Authors thrive on free publicity, which helps get the word out about a book. I am very fortunate to find that I've gotten publicity well before the book was ever released, which is a nice little feather in my cap, and a testament to the power of this project. Check out the story at Anderson's local newspaper, The Herald Bulletin. The picture is, I think, a bit unflattering, but the one in the newspaper version of the story, which was taken as we were giving out gift cards, is much better.
Let me know what you think of the interview!
GOd BLess You Both. You truly are a living testimony to God's promises. You will be blessed by this outpouring.
ReplyDeleteI have a suggestion. There is a half-way house in ANderson, Stepping Stones. It is for substance abuse people and mostly military veterans. They survive mostly on donations from outside sources. I know people give food alot, a large monetary concern. There are about 65 men and women housed their. They get counceling and housing. I know they are very successful, my son is an alcoholic and he is there. After 8 years he is sober 6 months now and has a full time job. Praise the Lord. I know they always can use a helping hand in feeding and housing these lost souls. The phone # there is 648-1101, address-332 W. 11th St. Just an idea. Also of our veteraans are having a rough time, they have seen alot. I truly believe Stepping Stones was an answer to my prayers and they saved my sons life, and they are doing this everyday. Just an idea. Keep on praising GOd and doing His Good Words.
I think what you are doing is a blessing. I pesonally would like to know which store you were at, giving out the gift cards you purchased there, when the manager came out and made you leave. In this day and age with the economy the way it is, the manager should have been appreciative of your generosity because, not only did you purchase the cards there, but odds are, the people receiving them would have gone inside and spent them there. If I knew which store you were at, I would not patronize this store as, apparently, the manager doesn't care about charity actions at all. God Bless you and your family. It's a shame more people don't practice random acts of kindness or charity.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me the idea of punishing the grocery store is antithetical to the idea the Jones are demonstrating; extending love to their world in the form of money (my description, not theirs).
ReplyDeleteWhy not experiment with extending love to the situation. Why did the store manager ask them to leave? We don't know. If (s)he was uncertain, confused, or frightened by their actions, why not extend Love into the situation and let Love work its healing powers? Maybe there was simply a store policy the manager was required to follow. If that's the case why punish the company? If there is a store policy that the manager was following it may have prevented two kind souls from giving away gift cards at that moment but it's probably also prevented the less genuine from annoying customers on a regular basis. So if it was store policy why not extend love to the store for implementing that policy?
Thank you Andrew and Amanda Jones for demonstrating your trust in Life.
What a hare-brained "experiment"! Why would people NOT ACCEPT gift cards from strange (in more ways than one) people? For any number of reasons, from being too proud to accept charity, to having plenty of money & not needing it, to never accepting ANYTHING from some long-hair whack-job loitering in front of the grocery store. "LOOK, folks, I'VE got money to burn & YOU DON'T!" I'll bet the grocery store's management are just wringing their hands over your little boycott - what a pompous air-headed megalomaniac!
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"It is said that papers in string theory are published at a rate greater than the speed of light. This, however, is not problematic since no information is being transmitted."
Congratulations on the media coverage!
ReplyDeleteThanks to everyone for the kind words and thoughts. I hope the project is successful, on a number of levels, and in fact so far I've had a great time doing it, even though it's at times been frustrating.
ReplyDeleteJust a few comments on some comments:
1. Important stuff first - it's Amber, not Amanda.
2. Though it was frustrating to be asked to leave the store, and I expressed this frustration myself in the blog when it happened, I am not encouraging a wide-scale boycott of this or any Pay-Less grocery store. Yes, the experience left me with a negative experience at that store so I won't go back ... but it's not my local grocery store anyway. So for me to say they won't get my business again isn't so much a boycott as just a statement that rather than stopping by that store on the way home, I'll stop at another one, where I haven't had a negative experience.
3. The store totally had the right to ask us to leave, and the commenter who points out that they have to think of the comfort of their customers is certainly valid. In retrospect, it may not have been the best way to handle the give. Still, there were 12 people who had a very positive experience there because of our handing out the gift cards, and they deserve at least as much consideration as the ones who turned it down. The difference between what we were doing and what a religious or political person does is twofold:
First, the thing we were giving away was of objective, not subjective, value. As opposed to the value of a religious or political position, no reasonable person could disagree about the positive value of the gift card.
Second, the thing we were giving away required no real action on the part of the receiver. This is why I would argue that we were doing was not "solicitation," while religious and political people are soliciting. They are trying to get something - agreement with their belief system - out of the person they're speaking to. I suppose the argument could be made that I was trying to get acceptance of my gift cards out of the people I spoke to, but that seems a stretch to me.
