<p>Those earliest colonists were bound into small communities by religion and interdependence. To survive, as well as promote their ideals. Depending on where, they may have come to escape religious intolerance or to adventure, but their ability to express individualism, early on, was suspect. Conformity was a value. (How 'bout those witch trials?) None of that was self-determination; much of their religion hinged on predestination. The frontier settler families were not out there reinventing the wheel as loners. They may have lived on individual, distant plots, but valued their Bibles and what community they could make. </p>
<p>But, it’s true the outliers, renegades, explorers, trappers, etc, lived by their own wits.</p>
<p>Well I never said anything about colonists and frontiersmen being alone. I said they survived on their self-reliance and self-determination. There were no “safety nets” back then that I know of.</p>
<p>There is nothing wrong with community service. Why do you ask? I brought it up in response to the idea that Americans are selfish. I see the opposite with my childrens’ generation.</p>
<p>Yes there were, Bay. It was the community. Were there national safety nets? No. But there were much closer families, communities, etc that took care of their own so-to-speak. It’s how many people survived when they fell on hard times. We don’t have that anymore. </p>
<p>I do firmly believe that Americans are selfish and self-absorbed, especially compared to the rest of the world. I don’t think there is any other country as selfish as we are. It’s glaring in my generation. Community service for many (probably most) is just hours you put in to fulfill your school’s requirements, to check off a box, to put on a resume, etc- not to actually GIVE BACK. I say this as someone who never had a community service requirement and has put in thousands of hours of work to various community organizations. This selfishness has been a strength and a downfall. </p>
<p>Also, he’s a sobering fact for you- in America, 3 out of 4 adults know someone who is in a domestic violence situation (and they KNOW about the abuse). How many people do you think actually intervene or attempt to help victims? We’re very much in the mentality to look the other way. It’s not OUR business.</p>
<p>“Our country was founded by colonists and rugged frontiersmen and outcasts who survived due to their self-reliance and self-determination. That is our roots. Maybe it is anachronistic now, but it feels disrespectful to label it selfish.”</p>
<p>I agree completely.</p>
<p>Before you can start taking care of other people in the community, you need to take care of yourself and your own family. Call it what you want, but if you’re not doing what it takes care of your own family, you are not doing the community any favors. I listen to people who are on welfare, taking this and that from others and talking about their volunteer service, and think, really? How about you go out and spend your extra time going out and getting a job, and supporting your own family? You need to be dedicated to your own children, your own parents, and then take care of others. Call it selfish if you want.</p>
<p>Funny, we never put an emphasis upon doing this bogus community service-check the block for college applications that seems to be so in vogue now. We just always emphasized to our kids to do what is right. Now my youngest is graduating with over 1,000 hours in community service (of which he is highly amused at the entire act of why he has to declare these in the first place), putting in more hours than most in his graduating class. I do not think this generation is selfish in the slightest. I think this generation is full of brilliant, thoughtful people who are going to improve the world. And they certainly aren’t more selfish than anyone else. I am full of admiration for these kids.</p>
<h1>24busdriver11 - I am curious. Where do you meet all these people on welfare doing volunteer work, whom you think should be working instead?</h1>
<p>1.How do you know they are on welfare? I don’t recall anyone telling me they are on welfare.</p>
<p>2.As I understand it, the tests to receive welfare are stringent, and those on welfare are unable to find jobs. Most wouldn’t be on welfare if they could work.</p>
<p>3.I never meet people on welfare, and if they are, why would they tell me? </p>
<p>That sentiment you espouse on these boards, over and over, in one form or another is so Ayn Randian, Libertarian, and out and out lie propagated by the selfish - those that this article describe.</p>
<p>There are plenty of good people, giving, though poor. </p>
<p>But also plenty who have lots more, who “take care” of their own familes and never look to the side. Their cash goes into bigger and better. For themselves. That may be covered under “liberty,” and it’s legal, but you bring us to Jefferson’s point- that does not make it moral.</p>
<p>we never put an emphasis upon doing this bogus community service Bogus to whom? Really? Then it was a poor choice. It doesn’t mean we throw out a longstanding ideal. </p>
<p>I am not a church going person, but put my kids into community service early, working with the needy, using the Judeo-Christian model, to let them experience something outside themselves and their “I wants.” It stuck. They can love, they work, they do community work in college. That’s not their goal, it’s what they do because it’s good and they * can*. </p>
<p>Feeling useful is one the most important things to make somebody happy.</p>
<p>And volunteer work makes people happy or more fulfilled.</p>
<p>I didn’t know that volunteer work…helping your fellow man… was only for those that were not on welfare.</p>
<p>When somebody helps his fellow man…he feels
better about himself…and when a person feels better about himself…he
will have a better attitude…and when a person has a better attitude…he is more likely to get a job.</p>
<p>Maybe society is getting a deal. The cost of welfare may be lower than the benefit to society from a person’s volunteer work. Maybe we are better off in “some” cases where a person’s volunteer work is so
beneficial…who cares that that person is on welfare.</p>
<p>Some of these people who complain about others on welfare…must be on welfare themselves…because they know that those on welfare are getting such great deals. Otherwise, how else would they know? Where can I sign up so I can go on welfare and live the good life. I might be out of a job in a month. Where can I signup for this super
deal?</p>
<p>On the idea of the rugged individual frontiersman heading west. There were undoubtedly people who did it like this, but I think by dad’s family experience is likely more common. They came from Germany where the oldest son got the farm and everyone else had to fend for themselves. A group of brothers headed to America and found there way to Herman Missouri (named for Herman - a German hero of whom there is a giant hilltop monument near where they came from) Clue: LOTS of Germans all living together.
