The Information Consumption Routine
Every morning I boot up my MacBook Pro, I start some coffee, throw together a quick breakfast, load up Gmail, Facebook, etc. and start observing, joining, or creating conversations. You never have any idea what you are going to be talking about every day on Facebook, it just happens. The access to these conversations every day is starting a huge cultural shift in personal communication and all of it’s different levels of value and meaning. While there is no replacement for the real deal, we’re learning very quickly how to “read” the correct emotional tone of Facebook statuses, Tweets, IM chat sessions, based on who we are talking to, when we are talking to them, who their other friends are on Facebook, and what your history is with them.
We’ve also started joining groups and fanning pages en masse, not even for the sake of the participating in the group or page itself, but just to have an opportunity to announce publicly in an information stream….to let the world know….(diminuendo to a dramatic pause)….that you’ve just become a fan of “Standing On Your Head While Stacking Golf Balls On Tuesdays After 3pm PST” and you don’t care who knows it!
The Needle
There are a couple things going on now that I think we really need to pay attention to. There are benefits and inherent flaws in the mobilization power contained within an environment like Facebook. The feelings of immediate connectedness can almost distract us from the thought of what it really means to be connected and reciprocal with others around us.
Benefit
Facebook on one hand has made it possible for us to amass quickly with like minded individuals for a passionate purpose. It puts those that have always wanted to make a statement or do something big with their opinion but never had the right medium for it. They were too shy, too localized, or too overwhelmed at where to even begin. All understandable of course. This has opened doors for them and given them a voice that puts them on the map. This is a very positive thing.
Caution
There is another side to this coin however, a price or cost that is being paid. Unintentionally I think we are training ourselves, to some extent, to feel morally validated by joining a group on Facebook called “Cure Cancer” and that’s all. It’s as if somehow we’re giving back by joining the group publicly and opting in to messages/news from the group or fan page. Now I do believe strongly that the dissemination and forwarding of information by supporters is awesome and will never be a bad thing. It’s a tangible contribution and good reason to join a group. Fans of a cause on Facebook can get the word out quick and promote. But we can ALL do that on Facebook, with just the click of a mouse, and then we update our status with how much we love bacon and then play Farmville (FB games are not my gig).
I don’t have the stats but I just wonder what the ratio is of people on Facebook that ‘joined’ a great cause to the amount of people that have actually either volunteered 1 hour of their time or $1 to any charity anywhere within the last month. I very much include myself in the group of people that wasn’t really giving, and did so without really realizing it. I was joining, and still do, online communities with a premise that I support. I share their posts on my wall, I retweet stuff to spread the word. I just started to question myself on how much have I actually tangibly given back or made any real contribution to any of these philanthropic institutions or initiatives. When I looked back at my level of giving back vs. what I took for myself, it wasn’t looking promising. I was out of whack and am still in the process of scoping out a way for me to contribute that allows me to also keep the quality of the other things I’m doing in my career and family life extremely high. Both can easily be done. You just gotta get creative.
Balance
I realized I really need to step it up in the area of real, actual contribution. Even a dollar a month helps, or donating an hour of your time at a teen center, a homeless shelter, an understaffed public school, or an old folks home giving some people your conversation time to brighten up the tail end of their existence as they get ready to move on. Look through one of the big charity fan pages or groups you’ve joined on Facebook and see if there’s something in your local area you can check out and contribute to every couple of weeks for an hour or so.
Reciprocation, Social Responsibility
Not to get all preachy here but the online world is permanently infusing itself with our psyches, our communication, sense of belonging and community, all at the click of a button. We need to be careful to not get complacent with a subconsciously perceived substitution for physical interaction and presence, for actually going somewhere to help a perfect stranger that could really use someone to talk to for an hour, a family that could use a $20 bag of groceries this month, a dollar to Haiti, or donating some old books you’ll never read again to a school or two.
You know me, I love social networking and yammering on about nothing more than most of you probably ever will but I am reminded constantly by my kids how important it is focus on the tangible.
Onward.
True Philanthropy
Check Your Motivation
True philanthropy only comes from helping others for the sake of helping others, with no internal quest for personal credit, no expectation of social capital gain amongst your peers. I believe that the credit you “expect” to get for helping others is equal to the amount of credit you don’t deserve, on the mere premise that an expectation exists on your behalf.
If your philanthropic work brings you personal monetary gain, directly or intrinsically, and instead of said monetary gain being 100% passed onto another charitable cause or effort, then you have poisoned the well. I would go as far as saying that you are not truly aligned with the purity of “real” philanthropy.
Lastly, helping others out of guilt is not philanthropy as you are only helping to pacify and feed your own demons. This is still “taking.”
A great quote I heard in a very cheesy action movie once was, “A true philanthropist will never put themself in a position where they are taking or personally gaining from those around them.” [Paraphrased]
Little Efforts Make Big Waves
Every day, somewhere, sometime, somehow, there are miniscule opportunities to make a difference in someone’s life, which inturn makes a difference in the lives of others, almost immediately. Little opportunities like these can create a real chain reaction that, while you may never physically see the full result, I guarantee happens on some level, at some percentage. Whether it brightens up someone’s shitty weekday morning, taking that edge off of their workday, or pushes someone else back a few feet from the proverbial edge they may have been on after a slough of things that have gone wrong lately in their life, a menial and quick selfless act on your part can really help tip the scales in a positive direction.
Here are some of the types of things even the busiest people in the universe can carve out time for, supporting a positive paradigm shift in humanity:
1. Offer to buy a stranger a cup of coffee in the morning.
2. Ask or call someone you know randomly and ask them how they are doing and then just listen and validate what they are saying.
3. Anonymously donate $5 to a charity of your choice.
4. Volunteer one hour of your time at a retirement center, home or hospice enviroment and keep an elderly person company for a little bit. Those places are lonely and dismal and our country tends to treat seniors as an annoyance as opposed to respected elders in our communities. It’s a shame.
5. Sponsor a low income or disadvantaged family one holiday season. You’d be surprised what $5 in cheap or donated toys does for a child’s spirit when times are tough. That spirit is contagious enough to lighten even the darkest of households.
We Are All The Same (Still)
There is an energy that exudes from humans every day across the globe, an energy that is constantly trying to synergize and be compatible with itself so that we can all just “get along.” I think in some cases we’ve become so fearful and complacent with one another that our personal insecurities have gotten the best of us. This fear and complacence has gotten us to the point where only physical co-existence is becoming the new “getting along.” What a bummer.
I do believe though that there is more hope in small doses than we are ambitious enough to acknowledge, small things that we, over time, inadvertently take for granted thanks to a perpetually imbalanced “work culture” that drives us full speed on the road to nowhere.
I encourage everyone to randomly and anonymously do something nice for one or more people every once in awhile. It’s easy, cheap, and will start to change you from the inside in a way that, if you aren’t used to it, will surprise you, shock you, make you uncomfortable if you aren’t used to feeling vulnerable, and will possibly break you down in a constructive way emotionally that only a few people have been strong enough to accept and experience….and those that have, see the world differently than most of us.
Onward.