Drop Dead Generous Co-founder Tom Cledwyn joins me on Sentientism episode 236. Find our conversation on the Sentientism YouTube here and the Sentientism podcast here.

Tom Cledwyn describes himself as the “chief emailer” at Drop Dead Generous (he’s actually the co-founder). Inspired by Chris Anderson’s (of TED) book, “Infectious Generosity“, Tom and his co-founder John Sweeney set up DDG as an experiment in sparking creative, fun, hopefully infectious generosity. They’re giving away half a million dollars in $500 chunks to people who want to do something kind for someone else (whether human or not).

In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and “how can we make a better future?”

Sentientism answers those questions with “evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” In addition to the YouTube and Spotify above the audio is on our Podcast here on Apple & here on all the other platforms.

00:00 Clips

01:15 Welcome

– Our introduction by Zoe Weil. Her two Sentientism episodes here and here

04:00 Tom’s Intro

–  @dropdeadgenerous  “It is a little left-field”

– Background in advertising, design and creative roles “A marketing guy”

– Working at Meta “for my sins” in Singapore and London

– Doing “silly boy experiments… self-discovery… in the direction of service and doing good and trying to  make a difference”

– Now bringing marketing & creative skills directly into the space of social good

– “Championing kindness, generosity and giving… my heart and head have fallen into alignment for the time being”

06:04 What’s Real?

– Family and community “that didn’t really hold religion particularly closely”, despite attending church schools

– Shifting from apathy about religion to “I became a quite aggressive #atheist “

– If someone had asked Tom as a child “Do you believe in God”… “I would have thought you were referring to Le God, who is Matthew Le Tissier, Southampton’s best ever football player… now, unfortunately, a very strange conspiracist”

– “I don’t think I really asked myself those questions… I felt totally detached from it [religion]”

– “The history of war. How often it seemed, and still seems, that religion plays a big part in what people are fighting for or against… I found that very hard”

– “I wasn’t seeing really many upsides at that stage”

– Reading the story of Prometheus stealing fire from Zeus and giving it to the people, then being eternally punished

– “That story really framed what I felt… religion was a real was also a real shame… it seemed to give people an opportunity to put, through faith, whether their accountability, responsibility or hope in the hands of something other than themselves”

– “Angry teenage years”

– A more recent change: “Avidly not believing is in itself a belief… another form of dogma”

– Moving to London “A big place to be lonely in… I have a history of depression”

– Recognising the value of religious community and sense of service “there are upsides and downsides”

– “The spiritual side of me has become way more open in recent years”

– “If I’m careful of being dogmatic about anything then I have to be open to everything”

– Excitement and curiosity in the unknown “embrace being as open as possible in every way”

– “My use of this word spiritual… to represent a radical openness of mind rather than anything… supernatural”

18:40 What Matters?

– Living in an idyllic country home with ducks, geese, goats, turkeys, cats, dogs and a “pig called Sausage”

– Growing up with parents with a difficult relationship and father with a drinking problem (now sober for 10 years “he’ll do anything for anyone”)

– A beautiful home but “I feel a lot of sadness there too”

– Being a dad now “what a privileged role that is to play”

– “You can be both good and bad at the same time… for right and wrong reasons”

– “As an addict, I don’t blame my dad… but I still experienced the consequences of it”

– “You can take any sense of judgement out of the equation and just focus on in what environments and moments and support systems are people more good than they are bad.”

– Challenging agency, desert and retribution

– “Karma… whether it’s a thing that exists or not, you’re better off living as if it does”

– Responsibility, accountability, potential

– “I’m driven by enabling myself and others to be their best self – and trust in the ripple effect of that”

– “The injustice I feel is just as strong for someone not fulfilling their potential as it is for the suffering of the person who could benefit from them fulfilling their potential”

– “A framing that feels most empowering, most positive, most exciting”

– Kindness: “When we are at our most giving… most generous… in service of others… Looking back on things we’ve achieved that bring us our own happiness, sense of fulfilment and pride”

– “It feels like a total win-win”

– “I’m almost more interested… enabling people to give more… in all sorts of ways… by the journey and the outcome that they will experience from it. The recipient?… Their benefits? It’s a bonus.”

– “If you’re on a hunt for happiness and meaning then just be in service of people”

– The Free Help Guy blog. Taking 6 months off to offer free, anonymous help to anyone who asked “from naming babies to finding bone marrow donors”

– “It sparked… this real curiosity for the full breadth of human problems”

– “A lot of traditional charity… is almost abstracted… it’s themed… [whereas] the base level human problems faced – it just connects in a different way”

– Donating a kidney to a 7 year old girl after hearing Kay Mason “Not only had she donated her kidney to a stranger she’d lobbied the government to put in the laws that meant she actually could.”

