“I don’t smoke,” Gunther tells me. “No one in my family smokes. I didn’t want my children to smoke when we were growing up. But at least it’s worth considering whether people should have the freedom to smoke cigarettes, assuming they take responsibility for the consequences.”
More broadly, “I worry that if we focus too much on the structures and systems,” Gunther continues, “we’re condescending in some ways to the people we say we want to help and we’re also not giving them the agency to make individual decisions and choices to improve their lives.
Maybe one question for philanthropy is, how do we encourage that sense of individual and family responsibility?”
On philanthropy journalism, he thinks there should be more “time-consuming, deeper looks at what’s going on. … I would also like it to be more critical.”
Michael E. Hartmann – Philanthropy Daily – 2021-03-31.
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