The Next Generation of Donors

The Seven Faces of Philanthropy is an interesting book. The authors talk to major donors about their movitations for giving, pore over the responses, and identify seven personalities.

As a higher education professional, the one personality that seems to fit most of our donors (many of whom are alumni) is the Repayer. Repayers tend to have been constituents first and partners second. A typical Repayer has benefited from some institution and now supports that institution from a feeling of loyalty or obligation.

Most of our donors are also 55 and older. Most colleges struggle to get millenials to give; but just because they are paying off student debt doesn't mean they can't give something. It's more likely that they don't see themselves as Repayers.

Millenials don't trust institutions. Ergo, they won't support them. So asking them to support the annual fund so a college can go on college-ing is a lost cause.

However, they will support causes. They won't support the Red Cross because they believe in their mission but they will support the Red Cross' efforts to help Hurricane Harvey victims. Then they move on to the next cause, regardless of the charity doing the work.

This is where The Seven Faces of Philanthropy can help. When millenials give, they see themselves as (mostly) Altruists. Altruists give out of generosity and empathy to urgent causes and who modestly wish to remain anonymous.

The challenge for higher education is to market giving opportunities as causes. Talk to millenials as Altruists, people who's gift can directly improve someone's life.

My journey with Better Angels

When I first read about Better Angels—a non profit group whose goal is to depolarize America by, among other things, hosting workshops with 7 liberals and 7 conservatives to get people talking again and forming community-based alliances—my reaction was that this was similar to an idea I had percolating in the back of my mind.

The other similar group was Living Room Conversations. Although they had similar missions, their approach couldn't be more different. Living Room Conversations was very libertarian. Their message is: "Talk to a friend in your house. Here are some discussion points. Let us know how it goes."

BA's message is "Here is what you need to do and how you need to do it. Follow this blueprint."

I ultimately chose BA because I wanted to work off of a blueprint. I know I wanted to get people from my community together with opposing views so we could find common ground. But I wanted some sort of direction.

I became a dues-paying member, reached out to some people from my town about starting a workshop (with little success), and haven't done much since. While I love BA and their mission, I have a few concerns.

First, to sign up they make you chose a side: red or blue. I don't identify either way and don't like being put into a camp. Plus, this crowds out libertarians, greens, and other independents, who should have a voice as well.

Second, the few people I have talked to who have shown interest have the same problems that I do. We're all in our thirties, have young children, and are consumed by our expanding responsibilities. The workshop is a full seven-hour day. I have trouble finding a sitter for a two-hour stretch.

I attended a group meeting with local BA members and was struck by how relatively-young I was compared to everyone else; mostly empty-nesters and retirees. In other words, people who have time for a day-long workshop and recruiting local members. I'll return to this in a moment.

Thirdly, BA seems to have a goal of creating BA red-blue alliances all across the country. I think that is a shallow goal. They mention "depolarizing" and "getting people talking again" but I think it should be more ambitious.

My goal is to solve problems. Immigration, healthcare, guns, terrorism; these are all issues we want to solve but cannot without coming to a mutual understanding with our political opponents. In that respect, I view BA is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

For millenials, such as myself and the other young fathers I spoke to about BA, trust in institutions is at an all-time low. That is why the book New Power shows how young people are drawn to movements that allow for their own customization, like the Ice Bucket Challenge or AirBNB.

BA does not allow such customization; it's structure is top-down. As such, I worry that it's very nature will crowd-out millenials. Based on my own observations; it already has.

Why I read

Justin Theroux, not reading. Trust me, it will make sense.

At the beginning of Season 2 of The Leftovers, you see the protagonist Kevin Garvey constantly wearing earbuds and playing loud music.

The narration keeps you in the dark before the big reveal: Kevin is experiencing hallucinations of a women for whose death he feels responsible. The music is his solution for drowning out the hallucinations.

I mention this because it is the best metaphor for explaining why I am always reading a book, particularly nonfiction.

My mind's natural state is untethered, and will invariably drift toward depression. A good book— particularly a complicated one in which I am learning something new, something that, for a moment, makes the world a little more sensible—drowns out the noise of my depression.

Unlike medication, there are no side effects. Unlike therapy, there is no cost (as long as I can find the book in a library). My only vulnerability would be running out of books to read.

The Tragedy of Tribalism

In his book Moral Tribes, Joshua Greene talks about the Tragedy of the Commons and what he calls the Tragedy of Commonsense Morality. The former puts "we" above "I" to solve societal problems. The latter pits "we" against "them," creating societal problems. This is both the blessing and curse of tribalism.

I've argued before that we are good at naturally sorting ourselves into communities of like-minded thinkers (although the "community" aspect has been dying in the absence of religion and civic engagement). However, we are terrible at dealing with other tribes.

I believe that we might have a government system able to solve this problem. Our sovereign states and localities should be able to operate as different like-minded moral communities, with little overreach from the federal government. Government's role should be to address what we are not naturally good at: communicating between moral communities.

