What I did, Exactly:
As I set foot inside the Knight division of St. Mary’s Food Bank to volunteer, I wasn’t quite sure what I would be doing for the next seven hours; I was just ready to get to work. As one of the secretaries guided me to my destination, I was perplexed by this mass system they had going on in order to get food to people. I sincerely had no idea what to do. I told the woman “Uh…I really don’t know what to do”, to which she responded, pointing to the nearest man in a beanie “Just ask that guy and you’ll get it figured out”. “Alright”, I thought. The man then introduced me to the assortment of food in the shopping cart he had, explaining that we had to give the people bread, pastries, fruits, veggies and meats. Good deal. Soon, a woman called me up and told me to take a cart full of food and follow some people outside, and, of course, wanting my hours to be completed, I complied. I wheeled the cart outside to find that my “customers” had no car, and I would just hand everything to them to put in their bags. Once again, I complied. Most of the day went on more or less the same. Wheeling the cart out into the parking lot to stack food bags in the trunks of cars. After about three hours I started directing traffic, though…That was quite the interesting experience. Apparently, people need to be told where to park and whether they can come forward or not. There were numerous times when I pointed to two or three parking spots, shrugged my shoulders and made a facial expression that said “Really, it doesn’t matter where you park. I’m pretty sure you guys can make your own decisions”. Heck, half the time the people parked somewhere else. Usually in a spot they deemed more beneficial to their walking situation. I just laughed. By the end of my seven hours, I realized that this is what a job would be like…And I would hate it. Doing the same thing for hours on end, only to get minimal rewards. But that’s life. It must be done. In the end, I suppose I really did appreciate the smiles on the faces of the various families, as well as the thankfulness and appreciation they showed me. It did indeed make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Summation of Civic Service:
Summative on Civic Duty
Civic duty is, by textbook definition, “the responsibilities of the citizen” (civicfest.org). Obviously, this could be interpreted a multitude of ways. Giving back to the community, voting, joining the military, basically anything you do to make your country flourish could be a civic duty. Some even state that our civic duty is to be productive and responsible ourselves, rather than having the politicians make all the decisions and changes in the world (Our Civic Duty). Unfortunately, we also have mandatory civic duties that we must comply to every day such as paying taxes, signing up for a draft given certain conditions, abiding by the law, etc (civicfest.org).
One specific civic duty I would like to tackle is abiding by the law. Now, the majority of the American public would argue that abiding by the law is of utmost importance…But why? Is it not our civic duty to want what’s best for our country and to try our best to improve what is wrong with it? For instance, jay walking is technically a crime, but Americans can think for themselves, can they not? If there are no cars coming, what’s to stop us from crossing the street? Besides the law, of course. The government feels that they are protecting us and keeping us safe by instating and enforcing such ridiculous laws. It’s quite ironic, considering it might cost us a fine in the end. Quite a few reformers would argue that not abiding by the law is a more important civic duty than abiding by it because it causes for reform. Prime examples would be Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman, whose defiance to the law pointed out what was wrong with America’s law system at the time.
Another civic duty would be the military, which, once again, some people do not like to abide by. Why should anyone be forced to sign up to fight for their country? To them, a proper example of civic duty would be to reject the draft and to call for reform in the country’s military department.
Protesting would be a form of political participation, and many would argue that this is far more important than just doing what it is your government tells you to do. So many people protested the war in Vietnam that it just got to the point where they were influencing even a large part of the general public, and the war was swiftly called off around that point.
Essentially, one could easily argue that the responsibilities of the citizen are not to comply, but rather to improve their country by what they view is right. Anarchists believe abolishing all laws and authority is what’s best for absolute freedom, while communists want complete and utter safety and protection from the government. There are radicals on both sides, and they both have entirely different methods they use in order to “improve” their country. Yet, other, more simple solutions to improving the community and performing civic duty would be to just simply volunteer somewhere and contribute to the lives of homeless people, starving people, etc. If one is looking to perform civic duty and benefit people without any sort of controversy, simply go to your nearest food bank or homeless shelter.
