DougNorton.com

I’m really looking forward to the New Year and all the adventures, challenges, and obstacles the New Year will will bring. Here are some thoughts on my most research agenda,

"Love in action is harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams"

-Fyodor Dostoevsky

The most courageous and emotionally costly experiences are often acts of love. That is why the path to love is so infrequently traveled by humans -even Christian humans. Our natural responses are cowardice and comfort. But, what if we did act in courageous and emotionally costly ways? What would happen?

Perhaps if we sow in love we will also reap love; yet, love is tricky to observe and therefore some action must reveal this inner transformation. For the current research and exposition we will assume that love manifests itself in the act of generosity. Certainly there are acts of generosity that are not wholly sacrificial and some faith traditions would argue we are incapable of such acts; but, observing generosity is the closest manifestation of "gift love" or agape by which we might hope to glimpse into someone’s heart.

Recently Mark Isaac and I submitted a grant to the Templeton Foundation "Science of Generosity". Please pray for us that we receive the money to conduct experimental studies based on stories of "harsh love" like Dostevsky described in his wonderful book Brothers Karamazov. The experiments are based on stories in the New Testament that seek to understand the magnitude of impact certain behaviors have on ourselves and others. Sometimes we do not remind ourselves of the very difficult, courageous, and costly acts we are called to by Christ. There are three specific teachings we will focus on if we are able to get the money for this research. Stay posted for more information.

The new semester has kicked-off to a terrific start.  And, I’m looking forward to running some experiments this semester and improving on the lecture notes for the Economics of Compassion.  Possibly the lecture notes could eventually produce a text book for a class that currently borrows from several other books that are wonderful but do not encompass all covered topics.

Also, something that has been cropping up over the past week that is really beginning to fascinate me is the tension between normative and positive analysis (how an economy ought to work and how it does work).  The divorce between the two occurred quite some time ago for a number of reasons, chief among them the economist’s desire to sever their ties with ethics for the sake of gaining some sense that economics is a "real science."  But, it seems normative economics is important since the "ought to" questions are the one’s people are most interested about.  Edward Zajac wrote in The Political Economy of Fairness, "Although their strong views on how to right societal wrongs may be fair game at cocktail parties, economists are careful to keep them out of their professional lives.  This is reasonable; however, this mind-set also keeps economists from treating fairness and justice as a topic to be analyzed, objectively and dispassionately, with a view toward improving conventional economic analysis."

This semester has been a terrific encouragement. Currently I am awaiting approval from the Human Subjects Committee for two proposed experiments; but, more importantly this has been a good time for course development. The Economics of Compassion course was successful last year but I want the class to be more engaging, fulfilling, and informing for the students this year and am searching for ways to improve the course. Also, it has been confirmed that I will be teaching a special section of the course this upcoming Spring semester to the Social Justice Living Learning Community on campus. I’m really looking forward to meeting and working with this select group of individuals whose hearts are set on justice.

It has been quite some time since my thesis defense and my attention turned almost immediately to other research that rested on the back burner. Now that we have submitted some of our research and are between experiments our efforts have been focused on writing grants. As my friend Jon and I always used to joke, “We’re chasing that sweet dollar.” Hopefully at the end of the process it will mean more experiments and more well fed Florida State students.

Thanks to everyone that supported me and offered me advice for my thesis.  As of June 12th I have a successfully defended thesis and I’m looking forward to graduation in August.  Now it’s time to write up all of the other research and send it out to journals.   Also, there is another big task of developing the product, procedures, and network for the coffee shop “rhythm”.  I’ll be sure to keep people updated.  Hope you’re all having a great summer.

Sincerely,

Doug Norton