A Sermon by the Rev. Melanie
Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist
Church of New Orleans
Sunday, January 13, 2013
You
never know when you’re going to need an unexpected outbreak of
cooperation. Just this week, an
opportunity arose within our church as confusion over the date of the Martin
Luther King Jr. holiday caused a disruption in planning for this service. Within the space of just 2 days, and
with me being a thousand miles away, we had to pull together this morning’s
service. In a terrific show of
cooperation and teamwork, office volunteer Jolanda Walter, Music Director Betsy
McGovern, and accompanist Jane Jensen all agreed to drop our carefully laid
plans for this Sunday, move it all to next week (which actually IS Martin
Luther King weekend), and quickly finalize today’s service. It had to be done, I couldn’t have done
it alone, and it needed everyone’s cheerful cooperation – it all came together
and I’m so grateful.
Today’s
topic really is a fascinating subject:
Just how is it that the normal rationally-selfish orientation of an
individual human being becomes cooperative within a community? Natalie Glance
and Bernardo Huberman, co-authors of the Scientific American article excerpted
for our Reading, have studied what is called the social dilemma phenomenon for
years, employing both mathematical analysis and elaborate computer models, and using
previous work by other scientists. From all this work, they have drawn several
conclusions that have important implications for all those involved in a group
of people requiring cooperation, such as unions, corporations, governments,
voluntary organizations -- and of course congregations. In short, what we learn from the study
of social dilemmas is important for just about everyone.
In
general, as in the Diner’s Dilemma scenario, human beings generally function in
ways that tend to maximize the outcome of a situation for themselves. That is, individuals will make such
choices UNLESS some factors enter in that convince a person to act more
altruistically, more in line with the common good of a group or community, even
if that choice is somewhat disadvantageous to themselves.
Glance
and Huberman found that there were 4 factors that increased the amount of
cooperation in a group. First is
the tenure of an individual within the group; that is, how long a person has
been a member, and how long they expect to stay a member. A person brand-new to the group, or who
is planning to move away, is more likely to act in their own best interest than
to think of the welfare of the group.
On the other hand, a person who’s been a part of the group for a long
time, or one who plans to make the community their home, tends more toward
behavior that fosters the common good of the group.
This
same principle holds true in a church.
Folks who are new, or who may not be committed to staying, are less
willing to support the congregation with their time, talent, and treasure. On the other hand, generally speaking,
it is often the longest-term members of a church and those who expect to stay
for a long time who are usually its most generous givers and hardest workers.
The
2nd factor in cooperation is the size of the group. The larger the crowd, the more
reasonable it would be to expect that the effects of an individual’s action
would be diluted. In the dinner
party example, $20-$25 either way makes little difference if the check is being
divided among 30 diners -- but it makes a BIG difference to 5 diners. In general, the larger the group, the
harder it is to maintain cooperation of all the individuals involved.
Again,
we find that this also works in churches.
In a very small church, a shortfall of $100 can break the budget; in a
middle-size congregation a deficit of $1000 is a crisis. In a large church, there might be
tolerance for variances that would be unthinkable to congregations in the
smaller categories. An amount
that’s hard to raise for 50 people is somewhat easier for 100, and is a walk in
the park for 1000 people. By the
same token, once a pattern of non-cooperation has begun -- what Glance and
Huberman call the stability function -- it is much harder to jumpstart
cooperation in a large group than in a small one. The possible positive effects of individuals is diluted in a
large group, and the possible negative consequences loom so large, that the
disincentive to defect vanishes, and cooperation becomes difficult.
This
is not to say, however, that cooperation is impossible in big groups. The examples given by the authors of
the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union show that
cooperation toward even momentous change IS possible in even the largest of
groups. To increase the likelihood
of cooperation, Glance and Huberman recommend forming smaller groups within the
large group -- much like the way the UUA recommends the formation and nurture of
small group ministries, or Covenant Groups, within Unitarian Universalist
congregations.
