[Note: I wasnât involved in the decisions around the wording of The Pledge so am speaking from my personal perspective as a member of The Pledge, and as a staff member at GWWC who has spoken with many members and prospective members.]
I agree that there is a downside to having ambiguity around the technicality of GWWC pledges. There are members who, from my perspective, I think they take it too loosely and others who take it too seriously.
However, the level of specificity is a very difficult tradeoff to make when making a short standardised simple language moral commitment for a large and diverse group of people with different backgrounds, contexts, and levels of scrupulosity.
If GWWC were to try to precisely state everything in the pledge language then itâd be less of a moral commitment and more of a legal contract â it certainly wouldnât fit on a pledge certificate. Weâd certainly miss many circumstances and getting agreement from members whoâve already taken a pledge to be backwards compatible would be very difficult.
Furthermore, I think an overly legalistic pledge would make it harder for most people to make (itâd be too scary/âconfusing) and keep their commitments. I think that trusting people to use their conscience (while providing guidance like is done in the FAQ and in member conversations) is a feature not a bug.
if I agreed to a pledge like this, Iâd need to carefully specify the conditions under which Iâd allow myself to exit this pledge or not, since itâs not nearly clear enough to me in its current wording.
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I want to be a person of unusual honesty and integrity, and so I want to think about what commitments mean to me and how I can structure my environment to help me make good ones and keep them.
Iâm glad that you have self-knowledge to know that youâd like to have more specificity. Many people whoâve taken a pledge have also gone further in specifying things that they think are important to their commitment (such as under what specific conditions they would resign from their pledge) and sometimes write up a document (or blog post) and share it with several close friends they want to hold them accountable. If someone were considering a pledge and had these strong preferences around specificity then Iâd encourage this route.
I think itâs great that the pledge now asks you to specify a starting and end time and particular percentage by default. (Previously, it read âuntil I retireâ).
Actually, this depends on whether you are taking a Trial Pledge (which requires a specific amount and period) or The GWWC Pledge (which is still a 10% pledge of lifetime earnings, âuntil I retireâ).
I think itâs quite bad that the main text of the pledge doesnât include any mention of an exit clause.
This is where it is quite similar to marriage and Iâd argue thatâs generally a good thing. Of course there are reasons that marriages end, but theyâre variable and relevant to the individual people. If you look at the reasons marriages end sometimes people could work through those things and other times itâs best it ends. I wouldnât include something like âinfidelityâ or âpoor communicationâ as an exit clause within my wedding vows, but I can imagine both cases where the marriage would survive the common reasons people end marriages and also other cases where itâd be best to end it for some of those reasons (in good conscience). That being said, Iâm all for people customising their vows (me and my wife did!) but still generally committing to the same thing as other married folk (put a damn good effort into sticking with the person for the rest of your lives until itâs clear itâs no longer a good thing for you to do). The same can be said for giving pledges: you can generally commit to the same thing, but also customise to what makes sense to you (e.g. write up a separate document also).
Hope that helps to provide an alternative perspective and is useful to hear a bit of the reasoning behind why things might be the way they are right now, and why Iâm not currently in favour of any major changes to the pledge language to include an exit clause.
GWWC is also currently in the process of updating our new FAQs and would love any input here.
Giving What We Canâs mission is to make giving effectively and significantly a cultural norm. If you think that any changes (e.g. to the FAQ, pledges language, or ways of communicating these ideas) would help us better achieve that mission then weâd be especially grateful to hear those suggestions.
Thanks for sharing your perspective here Jeffrey!
[Note: I wasnât involved in the decisions around the wording of The Pledge so am speaking from my personal perspective as a member of The Pledge, and as a staff member at GWWC who has spoken with many members and prospective members.]
I agree that there is a downside to having ambiguity around the technicality of GWWC pledges. There are members who, from my perspective, I think they take it too loosely and others who take it too seriously.
However, the level of specificity is a very difficult tradeoff to make when making a short standardised simple language moral commitment for a large and diverse group of people with different backgrounds, contexts, and levels of scrupulosity.
If GWWC were to try to precisely state everything in the pledge language then itâd be less of a moral commitment and more of a legal contract â it certainly wouldnât fit on a pledge certificate. Weâd certainly miss many circumstances and getting agreement from members whoâve already taken a pledge to be backwards compatible would be very difficult.
Furthermore, I think an overly legalistic pledge would make it harder for most people to make (itâd be too scary/âconfusing) and keep their commitments. I think that trusting people to use their conscience (while providing guidance like is done in the FAQ and in member conversations) is a feature not a bug.
Iâm glad that you have self-knowledge to know that youâd like to have more specificity. Many people whoâve taken a pledge have also gone further in specifying things that they think are important to their commitment (such as under what specific conditions they would resign from their pledge) and sometimes write up a document (or blog post) and share it with several close friends they want to hold them accountable. If someone were considering a pledge and had these strong preferences around specificity then Iâd encourage this route.
Actually, this depends on whether you are taking a Trial Pledge (which requires a specific amount and period) or The GWWC Pledge (which is still a 10% pledge of lifetime earnings, âuntil I retireâ).
This is where it is quite similar to marriage and Iâd argue thatâs generally a good thing. Of course there are reasons that marriages end, but theyâre variable and relevant to the individual people. If you look at the reasons marriages end sometimes people could work through those things and other times itâs best it ends. I wouldnât include something like âinfidelityâ or âpoor communicationâ as an exit clause within my wedding vows, but I can imagine both cases where the marriage would survive the common reasons people end marriages and also other cases where itâd be best to end it for some of those reasons (in good conscience). That being said, Iâm all for people customising their vows (me and my wife did!) but still generally committing to the same thing as other married folk (put a damn good effort into sticking with the person for the rest of your lives until itâs clear itâs no longer a good thing for you to do). The same can be said for giving pledges: you can generally commit to the same thing, but also customise to what makes sense to you (e.g. write up a separate document also).
Hope that helps to provide an alternative perspective and is useful to hear a bit of the reasoning behind why things might be the way they are right now, and why Iâm not currently in favour of any major changes to the pledge language to include an exit clause.
GWWC is also currently in the process of updating our new FAQs and would love any input here.
Giving What We Canâs mission is to make giving effectively and significantly a cultural norm. If you think that any changes (e.g. to the FAQ, pledges language, or ways of communicating these ideas) would help us better achieve that mission then weâd be especially grateful to hear those suggestions.