The Service Ethics: Why Serve?

In an era where most people instinctively serve themselves first, we should inquire to ourselves in the spirit of charity what purpose service has in our society and the role of putting others first plays in civilization more generally.  Why serve?

The question remains an important one for the developement of an ethics in a peoples.

Is it because by serving others - by "giving" ourselves to the service of individuals rather than ourselves - we make flesh that important sentiment the founders conceived of over 400 years ago?  That sentiment known as "compassion"?

Certainly.

What about the sense in which one often puts oneself at a disadvantage when putting others before oneself?

Well, I'd wager, that's entirely the rub of service ethics.  Capitalism thrives not, as popularly misconceived, on selfishness and the virtue of greed.  Capitalism and Democracy rather function on putting others before oneself, even if to the misfortune of oneself.

Capitalism repays self-effacement - if at very least on ones deathbed.


But what about those scrooges who will proffer that to truly serve others or humankind as an absraction is simply the result of an idealistic morality which gives ample quiet rest to an exceptionally degenerate corporatist hegemony in need of tranquilization?

I'd counter that not only is the Hobbesian "nasty, brutish and short" analysis of human life itself a, to put it mildly, nihilistic worldview - but further, human kind has historically subsisted off of relationships characteristically and intrinsically defined by their co-operative nature. 

Technology, music, entire kingdoms would have been incapable of suceeding and hence providing us with an ample stage upon which to live our own lives were it not for the pervasive prescence of such universal human sentiments as kindness, empathy, sympathy, selflessness, and yea- service.

Even an act of war is service.

And as troops come home from deployment and celebrate the holidays - I'd proffer in counterpoint to the stodgey anti-american scrooges - we should all look into our heart of hearts and find the best way to serve Christ by serving others.

R.T. Stillwell

Domestic Democracy United