– “As I was reading this article, the thought of ‘could I do that?’ was answered by… ‘yes and I’m doing it’ at exactly the same time. It was an easier decision than even putting on my socks this morning.”

– Hearing questions from then girlfriend and mum “all the questions I probably should have been asking myself… is it safe… can you live with one kidney… can’t you do this when you’re older?”

– “There’s 8 thousand people on the waiting list… this girl isn’t my daughter or sister or cousin but she is someone’s daughter or sister or cousin and it makes no difference.”

– “The only difference is that I won’t have the proximity to see the impact… That was a wonderful experience to go through… to do something I passionately believed in, knowing that I would never see the impact, but trusting that that impact occurred.”

– “This still gives me… goosebumps… If we can find a way to act beyond our in-groups… the community of people or non-human animals who we can see and touch and be thanked by… then we’re opening up an almost infinite amount of potential.”

– “I wanted to be the kind of person that could go through something like that… being happy with the decision despite not seeing the impact. If that occurs in me… a sort of super-power… I’m not limited to the person next to me or the people down the road.”

– Paul Bloom’s “Against Empathy”… “We need to think our way out of that empathy bias if we’re going to help the most amount of people in the best way”… Effective Altruism and impartiality

– The value of calculated impartiality but also “the power of the experience of doing something good when you can feel, touch and see the impact of it”

– “From a moral and ethical standpoint I am totally on board with the Paul Blooms and the Effective Altruists… from a policy perspective, if I was in government, I would be thinking this way too.”

– “As a mass marketeer I really can’t move too far away from the potential for the everyday person of an experience where they do something in service of others and they get that visceral feeling back through a thank you…”

– “That is the thing that’s going to make them fall in love with what they did and do it again and perhaps go on a journey where their sphere of influence goes beyond their empathy bias… their in-groups and their proximity”

– “A journey… You do look at your in-group first, fall in love with the act of giving, and then transcend to a point where everything, animal and so on is part of your in-group”

42:45 Who Matters?

– “Who matters… is the group of who that feel things”

– “This even sense of everyone mattering in equal measure”

– The Drop Dead Generous project “We’re giving $500 to a thousand people to do something drop dead generous or outrageously kind”

– A social experiment: “We’re less interested in the direct impact of those thousand acts of kindness and we’re more interested in… the level of inspiration and action we can create from the thousand stories that come of it.”

– Imagining being someone hearing the story “How do we feel, how does that make us think differently, how does it provoke us into some kind of action…”

– Helping a mate going through a tough time. Helping a community of homeless people. “We’re not finding ourselves weighting which group is any more worthy a recipient”

– “The ideas that come in that have an individual recipient often feel like ‘that is going to be a more relatable story’… the same thing is true… if the person submitting an idea has an emotional connection to their recipient… often means they’re in their in-group… friends”

– “Being a storytelling project… this empathy bias… humans love stories… hoping to spark something in people to start their journey”

– The strange disconnect between almost universal support for “kindness to animals” and the existence of animal agriculture, experimentation and exploitation

– “For 38 years I absolutely loved animals but, fairly shamefully, especially with salt and pepper”

– “I did not connect my love for animals with the… suffering that they go through as a result of being on the menu and in products and elsewhere”

– Meeting Zoe Weil (find her Sentientism episodes here and here) who leads the Institute for Humane Education, currently Vegan Crossfitter of the year “an astonishing humanitarian”

– “She quite quickly realised I was a meat-eater and started giving me shit straight away… It was such a joy not being preached to and… quite rightly made fun of… She was just pointing out, with so many smiles and with a lightness. that this was a huge contradiction.”

– “It’s mad isn’t it… I am someone that cares and I love animals… but for whatever reason…”

– Thinking “What can I do to honour the person she is and the work she does… If I tell her I’m going to become a vegetarian because of her… really make that decision and change of behaviour in honour of her”

– We went for a walk… “I said ‘hey, I’m a vegetarian… I want you to know that I’m doing this because of you…’ she just broke down in tears… it was just such a special moment.”

– “I think of the smile… every time I’m in a position in the supermarket or looking at a menu… what is still a conscious decision not to eat meat just a few months in… at no time has it felt like a sacrifice. It’s felt like a complete honour… because of Zoe”

– “The absurdity there is that I had to rely on a human and also their reaction to my decision in order to change my behaviour”

– “I love how it’s come about. It feels right… long-overdue”

– A friend who has been vegan for 10 years “I was in my garden flipping burgers on the barbecue and there was a cow in the field next door looking me straight in the eye… it was the last time I ever thought about eating meat”

– “Answering this question honestly… I am almost wholly reliant on that moment with Zoe and the memory of it and some additional self-serving realities since… I generally feel better”

– “The moral side of it… if anything I’m conscious amongst my peer group of making people feel uncomfortable for my choices”

– “I don’t even have the moral ammunition to speak about it… I feel ashamed when I say this… It’s strange…”

01:02:20 A Better World?

