Here’s another way that we are biologically wired for being social, but not in a good way. Our brain chemistry responds to grievance (real or imagined) the way it responds to narcotics. We can become addicted to grievance. This is hurtful enough on an individual level. In inequitable societies, grievance becomes a powerful force to...Continue reading
I’ve taken three months of 2021 off from writing for this blog. My dad passed away. My wife is a healthcare worker and needed support during the pandemic. Work was busy. I even paused my Google Ads campaign for my site because I couldn’t handle leads for even more work. And guess what? Work is...Continue reading
We say that people “throw their hat in the ring” when they run for election. But what if, instead of an election, we just selected a hat at random and its owner won the office? Election lottery is an old idea that’s becoming new again as a way to repair our civics.
This entire blog is built on the assumption that we share a social nature, even down to our biology.
When I say in this blog that we are social creatures, I’m being quite literal. Our brains are physically wired to be social. Each one of us has an interpersonal neurobiology that responds to the world around us.
As shown in my previous post on fairness featuring video about Capuchin monkeys who were paid unequally, fairness is innate. But what is the evolutionary benefit of fairness? Brian Hayden, professor emeritus of archaeology at Simon Frazer University in British Columbia, Canada, has an interesting theory. It revolves around scarcity and the distribution of resources....Continue reading
When human communities subsisted as hunter-gatherers, we recognized the evolutionary benefit of fairness. As our social nature evolved to living in settled communities, some people started having more than others. We accepted a certain level of inequality–as long as everyone had enough. But that begs the question: what is the fair distribution of social goods?...Continue reading
Our social nature is the basis for marketing public and social goods. How effective we are in social interactions directly influences the success of our marketing and ultimately whether we succeed in our social mission. Here’s the research-proven way to win more cooperation:
People in poverty lack money. It seems obvious that the best way to end their poverty is to give them money. Increasingly, studies support this obvious approach to reducing poverty. Yet the vast majority of poverty-reduction organizations and agencies offer goods and services, not cash. What is the impact on nonprofits of giving cash to...Continue reading
To continue bringing you topics of interest in the new year, I took a look back at what you read the most this year. Here are the top five posts published in 2016, as measured by your views: 1–Free download! White paper template for Microsoft Powerpoint In the public and social spheres, creating and publishing...Continue reading