The Past Ten Years of Cynicism and Generosity
Reading through this article by Jonathan Haidt in The Atlantic this past week–Why the Past Ten Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid– it was difficult not to feel utter despair. So much of it resonated: the state of our discourse and how badly it has devolved in recent years into viciousness, self-righteousness, and outrage. The article explores how social media has weakened social capital, trust in institutions, and, most ironically given its original intent, how it has made genuine human connection much harder to attain. It outlines how each seemingly innocuous techno-tweak — the “like,” “retweet” and “share” buttons — were “almost perfectly designed to bring out our most moralistic and least reflective selves.” While social media does, at least ostensibly, give voice and agency to many who lacked it, the barbs that Haidt calls the “dart guns” of social media give the most power and voice to those at the extremes.
The article focuses on the past ten years — the same period of time during which I have been both a leader and follower of the generosity movement GivingTuesday. I see those ten years not only through the very disturbing set of truths in the article but also through the lens of the generosity movement that has grown enormously during that same period of time.
In those ten years, GivingTuesday and other collective giving movements and acts of generosity have not just grown, but exploded like a starburst.
Measured, yes, in part, as the giving of money– billions of dollars donated on GivingTuesday alone to civil society organizations, giving that spiked dramatically even in years where giving was trending downward overall, even in the context of growing income inequality and economic insecurity. These monetary donations are critically important, because they support the work of indispensable social impact organizations that form the basis of civil society.
But it has been an explosion of generosity measured also by something more difficult to quantify but visible, crystal clear: the passionate adoption by millions of an overarching, driving ethos of kindness and community care around the globe.
The tools, resources, and hashtags for these generosity movements may be online, enabling accessibility, translation and widespread sharing, but the resulting actions happen largely offline. They manifest as behaviors driven by a philosophy that care for our communities and neighbors is as important as care for our children and partners. They manifest as food left safely in front of the door of an elderly neighbor during the pandemic; as messages of hope and encouragement scrawled on sidewalks for strangers; as the establishment of countless mutual aid networks; as music organizations playing jazz concerts for people waiting on line at food banks; as children reading poetry to the elderly; as the rebuilding of a community member’s destroyed home in the midst or aftermath of war or natural disaster; as the formation of giving circles all over the world; as community refrigerators and free pantries appearing in neighborhoods around the country and world. The actions are small, but their impacts are, collectively, almost beyond imagining in their significance. Each individual act contributes one thread to a protective tapestry of solidarity and reciprocity that grows between people within communities and between communities in the world. Ultimately, that creates real impact, saves lives, brings dignity, creates shared narratives, and eases mental and physical pain.
How can these two opposing trends be reconciled? The outrage, tribalism, and righteous indignation on the one hand and the generous actions toward strangers on the other? Are they disconnected phenomena? I don’t believe so. I think many of us are being torn between our better angels and our tempting devils. We are yearning for something warmer, deeper, more meaningful than we are getting through algorithms and confirmation bias. And that is fundamentally hopeful.
We still have a chance to resist the manipulation and the negativity, to shut it down, turn it off, and do something to make someone else’s life–or day, or even moment–better. Each time we do, we have sipped an antidote to hatred that makes us a tiny bit more immune to it.
When GivingTuesday began, social media was fairly new and mostly harmless, even banal. If the idea of GivingTuesday was a counter-narrative to anything, it was the consumerism of Cyber Monday, or to the banality of sharing our meals or new sneakers. Now the game has changed entirely. What is happening in the public square now is not trite but toxic and terrifying. We have long said “we need movements fueled by love to counter movements fueled by hate.” But now the hate is not confined to organized movements; it has seeped into the cadence of our public dialogue and our everyday interactions.
Finding ourselves in an environment so much more broken now than when we began, we started to use the more urgent and provocative phrase “radical generosity” to provide an appropriate counterpoint to radical cynicism–both in others and in ourselves.
In the end, choosing generosity serves all of us better. No act of giving should be seen in a vacuum. Giving is generative: the personal and communal payoff is so positive and so significant that as we realize our power to make change, we want to do more of it more often. It is contagious: recipients of generosity are more likely to be generous to others. And finally it is transformative personally: the experience of giving begins to let trust in others seep in through the cracks of our cynicism and erode our rush to judgment.
Haidt lays out other prescriptions–reform social media, strengthen democratic institutions, prepare and protect young people for the future they face. These things are all critical. But none of them will matter without a basic recognition of our shared humanity, our common needs for kindness and connection, and a celebration of our ability to bring help, beauty, and joy into the lives of others. Radical generosity may be the best tool we have to draw us back from a dangerous precipice.
Which one of these mindsets will we collectively embrace in the next ten years? The choice is ours to make.
