The “Public Service” Fallacy
Most of us are familiar with the fallacy of achievement. Philosophy, religion, and now even the burgeoning self-help industry each highlight the ancient wisdom which warns us against relying on external achievement for the fulfillment of life, purpose, and happiness.
Lesser known, however, are the modern fallacies of service.
As Americans, we live in a society which honors those who serve. While this is certainly a good thing in many situations, it results in an unspoken prejudice in many others.
One of the primary fallacies of service is our collective presumption that if someone chooses to serve a socially accepted “greater good”, or a cause universally advertised as “public service”, then they, too, must be good.
We assume that anyone working in a career field categorized as public service is inherently more noble than someone who, for example, makes public service possible by creating businesses and developing wealth, writing the code which maintains a fundraising website, or maintaining the buildings in which public service personnel work.
In other words, and as Eric Greitens highlights in his book Resilience, we reflexively place the “professor over the plumber…the abstract over the practical”, even though these practical career fields often contain more opportunities for direct, one-on-one impact on fellow human lives in comparison to the average knowledge worker, however humble these impacts may be.
Ask yourself – what is more meaningful? Managing the budget for an abstract, $3 million grant at a non-profit which purportedly and indirectly impacts hundreds of strangers overseas, or using your hands and problem-solving ability each day to improve the functioning of your neighbors’ homes?
I’m not quite sure, but I’d wager that over the long run, the latter service provides more sustainable fulfillment and purpose. In these vocations, we can see a plan unfold with the clear results, in tangible form, of our efforts. We can also find the least necessary intervention between our purposes, plans, and their execution, as noted in The Good Life.
Instead of allowing certain career fields to dominate the conversation on and definition of “service”, we should instead acknowledge that service is not an exclusive domain, and in fact is within reach of every human, whether they are serving two years in the Peace Corps or a plate of eggs and ham at a local diner. Thinking one is more noble than the other simply because it may garner more veneration from a larger number of people over a lifetime is both misleading and wrong.
And thinking of all of those who work in recognized service careers as noble and good is also misleading and wrong – humans can treat any occupation selfishly, no matter how service-oriented the organization may be.
While there are certainly many noble firefighters, teachers, nurses, and Marines, we all know an equal if not larger number of admirable janitors, receptionists, mailmen, and barbers who exemplify the true nature of selflessness. Though their job titles may not receive as much reverence on paper or in social settings, and though very few people may notice their daily sacrifice, it is their commitment to their day to-day duty, to something beyond themselves in whatever humble form it may be, which represents the physical embodiment of nobility.
As Marcus Aurelius reminds us in Meditations, “it’s quite possible to be a good man without anyone realizing it.”
And as George Eliot describes Dorothea, a main character from Middlemarch:
“The effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
We shouldn’t need to rely on job titles and organizational mission statements to demonstrate our commitment to service – it should be illustrated in our one-on-one, day-to-day actions as a matter of personal habit.