Citations:
Civicfest.org. (n.d.). Civicfest.org. Retrieved December 3, 2010, from http://www.civicfest.org/
Our Civic Duty - post-journal.com | News, Sports, Jobs, Community Information - Jamestown | Post-Journal. (n.d.). post-journal.com | News, Sports, Jobs, Community Information - Jamestown | Post-Journal. Retrieved December 2, 2010, from http://www.post-journal.com/page/content.detail/id/574264/Our-Civic-Duty.html?nav=5071
Analysis of Thematic Implication:
When donating any part of my time to a food bank in order to assist “those less fortunate than I” in downtown Phoenix, I suppose it truly is time well spent. Regardless of your actual experience itself, or why you are even working down there in the first place, it is never necessarily a bad thing to be helping out others. I mean, it is most definitely beneficial to the entirety of the community to “give back”, but for what purpose? What is our incentive? Well, for most of us, our incentive was to simply get a good grade on a community service project…but I digress.
Regardless, my actual experience itself was quite pleasant and I always do enjoy meeting new people. Talking to a complete ex-thug who was doing this because he apparently didn’t come to a complete stop at a stop sign was most definitely an encounter I will remember for the rest of my life, including the numerous life lessons that went along with it. Him and everyone else around me made me realize that there is a lot outside of our tight knight community we seem to be so involved with. When venturing downtown, one realizes just how much of a cultural difference there is in comparison…Kind of hard for me to explain, but it’s there.
Anyway, the implications on society today for these forms of service are that “we should all pitch in” and “do our part to give back to the community” and all that jazz. It all “implies” that we’re kindhearted, caring, genuinely good people.
I’ll be completely honest, to a good extent, those implications do not in fact exist.
As I walked in there I quickly learned that the majority of the people were not there on their own free will or loving nature to help others, but instead as something they considered a necessity. Whether it be to get out of jail time, pay less of a fine for a crime they committed, or to get a good grade on a project in school, very few people were there out of the “kindness” in their hearts, if one can even so call it that. As a rather cynical person, I believe that people really don’t do things out of pure kindness, or just to benefit others. Everything everyone does benefits them in some way or another, and we know this. You hold a door for a person; you’re doing it for their sake, correct? But at the same time, it makes you feel like a better person on the inside as well as coming across as a better person to whom you’re holding the door for. Would someone do something for others if there was absolutely nothing in it for them? That is the question. Not only that, but walking in and seeing that the majority of the people are not volunteering strictly out of their own free will makes you wonder: What if people weren’t breaking the law all the time? Or didn’t have community service projects to do for their government class? How many of these starving people would be able to get any food and survive on a day to day basis? The lines at the Food Bank would most definitely increase by a large amount, and the volunteers would actually decrease.
So, really, it’s not like any of this is detrimental to our community in any way, heavens no. It is all beneficial to everyone involved, and while I do believe that forcing someone to do something that they should be doing strictly out of the kindness of their heart more or less defeats the purpose, it still gets stuff done…And that’s really the bottom line, is it not? Get stuff done. Give back. So, society is not hurt by the outcomes, and I really see no reason why society would be hurt, to be perfectly honest. I am just tired of people treating volunteering as a very admirable trait and one that makes you a “better person” when you’re not really doing it for others’ sakes.
I got some random guy that I met to take a picture of me holding the cart. He was somewhat friendly tbqh. I guess I'm too cool to smile.
Same crap. Except I half smiled and gave a thumbs up. You'll see that a lot.
Alright so some guy in blue came up to me and was like "bro how long you gonna be here for" and I was all "dude I'm staying for another four hours" so he was just like "that's it son we're putting you on traffic duty". Before actually being put on traffic duty I thought you had to have training or something...Turns out you just point at parking spaces and people do your bidding. I felt powerful. Also it got crazy because we had to close off this entire back area where people could park and it came to a point where we didn't have any spots left at all. That coupled with the people not knowing English, it was difficult for me to convey "You can not park back here" to them. The other traffic guy was quite the interesting person, and funny, at that. He was quite the drug lord at age 17, actually. Good fellow.
At around the 6.5 hour mark I decided it was time for a break and I was in desperate need to satisfy my caffeine addiction. I had some random person who was also taking a break take this picture. The Coke was delicious, btw, and unfortunately the vending machine was broken. Then I got right back to work at pushing more carts.
