I agree, because people of all different demographics not only have different kinds of resources, but different opportunities.
Young people are more likely to have time to attend protests, and involve themselves in activism. It’s easier to schedule those events around a shift at your part-time job, or a single class you have that day, than a business meeting, crucial to your career, the sort of which will become more common in your thirties. There’s also a lower cost to social status if young people do things that look weird, and deviate from societal norms, which tend to be set by an older, possibly less active, generation. At a younger age, what individuals lack is soft power, and influence. After all, if they could change things without protest action, surely they would try do so more readily.
Of course, the older generation, between the ages of 30 and 50, is hardly inactive, really. They just focus on different things, because they have different motivations. This is a time when, keeping up appearances to stay ahead in the rat race, one cannot take as many personal risks without risking career capital. People of this demographic are also more likely to have a large(r) family of dependents, such as young children, and elderly parents. In addition to the high constraints all this may place on time and money, the fact that this is family may cause people to focus less upon distant others. This is understandable. People of this cohort are still altruistic, though. However, upon focusing on their career development, family, and community, they’re more likely to support causes that have been brought to their attention by their default circle of influence. They may fund donation drives at their children’s school, or at the workplace, they may volunteer locally, and they may count the community involvement they do for fun altruistic in its own right as well. Also, because they have so much to care for, people of prime working age may be minimizing extra costs, such as donated time or money, to hedge against unknown risks such as family emergencies, etc.
As people age, their children, and other family, are no longer dependent upon them. After retirement, people have more time. Even in the later parts of one’s career, before retirement, one may own a business, or be in a position for which one doesn’t need to put in extra effort beyond the requirements to stay afloat, or get ahead. Elders have more money to donate to political causes, but they also leave legacy gifts, endowments, and the like. This happens at a time when they’re more respected in society as elders, and may have more soft power anyway. Additionally, they either have more money than they’ll ever need, or they at least have greater confidence in how secure the money they have saved will support them for the remainder of their lives. Finally, they may think about supporting grander causes in a broader way than what they did with altruism earlier in their life, as they think about how they’ll want to be known, and remembered.
This model above is a hypothesis for a trend. Of course, there will be outliers. Mark Zuckerburg is influencing the world in ways many in their twenties couldn’t have dreamed of, while they’re still trying to get on the career track. On the converse, it would be crass of us to just assume the typical senior has money they’re sitting on that they could give away, when many pensioners themselves are in need. Indeed, I believe that increasing the healthspan of seniors could be considered one of the most effective altruism opportunities available, given the right research, and application of it. Anyway, this model seems simple enough to verify, or falsify, by checking the right sort of data.
What I’m trying to show is that it seems intuitively plausible that everyone has ideals, and everyone cares, but society drives people to care about different things in different ways over the course of their lives. To a parent, ‘ensuring my child grows up happy, healthy, and safe’ may be an ideal felt as strongly by a young activist yet without children pushing for some greater equity, or equality, in society. Cynicism of any particular generation doesn’t need to be rejected on the basis that it’s unattractive; rather, the cynical approach of older generations don’t care, or young people are too naive, may not explain as much as simply as this other model.
Ryan, if you think this hypothesis may hold weight, where could someone access the data to check? If not you, would someone at 80,000 Hours know? I feel as if that if we could figure this out, it could be not only an optimistic but also truer message that, e.g., Will MacAskill could put into his book. For people of any age, effective altruism will be non-conformist. If we can paint a positive picture that everyone cares, and wants to care, about the world, but just socially pushed in different directions, people new to effective altruism might realize that they can get off the hedonic treadmill anytime they like, rethink where they focus their resources for doing good, and find support in others.
I agree, because people of all different demographics not only have different kinds of resources, but different opportunities.
Young people are more likely to have time to attend protests, and involve themselves in activism. It’s easier to schedule those events around a shift at your part-time job, or a single class you have that day, than a business meeting, crucial to your career, the sort of which will become more common in your thirties. There’s also a lower cost to social status if young people do things that look weird, and deviate from societal norms, which tend to be set by an older, possibly less active, generation. At a younger age, what individuals lack is soft power, and influence. After all, if they could change things without protest action, surely they would try do so more readily.
Of course, the older generation, between the ages of 30 and 50, is hardly inactive, really. They just focus on different things, because they have different motivations. This is a time when, keeping up appearances to stay ahead in the rat race, one cannot take as many personal risks without risking career capital. People of this demographic are also more likely to have a large(r) family of dependents, such as young children, and elderly parents. In addition to the high constraints all this may place on time and money, the fact that this is family may cause people to focus less upon distant others. This is understandable. People of this cohort are still altruistic, though. However, upon focusing on their career development, family, and community, they’re more likely to support causes that have been brought to their attention by their default circle of influence. They may fund donation drives at their children’s school, or at the workplace, they may volunteer locally, and they may count the community involvement they do for fun altruistic in its own right as well. Also, because they have so much to care for, people of prime working age may be minimizing extra costs, such as donated time or money, to hedge against unknown risks such as family emergencies, etc.
As people age, their children, and other family, are no longer dependent upon them. After retirement, people have more time. Even in the later parts of one’s career, before retirement, one may own a business, or be in a position for which one doesn’t need to put in extra effort beyond the requirements to stay afloat, or get ahead. Elders have more money to donate to political causes, but they also leave legacy gifts, endowments, and the like. This happens at a time when they’re more respected in society as elders, and may have more soft power anyway. Additionally, they either have more money than they’ll ever need, or they at least have greater confidence in how secure the money they have saved will support them for the remainder of their lives. Finally, they may think about supporting grander causes in a broader way than what they did with altruism earlier in their life, as they think about how they’ll want to be known, and remembered.
This model above is a hypothesis for a trend. Of course, there will be outliers. Mark Zuckerburg is influencing the world in ways many in their twenties couldn’t have dreamed of, while they’re still trying to get on the career track. On the converse, it would be crass of us to just assume the typical senior has money they’re sitting on that they could give away, when many pensioners themselves are in need. Indeed, I believe that increasing the healthspan of seniors could be considered one of the most effective altruism opportunities available, given the right research, and application of it. Anyway, this model seems simple enough to verify, or falsify, by checking the right sort of data.
What I’m trying to show is that it seems intuitively plausible that everyone has ideals, and everyone cares, but society drives people to care about different things in different ways over the course of their lives. To a parent, ‘ensuring my child grows up happy, healthy, and safe’ may be an ideal felt as strongly by a young activist yet without children pushing for some greater equity, or equality, in society. Cynicism of any particular generation doesn’t need to be rejected on the basis that it’s unattractive; rather, the cynical approach of older generations don’t care, or young people are too naive, may not explain as much as simply as this other model.
Ryan, if you think this hypothesis may hold weight, where could someone access the data to check? If not you, would someone at 80,000 Hours know? I feel as if that if we could figure this out, it could be not only an optimistic but also truer message that, e.g., Will MacAskill could put into his book. For people of any age, effective altruism will be non-conformist. If we can paint a positive picture that everyone cares, and wants to care, about the world, but just socially pushed in different directions, people new to effective altruism might realize that they can get off the hedonic treadmill anytime they like, rethink where they focus their resources for doing good, and find support in others.
I’m not sure. I think the data you want is who donates and volunteers more, and how does this relate to age and income? Maybe census data would help?
Yeah, that’s the sort of data I’m thinking of. Honestly, I’m not very thoughtful when it comes to these things. Thanks for the pointer.