Altruistic Impulse & the Groundswell

"..the fundamental emotions that drive people to the groundswell - the desire to connect, to create, to stay in touch, and to help each other - are universal"

(p.49, Groundswell)

FIRST OF ALL

Reading the first pages of the Groundswell I've been waiting for an answer to the most enigmatic questions on the Internet at the present time: What forces people to participate in the groundswell? "What is their emotional motivation?" (p. 60, Groundswell). Authors describe many reasons, for instance, "keeping up friendships", "succumbing to social pressure from existing friends" (which is very true), "the altruistic impulse", "the prurient impulse" etc.

As for me, the altruistic impulse is a little bit questionable and problematic. What is at the back of this selflessness? In the age of the Internet and marketing it's hard to believe that something can be created for an absolutely altruistic reason. Besides, sometimes it's more difficult to check if that unselfish motivation is genuine or not. We cannot go to people's heads.

ALTRUISTIC IMPULSE 

I've found the following examples of altruistic sites (of course, Wikipedia is beyond competition) which demonstrate this idea clearly. Firstly, I should mention Linux (which is the most outstanding example of free and open-source collaboration). 

Another example is Project Gutenberg (PG) (the oldest digital library) which is "a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". It is claimed that they try to make this eBook collection as free as possible. Well, that remains to be seen.

One more example is Care2 (social networking, petitioning site) which goal is "to connect activists from around the world with other individuals, organizations and responsible businesses making an impact". If you click the link, you'll see the groundswell in action. This is a great example how to take advantage of social media. Just look at these themes:

The results: 381 million signatures and counting. Can you imagine?

The Hottest petitions on Tuesday, September 22, 2015: "Tell Ellen Degeneres to remove leather from her clothing line" (100,322 supporters), "End commercial aerial hunting on wild hogs" (87,885 supporters), "Urgent signatures needed to stop OC Animal Control from killing karma the husky" (287,137 supporters). 

"It's one thing to understand what drives the groundswell - it's quite another to dive into it and turn those forces to your advantage"

(p.62, Groundswell)

AND ONE MORE THING

Do you remember Harriet Klausner? (she is the Amazon's top reviewer who reads 2 books a day). TWO BOOKS a day. "She's well known to publishers, which send her 50 books a week). I've checked the updates and the result is fabulous. It's very doubtful and inspiring at the same time:

Check these tips how to become a famous person on the Internet:

All in all, when ordinary people are given a voice and something or someone can be truly altruistic and truly prominent (as the Harriet Klausner's example), it can bring a lot more brilliant ideas and a belief in world's improvement.