Why are some people seemingly hard-wired for compassion, while others hardly notice suffering? Is generosity the by-product of a virtuous upbringing; a quality we learn primarily through early observation? Or is altruism something we can develop later in life through practice? What do we really know about generosity?
Very little, as it turns out, but that’s changing. In 2009, Christian Smith launched theScience of Generosity Initiative在巴黎圣母院（Notre Dame）领导“揭露慷慨的原因，表现和后果的国际努力”。在2012年9月的论文中Nature, Harvard University researchers David Rand, Joshua Greene, and Martin Nowak conclude that when given the choice, our innate first responder–intuition–is pretty generous. But in a span of just 10 seconds, a stingier impulse arises, and the cooperative impulse decreases dramatically.
我们现在可以看到我们周围发生的事情。刚过桑迪飓风, New Yorkers exhibited the kind of intuitive outpouring of generosity the Harvard paper suggests. Rebecca Solnit, author ofA Paradise Built in Hellcoined the term “disaster utopia” to explain how people band together and help one another when crisis hits. But now, as with all crises, we see this immediate and spontaneous generosity receding: New Yorkers back to jostling each other on the subway and pretending not to see the homeless as we scurry by.
The importance of generosity is strongly rooted in all cultures: Buddhists believe that达纳(generosity) has positive transformative powers on the mind of the giver. In Judaism, the idea oftzedakah具有可互换的含义 - 右事和慈善事业 - 您没有另一个。在马克书中，耶稣明确地观察了一个可怜的寡妇与她的最后两枚硬币分开，并告诉他的门徒，穷人的牺牲对上帝意味着比富人的更大范围捐赠更重要。穆斯林认为，没有慈善机构减少财富，将由真主归还给送礼者。
但是，同胞们坚持鼓励慷慨的哲学，甚至还涉及一些纤维。克里斯蒂安·史密斯（Christian Smith）和希瑟·普莱斯（Heather Price）在宗教社会学协会会议协会上对教堂的教会者进行了一项调查，尽管有四分之一的受访者声称他们的收入的10％贡献了慈善机构，但实际上，他们的收入为only 3% of the group gave more than 5%.
But perhaps our interest in generosity isn’t declining, it’s changing and in need of new models for expression. A 2010 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by James H. Fowler and Nicholas A. Christakis, revealed that社交网络激发了更大的慷慨。In lab experiments, subjects played a series of games with strangers (choosing how much money to give away and to keep). Subjects were “influenced by fellow group members’ behavior in [their] future interactions with others who were not a party to the initial interaction.” This influence kept up for multiple rounds. In other words, generosity is learned, it’s contagious and most effective when it’s a shared experience.
在我的组织中Catchafire, we’re creating new opportunities for talent-based generosity. We work with professionals who, not content with just doing excellent work at their day jobs, join Catchafire looking for ways to put those same skills to good use for nonprofits and social enterprises they admire. You simply register on Catchafire and the site delivers you highly accurate matches to specific nonprofit projects based on your skills and cause interests. The projects you get to work on are high impact and high value, spanning a few hours to a few months, and they are designed to be executed in parallel with regular life. Jim Craig, an executive from Virginia, helped empower low income urban kids by leading a Mission and Vision Analysis for Quest Adventures. Faigy Gilder, a New York non-profit manager, helped alleviate poverty in Kenya by designing a Social Media Strategy for The BOMA Project.
In celebration of generosity, and in the spirit of inquiry on how to understand it and to create new mechanisms to express it,we’re announcing a series running on Co.Exist examining some of the most generous people in a variety of fields。You can find it on Twitter at #GenerositySeries.
我们将根据专业卓越和展示服务行为（而不仅仅是深深的口袋）来展示每月获奖者清单。然后，我们将与他们每个人谈论他们关于慷慨的个人哲学，以及他们一生中最激发他们的启发。我们将共同尝试将如何嵌入，编码，装饰和锁定在我们的集体DNA中。
Today we unveil our Top Ten Social Media Mavens, who have innovated the use of social media for the greater good. In the coming months we’ll keep going with profiles of Designers, Tech Founders, Wall Streeters, Marketing Gurus, and Filmmakers.
