"We gotta stand a little closer."

Today I met 6 new people while working on the trust lab. I definitely gained confidence in approaching people and I think this skill will help me with my social capital in the future. By meeting new people we learn new ways of thinking and perspectives, we gain connections, we form friendships, we learn new things about ourselves even. Meeting new people is a great way to increase your social capital.

I posted this poster that says “MEET SOMEONE NEW TODAY” in order to spark people to step out of their boundaries and talk to people they might not usually associate with. I also posted a list of 150 things you can do to increase your social capital next to it. I hope this inspires my fellow UNCSA students to make a change and increase the social capital within our school.

I found this wonderful list of 150 ways to increase your social capital here:

http://www.bettertogether.org/150ways.htm

Also I found this artist who spent a year doing a project called “Peoplescape” that helped turn strangers into friends. Here is the link:

http://www.peoplescape365.com/

Trust [truhst]

-noun

1. reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence.

Trust is a very important part in any relationship, wether it be between a couple, between friends, in the government, a higher power, etc. When one’s social capital is high one builds trust in others. For example, I live in a neighborhood where everyone knows each other and we are all involved in the activities that go on around us and are all always hanging out at one another’s homes. Because of this there is a high level of trust in my neighborhood, we trust that no one would steal from another, and we trust that one will always be there for another in a bad situation. But as for neighborhoods where there is a lack of social capital, there is an obvious lack of trust between one home and another.

I decided to walk around Winston-Salem and ask strangers to write down their personal spiel on trust. Some of the questions I asked them to marinate on were:

How many people can you trust?

Who do you trust?

What does trust mean to you?

Does our country have trust?

It was interesting because I could physically see trust in this experiment. When I first would approach someone I would ask them “Excuse me, do you have a moment?” most people looked concerned and would reply “Umm, maybe, it depends…” and I could see at first they did not trust me and were skeptical that I was selling something or asking for money. Once I explained to them that I was doing a project for my Civics class on social capital and that I only wanted their opinion on what trust means to them their faces would soften and I could see that they began to trust my word. I even had a woman give me her business card and another women give me a great big hug. Reading through everyone’s ideas of trust really touched me. Some people found trust in something higher than human and felt as though they could not trust any person, some people felt that trust was rooted in mankind and faith in mankind. It felt like I learned a lot about trust in this lab, and it definitely touched me deep inside.

Social Capital’s basis is around communication and interaction between one human being and another. Facebook is a social networking website that allows people to keep in touch with old friends, make new friends, and interact with people on the internet. The question I asked my fellow students at UNCSA is “Is facebook a good thing or a bad thing?” I allowed them to choose between a thumbs up sign and a thumbs down sign to display their opinion and then they elaborated through words.

Facebook has allowed me to keep in touch with my friends and family that live far away and reconnect with friends that I have not interacted with in years. However despite Facebook certainly having some positive effects it also has a lot of negative ones regarding my social capital. By talking to people online a sort of safety net between you and the person arises and you say things you wouldn’t normally say in person. Also by being able to keep in touch with so many people online, it sometimes cuts out actually hanging out with them. Sometimes I feel like because I talked to them online that I don’t really have to make time to see them in person. Another negative effect of Facebook is procrastination. I spend too much time checking it and chatting with friends when I should be working or going out and physically hanging out with people. I think in the end it will benefit us all to use Facebook a little less, and when we do use it to use it to make plans for hanging out in person.

Here are some Facebook facts:

• More than 300 million active users
• 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
• The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older
• Average user has 130 friends on the site
• More than 6 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)
• More than 40 million status updates each day
• More than 10 million users become fans of Pages each day
• About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States

I made a little stop motion to show the monotonous drive from Advance to Winston-Salem I made every day last year.

Last year was my first year at UNCSA. Since I lived with in the 25 mile radius I decided I would commute to school. It was nice having my car and my freedom to come and go as I pleased unlike those to live at school, but at the same time it was hard to make time to come and work on things in the studio on the weekends and a lot of my artwork I found myself doing at home. Because I wasn’t at school as much as everyone else, I didn’t make as many friends as I would of hoped to. I also found that commuting became an excuse to do things I didn’t really want to do and I wasn’t very involved in school events. To say the least, being a commuter decreased my social capital.

This year however I live at school. I have made a lot more friends, talked to people who I never talked to last year, and have participated in a lot more of the events going on at school. Also a lot more time and energy has gone into my artwork because I can now walk to the studios. Although at first I was dreading moving in, I know realize it has only brought me positive things and has definitely increased my social capital.

I decided to calculate a rough estimate of the time I spent commuting per week last year and here are the results:

FIVE HOURS AND TWENTY MINUTES per week!

I have now gained at the least five more hours and twenty more minutes on top of that to work, rest, and enjoy my time here.

Not only do I have more time, I also am helping out the environment by not driving back and forth so much.

The Monsters of Folk know all about some social capital. The group in its self is a collaboration of Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes, Desaparecidos, Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band), Jim James (My Morning Jacket), M. Ward (She & Him), and Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes). Not only do they increase their social capital by collaborating with each other but they also are making beautiful music as well. This song, “Baby Boomer” talks about how we need to stand closer to one another and love our neighbors which are two things we all can do to increase our personal social capital.

We gotta stand a little closer 
To what it is we’re leanin’ on 
Who was it that first said it? 
Could it be he could be wrong 
About the pilgrims and the natives 
Having dinner on the lawn? 

I think if I was ever king 
I would buy a censorship 
Where the only books upon the shelves 
Were the ones that I had written 
Oh, and put them up in borders, set my photo down the spine 
To tell the story of the livin’ without forgettin’ those who’d died 

And I would die a happy man 
‘Cause I did the best that I could do 
To find a better way of leading, 
Should we leave that up to you? 

Who was the one that said it, 
Yeah the one who said it best? 
You got to L-O-V-E your neighbors, at least the ones who are still left 

And we gotta stand a little closer 
To the lessons that we’ve learned 
Is it just a premonition? 
Could we really get ourselves both burned? 
I’ve been sent here on a mission to find what we agree upon 
We don’t agree about September, 
Could we agree on Vietnam? 

I think if I was ever publisher I’d buy a pirate ship 
Where the mission at each position is to shoot and to click 
Clean the photos up a little, censor the ship out of it 
So when we put it up in borders, turn a profit on the trip 
Charge the public for the overhead of 1492 
And if they need a better reason tell them we got livin’ proof 

And I would die a happy man 
‘Cause I did the best that I could do 
To find a better way of leading, 
Should we leave that up to you 

Who was it that said it? 
Yeah that’s what I’m trying to say 
You got to L-O-V-E your neighbors, at least the ones that live today 
Hey, hey