This was taken about halfway up the block on the east side of Broadway, between 79th and 80th Street. It's at the north end of the "Filene's Basement" store on the corner, and it's a place where I've often seen homeless people holding up a sign that asks for assistance...
With very rare exceptions, I haven't photographed these homeless people; it seems to me that they're in a very defensive situation, and I don't want to take advantage of their situation. But something unusual was happening here: the two women (who were actually cooperating, and acting in tandem, despite the rather negative demeanor of the woman on the left) were giving several parcels of food to the young homeless man on the right.
I don't know if the women were bringing food from their own kitchen, or whether they had brought it from a nearby restaurant. But it was obviously a conscious, deliberate activity, and one they had thousght about for some time...
What was particularly interesting was that they didn't dwell, didn't try to have a conversation with the young man;they gave him they food they had brought, and promptly walked away. As they left, I noticed the young man peering into his bag (the one you see on the ground beside him in this picture) to get a better sense of the delicious meal these two kind women had brought him...
**********************
This is part of an evolving photo-project, which will probably continue throughout the summer of 2008, and perhaps beyond: a random collection of "interesting" people in a broad stretch of the Upper West Side of Manhattan -- between 72nd Street and 104th Street, especially along Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.
I don't like to intrude on people's privacy, so I normally use a telephoto lens in order to photograph them while they're still 50-100 feet away from me; but that means I have to continue focusing my attention on the people and activities half a block away, rather than on what's right in front of me.
I've also learned that, in many cases, the opportunities for an interesting picture are very fleeting -- literally a matter of a couple of seconds, before the person(s) in question move on, turn away, or stop doing whatever was interesting. So I've learned to keep the camera switched on (which contradicts my traditional urge to conserve battery power), and not worry so much about zooming in for a perfectly-framed picture ... after all, once the digital image is uploaded to my computer, it's pretty trivial to crop out the parts unrelated to the main subject.
For the most part, I've deliberately avoided photographing bums, drunks, drunks, and crazy people. There are a few of them around, and they would certainly create some dramatic pictures; but they generally don't want to be photographed, and I don't want to feel like I'm taking advantage of them. I'm still looking for opportunities to take some "sympathetic" pictures of such people, which might inspire others to reach out and help them. We'll see how it goes ...
The only other thing I've noticed, thus far, is that while there are lots of interesting people to photograph, there are far, far, *far* more people who are *not* so interesting. They're probably fine people, and they might even be more interesting than the ones I've photographed ... but there was just nothing memorable about them.
Para investigar esos procesos del cerebro, la profesora Soyoung Park, del Departamento de Psicología de la Universidad de Lubeck, dirigió un estudio que analizaba la actividad cerebral de 50 participantes.
Londres, 11 de julio (EFE).- La interacción entre las áreas del cerebro responsables de la generosidad y la felicidad explicaría por qué la gente es altruista incluso cuando conlleva un coste personal, según una investigación de la Universidad de Lubeck, en Alemania, publicada en la revista científica Nature.
Todas las sociedades y culturas valoran el comportamiento generoso de sus individuos, pero la teoría económica siempre ha fracasado al buscar una explicación cuando la generosidad conlleva invertir los recursos propios en beneficio de otro.
La psicología, en cambio, había sugerido que el motivo para el comportamiento altruista es el incremento de felicidad que provoca, pero no ofrecía un entendimiento del mecanismo de los procesos neuronales que los vinculan.
Para investigar esos procesos del cerebro, la profesora Soyoung Park, del Departamento de Psicología de la Universidad de Lubeck, dirigió un estudio que analizaba la actividad cerebral de 50 participantes.
Los sujetos del experimento recibieron una suma de dinero durante cuatro semanas, aunque la mitad recibió la instrucción de gastarlo en ellos mismos y la otra mitad de gastarlo en otra persona.
Los investigadores descubrieron que los participantes que habían gastado su dinero en otros también se mostraron más generosos a la hora de realizar otras tareas independientes y sus cerebros mostraron más actividad en un área vinculada con el sentimiento de felicidad.
Utilizando imágenes por resonancia magnética, vieron que las decisiones generosas involucraban más el área cerebral conocida como la unión temporoparietal (TPJ, por sus siglas en inglés) y modulaban la conectividad entre esa región y el núcleo estriado relacionado con los cambios en la felicidad.
De hecho, algunas lesiones en el núcleo estriado han sido asociadas con casos de “generosidad patológica” y ruina económica personal, sugiriendo que esa zona estaría encargada de inclinar la balanza hacia el interés propio en situaciones en que el altruismo supone un coste personal.
Las conclusiones del estudio podrían tener importantes implicaciones no solo en la neurociencia, sino en la educación, la política, la economía y la salud, ya que, actualmente, según los investigadores, la sociedad subestima los beneficios sociales e individuales del comportamiento generoso y sobrestima el efecto en de los motivos egoístas para alcanzar la felicidad.