Top Ten Social Media Mavens
Arianna Huffington, President and Editor-in-Chief, Huffington Post
在一个政治时代，当国家对话严重地缺乏建设性冲突导致的前瞻性动力时，我们特别感谢赫芬顿强调使用社交媒体向更棘手的问题提出和要求答案：什么时候我们左右移动？资本主义可以在没有道德基金会的情况下生存吗？
Jennifer James, Mom Bloggers for Social Good
我们都知道我们的妈妈很强大，但詹姆斯想出了如何将它们捆绑在一起（嗯，无论如何，无论如何写博客），形成一个强大的，1000名女性强，全球的网络，Mom Bloggers for Social Good。由詹姆斯（James）领导的该网站放大了新闻，“从孕产妇的健康和儿童生存到饥饿和教育”，这一信息很大，而且越来越大。
Nicholas Kristof, Columnist,纽约时报; Co-Author,半边天
克里斯托夫（Kristof）对侵犯人权的调查致力于对“发展中国家被遗忘的人”的揭示，他对达尔富尔和天安门广场的报道为他赢得了两次普利策奖，以供评论。但是，我们对他在Twitter和Facebook上的150万追随者的实时订婚使我们特别着迷，在那里他始终通过坦率，同情和智慧来提高对话。
不可见的人电视首席传福音官马克·霍瓦斯（Mark Horvath）
Horvath used to be homeless. Now that he’s not anymore, he doesn’t pretend the whole thing never happened. Instead he has dedicated his life to an unorthodox brand of grassroots advocacy. With a simple camera setup, he seeks out homeless men and women all over the world, for raw, uncomfortable interviews which he uploads to YouTube unedited and unfiltered. If you think that sounds like a recipe for Internet obscurity, well, then you haven’t seen看不见的人电视。
国家野生动物联合会社交媒体经理Danielle Brigida
Brigida was first noticed by her bosses at the NWF for quietly creating a deafening buzz in their previously non-existent online community. They figured they had a social media maestro on their hands and let her have full rein. She took them to a social media following of 400,000 active advocates, and now everybody in the nonprofit world wants to know how she did it.
Shaun King, Founder, Hope Mob
Shaun King is a preacher and Twitter is his pulpit. We knew we loved him for his relief work in Haiti, and his crowdfunding siteHopeMob.org，但随后我们看到他在桑迪期间弹起了行动。无论是安排滞留狼疮的妇女，还是要为她的药物服用，还是将急救发电机送到鲍里救援任务，他都是人类的需求聚合者和危机支持的交换所。
爱德华·诺顿（Edward Norton），联合创始人，Crowdrise；演员
诺顿曾经吓到我们，但现在他使我们崩溃了。无论是扮演改革的新纳粹还是血腥的街头霸王，他的巨大表演才能都会表现出人类的黑暗。但是后来他想到了Crowdrise, an online fundraising community that combines irreverence, wit, and philanthropy–something you don’t see every day.
Christy Turlington Burns, Founder, Every Mother Counts; Director/Producer,No Woman, No Cry; Supermodel
Did you know that every day, approximately 800 women die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth, 99% in developing countries? Neither did Turlington Burns, until she experienced complications during labor and set out to find out more and then do something about it through没有女人没有哭声，她的纪录片和Every Mother Counts, her nonprofit.
读Turlington Burns’s full profile here.
Scott Harrison, Charity: Water
It sounds like a movie plot: a morally bankrupt nightclub promoter runs away to Africa and pledges to provide clean drinking water for every person on the planet. But it’s all true. Harrison’sCharity:Water, which lets interested people form their own campaigns to raise money for clean water, is working, donating more than $40 million to clean water causes.
读Harrison’s full profile here。
Claire Diaz-Ortiz, Leader of Social Innovation, Twitter
当我们其他人首次面对高中朋友时，迪亚兹 - 奥尔蒂斯（Diaz-Ortiz）弄清楚了如何使用Twitter向肯尼亚孤儿院的艾滋病孤儿发光。作者Twitter for Good: Change the World One Tweet at a Time, she is a powerful voice for do-goodership in the social media space and for using the power of social networks to effect real change.
并继续关注另一个神秘猜测。谁不喜欢惊喜？
星期一回来，在阿里安娜·赫芬顿（Arianna Huffington）上全面讲故事。