4. I appreciate the comment which points out that some people could see this as an act of vanity, and from the beginning I had concerns over it being viewed this way. I'll address some of these issues in future posts, but one thing I find interesting - the "any number of reasons" cited include "being too proud to accept charity, to having plenty of money & not needing it, to never accepting ANYTHING from some long-hair whack-job loitering in front of the grocery store." Yes, these all could be reasons for being turned down, but the point is that none of these are good reasons for turning down $20 when offered. Pride isn't a good reason to turn down a gift. I know of no person who has so much money that $20 wouldn't be appreciated, and wealthy people would be even more likely to express curiosity about such a thing ... how do you think they got wealthy? It wasn't like anyone said, "You know, son, I lead a very wonderful life and have such abundance I don't need your $20. Give it to someone who has less!" And if someone had a blanket policy about not accepting things from certain types of people, just on the basis of what the person looks like (because there's no way they can know, from looking at someone, that he or she is definitely a whack-job), then you are turning down good fortune because the bearer didn't quite look the way you expected. This is irrational.
Again, though, I do appreciate all of the comments. They will be of great help in my reflections this week as I solidify these experiences more fully into book format.
All the best,
Andrew
A quote from a friend who read the article & subsequent comments, "If somebody gave me something like that, I'd probably assume that there was some kind of catch or scam and would throw it away. It's all about making himself feel better any way.". That's EXACTLY, what it's all about, in abridged "sentence format". Spare us the self-serving tome!
ReplyDeleteThe last poster is (mostly) right. I feel great performing this project!
ReplyDeleteIn fact, neurological evidence suggests that we receive as much satisfaction from giving a reward as we do from receiving the reward. If giving to others felt bad, I would have stopped it long ago, and certainly I wouldn't have started this project in the first place.
Here's a key point, though: there was no catch or scam, so the friend whom you quote would have thrown away $20 based on an incorrect preconception.
Once given the gift card, it's certainly his right to throw it away ... but I wonder who is benefiting and who is being hurt in this scenario. I have already decided to get rid of the $20, but have gained a psychological benefit from the act of giving. I deem the benefit to myself, and hopefully others, to be more worthwhile than the $20 itself.
Your friend, on the other hand, has also sacrificed $20, but it's not clear to me that he's getting any benefit in exchange. I can't conceive of a psychological benefit that he gets from an act that's based purely on an incorrect basis of fear and mistrust.
My friend meant that you enjoyed drawing *attention* to yourself, NOT that you enjoyed giving. He believes that there is no "free lunch" & is suspicious of any "free" offer, as most have (at least) a catch of some kind. Your “incorrect basis of fear and mistrust” statement is both incredibly naïve & ignorant. It's best to delete both the email offer from the Nigerian banker & to turn down the $20 gift card from some nut-case standing outside a grocery store. Perception is EVERYTHING!
ReplyDeleteI must also correct your use of the word "reward" in describing your $20 gift card giveaway. An online dictionary defines "reward" as "a recompense for worthy acts/payment made in return for a service rendered". The people who accepted your offer did NOTHING that you knew of to be rewarded for, in fact, they may well have been (for all you knew) thieves, crack addicts & prostitutes who were more worthy of PENALTY (the OPPOSITE of REWARD!)…
…or are YOU declaring yourself a DEITY who is capable & worthy of passing judgment upon those who you bestowed your Holy Gift Cards?
Your “gifting” could easily be perceived as a thinly-veiled “experimental” microcosm of a welfare state & of your enthusiasm to participate in such a socialist debacle. You were, indeed, “redistributing wealth” to the undeserving, though any acceptance of the gift cards does not verify the acceptance of socialism. It merely proves that a certain percentage of people will take advantage of a long-hair whack-job giving money away, when it should have gone into his kids’ college fund.
Your “experiment” is stupid enough at face value, but to describe it as a Lenten sacrifice is a despicable sacrilege. Any TRULY religious philanthropist would give anonymously to a worthy cause, rather than make a public display like a foolish braggart, hoping to make money on a future book. Unless your wife is brain-washed or as brain-dead as you, she should give YOU up for Lent!
If perception is everything, then how can you be naive? Perceiving the world as a place of abundance and generosity means that it is a world of abundance and generosity, whereas perceiving the world as a place of mistrust and stinginess ... well, you can see where I'm going with this.
ReplyDeleteYou are right about the word "reward," but I still stand by its use - I was rewarding them for the simple act of walking to the grocery store at a certain time of day. I am fairly certain that every human being on the planet has done something worthy of being rewarded by $20, even if they were thieves, crack addicts, or prostitutes.
