Eye Contact

Here is an interesting question.  When two people converse, they often make eye contact.  In fact, if you watch their eyes closely, you will find that they roam and glance across all parts of the face, and occasionally to the hands or parts of the surroundings as well.  Ignoring, for a moment, the rich trove of information contained in the multiple glances at the mouth, the hands, the room, etc. I wonder what might be learned from simply examining the contact between the eyes…

For example- when two people come to an emotionally important moment in the conversation, their eyes will often lock, and they will glance first at one eye, then another, then back and forth several times.  The question is: what is going on in this second of silent dialog?

Often, this interaction can be observed when one person is attempting to asses another person’s sincerity.  Other reasons apply as well.  It would be interesting to notice the different patterns of eye contact between individuals who are telling the truth versus lying – between individuals who know each other versus those who don’t, and between those who are in different emotional states.

My own hypothesis is interesting, but I won’t go into it now - I've noticed my posts are often too long.

Charitable Contribution

I had an idea the other day – I hoped it might be useful to a charity. 

Most people agree that there are many charities that do wonderful work for the world.  We may also believe that the good of a charity is not only in the acts that it performs for the world, but in the beneficial effects it has on the giver itself.

This idea is designed to increase the number of people who give to charity, to increase the amount that each person gives, and to increase the total amount given to charity.  The benefits of this idea are threefold:

First, it benefits the donors, who have a more positive view of themselves, their community, and the world.

Second, it benefits the charities, which have more resources to do good with.

Third, it benefits the recipients of the increased charity.

The idea is simple.  Based on the foot-in-the-door technique Dr. Cialdini studied, representatives walk to each house in their local area.  They begin the conversation by asking if the residents have given to any charity within the last 5 years.  Whatever the answer, they then continue with the response that they are working to increase the number of people who donate to charity in this specific neighborhood.  They next ask if the resident would be willing to walk around to all of the homes within a five block radius, asking them to give to charity.  A few will say yes.  The majority will say no. 

Those who say no will then be asked:  “Okay, well then is it okay with you if we leave this jar with you and come back in 6 months to pick it up?  We’ll donate the money to any charity that you choose.”  The jar is labeled “Charity Change” and there is a slot in the top.  Many will agree to this request.  The representative will then ask for their phone number and email address to schedule the pickup.  Before leaving, the representative says, “I recommend that you put the jar wherever you normally put your spare change.  By the way, do you have any children who you would like to have a jar to so that you can teach them the value of donating to charity?”  Whatever the answer, the representative ends with:  “Most people fill their jar within a few months – if you want another jar, please call me and I’ll drop one off.”

Each month the resident is sent an email with details of the local campaign, contrasted with neighborhood, city, state and nationwide results.  Three months later, a follow up call is placed asking about their progress so that they can tally the local results (“How full is you r jar – half, 1/3, Full?  Do you need another jar?”)  One week before six months, the representative calls to schedule a pick-up (“Don’t give you jar to anyone else!”)  They ask about the fullness of the jar as well – and also ask if there are mainly pennies and dimes, or if it’s quarters and paper money.  “Don’t bother counting it, we will send you a total of what you donated once we count it.  You’ll get a receipt for your taxes.”

Thank you!

This program benefits from a number of human characteristics.  The large request at the beginning (to canvas the neighborhood) sets up a strong desire to comply with a smaller request, and increases the chance that the resident will agree to keep the jar.  The fact that they can choose the charity to receive their donation also increases agreement.  Accepting the jar will create a desire to reciprocate the gift of the jar – especially if the jar looks like a gift (a ribbon with a bow, bright colors, etc.)  Keeping the jar in their own home increases their sense of ownership over the decision to give to charity which increases their positive emotional response to giving.  The follow up calls will increase the amount that they deposit in the jar, and in some cases, will cause them to donate an increased amount or write a check at the end.  Some people may have to be cautioned not to give more than they can afford.

Finally, when the jar is picked up, the homeowner is first asked how it went, then asked if they would be willing to canvas the neighborhood, and finally asked if they would be willing to keep another jar.  The key to encouraging continued participation is keeping just the right amount of follow up with the resident.  Not too much to be pushy, and not so little that the resident thinks they’ve been forgotten.  Also critical is a constant emphasis on the positive benefits that the resident is now a part of.  Total money raised – pictures of people helped by local donations, etc.  Sharing participation percentages in a way that highlights the high numbers of participants (67% of our neighborhood participated in giving to charity through this effort this year!  312 people in your neighborhood gave to charity through this program) is another way to increase participation.

Some of these ideas may seem a little unorthodox, but I feel the worthiness of the goal sanctifies the means.  What do you think?

Meditations on Collective Unconcsious

In the end what you don’t surrender, the world just strips away.  – B. Springsteen

We’re flickering flames – here now, gone tomorrow.  What of that?  What to do with this idea of impermanence.  Put it out of our heads?  Is it immaterial on a daily basis?  And what of purpose?

If the final outcome of living is death, how should we consider our accomplishments?  What of our hopes and dreams?  What of our legacy?  What of our visions?  What of our sown seed?  What of our worth?  If eighty years we have, what moves us, when we know that at eighty years end, we exist no more?  With death on the horizon, with our destination known, what focal point do we choose in the middle distance?  What difference does it make?

We, who are uncertain as to what, if anything, may lie after death – may not be able to say anything about the point of life.  Can we say the point of life is living?  To live?  To be?  To experience… what?  To be what?  And without a single signpost except our desires, our urges, our feelings, our fellow traveler.  And how do we see the human panoply, spread about us in its splendor?

I can empathize with some who come to see this as a cosmic experiment, a universal joke, a giant simulation.  What purpose in creating something completely without purpose, except to see what it does on its own?  Of course, that last sentence speaks of a creator.  What if these woods sprang from nothing, creating themselves, existing without any purpose but existence?  In that case whatever perseveres would be the purpose.

And so, thinking of existence, experience, and ephemera, I come to consider eternal existence.  If I were that existence, what would I do with myself?  If the ephemeral creatures of the earth were my body, my eyes, my hands, my heart and my head, how would I consider them?  Would I take part in their experiences individually, or collectively?  Would I have fragmentary awareness, a gigantic consciousness, a combination of both, or nothing similar at all?  Would the idea of interfering in the lives of men have any meaning if those men are me?

How would I endure?  Would my consciousness divide itself, and move from one mind to the next, weaving exotic new networks of understanding and comprehension?  Would I weave narratives from the fabric of lives within which I were ever entrenched?  Would the pathways of my learning be the lives of children?  Would I want to see my existence in another’s eyes?  Or would I leave it largely to be?

For what of suffering?  A tool to design?  Vision manifest?  An agony to remind us of what we are not?  A creation to encourage forgiveness, divine intervention, relinquishment, atonement?  Or self-created, self-fulfilling, self-correcting self-improvement?  Chance?

For that’s the crux – in conceiving something greater than we, we conceive of it letting us be.

Beginnings

Beginnings are important.  I believe in beginnings.  I've got boxes of books of beginnings but not one end.

Endings... so final, imposed, closed.

Beginnings begin.  They bring together things that never were to make us long to live and love.

Endings shutter us.  Each stuttered period clattering death to a sentence, paragraph, page.

And those who plead, "Beginnings imply the end" as though it were some maxim, some nihilistic, heat-death apology, I say to you - only by beginnings outpacing their ends does an existence continue at all.

While I'm willing to entertain the notion that the end might be nigh - I'm not inclined to concede the point. 

Not yet anyway.