I love reading inflammatory, polemic pieces of writing because they often use ego-breaking, humorous and clever words to state the obvious that has become not so obvious. One of the obvious facts of life that the recent articles I have read expound on is that the U.S. government feeds us a lot of junk food. By junk food, I mean things that make us feel good but are really bad to our personal and community health in the long run. The piece of writing that I am specifically going to discuss is Ivan Illich’s “To Hell with Good Intentions.” You can read his article at this link.

I agree with Illich. In fact, I have been feeling the same animosity against international service for quite some time. On a theoretical level, I do not believe in international, domestic or any other kind of service because that would only imply that the community being serviced has little to no privilege or power with which it would normally be able to take care of itself. The power and privilege have been taken away from these communities by the dominant group. It is perverse and inefficient for the dominant group to do community service when it could easily eliminate inequality by equitably redistributing resources, money, and political power. But, of course, the dominant group does not want this. For example, American and European governments and corporations are keeping many African nations under increasing debt while, at the same time, young, affluent people are joining organizations to help alleviate hunger and poverty in these same countries. This is simply and intentionally schizophrenic. Moreover, service organizations ultimately keep these poor countries indebted to affluent countries in one more way.

On a practical level, I do not believe in service because service will not overcome the corporate and governmental forces that seek to preserve the global inequalities in food, money and resources. Volunteers do service for a few hours, weeks, months or years and they go home because they are exhausted. I am reminded of the naïve, cute story about the boy who existentially throws back into the sea every starfish stranded on the beach despite there being hundreds of them. The storyteller failed to mention that this boy will eventually get tired but the waves will keep stranding hundreds of starfish onto the beach everyday. What service organizations need to do is to directly attack and nip the forces of greed in the bud. They should focus their work on demanding that there be no more war in Iraq, no more exploiting Fiji of its artesian water, no more sweatshops in Asia and South America, and no more military presence in Africa.

It is the biggest irony to me that the most powerful, affluent nation in the world actually needs its own service organizations. How can this be true? This is true if one were to see that the U.S. is actually not truly affluent. American wealth comes from the exploitation of others. As a karmic result, the quality of life of the average American is shallow and has become poorer now than that of previous generations. America the Great still experiences racism, poverty, unemployment, high divorce rate, high teen pregnancy rate, social isolation due to excessive vehicle use and living in suburbia, poor healthcare, and high illiteracy rate among many other problems. Concerned American youth should focus their attention on their own country’s problems. So instead of Free Tibet!, college students should Free Native Americans! Instead of ending poverty in Uganda, volunteers should end poverty in American cities.

This is where the junk food of the government comes in. Through the media, school system and inspiring speeches, restless, American youth wanting some “feel good” action have been fed the myth that doing service for impoverished countries is good. But why? I believe there is one main reason. It is so that smart, caring young people divert their attention away from problems at home and away from the true perpetrators of global problems and focus on a hopeless quest abroad. Also, it is not too difficult to convince college students these days to travel to exotic places, eat authentic “ethnic” food and feel good about helping those in need.

Service, international or domestic, is junk food for the soul. It excites our physical and spiritual senses. But it ultimately clogs up our critical thinking abilities and fattens our egos. Like spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle, once said, people who need to feel good by helping others constantly need the “others” to be in worse shape than they are in. From an ecological-spiritual perspective, all change and all power come from within. It is usually not successful when one society enters another society to educate and modernize it by force. It is not successful for two reasons. First, all societies have the inherent wisdom, creativity and power to change and flourish under its own terms if given back the resources to do so. The forced adoption of another society’s ideas severely reduces cultural diversity in ideals and in expressions of the same ideal. Second, historically, the purpose of forcing another society to adopt one’s own ways is so that the one can setup economic and military forces in that society, often to the detriment of that society.

All of these hidden motives and unstated consequences are the reasons why I never participated in community service activities in college. I realize that it is of no real effect. I am someone who rather deals with fighting for true change instead of trying to patch up endless wounds. I am, instead, a strong proponent of mutual partnership in working towards change. I aspire to enter a work field in which I am not “helping” a community in need from a patronizing, “more educated” position but rather working with a community as an equal partner – a student, a co-learner. I want to share and develop knowledge and solutions mutually and equally. Service organizations automatically create the distinction between the volunteer and the serviced. This distinction is illusory and damaging. The community is the true source of knowledge and solutions, not the working partner or volunteer. The working partner is merely the facilitator.

This is not to argue that people who inherently have a sincere passion for working in another country should not do so. I believe that anyone who has developed a love for another country and wants to dedicate his/her life’s work in that country should do so. I do not worry about these people because they are working out of true passion and out of a true sense of belonging in that country and not out of the liberal, racist belief that they are entering another country to help its people.

There is a movement happening to usher in a new era of life and it has no leader, for all are participating. This new, Aquarian era will operate on decentralized intelligence, participatory democracy, sense of a planetary community, and compassion for all life. In the end, counter to our intuition, even the junk food called “service” that the government feeds us is but a mere stepping stone towards a higher level of global awareness.