How Service Can Save Us

The Vital Solution No One Is Talking About

Towards the end of this piece, I will contend that a strong National Service program, with emphases upon and significant investment into a wide range of non-military activities, can help address and alleviate the vital problems facing our nation today. It is not the most out-there of solutions — support for requiring service of some sort is fairly split, while generally investing in and expanding service programs is seen quite favorably — but it is one largely absent from the current discourse, and wrongfully so. It is precisely the Big Idea that we need, and frankly the one we deserve after putting up with so much crap.

Things are not great in the U.S. right now. Pride in the present nation is at a low, while anger and fear are rising. Headlines are dominated by tension, outrage, unrest, and some sort of bug thing. Attempts at constructive discourse are hindered by a social media-driven environment that incentivizes divisive rhetoric and perpetuates polarization.

If we are to seek to work together and find a way forward — and we really, really, really should — then our task begins with making sense of the problems at hand. To treat each piece of trouble as a wholly independent quandary would be a futile and naïve approach, but there is also danger in oversimplifying, a danger exacerbated by our timeless desire to see things as Good vs. Evil, heightened by our modern obsession with instant gratification and results. No, our trouble is not singularly the fault of Donald Trump, or George Soros, or Bill Gates, or Nancy Pelosi. And no, it cannot be traced entirely to Racism, or Marxism, or Fascism, or even Zoroastrianism.

Rather, what we face now is a number of pivotal, deeply intertwined crises. each posing an existential threat to our nation and people. There’s a lot to unpack, so let’s begin:

The Crisis of Inequality

First and foremost on many minds is the problem of inequality, and chiefly therein our inequality of opportunity. The issue has been at the heart of countless political movements, from Occupy Wall Street’s anti-1% fervor, to Bernie Sanders’ runs against the excesses of capitalism, to even the drain-the-swamp, rigged game clamor of the Trump train. Whether the inequality is seen along the axes of class or race or place of origin or any other factor, it is an absolutely essential thing for a society to address if it is to flourish.

This is a crisis that cuts deeper than financial prospects — it is a question of controlling one’s own destiny. When people feel they can dream, amazing things happen. When they feel they can’t, that their hopes are for naught in the face of forces beyond their control, then we see societal unrest, then we see people calling into question whether upholding the society they are in is even worth the trouble.

This is not a uniquely American problem. More than one nation has run into revolution at the hands of those who saw no future in continuing to support and live under their governments. It was not so long ago that yellow vests crowded the streets of France in search of economic justice, and all around the world we can hear the bellow of both movements for socialism, populism, and even democracy, crusading against what they deem to be rigged or broken systems.

But the forces standing in the way of equal opportunity are far more than just a few malicious actors. It is human nature, after all, to attempt to leverage every available resource and advantage to ensure the best for oneself and one’s own, and this places major obstacles in the path towards progress. There is an entropic tendency towards corruption, and the challenge of counteracting it, difficult for even the highest-functioning of governments, becomes greater and greater as systems complicate and grow, and the ways of abusing them expand.

The Crisis of Youth

Should we fail to properly distribute opportunity, those who stand to lose the most are those with the most ahead of them — this is to say, our youth. If we allow them to feel themselves without hope, without direction, without faith in what we have built, then we are absolutely… well, it isn’t good.

Even before the arrival of COVID, the shift towards remote learning, and the massive social unrest that we have faced of late, our youngest were faced with a unique set of generational challenges. Rapid changes in technology have produced profound shifts in culture, creating a bizarre growing experience not seen by previous generations, including those tasked with raising the youth of today. The meteoric rise of social media, known to have alienating and depressive effects, threaten to combine with this intergenerational disconnect to make for a perfect mental health storm.

Meanwhile, the tools we use to prepare our youth are woefully outdated. Well-intentioned investment in higher education has led to spiraling costs, produced a loan bubble, devalued college degrees, and left millions with rising mountains of debt, a lack of useful skills, and a sense of years wasted at the behest of societal norms. In essence, we have been pushing young people to get university educations for the sake of getting university educations, and allowed them to bear the costs for little benefits.

