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By Keeble McFarlane |
April 2, 2005: The world most of us inhabit these days is a much meaner, more hard-nosed and selfish place than used to exist just a couple of generations ago. It is true that a bigger proportion of people are enjoying things and circumstances they never could have dreamed of not so long ago.
But the level of anxiety, frustration and stress they have to endure to taste these things is quite high, and for many, a bitter price to pay. Everyone is running around like laboratory rats on steroids, rushing here, rushing there in pursuit of some elusive goal of success.
In order to meet the company's quota for the next quarter, you have to come in early, miss lunch or stay in after work; or take work home; or do all of the above. Then we have to dash around looking after the children and the various activities they are engaged in. For those with a little means, the parents become unpaid taxi drivers; for those with less, the anxiety level goes up when they have to rely on less than ideal conditions aboard public transport.
For the children, there is the pressure to cram in all the knowledge they can, otherwise they face the most bleak of prospects in an increasingly uncertain world. Gone are the simple pleasures youngsters used to enjoy - unstructured time when they could run around like "leggo beasts", enjoy the company of friends and schoolmates in playing simple games, idle pastimes or just fooling around.
Many things go by the wayside in our modern hurry-hurry existence - time to reflect on our blessings (or lack thereof), time to relate to our family and friends, time to enjoy a leisurely outing in the countryside or by the beach, and time to engage in some kind of service to our fellow-citizens.
This is an important part of citizenship, since, as we know from that well-worn Biblical sentiment, man cannot live by bread alone. Community service is as old as the notion of community itself. It began when human beings started living together in ever-larger groupings because they found that they were able to feed, clothe and protect themselves much better as a group than individually.
Some would grow and harvest the crops, others would tend the animals, some would build the houses and other structures that the increasingly sophisticated social arrangements demanded. Others would gather the increasing stock of knowledge and pass it on to the next generation. Others would study and look after the illnesses that plague all living things.
Yet others would band together to safeguard the group against attacks by rival groups or by marauding animals.
Societies quickly developed the habit of paying for these services in some manner or other, and these arrangements became more formal as the generations slipped by.
But at all times, people helped others for no other reason than that they needed help.
In our own case, the aboriginal peoples who inhabited these islands, and the Africans dragooned to provide labour for the European colonists, practised their own forms of community service because theirs was not a money economy.
When slavery was abolished and the freed slaves had to embark on a different way of life, the most effective way of making that start was to help the people who shared their circumstances.
Even in the places where people settled voluntarily, such as the American mainland, those settlers had to rely on the voluntary assistance of their neighbours in breaking the land, putting up buildings and machinery, planting and reaping the crops and tending the animals. Jamaicans of a certain age can all recall when someone who wanted to work a "ground" put out the word and the community organised a day for the work.
They all had different skills, and these were all put to use as required. Some parts of the task required merely the application of brawn and sinew, and in that case everybody got into the act - putting up the walls and roof of a house, barn, shed or whatever, without thought of direct payment.
They knew that when their turn came to clear a piece of ground, erect a building on it, dig a well or some other labour-intensive project, they could rely on the combined efforts of the members of their community to get the job done.
Nowadays, community work is no longer the informal, haphazard matter it once was. Like everything else in our modern society, it has become organised, formalised, scheduled, slotted and compartmentalised. You have associations, clubs, circles and committees raising money to fight diseases, to provide housing for homeless children, help the handicapped, and even to provide meals for those who can't feed themselves.
The formal nature of the organisations which provide these services may take away some of the purity of the exercise, but many people still enjoy engaging in these endeavours purely for the joy of doing something for someone else without being paid for it.
Early in the 1960s, the idealistic young people who had won a revolution in Cuba decided to tackle one of the biggest problems their island suffered - illiteracy. They did so by taking the hugely expanded number of children they had opened schools for and sending them back into the countryside during their vacation to teach the older people to read and write.
Well, what happened was that, yes, many of the older people were, for the first time in their lives, able to discern what those funny little shapes on paper meant. The majority would never become fluent readers, but the ability, however limited, opened a new world to them. It was, though, the youngsters who benefited more from the experience of paying back what the society had invested in them - they learned more than they taught.
Our youngsters could well profit from the experience of engaging in some form of community service - it removes the selfish focus on themselves, affords them the pleasure of serving someone else, and teaches them to respect other people. A good dose of this sustained over a generation might help end the dreadful spiral of self-destruction the society seems intent to remain upon.
keeble.mack@sympatico.ca