Archive for the 'Sociology' Category

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Give Big: How Giving $10 Is Like Giving $100,000

Published by a Guest on March 27, 2008 in Philanthropy and Sociology. View Comments

The following guest post was written by Christy Moss, a writer and fundraiser for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois. Christy is passionate about encouraging a spirit of philanthropy among her peers. Her favorite non-profits include National Public Radio, Kiva, public libraries, and Greenville College, her alma mater.

Through her show The Big Give, Oprah seeks to change the way we view giving. While most of us already agree with her pay-it-forward style of philanthropy, it is a bit more difficult to connect with contestants giving away $100,000, when $10 is all we have to give. Don’t be discouraged! I am here to help you realize that $10 is a significant start – and that giving away $10 is more like giving away $100,000 than you realize.

Forget the Numbers

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” – Helen Keller

Did you see the Easter episode of the Big Give? Contestants were challenged to give away $100,000 in 24 hours. One contestant was actually paralyzed by the amount she had to give away. And only one contestant was able to give away all $100,000. Numbers can be crippling. Whether your gift is large or small, $10 or $10,000, giving is an act of the heart, not the act of a calculator. Don’t be discouraged by starting small. You may feel your gift is insignificant, but what if everyone who made $10 gifts felt the same way? Your gift, combined with the gifts of countless others, do make a substantial difference.

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Addicted to Information, or Wired For It?

Published by Jarred on March 18, 2008 in Culture, Science and Sociology. View Comments

In Tropophilia‘s first guest post, Dan wrote about information saturation in our increasingly connected world:

Will we ever reach a point in which our desire for information, for advances in technology, science, medicine, etc. is quenched, where the demand weakens, and the bubble bursts? It seems that an ever-increasing demand for knowledge has fueled, since the beginning of time, most of our scientific and technological advances. And at the beginning, our needs necessitated these advances. But have we, or will we ever reach a point when our daily lives have no direct needs that can’t be satisfied by previously existing knowledge? What do we need to know now, that we didn’t know before, to help us be better humans or citizens?

Interesting questions indeed, and it seems that Dan hasn’t been the only one posing them. In his “Portals” column for the Wall Street Journal, Lee Gomes wrote last week about how human beings are more or less “wired” to consume endless amounts of information.

Gomes cites a study where researchers found “increased production of the brain’s pleasure-enhancing neurotransmitters called opioids” when test subjects were shown certain images. Those images were determined to contain more processable information than others, and so a correlation arose between the consumption of information and pleasure experienced by the brain. As lead researcher Dr. Irving Biederman put it:

When you find new information, you get an opioid hit, and we are junkies for those. You might call us ‘infovores.’

So it appears we crave information just like we crave food. But as Dan asked, doesn’t basic economic theory tell us that “every market can reach a point in which demand is decreased due to abundant availability”? Why doesn’t our demand for information decrease as the scarcity of information decreases?

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Monday Links: March 10th, 2008

Published by Taylor on March 10, 2008 in Business, Monday Links, Philanthropy, Politics and Sociology. View Comments

Happy Monday. I’ll be on the road most of this week, so I apologize in advance for light posting (though maybe Jarred will pick up the slack…..ahem). Here are a few items that caught my attention recently:

When you hear the word “scuppie” what do you think of? For me, I remember the schools of scup–a small whitefish, delicious fried–I caught with my grandmother as a kid. Apparently, at least a few people are trying to bring “scuppie” into the nation’s vocabulary of social labels much like “hippie” or “yuppie.” What does scuppie mean?

“Scuppie – a ‘Socially Conscious Upwardly-mobile Person.’

1. A person who desires all the best life can offer and strives for those goals in a socially conscious manner.

2. One who is dedicated to the pursuit of peace, happiness and cash (not necessarily in that order).

3. Someone ‘green’ — i.e. one who understands the love of money does not preclude the love of nature…and vice-versa.”

I this this report from Deloitte about employee preferences is spot-on: I’d much rather accept a lower salary with plenty of perks like flexible working hours, more vacation time, and free food than a higher salary without those benefits. Turns out most folks would agree (at least when faced with a hypothetical offer).

Expect a blog post this week where I take a deeper look into this column, by the authors of Freakonomics, about prize philanthropy and alternative giving that promises a financial return to donors.

A bit late, but this techPresident piece on Obama’s Million Donors: Why They’re Important is well worth the read regardless of your political persuasion or preferred candidate. Money quote:

“Obama’s million-plus individual donors should be seen as marking two significant changes in American politics. First, we’re living through a major upsurge in public participation in politics–and the Internet is a big engine of that surge. Second, a candidate with a million-plus individual donors–90% of whom at this point have given something like $100 on average–has the potential to more independent of monied interests than any in the past. It’s too soon to say if Obama will live up to that potential–indeed, it’s too soon to say if he will be the Democratic nominee–but whatever happens I suspect that a year from now we’ll look back on this day and note that it marked an inflection point in how technology is changing politics.”

In case you’re planning your travel around gadget obsession, social networking addiction, or general dorkdom (and, let’s face it, with a bit more disposable income Jarred and very well might fall into this category), here’s a convenient description of the “Best Geek Hotels in the World.”

It’s really not fair to make fun of children passing through that awkward phase known as “Middle School,” but these 41 Hilarious Science Fair Experiments had me laughing out loud. As Fake Steve said, “Ever wonder what those crazy kids at Google are doing with their 20% free time?”

That’s all for now; check back all week for new material. If you’re interested in writing a guest post for Tropophilia, we’d love to have your input. See this page for instructions on submitting a guest post and please contact us with any questions. It can be long or short, serious or sarcastic, and on any topic related to change.

Going Global [Guest Post]

Published by a Guest on February 7, 2008 in Culture and Sociology. View Comments

a guest post by Daniel H.

During these past few weeks, we’ve all seen the economy have its ups and downs, and if nothing else, we’ve been reminded of Thomas Friedman’s idea that the world is becoming increasingly flat, (and that our markets are no longer insulated from outside shocks). Another Friedman (Milton) reminds us that this sort of open capitalism, of the laissez-faire variety, promotes political freedom. But does the open market have a darker side, one which undermines the freedoms which come from our communal responsibility to one another?

What I mean by this: If all our money is continually in flux, in markets all over the world, in the U.S., in Asia, in Europe, and elsewhere, who follows our spending habits, who provides checks and balances for how we spend out money, to help us become more fiscally responsible people? Most likely, no one. We are able to spread out our finances, through multiple areas, and create portfolios that are as complex and discreet as we’d like them to be.

And while I do not believe these things to be bad in and of themselves, I put forward this idea to ask a bigger-picture question: What happened to the days when people made some of their financial decisions based on what their community might think? Were they held to a higher degree of fiscal responsibility, more prone to avoid extravagance and more likely to ask for help earlier if financial trouble loomed in the future? I hope that as the world continues to flatten, we might recover some of this neighborly accountability for ourselves, and we might encourage it in our communities. I don’t believe we can slow down this kind of change that I mentioned, this shift towards a flattened, global economy of ever-connected, increasingly anonymous (and perhaps increasingly irresponsible) consumers, though if we can begin to think about it in a different way, we might avoid some of the problems it could deliver.

(image courtesy of WikiMedia)