What is Service? Why Serve?

What is Service? Why Serve?

There is an old story about an ancient Greek philosopher named Thales. According to this tale, Thales was looking to the stars as he walked about Athens, attempting to answer certain troubling philosophical questions. He became so engaged in thought that he didn't even notice the well he was approaching. Needless to say, Thales, one of the most brilliant of ancient Greek philosophers, fell into that well and became the butt of many Athenian jokes. His head was so lost in the clouds, some said, that he didn't even notice the world around him.

In our current tumultuous era of fast food drive-thru's and 24-hour convenience stores, we can no longer afford the luxuries Thales had. We can no longer ignore the world around us. As we consume our well-earned products and whistle down an interstate with plastic cups of coffee, propelling ourselves onward, plagued by an advertisement landscape, it is certainly easy to forget what it means to live in a society. Even with history offering us reminders such as Rousseau's idealistic vision of community, and the present offering us John Rawls' ultra-liberal version of the social contract, we quickly forget what we colloquially call - in a revealing television metaphor - "the larger picture." These thinkers have pinpointed what has for too long been left on the periphery of the cultural consciousness: the basic fact that, regardless of who we think we are or how self-indulged we prove to be, we have a responsibility to ourselves and to those individuals around us who compose the community in which we live.

The notion of service has stood at the heart of every great religion. From familiar Christian mantras to the proverbs of the East, human beings have bee...

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...y, no matter how far removed they might seem. It is thinking through the dilemmas we, as a society - as a world - face in our current predicament and engaging in the world in such a way as to resolve those dilemmas. It is recognizing that the world is more than one's own solipsistic microcosm, that it is more than what lurks beneath a pile of paperwork and a cup of McDonald's coffee, more than the new Volvo and climbing a corporate ladder, more than a few college courses aiming at either education or salary. And even if a "kingdom of ends" can never be attained, the notion of service leaves us without excuse for our indifference. We can no longer stare at televisions with glazed over eyes, nor can we merely think about the problems we read about in the papers and shrug our shoulders, falling into wells when we encounter them. Service is being Thales with open eyes.