It makes us think that we are "loving" when in reality, 'service' only feeds our ego, our desire to tell the world that we are responsible..

Sincerity remains an elusive virtue in this neoliberal world

The need is to uncover the mystical language of 'service'

to remove the perfunctory intuition that it is immediately good.

to see that the language of service is constructed, and therefore subject to recapture and reconstitution.

And hence, by questioning 'service' we widen its analytical foundation.

!

In fact, at this point of thought, there is no room for altruism.

Did you know that in America there are people who get sued when they try and help someone out of a car crash?

I AGREE! especially when "serving others" is imposed upon us!

i like

However, let me clarify that this suspicion should not debilitate into merely anti-'service' paranoia.

That 'service' today lies, as David Foster Wallace puts it, "with a potency somewhere between a symptom and a synecdoche".

This suspicious thinking towards service is a symptom of a possible greater and malignant form of illusion - that service is merely

an individual, isolated act.

It is also important to note that the crisis of "service" is a synecdoche - a part that is interpreted to mean as a whole.

that micro-forms of 'service' is seen as enough that can be satisfactorily equated to responsibility.

The symptom and synecdoche of 'service' therefore (to borrow from tocqueville's words) is merely "stirring passions" and "gratifying taste".

"Service" henceforth should learn from the Catholic teachings - to be compassionate. To believe that the last word is not death or chaos,

the last word thus is God who is love. That when service is done in "love", a term that was replaced by Levinas with

"responsibility for the other"

Service as the responsibility for the other (seen from the vantage of the Face and not with prejudice), pushes to see the self

as "unattainable"

But that the "unattainable" is the "true self" (Abe Masao).

But is not the very manifestation of service as rooting from religious tradition similarly of an understanding that there is a need to fill

up one's underperformances? True, Catholic doctrine does say that we as humans were loved by God before, and as such anything we do will not

and cannot deserve His love. However, the ethic of responsibility (which corresponds to the other ethics of consistent critique and self-

reinvention in order to achieve something close to the Form) seems to contradict it, which impulses one to do good for the purpose of duly

maintaining the image (hopefully in the process, achieving the substance) of a virtuous person. Is not this consistent impetus to serve and

work a belief that, while probably providing space for the fulfillment of an ego-binging, should also acknowledge possibilities of altruism?

Yes, truly 'service' is used to "merit God's love" (to echo your point on "filling in underperformances").

However, in trying to question this 'service' and in attempting to draw from "God's Love", true service therefore

acknowledging that the self is unattainable. That it is not about ego, the self-congratulatory attempt to be 'responsible'.

Hence, the unattainable is the "true self". \

If that is so, then, wherein is the place for *gaudium* if we cannot allow ourselves a measure of consolation? If any, this despair is what

drove Anselm to find God, and, knowing that wherever he tries to find God he sees God *semper major* he learns to let Him envelop him.

In this surrender, is the volition to service magnified (as a conduit of this love that envelops him) or is it rendered docile?

In light of the self-annihilating and self-negating move towards the "true self" as unattainable vis-a-vis sincere service, the will to

serve therefore is strengthened by self -negation.

A realization that I should not 'serve' because I want to "merit God's Love".

That "sincere service" is to finally say "I am not Leo, to self negate". Thus, in so doing, the walls of our ego crumble

Service not counting costs save that of knowing we do His will. An "unlocking" of potentiality in being tied.

we no longer seek to serve because we should merit God's love

Instead, sincere service is letting Him find the true self. My true self is uanttainable. Hence, the unattainable (the true self) can only

be found by God (by letting His love find us).