You have no way of knowing whether the people were deserving or undeserving, and neither do I. You assume they were undeserving; I assume they were deserving, and it was my $20 to give. And, as you say, "Perception is EVERYTHING!" which ... well, I think you see where I'm going with this.
And a welfare state implies that the government is giving the aid. Individual giving is, by definition, not the least bit socialistic. It can be communal, perhaps, but not socialistic.
Also, just to be clear about something - I have *never* described this activity as a religious Lenten sacrifice. The newspaper article emphasized the "Lent" aspect way more than I think it should have. If you read my quote from the interview, you will see that I had the idea for the concept of the project and THEN realized that Lent would be a good time to do it, for symbolic (not particularly religious) reasons.
Again, though, thanks again for following the blog and being such an active member of the 40 Days of Giving community!
Andrew Zimmerman Jones said...
ReplyDelete“If perception is everything, then how can you be naive? Perceiving the world as a place of abundance and generosity means that it is a world of abundance and generosity, whereas perceiving the world as a place of mistrust and stinginess ... well, you can see where I'm going with this.”
Frankly, no, I don’t see where you’re “going with this”. A world where zealots fly passenger jets into skyscrapers cannot be labeled merely as a “world of abundance and generosity”. The phrases “buyer beware” & “trust but verify” come to mind; the world is also full of con artists, if you’re not aware of that then you are beyond naïve.
“You are right about the word "reward," but I still stand by its use - I was rewarding them for the simple act of walking to the grocery store at a certain time of day. I am fairly certain that every human being on the planet has done something worthy of being rewarded by $20, even if they were thieves, crack addicts, or prostitutes.”
Maybe you think it noble to reward criminals, I think it would be a millions times more noble to give the money to a responsible charity for Haiti relief. Another little tidbit that you seemed to have overlooked: when you buy store gift cards, they do not designate WHAT type of products that they are redeemable for. They could have been redeemed for cigarettes & liquor for all you know. Instead, you could have TRULY helped a starving child in a faraway land…but I guess that it’s more important to your massive ego to see the person’s face when you give them a gift. What a philanthropist!
“You have no way of knowing whether the people were deserving or undeserving, and neither do I. You assume they were undeserving; I assume they were deserving, and it was my $20 to give. And, as you say, "Perception is EVERYTHING!" which ... well, I think you see where I'm going with this.”
Again, I have no idea where you are “going with this”. As I just stated, there are people in this world, at this moment, who NEED financial help FAR MORE than random folks walking into a grocery store in Anderson, Indiana. After all, they wouldn’t be walking into that store unless they already had (at least) enough money or food stamps on hand to purchase what they intended to buy!
On another point, if your intentions were so holy, then why were you kicked off the store’s property? The store management that booted you may well have PERCEIVED that you were protesting their prices as being high & that your “gifts” were intended to defray the customers’ bills. The truth is that you were pulling a stunt to get admitted “free publicity” for a book, that is NOT charity, it is SICK. (cont‘d. in next post)
“And a welfare state implies that the government is giving the aid. Individual giving is, by definition, not the least bit socialistic. It can be communal, perhaps, but not socialistic.”
ReplyDeleteThe key word I used, “microcosm” went completely over your head. In your giveaway scenario, it could be perceived that YOU played the part of government, parceling out money as you (big government) saw fit. Because it was NOT used as truly needed (charity for disaster victims, college fund for your kids, etc.), it demonstrated how unfair & wasteful socialism is. I did not say that you intended that demonstration (you called it “communal”, or communism, I reckon), but perception IS everything when one witnesses kooky goings-on like this!
“Also, just to be clear about something - I have *never* described this activity as a religious Lenten sacrifice. The newspaper article emphasized the "Lent" aspect way more than I think it should have. If you read my quote from the interview, you will see that I had the idea for the concept of the project and THEN realized that Lent would be a good time to do it, for symbolic (not particularly religious) reasons.”
I think that your blog title “40 days of giving” more then implies the Lent connection, & that you trying to distance yourself from the religious (dare I say Christian???) aspect of it is quite appropriate for the season. Didn’t a certain Judas Iscariot also deny his religious ties, leading to his eventual suicide? How’s THAT for symbolism?
“Again, though, thanks again for following the blog and being such an active member of the 40 Days of Giving community!”
You’re quite welcome for the exchanges, although I am not “an active member of the 40 Days of Giving community”. I just know hypocrisy when I see it, & that “selling” one’s hair for $10,000 is the ultimate statement of arrogance, vanity & hypocrisy. Just do as my daughter did & cut it off without the price tag so a sick child can make use of it, Rapunzel!