I was intrigued by Seth Godin’s blog post today, so I clicked the link to Sasha Dichter’s TED presentation entitled The Generosity Experiment. I would encourage you to watch & then peruse the comments.
The gist of the talk was his commitment to saying “yes” for a month to anyone who asks for a handout or financial help. The video discusses the impact of this experiment on himself in the context of the work that Acumen fund does.
The whole concept hits me squarely in the sweet spot of my own personal quest of investing my own life, passion & skills in something that has a sense of purpose and meaning (granted that the specifics of what that means are different for everyone).
I wasn’t all that familiar with Acumen fund, but am aware of similar investment funds and that’s something that I love to see happening. I found Sasha’s talk quite inspiring & was curious to the reactions in the comments on the presentation page (again, worth looking at). There are a number of good points that people brought up that pretty much fit into the typical responses to giving people handouts on the street, many of which I think are totally legitimate questions that people have to work through. I remember being in church leadership a few years ago and asking a lot of the same when trying to determine how we were going to handle our relatively small ministry budget.
However the point that struck me most was the idea of trajectory. It seems that the whole idea behind the generosity experiment for Sasha was to change his personal trajectory from habitual avoidance of those around him in need to habitual sensitivity to the issue. It’s not so much about “should I give some money to this particular person” as it is about cultivating an attitude of generosity.
I think it’s easy, when considering a talk like this or similar discussions in a church or other organization, to hear a “system” instead of a journey. “Well,” I may argue, “if I give money to someone, I may be inadvertently supporting the heroine trade because all they’re going to do is to buy drugs.” There are a couple of implicit assumptions in this kind of reasoning. First, there’s the assumption that if I help a particular person in a particular way, that I’m always going to do it the same way. Second that the person on the receiving end is going to always do a particular thing and react in a particular way every time (or at least more often than not). There’s the assumption that there exists a particular right or wrong way to deal with similar circumstances and that there exists some sort of systematized approach or methodology that should be used.
However, I think that line of reasoning, while making good arguments in the abstract, is faulty because they assume consistency of methodology. Instead, the whole point is that by changing a habit, Sasha felt himself becoming more attuned to the needs of those around him and his own capacity for having a generous heart (at least that’s what I took from it), not that his experiment was going to determine his methodology forever.
Just like a child learning to walk, one has to try and stumble before maturing and accomplishing. It’s the trajectory of change that’s important. Because we crave formulas, there’s little room for the idea of organic growth as we engage, attempt, help, are taken advantage of, learn, connect. The problem is that while we are often well intentioned, it is just as often that it is to a point. After which it gets messy because you have gone past checking the charity box to engaging another human being with a complex set of issues. We must each ask ourselves how far we’re willing to go, a question who’s answer is highly individualistic.
Exercising the capacity and desire to help someone is a complex thing. Our motivations have as much variation as the circumstances in which they manifest action. Will copiers of the Generosity Experiment do something wrong? Probably. Will we get taken advantage of? Sure. Will we do some genuine good and make a difference? There’s a pretty good chance of it. Will we experience and learn things that we wouldn’t have possibly known without having taken the journey? We will never know unless we try.