Once again I have to refer to the work that I am doing on the Bibliography of Ethical Culture and the ideas that seem to be flying at me from my discoveries. Today's idea is Social Service.
Social service seems, in my knowledge and experience, to include assistive services provided to those who are somehow at a disadvantage in our community, whether they are disadvantaged by poverty, ability, genetics, place of origin, language, etc. These would be services provided by public or private entities to relieve those disadvantages with food, funds, pro-social policies, translators, etc. There's a great deal of assumption built into that notion of "disadvantaged," but the focus on social service will have to skip those assumptions for the time being and merely note that my and, I believe, our common understanding of "social service" speaks of services of whatever sort provided by a group entity to individuals who are considered to be "disadvantaged."
Today, I'm documenting a book by Frederick James Gould, called The Children's Book of Moral Lessons. Gould was a crusader (I think the word is apt) for moral education for children--in both public and private settings. He worked with Stanton Coit to found the East London Ethical Society, was known as a "pioneer of secular humanism," and spoke widely as a representative of the Moral Education League. This particular book is the second in the series, and focuses on "kindness" and "work." The first, which I have not yet located, focused on "self-control" and "truthfulness." The search is now on for the first series and any later series.
In the meantime, I took the opportunity to glance through the very lengthy table of contents and noticed a section under "work" called "social service." I am increasingly disturbed by the attitudes I am seeing among my fellow members of Ethical Culture regarding "Ethical action," concerned that there is too much emphasis on the act of providing social services and not enough emphasis on the ethical roots and purposes of those actions and services. I hope someday to be able to articulate that concern in some better fashion. At the moment, I find that Gould has given me a new point of view on social services.
In Chapter 41, Gould begins with a discussion of Michelangelo's statue of David. He has a charming way of keeping his narrative at a child's level (I'm thinking elementary school level), defining his terms, making sure that, when he talks about the Italian setting for his story, he is providing parallels for understanding by the English schoolchild. His story talks about Michelangelo's carving of the statue as a social service--service to his community--because he used an abandoned piece of marble, seeing in it the future David. The marble had been laying about near the cathedral for "more than a hundred years" (p. 193), and Michelangelo's service replaced an eyesore with a work of art. Gould's story continues with more "social service" by those who talked about what to do with the statue (where to put it), those who struggled for four days to move the statue with ropes and rollers, and even those who criticized the statue. In all cases, individuals--sometimes working together, sometimes independently--provided a service to their community through their skills, their energy, their ideas. That service he called "social service."
Later Ethical leaders referred to "public spirit" for some of the same "services." They referred to the duty to vote, the importance of speaking out in councils (both public and private), the value of stepping up to serve on those same councils.
I have talked in the past about four modes of Ethical action: Living, Giving, Serving, and Teaching/Educating/Testifying. (I am still working on that fourth label.) In my thinking, some of these same modes of action fit into the notion of "social service" that Gould advocates and also with the idea of "public spirit." As we make ethics central in our lives, how we live can (and should) be an Ethical action. What we give (including time, talents, and money) can also be an Ethical action when it is given in the spirit of social service--and not merely as charity, which makes us the giver of bounty rather than a servant of the community. Serving is easiest for us to see as both Ethical action and social service, but, interestingly, Gould turns the notion on its head when he tells the story of the cathedral bell-ringer in Switzerland. Simple actions that serve the community, he points out, should be respected just as the grand deed of an artistic genius such as Michelangelo should be respected. In that, the respect we give to others is an Ethical action. The final mode--teaching, etc.--is simply how we use our voice to show others the ethics of the situation, whether it is to speak up and point out wrong, plan a better path forward, or to clarify the benefits to community and self in a particular course of action or event. Speaking up to assert, challenge, praise, identify--all of the ways in which we can express our Ethical values in the presence of others--becomes, in that way, an Ethical action--and a social service.
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