Kirill Likhovid

Professor Green
EXPL 292
02/10/2016
Complexity of Service
Throughout our society here in the United States, community
service is looked upon as a noble and beneficial thing to do. Service is
taught to be sacrificial and selfless in schools and in the media to
everyone at a young age. And to be honest, I have never really
questioned that position on community service. I have always believed
that individuals who would travel to another, less fortunate, country to
give aid or teach are helping the people there significantly. I was
always envious of their drive and selflessness as I believed their action
to go help the poor was extremely beneficial. I am now understanding
how ignorant and in some ways shallow that idea of service is at times.
I now realize how easy it is to believe that community service is all
positive and simple without putting much thought into the act. Many,
like my past self, do not weigh all the variables when promoting
service. They do not think of the people they are going to help and
ignore the thoughts that those people have. We have to remember that
the people that we are going to help have thoughts, pasts, and
opinions too which many times is forgotten. These two pieces by
Morton and Illich do a very good job at putting you in the mindset of

the people who tend to receive the so-called good service. By doing
so, more complex, but important, discussions arise as the common
American idea of community service is brought into question.
As I said earlier, both Morton and Illich bring up conflicting, but
different, viewpoints to the overwhelmingly positive attitude words
service in the United States. Morton brings up the story of the starfish
and how there are too many washed up on the shore to help. He goes
on to compare this tale to community service by bringing up a couple
of reasons of why one should not go and try to throw them all back into
the water and in turn why one should not partake in community
service. One of the reasons Morton brought up that stuck with me is his
ecological example. He said that maybe the starfish are supposed to
be washed up so that the birds could eat or that possibly the starfish
outgrew their habitat, so throwing them back into the water without
knowing the complexity of the ecosystem would be harmful. The same
applies to community service in that one should not blindly go in to
help other people without knowing everything about their situation in
order to not make the situation worse or throw off the community they
are in. Another example that stood out from Mortons piece is
something that I brought up earlier, which is that when we preform
community service we are helping real, complex, and thoughtful
human beings and not passive starfish. Throwing starfish back in water
cannot be compared to helping people because there is so much more

to interacting with another person. Those people have voices,

judgment, and the right to choose their fate unlike a starfish on the
shore. Morton really pushes the reader to be go out and preform
service not to help but to learn, build relationships, and make yourself
a better more educated person instead of blindly trying to improve
somebody elses life that you know nothing about.
Illich on the other hand goes on to discuss more of the power and
relationship aspect of community service in his short piece. One of his
main and reoccurring points is that it is impossible for a connection to
form between the less fortunate people that are receiving the aid and
the well-off people that are giving the aid. This connection never
occurs according to Illich because we are never able to truly put
ourselves in the shoes of the struggling Latin American people. We, as
educated Americans, simply do not understand the communities,
lifestyles, and people that we travel to help. Illich states that we are so
used to the norm which we are taught here of graduating high school,
college, and being a consumer in our democracy that we are unable to
think of life in any other way. We try to create that same way of life in
the places that we go to help when that is just an impossible task,
which a lot of the time throws off the dynamic in the communities and
villages much like the ecology of the starfish in Mortons piece.
Because of this, the people of these communities see the people who
are attempting to help them in a very negative light. Illich says that the

poor in Latin America know how little Americans can actually help and
see the pretentiousness and our bad consciousness that brought us to
do the act. He says that no matter how much we try to relate and help,
our demeanors put people down and make them feel powerless.
Because it is impossible to connect on a person basis with these people
who have no education and live in a vastly different environment than
us, we come off as superior and end up hurting much more then we
help.
After reading these two articles, I really began to question how
much we, as a team of very pillaged Americans, can actually do to help
the people of Peru. I understand that we are learning about the
complexities of service and the mindsets of the people we are going
out to help, but I have a hard time imagining us changing the images
that the people we are going to help have of us college educated, rich,
and white young adults. I know that nobody is intending to go there
and show their superiority to put the people there down but I am
scared that just our images and backgrounds, no matter what we
actually do there, will give off that vibe. I question if the people there
actually want help from a group of people who have never lived like
them or experienced the things they experienced. Can we actually go
there and have a positive impact on that community. We have never
known anything other than our own so I am wondering how much we
can do to create those relationships that are so crucial to actually

helping people. But after all these thoughts I am slowly realizing that
this trip is a lot about helping and bettering myself to become a more
mature person and a person able to act with more knowledge
throughout my life so that I dont come off as a pretentious American
who thinks he is selfless and is there only to change these peoples
lives.