After all this, it should surprise no one that the young people of today should lose faith in our society, that they should feel dejected and abandoned, that they should favor societal upheaval at alarming rates. This intergenerational division is one we have wrought, one we really should have seen coming.

The Crisis of Disunity

Deep divides, of course, are a hallmark of the American experience in the social media age. Politically, we seem to have devolved into a hyper-polarized tribal society, and the devolution is ongoing. ‘On the verge of a civil war’ is a phrase that seems to be getting bandied about more and more, and understandably so.

Unfortunately, these divisions tend to feed upon themselves, and they are spiraling dangerously. Communication in the social media age has a way of amplifying the loudest voices and drowning out the rest. Ideas develop within ideological bubbles, selected for their ability to rile up the truest believers rather than sway outsiders to the tribe. Views shift towards the political poles, and our ability to understand one another diminishes.

As we and our ideas grow more and more alien from each other, our trust dangerously breaks down. From the president, to congress, to the media, to academia, to the rich, to immigrants, and everywhere in between, our trust in our leaders, our institutions, and each other seems to have shattered. Productive discourse, hard enough to forge to begin with, has become an absolute impossibility, and any prospects of coming together and working together as a nation are quickly diminishing.

Perhaps worst of all, this lack of trust is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, as our current environs provide a perfect breeding for exactly the sort of politicians and influencers we shouldn’t trust. Demagogues, rabble-rousers, and fanatics of all sorts are excellently suited to play the social media game and take advantage of our hyper-divided state. Regardless of where or how deep you may believe corruption has already seeped, the immense corruptibility of our current state should be a very real concern.

The Crisis of Readiness

Even divided against itself, our house seemed to be standing for some time by virtue of its strong foundations. But there was always the worry of a strong wind putting that to the test, and that strong wind came this year in the form of a pandemic, exposing the dangers of having a government so incapable of working together and a people so untrusting of one another.

We have been spoiled, it seems, by times of relative peace and prosperity, but trouble is bound to come every so often, and it has a way of laying our flaws bare. Any feelings of an unfair shake inflame when there is less pie to be shared out. Any feelings of an uncertain future are amplified when global uncertainty is skyrocketing. And any internal hostility and distrust is going to get worse when the stakes — and the perceived danger of letting the Other Side wield power — are raised.

The old common knowledge was that real trouble had a unifying power, that we as a nation would come together, would sacrifice for each other, would work as one to weather the storm and move forward. That we are largely incapable of such a crisis response, that we are so paralyzed by our internal strife and corruption, points to an existential threat that we as a society cannot afford to put off addressing for any longer.

The Crisis of Futurity

Lastly, we have the crisis that looms perpetually beyond the horizon. While we cannot, predict when the next calamity is to come, we can see clearly that some future, full of change, is at our doorstep. If we are to prosper — indeed, if we are to survive as a nation — we need to be ready for it.

This means readying ourselves for massive shifts in technology, and the industrial upheaval that they bring. Automation and obsoletion are coming to more and more of our workforce, and pretending that they don’t exist — refusing to utilize new technology — would put our companies at a global disadvantage they cannot afford. The economic shifts are going to be massive, and they may require a restructuring unlike any before.

There is a famous incident in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass which comes to mind here, and that is the Red Queen’s race. There, our heroine Alice finds herself in a strange place (as she tends to do), running just to stay in the same spot. As the Red Queen explains, “here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

That is the world we find ourselves in. If we want to keep up, if we want to maintain our strength and standing, we need to move quickly. If we should dawdle, consumed by our internal turmoil and ineptitude, then we will fall dearly behind.

A Solution

Given the breadth of all these problems, it seems preposterous that anything could provide the singular solution to all of them. But building and investing in a robust national service program can go quite a ways to start, if done right.