[Hermannsdenkmal</a> - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermannsdenkmal]Hermannsdenkmal”>Hermannsdenkmal - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>My great grandfather and his German wife had 13 kids - many of whom continued west together and settled in Oregon in the West Hills of Portland on . . . wait for it . . . Germantown Road, where they were surrounded by a network of family and practically family who looked out for each other, shared farm work, hunted together, took in the bachelor uncles, etc. My dad’s generation did a lot of pulling themselves up from there but they had a pretty large group giving them a boost.</p>
<p>My mom’s family also came west on the Oregon Trail. They ended up in the wheat country of Eastern Washington with cousins buying farms on opposite sides of the road. They shared labor and equipment and their descendants still do. The measure of how the oldest generation is getting on is if they were able to make it to the little cafe for collective morning coffee with the other farmers. They are out there on vast acres working the soil, but their yardstick of health is did they make it to the collective coffee klatch.</p>
<p>I don’t think a country that sends its sons and daughters to other countries to fight and die for freedom can possibly be called selfish. Or the huge amounts of money that are sent for relief overseas. Or that shows the outpouring of love to those in distress in their own communities.</p>
<p>This conversation sounds like a “glass half full/empty” one.</p>
<p>From my perspective, I see America as one of the most, if not the most, generous countries in the world. We welcome hundreds of thousands of immigrants and refugees every year. Once within our borders, everyone is protected by our Constitution and Bill of Rights. We spend billions helping other countries. No one starves to death or dies in the streets here (unless they refuse to get help). I know all of my neighbors and feel I live in a supportive community. No one I know has shared their domestic violence with me, but I do know it is a crime here.</p>
<p>As expected, this thread is going to devolve into a haves (who will be labeled the selfish ones) versus have-nots conversation.</p>
<p>To get a sense of American “selfishness”, compare the amount of volunteerism and charitable donations done by individuals in the U.S. versus the “unselfish”, progressive Western European ones.</p>
<p>I emphatically value the individual over the community.</p>
<p>Which is why the individual human being that I am has and continues to volunteer with my individual expertise for the betterment of individual human beings, mostly from other countries, for thousands of hours over decades. Individual contact between individuals is the best way to make individual lives better. I actually love and care about human beings. Less so humanity as a whole. Which is why I’m a conservative and one of the reasons conservatives are so likely to volunteer and contribute.</p>
<p>What I find selfish is the mindset that supports taking from someone else without his consent to fulfill your personal goals.</p>
what a terrible country that actually considers, albeit imperfectly, the safety of its citizens. For shame!!!</p>
<p>So if he gets her here in a year what’s the problem? Did he expect the immigration fairy to skip around him thrice while sprinkling glitter from the end of a magic wand?</p>
<p>Actual adults know that things worth obtaining are often worth waiting for and earning.</p>
<p>Now, let’s talk about a selfish country.</p>
<p>Mexico!</p>
<p>Let’s discuss the people I work with who have been pushed out of their countries, communities, homes and families so they can work like pack animals and send most of their earnings back to Mexico for the ostensible use of their families, but only after the people pushing them out have taken a huge cut!</p>
<p>Let’s also talk about the people in Mexico with no access to clean water, education or even opportunity.</p>
<p>Then we can talk about America being selfish, where those same people aren’t turned away from hospitals, where there children are not just welcomed, but accommodated in the public schools. Where there are countless people like me using their own time and resources to help these rejects from their own countries make a better life.</p>
<p>Marriage fraud for immigration purposes is a real issue. It has both national security implications and the exploitation and abuse of foreign nationals as a concern.</p>