philanthropists.

Little-p philanthropists are the rich people who give their money away. I'm not into letting money be the decider whether you're truly a Philanthropist or simply a philanthropist. So we'll let the harder category, that of those who truly love people in general, be the Philanthropists. If you do the easy work of amassing vast amounts of money and the hard work of truly loving humanity, and you put them together, you get to be called a philanthropic Philanthropist. Otherwise, we'll be looking for people to add to the ranks of the rare souls who are looking out for the good of humankind, the big-P folks.