Too often, national service is thought of as simply military obligation, but it can be so much more. AmeriCorps, the US’ largest non-military service organization, boasts programs focused on:

• Mentoring and tutoring students in lower performing schools
• Assisting military families and veterans adjusting back to civilian life
• Cleaning up rivers, parks, and blighted public areas
• Helping communities prepare for and respond to disasters, including the current COVID-19 pandemic
• Providing job training skills to boost economic opportunities for low-income Americans

These programs have been shown to lower depression, bolster sense of social incorporation, and prevent course failure, suspension, and school dropout among those serving. Moreover, a 2013 Columbia University study demonstrated that each additional dollar of investment for national service programs produces nearly $4 in returns to society, in terms of “higher earnings, increased output, and other community-wide benefits.” This is spectacularly effective, and it’s a win-win.

Unfortunately, the current formulation of these service initiatives woefully inhibits the good they can do. The lack of large-scale government funding or a cultural emphasis upon serving means that reach is limited. Relying purely upon volunteers, they bear a major opportunity cost in the time they ask of those who serve. What should be a vital avenue to any young person looking to build character and gain valuable experience is instead perceived as a luxury, enjoyed by those who have a year to spare resume-building before going off to college. It can be so much more than this.

What we have is a goldmine of societal good at our fingertips, and we are failing to seize it. If we could formalize and emphasize national service, if we could make it a central part of the American experience, we can ignite a fundamental cultural and economic shift that this country deeply needs.

Yes, this means eventually universalizing, scaling it to the point that it becomes an expectation of youth at a certain age. Such programs, in some sort or fashion, are not uncommon requirements for citizens in democracies around the world, and making it a requirement here would not be essential. A carrot at the end — eligibility for some sort of education or mortgage loan from the government, for instance — may well be enough emphasis.

Moreover, by having a wide variety of service programs available— from mentoring and teaching, to building and environmental cleaning, to social work, to medical and legal apprenticeships, to military service, and even to religious missions and more — and by encouraging our free enterprise to create organizations to support these initiatives, rather than making them top-down government efforts, we could make our approach to national service a uniquely American one. By imbuing it with our signature flavors of freedom and innovation, we can set a model for the world to envy and emulate.

It is time for us to realize that our societal norms and expectations for youth are woefully out of date. In pushing and pushing and pushing for more to attend college, we have devalued the college education, inflated its cost far beyond reason, and entrapped its would-be beneficiaries in a vicious cycle. What we have created is bloat, a glamorized 16-grade school system with a very high built-in risk of crippling debt. By refocusing towards service, we can give them something much better — valuable perspective and understanding, feelings of accomplishment and purpose, and a vital sense of connection to their peers and nation.

Through service, we can deploy the greatest force that our nation has ever seen towards addressing our inequalities at their source. Through efforts towards teaching, mentoring, and counseling, we can offer a critical support system to children in our struggling communities, enabling them to break from some of the vicious cycles that perpetuate poverty. Through efforts towards building and environmental cleaning, we can improve the quality of life for all. And through efforts in social work and job training, we can create pathways to opportunity, we can give hope, to those most in danger of being shut out from it.

Through service, we can give the youth of America vital foundations for their future. For those who serve, it means feelings of accomplishment, purpose, and belonging, and an improved sense of direction and hope. For those young people that they serve, it means a sense of connection to those who may well understand them best, an alleviation to any sense of societal alienation.

Through service, we can build something together, as a nation. We can feel unity and pride in the good that we do for each other. We can break through the communication barriers of the Social Media age and see each other for what we are — people. Over time, we can heal.

Through service, we can create a vital human resource to face any crisis that may come along. By fostering a greater sense of community and an ethos of volunteerism, we can imbue our nation with a strength and resilience that is invaluable in times of trouble.

And through service, we can position our economy to thrive in the post-automation world. All these service programs will require training, oversight, and logistical support, after all, and that means serious investment in the various industries of helping others. People need people, and no robot can change that. The jobs created through an expansion of national service are not artificial, but precisely the jobs most vital to our nation’s future.

I cannot pretend, of course, that all this amounts to a complete policy proposal. There are plenty of questions about the exact mechanisms of expanding national service, about what corresponding actions must be taken with regard to our college systems, about the costs incurred each step of the way. But the idea of using national service to address our crises is one that begs our attention and consideration, and we would be doing ourselves a tremendous disservice — pun intended — by continuing to ignore it.