Out of this world

Bluemem #8-There’s no I in team

                As a result of growing up in New York City, it is very easy and almost unavoidable to develop a very “stick to your self” kind of attitude. Everyone always view the people of new york city as mean, grumpy, and selfish, but I look at the people in my city as very busy people who work a lot more than they should and are always fighting through crowds of people to get to work. I mean who wouldn’t get grumpy every once in a while with those kind of conditions. But back to my point about sticking to yourself, in American society, people tend to have an individualistic attitude about work ethic and success. If you work hard and avoid having to depend on people for help, then you will be very successful in life. I must admit that this mentality was my way of life up until I went to High school.

               In high school, one of the clubs that I was really involved in called buildOn, encouraged students to play active roles in their community by engaging in community service and helping out those less fortunate than us whenever possible. They also encouraged us to do a lot of fundraising because the money from our fundraising would go towards building a school in a developing country. Well, during my junior year in High school I was one of eleven students chosen to travel to a developing country in West Africa to build a school. When we arrived and starting building the school, it was clear that trying to do any task on the school site would not be an easy task to do alone. The natives to the village where we stayed however new this and always stopped what they were doing to come and help out someone who needed it. For the two weeks that I spent in in Mali, West Africa, proved to me that society functions a lot better when everyone is willing to do their part. 

                       In my English course, we discussed the ideas of Robert D. Putnam in his piece Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival American Community. In this piece Putnam suggests that in the past societies ran because of civic virtue. People use to believe  that it was their duty and social obligation to keep society going so they we active members of society. People did things not because they wanted money, but because they wanted to impact the greater community. Well my time spent in Africa definitely illustrates civic virtue at its finest. Even though the people in the small village where I stayed did not have many of the luxuries that I am guaranteed as an American citizen, such as free education, their society was able to run much more efficiently and the people seemed a lot more happy than many of the people that I run into at home. I believe that the reason for this is because everyone within their society did their part. As a result of everyone choosing to do their fair share more things are accomplished and the greater society can reap the benefits of everyone’s hard work.