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Rendering Service To The Community
Snagged via Cryptogon, a news item alleging that the rhetoric on Obama’s official site has changed from a previous version, softening language around the subject of compulsory community service for high-schoolers and college students.
Having spent a lot of time in the past on “fringe” news and conversation sites, I’m guessing that the usual public response to this sort of talk is once again alarmist. But I’m wondering why: what’s wrong with not just encouraging public service, but actually requiring it?
The issue, to me, is that any group to whom you render service or some level of commitment and regular work towards, you inevitably develop some sort of loyalty towards - nevermind social contacts and skills picked up along the way. The way human communities seem to work - both formally and informally - is that you have to put in a certain amount of value into the community before you can really draw value out of it. Like the example I wrote about a while back: neighbors and friends repeatedly exchanging favors builds a pool of shared value and reciprocity which can be drawn upon by all parties. None of these elements really strike me as particularly negative things to instill in young people. Nor does it strike me as all that Orwellian to issue such a call to service on a national level. The idea here, of course, being that young people rendering service to their communities will enable a greater feeling of connectedness and ownership on both a local and national level. What’s so terrible about that?
November 10th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
When you force someone to do something the quality of their work goes down. This is the rationale behind our military service, and why many GIs volunteer so quickly in WWII, they didn’t want to be pared with those who would be instead forced to do so.
November 10th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Everyone is “forced” to work to begin with by the way our economic system works. You don’t get money for nothing, therefore you’re *required* to exert effort. Volunteering your time in exchange for no money actually circumvents the usual compulsory labor arrangement most people operate under…
November 10th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
The other reason I wanted to bring this subject up is as a jumping-off point for the discussion of public works projects which happened in the last Depression: projects whose purpose was to stem idleness and joblessness and renew national culture and identity.
November 11th, 2008 at 4:45 am
When the quality of work is shit, then I suppose you get a glimpse of the underpinnings of this common sub-reality we inhabit. If shit is what you produce and peddle, one expects one should be unfairly compensated for such — in this depressed “sub-reality”. Supposedly there is beauty in complexity — and I suppose there is. But there is no beauty in paranoid befuddlement. You jump at shadows and even warm touches on your shoulders. Which is the beauty of all this shit.
Bush woke people up by putting them to sleep while the alarm was going off.
snooze button x 8
Obama will put them to sleep by waking them up.
It’s pure shit.
Tell me there’s nothing more weird about this country simultaneously bailing out monster corporations that couldn’t “hack it” in and of their very own “fish bowl” of competition and yet also serenading the people of said country with Obama centric odes to volunteerism. Is that not weird? I think it’s weird. It doesn’t add up.
I forget where I read it, but the idea of 9/11 (no matter who created the idea of that day’s existence in our minds) was to create a blank slate. A mental, spiritual and even physical break with the “ways of yon” materialized before all of our beingnesses. ANd I think those who still remember the old ways are taking this all way too seriously. Seriously.
It’s all marketing. But the addition of death, mass death, makes it all the more appealing from a marketing standpoint. It sells. We have on our hands a massive containerization of what “importance” is. What is important is hope. Reality/REALTY has been damned. Land is being lost. Lives are being lost. Lives are cheap. Land is finite. Hope will be killed in 2012.
November 11th, 2008 at 10:44 am
If the federal government is corrupt then compulsory service to it is in service of evil. So let me ask you this Was Hitler Youth in this same spirit? Sure we can all say the right answer in hindsight now. But the perspective from inside Germany with typical german people at the time was different.
No one is stopping any teenager from helping their neighbor and building community ties.
The issue is being dependant on corrupt hierarchical organizations. I think it just builds the mindset of obeying orders from the top uncritically.
November 11th, 2008 at 11:34 am
I’m not sure the federal government as a whole is completely corrupt. Certain factions of it clearly are, but to say the totality of it is seems to me to be erroneous and unproveable.
But the thing you’re missing here is that if you’re volunteering in your community, then you’re serving your community. You’re not serving the federal government. In an ideal world, the entire purpose of the government is to serve the community to begin with
November 11th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
[…] Continuing on my train of thought about the subject of “service”, with previous conversations here and here… I think this is a good topic and it seems to be at least touching a nerve with people, regardless of whether or not we’re all on the same page about it. […]
November 11th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
You guys make me feel so old. The “National Service” types used to be the old fashioned republicans who thought it was the hippie youth who were eroding American values like service and sacrifice.
November 12th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
So why do you need the Federal Government to serve as a mediator to help your community?
November 12th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Anyway Dude if you don’t know the difference between freedom and coercion I don’t know what to say.
Its institutionalization that is bad. Relying on powerful instititions to do what you would otherwise do anyway on your own.
Plus you wouldn’t work in your home town you would be shipped away.
Could you see the World and have good experiences? sure. But anyway I joined the Army. So I know what its like. Its about obeying authority. Not thinking, not being spontaneous, but obeying orders.
Plus there is random piss testing.
To me acting as a a free agent is the only way to make moral decisions.
November 12th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
One way you can grow as a person is through bucking the system. That’s hardly a reason to be in favor of the system itself.
Its like saying I support the Roman Empire because it developed such Character in Jesus.
The Roman Empire builds character. Its in the Bible.
November 12th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
You don’t! I never said you did. I’m not even really sure why we need the Federal government at all, honestly.
Yeah, clearly I don’t know the difference between freedom and coercion. Obviously.
Right, I totally agree with that.
According to what evidence are you basing that statement?
Another way you can grow is by *not* bucking the system. In fact, there are 100 billion different ways for a human to grow and none of them are mutually exclusive.
November 12th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Anyway, I found something I’m going to volunteer for:
http://www.ohmidog.com/tag/animal-response-teams/
November 12th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
I’m stealing this line.
November 12th, 2008 at 11:38 pm
Your ad generator heard me say I felt old so it’s offering me ads for elderly care in Chicago.
OK magical Google Ads, I want to feel young and I want to be rich and I want three more wishes!
November 13th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Check this shit out:
http://www.good.is/?p=13363