– Working with Chris Andersen of TED Talks

– “I was busy working at Meta feeling like I was working for the devil… my gosh, these products are not net good for society”

– Chris’ idea of infectious generosity vs. the internet encouraging divisiveness

– Chris’ book “Infectious Generosity”… “this beautiful book… kindness and generosity in the age of the internet”

– Putting together the Drop Dead Generous idea. Giving money and trust and permission to people who want to be kind to others

– “Someone else’s problem is a blank canvas”

– “If we can show that the way in which we go about helping others can be an amazingly expressive experience”

– “If more than half of us gave more than we took we’re probably going to be alright”

– “Trying to inspire people to give in as many ways as possible with as much self-expression and enjoyment as possible”

– “To trust in the fact that kindness creates kindness, that generosity is infectious”

– Working with John Sweeney

– A 2 year project “And then follow the signals of where this project is going…”

– “The approach of really treating it like an experiment has been really joyful… the humility of not knowing”

– JW: Can we extend humanitarianism to sentientitarianism? “One of your first applicants was suggesting they’d be helping non-humans”

– “Obviously the grants are only available to humans, but… what’s your criteria based on the recipients being humans… we’d barely thought about it… we have barely any criteria… we want to see what comes in”

– “We’ve not explicitly said that as a recipient you can think of non-humans… [but] the second idea we funded was a Singaporean software engineer who wanted to build a food dispenser for his local community of street cats… he was going to live stream the food dispenser and whenever a human donates to the local cat charity it dispenses food”

– “A lady in Holland who runs a horse sanctuary… a 31 year old horse… a therapy horse… a stalwart of the community… she wants to host a birthday party for this horse”

– A focus on showing gratitude

– JW: “Stopping a harm that you’re doing I would argue is also an act of kindness… but people don’t seem to think of it that way”

– JW: “To help someone else when you don’t need to can feel positive… a joy… fuzzy feeling… [whereas] To be kind to someone by stopping harming them is psychologically very difficult because you have to acknowledge your complicity first…” as in boycotting animal agriculture and exploitation

– Are traditional conceptions of kindness too narrow and “nice”?

– “We’re really on the hunt for any idea that challenges that preconception… kindness as an act of courage… of inaction… of protest”

– JW: The tragedy of do-gooder derogation

– “I’m hyperaware of this… in internet culture… calling out others for virtue signalling… the danger is… it becomes such a powerful disincentive to, if not do the thing, then at least talk about the thing you did… Sharing your story… that’s the potential for the ripple effects.”

– Philanthropists being called out for virtue signalling “There’s such a fear… it becomes a very easy decision to go… ‘I won’t spend part of my life trying to give my money away if I’m going to get criticised…’”

– JW: “I know we’re not going to get much empathy for billionaires but it almost seems that billionaires who give away most of their fortune get a lot more hassle than the billionaires who just spend it on yachts”

– “It’s this weird place where culture is at – where being a ‘do-gooder’ is a derogatory term… it’s a huge disincentive… a massive barrier to the good people do spreading… we’ve got to find a way to take that back”

– “One way to get around this fear… we or someone else can tell your story on your behalf… Your story is a gift to the world”

– “You’re not reporting to us, you’re not preaching to anyone, you’re just putting this out there and we’re very grateful for you doing it”

– Human interest stories… “at the core an act of giving, but the story you’re telling is what your worldview is… how you approach this creative challenge… not just ‘I did this good thing’…”

– “I would love for as many people listening to first think about who it is, human or otherwise, who really could do with me stepping up and expressing yourself through an act of kindness… heading to the website… submitting an idea”

– “The more this project is in the hands of everybody else… the more potential it has… we really want to be as radically open and collaborative as we possibly can be”

– “If someone has a feeling for something… we just really want to hear it”

01:24:42 Follow Tom:

– Drop Dead Generous project
– @Dropdeadgenerous

– Tom on LinkedIn

– Tom@dropdeadgenerous.org

– The DropDeadGenerous ideas voicemail podcast

Thanks to Graham for the post-production and to Tarabella, Steven, Roy and Denise for helping to fund this episode via our Sentientism Patreon and our Ko-Fi page. You can do the same or help by picking out some Sentientism merch on Redbubble or buying our guests’ books at the Sentientism Bookshop.