Sophie Scott:

Why we laugh

            Sophie Scott has an amazing approach to discussing laughter. She starts her presentation with hilarious laughs from people throughout the world. Brilliant, because before you even begin to realize what she is talking about you’ve laughed for a solid 2 minutes.

            She talks about why we laugh, explaining the biological response to laughter. People are 30 times more likely to laugh if they are with someone else.

             Laughter is behaviorally contagious; there are two different types of laughter; involuntary laughter, and voluntary laughter. Involuntary laughter is high-pitched. Posed laughter is lower, and ambiguous. Laughter is always meaningful, and people are always trying to interpret the meaning.

            Sophie Scott explains that Robert Livingston is working on a longitudinal study on laughter. It is a phenomenal useful for individuals as they are indexing events. For example when things go wrong, people tend to laugh. The individual, who has the unfortunate experience that might cause pain, will often laugh as well. It is useful in helping people to get through painful or embarrassing moments.

            Marwell & Schmitt's Taxonomy Influence Tactics Positive Expertise:
Speaking as an authority on the subject, I can tell you that rewards will occur if you do X, because of the nature of reality. "If you start working out at our gym regularly, you'll find that people are more attracted to you physically."

            This is the very nature of Sophie Scotts appeal; she wants us to use laughter, and promises positive experiences if we follow her advice.

            Sophie uses the Process Premise of both Needs and Emotions for reasons to use, and seek laughter in our everyday lives. She promotes the social, and emotional benefits of laughter through these process premises’.

            Hilarious!

           

Out of class Presentation: Addiction, the Impact on Loved Ones

Out of class Presentation: Addiction, the Impact on Loved Ones

            I do group training every workday at Walmart Distribution called “start-up meetings”. Honestly my initial reaction to this assignment was to hand out an evaluation at the beginning of one of these trainings. I knew better than that.

            My “out of class” speech was actually done in our classroom (Boeing) on a weekend after school hours. A group of students met together for the purpose of completing the out of class presentation.

            I had slides and an oral presentation prepared on the impact of drug addiction on the family. I shared a personal story about one of my loved ones who is struggling with addiction. The feedback I received from the evaluation was mostly about my presentation; slides were not up long enough, sometimes I stood in the way of them. My claims were supported within the slides, but the font was too small to read who/ what was represented.

            There was one surprise. The topic of addiction hits close to home, so I had to stop once or twice to gain composure. I didn’t expect that. Since all of my slides were timed, I had to ‘catch up’ to where the slides were; in an effort not to ‘self-check’ I got ahead of some slides. The lesson I learned was; if I am going to use an emotional persuade that is close to the heart, I need to keep my slides set to advance on ‘click’. J

Kailash Satyarthi

How to make peace? Get angry!

            Kailash Satyarthi teaches us how he used Anger to create Peace.

When he was 11 years old his friends started dropping out of school because their parents couldn’t afford textbooks. This made Kailash angry. He witnessed, or experienced several events in his life that infuriated him. When Kailash was 15 years old he saw a slave father who’s daughter was taken from him and about to be sold to a brothel. He was angry and took action to save the girl and return her to her father. These events made Kailash angry. Gave him ideas. Drove him to action.

            Kailash explained that he gained some of his greatest ideas during his angriest moments.

            In India the people born in the lower segments of Cast are considered “Untouchables”. Kailash set an example by allowing Low Cast people to cook food for him. He invited political leaders to join. Each one of them agreed to join but none of them showed up. He was angry that no one showed up, and ate the food himself. When he got home the priests were waiting, they wanted to outcast Kailash and his whole family. He instead out casted his entire cast by changing his family name. Satyarthi means “seeker of truth”.

Kailash created a book bank at the age of 11 to get books to children who couldn’t afford it. At age 27 Kailash gave up his career as an Electrical Engineer and took up a more noble cause. He began to educate consumers to encourage them to not accept child labor products. Since then child labor has dropped by 85%.  He co-founded the worlds largest global education movement.

Kailash’s developed a method of using mans inherent compassion to care enough to become angry at injustice. Using that momentum and passion to develop an idea for change, then put that momentum and idea into action. Anger. Idea. Action

Kailash's selfless action to roll up his sleeve's, give up everything that was "socially important" and do the right thing to help those in need follows closely to the framework of Reich’s cultural parable of The Benevolent Community. 

He started a “raid and rescue” to liberate child slaves. He and his colleagues have personally rescued over 83,000 child slaves from slave labor and given them back to their mothers. They have organized an international convention to protect children against child labor. As a result the global number of child labor has been reduced by one third in the last fifteen years.

Kailash used the Process Premise of Emotion (Anger) effectively to persuade the audience to want to make a change.  He gives a model of how anger can be destructive, and explains how to avoid that through compassion and selflessness. Kailash drive the emotive that “Anger can be transformed into something great.”