Quote:
|
Many people in this forum have taken to pissing and moaning about President-elect Obama's calls for greater participation by the people, and particularly his notion that the members of our greater community should perform public service. My thought is that the best way to prevent mandatory public service is to ensure that all the wealth is NOT concentrated in the hands of a few.
|
That is the problem with a lot of people in this country. We wait for someone else to get things done and complain when they aren't done to our satisfaction. I was in then Army and then the National Guard. I served my country and my community and for it I got a free college education.
What I find so pathetic is that there are people who have no idea nor do they care about the implications of a small percentage of people controlling the vast majority of the wealth. The ideology that I hear from people like this is, "I am getting mine, so screw everyone else." We have little to no sense of community. In most all large population centers, people don't even know their immediate neighbors; can't name one of their local representatives; live in a tiny social bubble which they deem "superior" to others; always have reasons to be the exception to the rule; don't do squat to help their community thrive except to complain that someone needs to fix things.
We are a society that has been trained to be one-trick ponies. That being the basic rule of go to school, then college/trade school, get a focused career and do that for the rest of your life. Then of course if that doesn't work out, one is forced to reinvent themselves which, today, is very taxing and almost impossible. We are a single skill society. We are so dependent on this system that it has become so fragile to the point where is one little piece of the system gives the whole system eventually collapses.
When this country was founded, the first settlers had skills in many areas: construction, textiles, agriculture..etc. Now most people do not even know how to change their oil, fix their door frame, some still refuse to learn how to use a computer. It is truly perplexing.
I bring this up because all of this comes together with the idea of community. If you knew how to fix cars and your neighbor knows about carpentry, you can exchange services with far less cash outflow. You get to know your neighbor and in times of crisis you can help one another get through these things. I am not talking about an auto mechanic and a carpenter here. I am talking about two neighbors who have careers elsewhere but also have these skills. What it does is lessen their independence on the system. This is what a sense of community rewards us with. The idea of community service is not a bad one.