Let's take the multicultural metaphor of a salad. Instead of a melting pot, people are expected to stay a tomato, onion, or whatever belief or race they represent. But this only works if they are tossed in the same dressing. But what is this dressing that binds all these different beliefs, cultures, and tribes to America? This is the problem we can't solve on our own. It might take intervention from the federal government.

The best essays of the past 3 years

Each year there always seems to be one essay I read that sticks out from all the rest.

In 2016, it was a blog post about the effects of globalization by economist Russ Roberts. Even as a libertarian, Roberts is great at considering all sides of an issue. Libertarians have a habit of being overly rational, but he is great at understanding the emotional impact of people's lives.

Last year it was this essay by Jonathan Haidt, which is actually a transcription of a speech he gave. It's a great look at the current state of our polarized country, how we got here, and how we can find our way out of the mess we're in.

He lists things that tend to pull people together and things that tend to separate us. I should note that he references a study suggesting that immigration divides people. Since that time, I have read about several additional studies that either show no impact of immigration on what he calls "social capital" and even some studies that show immigration bringing communities closer together.

I think the best part is where he talks about Martin Luther King's concept of an American Civil Religion. Currently, there is a lot of focus from both sides of the political spectrum on what divides us. King cared about what united us.

"The civil rights struggle was indeed identity politics, but it was an effort to fix a mistake, to make us better and stronger as a nation. Martin Luther King’s rhetoric made it clear that this was a campaign to create conditions that would allow national reconciliation. He drew on the moral resources of the American civil religion to activate our shared identity and values."

For 2018, I think I already have a winner: Sebastion Junger's essay "The Anthropology of Manhood." For the first time in our country's history, men seem really lost. Junger does a great job of openly talking about why men are the way they are, and the pros and cons they bring to society.

"men are eminently disposable; kill most of the men in a society and it quickly recovers, but kill most of the women and it dies out within generations. Because of all these factors, a common definition of manhood throughout history has been a willingness to put the safety of others above one’s own."

He makes some points that seem especially prescient in the aftermath of the incel massacre:

"As these gender-specific jobs disappear, it becomes harder for men to know whether they have anything essential to offer society... But the only way to guarantee membership in a group is to be needed by it, so being unneeded can feel catastrophic... The national suicide rate is known to closely track unemployment, for example, and after the economic collapse of 2008, around 5,000 additional people in 54 countries committed suicide because they had lost their jobs. These were people who no longer felt needed." 

Like Roberts, Junger doesn't call to return to the way things were. Rather, he looks for new and healthy ways to adapt society to our natural traits.

My (Regretful) Unwillingness to Believe

I was rewatching Moon on Netflix last night. Spoiler: the protagonist is supposed to be alone in a space station on the moon and one day comes face to face with another person who talks and acts like himself, and claims to have the same identity as the protagonist.

The first time I watched Moon I believed the protagonist was delusional until the twist ending reveals they are just two of many clones awakened and then killed every three years, spending their short lives working at the station as free labor.

I am bad at predicting twists (I guess I prefer to get swept up in the moment rather than trying to guess where everything is going) but I think my rational brain just felt that delusion was more probable than cloning.

When someone makes an assertion I believe is misguided, I ask two questions that I am stealing from Neil Degrasse Tyson:

• What is your best evidence for this belief?
• What would it take for you to believe otherwise?

The latter question subtly asks the person to consider that they may be wrong; something the human mind is loathe to do on its own.

I was thinking about God the other day and what it would take for me to believe in him. At first, I thought that he would have to reveal himself to me and communicate with me for me to believe. However, I think I would make the same rationalization I made the first time I watched Moon. I would believe that there is a higher probability that I am delusional than having a conversation with God.

What about something experienced by many people at once that cannot be explained by science, like the Miracle of the Sun? Even then, it seems more probable that it would be a Black Swan-like event, something we have just never seen before and will understand eventually.

This disappoints me because I don't want to close myself off from changing my mind on a position.

The Two Axioms of American Democracy

America was created to be a pluralistic society. Everyone is welcome, you are not required to look a certain way or believe a certain faith.

By it's very nature, pluralism leads to what the founders called "factionalism" and I call "tribalism." If we don't require a particular belief, people will sort themselves into communal belief systems that compete for power.

This leads to the first axiom of American democracy: One tribe, or faction, will never dominate. (In this context, a tribe can be a religion, political party, or any belief system.) It may hold a majority for a brief time, but there will always be another tribe pushing back against it.

Due to self-preservation or some evolutionary trait we picked up along the way, humans are really bad at admitting when they are wrong. This leads to the second axiom of American democracy: One tribe will never convince another tribe that they are wrong. A few may switch sides from time to time, but one tribe will never give up everything they believe in and willfully adopt the ethos of another tribe. 

These two axioms lead to my conclusion: Our system of government was not designed to solve problems by growing one's tribe. Our system was designed to solve problems by building coalitions. 

We start where we have common ground and make trade offs until everyone agrees that the best deal is on the table.