The Myth of Selfless Giving

Jason Evans posted an interesting piece today about the problem of giving to receive, based in part on a current NPR story about conscientious capitalism in efforts like The Red Campaign. He quotes Harvard professor Richard Weissbourd from the story, who laments,

“I do feel like, as a country, we have lost a sense of morality for its own sake,” says Harvard professor and psychologist Richard Weissbourd, who teaches about moral development. “You should just be generous to be generous. You should do what’s right because it’s right, not because of what you get back.”

I protested a bit in Jason’s comments, saying there’s no such thing as selfless giving, and he asked for a deeper explanation of my position, so… Continue reading…

Technorati Tags: gifts, Giving, Jason Evans, Jesus, Matthew, NPR, Self-Interest

Unbecoming Buzz Agents For Christ

Back in the day, businesses could count on word-of-mouth as the most powerful form of organic marketing. By doing a genuinely good job, or offering the best quality products, people enthusiastically recommended them to each other. Relationships of trust are natural networks of growth. Roland Allen understood that well.

But the Web 2.0 world (World 2.0?) has spawned new forms of friendship, and new opportunities for word-of-mouth marketing that big businesses are capitalizing on. The infectious power of facebook and Twitter is their instant ability to connect people across traditional barriers, but that very power and success is being capitalized on (annoyingly) in order to increase the sales noise in the midst of those very connections. Connections of grace and reciprocity are corrupted into connections of self-interest and quid-pro-quo. Even more unusually, some people are being enlisted as volunteers – in the thousands – to serve corporate clients by literally creating a “buzz” about products, one person at a time. In return for their willingness to talk to friends and strangers about the products, these “buzz agents” receive products for free.

NPR did a great story on this a while back, and in it there’s a key moment where one particular “buzz agent” talks about wearing a new brand of perfume and then “cozying up” to people throughout her day with the hopes that someone would remark on the scent, thereby creating a “natural” opening for a conversation about the product.

Continue reading…

Technorati Tags: Church, consumer church, marketing, missio dei, mission, News, NPR