The
3rd factor is the amount of information available to the people in
the group. Not too surprisingly,
communication fosters cooperation -- in fact, studies show that redundancy in
communicating, what the authors call “repeated iterations,” promotes
cooperative attitudes. The more
the participants talked to one another, the more information that was shared in
the group, the more often the same information was repeated, the greater and
stronger the cooperation. Once
again using the Diners Dilemma as our example, if the dinner guests talked out
loud about their menu choices and what they felt like eating (and spending),
then the more likely it would be that all would stay in tune and not attempt to
“free ride” each other.
Perhaps
to even say that communication is important in securing the cooperation of the
members of a congregation is a big DUH!
It is certainly something that our congregation has been reminded of
quite recently. But it is a little
surprising how many churches -- including our own -- forget the importance of
good communication.
To
increase the spirit of cooperation in any group, but especially a religious
community based in congregational polity, the members have to feel that they
are included, kept informed, and not being led around in the dark by leaders
who don’t trust them. (Years ago,
there was a cartoon that circulated around the middle managers of the
Godchaux’s store on Canal Street where I worked as assistant store manager. The cartoon showed an unhappy-looking
mushroom; the caption said, “I must be a mushroom, because they keep me in the
dark and feed me manure.” The
store was family-owned and not very open to new ideas and outsiders; it has
since gone out of business.) In a strong
and healthy community, there is no such thing as too much communication.
The
4th factor may surprise you -- it sure did me. It is diversity. I’ll bet you thought, as I did, that
the more homogenous the group, the better the cooperative spirit. Disparate beliefs, Glance and Huberman
found, tended to increase the amount of co-operation in a group. Their studies showed 2 kinds of
diversity that affected social cooperation. One is a difference in what they called a “threshold” which
basically means different people have different tolerances in different
situations.
The
other difference that impacts cooperation is factions, or small groups within
the larger group that share a particular outlook or point of view. For example, among our diners there
might be both struggling students and successful professionals. The variations within the subgroups
would be much smaller than between the 2 subgroups.
What
does this mean for a liberal church?
For one thing, it would mean that there really IS “unity in
diversity.” The more inclusive the
church, the more varied the beliefs and philosophies, the easier it is to
foster co-operation, as each different person with their differing threshold
and each subgroup with their new belief system makes the decision to commit to
the community as a whole, causing a rippling cascade effect throughout the
congregation. All of us thinking
alike, all of us agreeing, all of us being of one mind -- turns out to be,
counter-intuitively, the wrong way to build a strong cooperative
religious community.
So
how do you increase cooperation in a social group? You rely on the example of the most committed individuals
with the longest horizons; you break the larger group into smaller more
cohesive units; you increase the amount of communication and the rate and iteration
of information flow; you open up the group to be more inclusive, more
diverse. How do you get a UU
congregation to be a more cooperative community, to raise the amount pledged in
the Annual Budget Drive, to get more volunteers for Sunday School, to act in ways
that foster the common good? You
do the same things.
But
there’s no utopia, no perfect community, no completely cooperative
congregation. The automatic default
setting on most human beings is self-interest, not altruism. Folks will always slide back into
seeking a free ride, or getting the most they can while giving the least they
can. The way that Glance and Huberman
chart the flow of cooperative human behavior, it’s easy to see why they say
that building a community will always be “punctuated by unexpected outbreaks of
cooperation.”
But
pockets of collaboration can spread; outbreaks of cooperation can become a
full-scale wave. Community,
although it requires a lessening of the maximized outcome for the individual,
turns out to have unmeasurable benefits that most folks eventually feel is
worth the risk and the trouble.
It
IS a social dilemma, all right -- how to nurture the spirit of co-operative
community while still valuing and upholding the rights of the individual. Is it easy? By no means. Is
it worth it? I believe most of us
would join me in saying, from the heart, Oh yes. So might this be, for our lives and in this congregation! AMEN
-- ASHE – SHALOM -- SALAAM -- NAMASTE -- BLESSED BE!
